Octavia Spencer slams Elon Musk’s DOGE in a hilarious reference to a controversial film
Octavia Spencer is hitting back at Elon Musk’s controversial (to say the least) DOGE and its employees. And controversy is the name of the game here, because the movie she used to aim her insult is also fairly controversial.
In 2011, Spencer starred in The Help, a movie about 1960s-era Black maids and how they survived in a racist world. Spencer’s character, Minny, takes a novel revenge on the racist Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard)… she cooks her a pie which she put her own feces into. And it’s this poop pie Spencer wants to send to DOGE.
She posted an image from the movie of Minny presenting the pie, and then wrote, “Bake sale for Washington to ALL DOGE employees and supporters. I need good vanilla from MEXICO and some CANADIAN maple syrup.” Mexico and Canada are two countries Donald Trump has imposed harsh tariffs on.
The pies, she said, were “Corn and chocolate. Need lots of donations for the “special ingredient”. Eat looooooooots of corn. One time sale.” She concluded, “Fill out the cards below. Who would you send a pie to?” #MinnyJacksonCallToAction.”
Many people were amused by the post. Actors including Donna Murphy and Gina Torres commented with emojis, while other people expressed their own hatred for Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and DOGE.
It’s interesting to see The Help being used here because it’s a movie that’s drawn a lot of criticism for its portrayal of race. It’s considered very much a “white savior” film, where the white characters are the fully drawn ones and the Black characters are their props. Viola Davis, another of the stars, has long since stated that she regrets being in it. “There’s no one who’s not entertained by The Help,” she told Vanity Fair in 2018. “But there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth].” She believed the film was “created in the filter and the cesspool of systemic racism.”
Spencer seems to feel a different way, though. While appearing on the podcast Table for Two in 2023 she said, “Could The Help be made today? I don’t know. Should The Help be made today? Absolutely. It represents real people who made real contributions to society who were never rewarded for those contributions.”
But the debate over the film aside, Spencer is absolutely right to be angry at the current state of the USA. Elon Musk and DOGE have caused countless Americans to lose their jobs so far. This despite the fact that Musk is not a US citizen and no-one voted for him. Some have said this is unconstitutional and have compared Musk’s actions to a kind of coup – but unlike Hilly in The Help, the world’s richest man has suffered no consequences. Such is Trump’s America.
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