Off color?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Off color?

Fresh from her studies at Ole Miss, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) returns home to Jackson in the early 1960s with her head full of rebellious notions. Instead of finding herself a husband, as her good-hearted but traditionally minded mother, Charlotte (Allison Janney), would prefer, Skeeter wants to be a journalist.

As for the wildly racist thinking that prevails among her privileged peers – personified most viciously by Junior League leader Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) – Skeeter has no patience for it. Neglected by Charlotte, Skeeter was nurtured instead by her family’s black housemaid, Constantine (Cicely Tyson in a brief but wonderful performance), for whom Skeeter retains a deep affection.

Securing a job as the household hints columnist for a local paper, Skeeter turns to another servant, Aibileen (Viola Davis), for advice on the subject. But Aibileen’s help with cleaning tips soon becomes a pretext for Skeeter’s secret and potentially dangerous scheme to write a book documenting the lives of Jackson’s African-American domestics.

Though initially reluctant to cooperate, Aibileen decides to take the risk based on a sermon she hears in church. Eventually Skeeter also manages to win the confidence of Aibileen’s sassy best friend Minnie (Octavia Spencer), whose anecdotes include the off-color tale of how she took revenge on Hilly for firing her.

Since Hilly is leading a crusade to establish separate bathrooms for the city’s maids, so they won’t spread disease to the white population by using their employers’ facilities, Minnie’s manner of wreaking vengeance is apt. But, as portrayed in a fairly lengthy scene, and as repeatedly referred back to, the incident is also profoundly distasteful.