By William Silveira
While the movie The Butler has been criticized for attempting to meld history with biography, I disagree with that criticism. I believe the director, Lee Daniels, chose to portray the life of Cecil Gaines (played by Forest Whitaker) against the very realistic backdrop of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, because Gaines' s life and the very real challenges he faced were so much a part of that time and the period preceding it.
Cecil was born in the old South before World War II. His mother was raped by the owner of the Southern plantation where his family lived. Reacting to the rape, Cecil's father begins to challenge the owner and is shot before Cecil's eyes. Cecil is then turned into a house boy and forced to wait on the white family, including the man who killed his father and raped his mother. His mother lost her mental stability and never regained it.
By the exercise of magnificent self control and intelligence, Cecil eventually ends up employed in one of the best bars and restaurants in Washington, is noticed, and is hired to serve as a butler in the White House, beginning with the Truman presidency and ending with the Reagan presidency.
Louis takes an active part in the civil rights movement, is brutalized, jailed, and beaten many times. His father disapproves of his participation in those events, and they become estranged. The younger brother, Charlie, joins the army and is killed in Vietnam.
The criticism I have read of this film claims that the director encapsulated too many 60's events into the film and underdeveloped the characters. If one chooses to view this film solely as a biographical story, that may be true. However, the criticism misses the point that this film is not biographical but docudrama. And it is a docudrama that America needs.
The events of the 60's are nothing but distant history in the minds of most Americans. And Americans forget the realities of their history quickly—if they accurately perceive it at all, even when it happens before their eyes. And I believe the timing of this film's release couldn't have come at a better time than the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech at the March on Washington. The Civil Rights struggle, the Vietnam War, and the rifts these created in this country between citizens, and between family members, linger on. Whites think that all the racial divides of the past have been healed. Many African Americans disagree. We continue to fight foreign wars served up on same dirty and tired old plates and we seem incapable of considering them in light of the immense moral issues they pose.
I'm glad I saw this film. It reminded me of many things I failed to fully understand at the time they were happening, but did come to understand better as I matured. If America needs to have an accurate portrayal of this part of its history served in this manner, so be it. It needed to have gut impact and be easy to understand. It succeeded very well in both regards.
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Copyright © 2013 by William Silveira
| Please comment |
William, very nice review, especially the point about America needing docudramas like this - or at least more news programs on the topic, or some sort of constant illumination and enlightenment. In much of this country people believe situations portrayed in the movie couldn't have happened since the Civil War, or the early 1900s at the very latest, but people in the Southeast know better. What seems an impossible "Hollywood" stretch of the facts was just part of everyday life in the Southeast well into the 1970s, and no doubt still is today in many places outside the major cities.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in SW Virginia and now live in Central North Carolina, and have spent much time on the backroads of both places the past 50 years or so. While those areas do have forced integration and mixed communities they did not have before the 1960s, it does not mean the mindset has changed. Get into a conversation with a white local in a small town or out in the country, and you quickly learn the only thing that has changed over the decades is they look around before dropping the "n" word, instead of just doing it openly.
Being suspended from school is a small point compared to people being raped and murdered, but the difference in expulsion rates between black students and white is a good barometer of how little the mindset has changed. In listening to a radio program a few days ago, I was shocked to learn that in our local NC school system a student could be suspended for a first-time infraction over using a cell phone in school. The statistics on that are revealing: 5% of white students are suspended for a first offense; 32% of black students are suspended for a first offense. The discrepancies are even larger when one looks at the statistics by race for students suspended for dress code violations and similar offenses.
Statistically speaking, school suspension and the host of problems that come with it are strong indicators of who will become school dropouts. And the school dropout numbers for black versus white students are abysmal. And yet the system blaming black students for going down that road, is the very same system shoving them down that road. It isn't rape and murder, but it is still a system designed to decide someone's fate in life based on the color of their skin.
So yes, you are correct: docudrama and any other enlightenment about the way things were, and in many cases still are, is something America needs.
A very good review. Having not seen it, but I wondered about the bad reviews. The clips I have watched, to me anyway, were much better than the reviews would have you believe. As for schools moto. Most of the ones in Memphis are a war zone, with armed police walking the hallways. It's hard to learn anything when you spend so much time wondering if you'll make it home alive. Good job
ReplyDeletekono, I agree many schools are not unlike a war zone: but what really caused the escalation? When school systems take normal classroom discipline away from teachers and principals and turn it over to the armed police they have added to the staff, every small infraction becomes a potential legal offense. Kids with weapons are a legal and personal security issue and should be dealt with as such, but should a 12-year-old be driven home by a police officer just because they broke the rules and used a cell phone at school for the first time?
ReplyDeleteIt is good to read of a film cutting through the gray haze of movies made by accountants' calculations and having "gut impact" as Silveira describes it. If people won't follow the news to learn what really goes on in life, maybe movies are justified by forcing some deep thinking.
When I first moved to Washington State, I worked at the local school bus garage. I also drove a bus with kids into work and drove one back home with the same kids. The kids I drove were in high school and for the most part almost easy to control with just a word of warning.
ReplyDeleteOne of the drivers for the Jr. High run got sick and I had to take his bus. Not all the girls on the bus were this way but a large number were like a pack of animals.
I would ask them to take their seat and they would tell to f-myself. They would go from seat to seat hitting people and cursing them. I had never seen anything like it. I spoke to the driver when he came back and he said they started a fire in the middle of the bus one day because they said it was cold.
There are 12 to 14 year old kids that get caught in the net and shouldn't be, but after my experience with that age group, I give the teachers the benefit of a doubt. Where was the child when they used the cell, maybe the teacher had asked a number of times for the child to put their cell away before sending them to the office. Does it not bother you--it does me--when I'm talking to a person and they text away as if I'm not there. Try to teach a class like that. However, instead of a police being called, the parents should have been called to pick their child up. They have had teachers shot and killed by gang members in Memphis for sending a kid to the office. Are as they see it disrespecting them.
Paul you speak of old farts saying things just because we know it's right without any information to back up what we say, but you have done the same thing. You give no information as to who, where, why. Was there other reasons besides just the cell phone---we don't know.
Oh, those glass houses---[smiley}] Just saying man
Great school bus story! Man, I thought West Coast kids were supposed to be laid back and we had all the thugs here in the East.
ReplyDeleteSince you asked for details about being suspended for first-time cell phone violation, here 'tis, Just go to Page 14: http://www.orange.k12.nc.us/academic_dept_pages/c&i_links/student_code_of_conduct.pdf On first offense an elementary student can be suspended for up to two days, and a middle or high school student for up to five days. Seems overkill, for a first offense?
It was the radio show that had the stats on white kids being suspended 5% of the time and black kids 32%, but since they had school counselors on the show I'm assuming they know the numbers.
I text all the time when someone is trying to talk to me. It is to subtly let them know they are boring me and I wish they would go away, or at least just shut up. Think about it. (smile)
Bill, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I am watching "The Butler" myself. I'm finding it so gut-wrenching, I've taken a break to calm down before watching the rest. I think that Cecil Gaines's early life is told in sufficient detail that referring to the movie as "of the 60's" is too restrictive, and I disagree more strongly than you do that the characters are not well enough developed for the movie to be about Gaines and his family. I think the movie stands on those feet steadily.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love actor John Cusack's Nixon nose!