INVISIBLE CAGE: A STUDY OF HIDDEN SLAVERY IN THE FILM THE HELP

ABSTRACT Prabarini, Kristi Yana. 2014. Invisible Cage: A Study of Hidden Slavery in the Film The Help. Thesis, English Literature, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Drs. Kukuh Prayitno Subagyo, M.A. Keywords: Postcolonial theory, Marxist theory, hidden slavery, black maids, system, liberation. The Help is a 2012 American film which is adapted from the novel by Kathryn Stockett with the same title. It tells about the white masters’ attitudes towards the black maids in the early 1960’s during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi which are challenged by Euginia “Skeeter” Pheelan, a white journalist. She then helps the black maids by collecting their voices to write a book entitled The Help. The name of Skeeter and the black maids in the book are changed to be anonymous. The book exposes the black maids’ journey as domestic worker in serving the white families. This film portrays how Skeeter struggles with the obstacles in helping the black maids. This film has a concern that is important to be delivered because it shows that racist ideology is unconsciously represented in cultural text through certain signs. The representation of the black maids comes to such resonance in popular representation of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’. The black maids’ image still remains in the old stereotypical ‘regime of representation’. Their image still persists in the basic racial representation that the black maids’ figure never entirely disappears from ‘slavery’, even though the slavery era ended. The analysis of The Help uses Postcolonial and Marxist theories as approach. These theories uncover the racial difference is a matter representation since the whites fix the racial stereotyping regarding the black maids’ blackness and primitivism. The image of black maids as ‘other’ is exploited in this film. Further, the racial stereotyping becomes the basis of racist ideology through the establishment of racist institutions that the ruling class distributed into society. Then, the ruling class exerts ‘total social authority’ over the black maids which determine the whole life of the black maids should be fixed in the invisible cage. This is what Marxist argues that power relation and its false consciousness could happen even in small social relations and remain hidden, between masters and the black maids. The analysis shows that hidden slavery in the black maids’ life firstly occurs in their daily life in serving the white families. Further, the supposed outcome of Skeeter’s help might change the maids’ life. Yet, it leads to the unconscious reinforcement of hidden slavery towards the black maids. Skeeter’s idea for writing the book is seen as the idea of the ruling class since she has power and knowledge. She as subject is utilized by ideology in dominating the maids’ imagination. She gives beautiful imagination of human rights and justice that they are actually belong to white liberty and white justice. The maids are more receptive towards this understanding that they still have human rights although they are low-paid domestic worker. The ending brings the notion of the new face slavery within hidden slavery system because finally the maids willingly commit to work and loyal to the white masters. It also leads to the issue of master-slave dialectics and Sambo-like