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Well, if this book doesn't make you want to tape over your laptop camera, we don't know what will.
By the end of this video, you will be brainwashed. There's nothing you can do about it; we just wanted to let you know. We like to think we're bigg...
Bestsellers: The Help 9594 Views
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Description:
Historical fiction novels like The Help can whisk you back to a place and time that you may have only read about in history books. Or... a place and time that you would have read about in history books if you hadn't been slacking off on your assigned reading.
Transcript
- 00:04
The Help, a la Shmoop. We laughed, we cried… we’ll never eat pie again.
- 00:10
The Help has been selling like hotcakes for a while now.
- 00:13
But it actually has the critical cred to back up its popularity. That's right: Even stuffy
- 00:18
types love The Help.
- 00:20
Some folks are even comparing it to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which always
Full Transcript
- 00:24
ranks high in the “best books ever” debate.
- 00:27
So will The Help follow in To Kill a Mockingbird’s footsteps? Will it ever make the move from
- 00:33
bestsellerdom to classic lit? Sure, The Help isn’t a classic yet, but
- 00:37
how many stories are called “classics” right away?
- 00:41
Plenty of jerks thought Charles Dickens was a worthless hack, and we all know how that
- 00:45
turned out.
- 00:47
The important thing was that Dickens’ books were popular, just like The Help is today.
- 00:51
Of course, popularity isn’t everything. You’ve got to have respect, too. Sorry,
- 00:56
Twilight.
- 00:57
But The Help is no slouch in that department, either. “Popularity plus Respect plus Time
- 01:02
equals Classic” is an equation that’s worked in the past, so maybe it'll work for
- 01:07
The Help, too. If that equation isn't enough for you, throw
- 01:10
some racism into the mix. We're serious. Books about tough subjects like racism have a history
- 01:17
of making their way into the world of classic literature.
- 01:20
We’re thinking way beyond just To Kill a Mockingbird – there’s The Color Purple,
- 01:25
Invisible Man, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry…
- 01:29
The list of tales about ignorant scumbags goes on and on…
- 01:33
…and guess what The Help is about?
- 01:35
Okay, so The Help has all the makings of a classic, but it's definitely not a shoe-in.
- 01:40
Why? Well, lots of people think The Help is just reality TV in novel form.
- 01:48
The black maids serve as the cameras, giving us a semi-scripted view of the badly-behaving
- 01:52
wives of a particular town.
- 01:54
Sound familiar? Deep down, could The Help just be the print
- 01:58
version of “The Real Housewives of Jackson"?
- 02:03
When we get sick of rich ladies being terrible harpies on TV, we may get sick of stories
- 02:08
like The Help, too. So what do you think?
- 02:11
Is The Help headed toward the literary hall of fame…
- 02:13
…or is it just another one-off bestseller destined for oblivion?
- 02:20
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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