Reflections of racial segregation and social injustice in the movies: Mudbound and the help

Today it is a well-known fact that there is no relation between skin colour and intelligence; hence no sign of inferiority. Cultural and physical differences constitute only the variety among the races. Thus, today it is claimed that the delusion known as racism is just a social construct used by whites to dominate blacks brought from Africa as enslaved people. According to Critical Race Theorists, racism is not merely a scientific error either since, for about 250 years, it was legally and socially practised deliberately. In her great movie, Mudbound (2017), based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, Diandrea Rees, an African American director, skilfully portrays and criticises the social and legal inequalities and injustices endured by Blacks during the post-war era in the 1940s in segregated Southern America. Tate Taylor, a white American director, also reflects on the injustice and inequalities of a segregated and prejudiced society in 1960s Southern America, particularly the exploitation of Black American women working as maids, in his movie The Help (2011), based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett. Although both films reflect the difficulties and consequences of discrimination against Blacks by shedding light on the lives of the characters, the directors' approaches to the subject differ significantly. By analysing Diandrea Rees's Mudbound and Tate Taylor's The Help, this thesis aims to illuminate the differences between the two directors' approaches and portrayals of racial segregation in the American South through the perspective of Critical Race Theory.