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<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
THE BUTLER<\/strong><\/p>\n
For a few years, and especially during the summer, older viewers have complained that Hollywood no longer makes movies for adults, with studios putting most of their eggs in the summer blockbuster basket and hoping that two or three huge hits will earn them enough cash for the entire year. But with 2013 going down as the summer of mega-budget flops, studios would be smart to look for more adult fare like \u2018Lee Daniels\u2019 The Butler\u2019, a film loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, a black man who was the White House butler for 34 years across eight administrations. Made for a modest $30 million with a powerhouse cast, \u2018The Butler\u2019 has been #1 at the box office for an amazing three weeks riding critical buzz and strong word of mouth. But is \u2018The Butler\u2019 a historical epic capturing generational conflicts in the black community during the Civil Rights movement, or is it, as African-American actor Harry Lennix calls it, merely \u201chistorical porn\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u2018The Butler\u2019 follows the life of Cecil Gaines, who\u2019s played as an adult by Forest Whitaker. Raised in Macon, Georgia by sharecropper parents, Cecil is taken out of the cotton fields after a family tragedy by the estate\u2019s caretaker and taught to be a house servant, learning skills Cecil takes to his jobs at a pastry shop and a Washington D.C. hotel before being hired by the White House in 1957. Along the way, Cecil marries Gloria (played by Oprah Winfrey) and has two sons, Louis and Charlie (played as adults by David Oyelowo and Elijah Kelley). Cecil goes on to serve under Dwight Eisenhower (played by Robin Williams), John F. Kennedy (played by James Marsden), Lyndon Johnson (played by Liev Schrieber), Richard Nixon (played by John Cusack), and Ronald Reagan (played by Alan Rickman), while working alongside fellow servants Carter (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) and James (played by Lenny Kravitz).<\/p>\n
While \u2018The Butler\u2019 may seem to be about what it\u2019s like for a black butler to witness history from the halls of power, the movie is much more about a father and son witnessing the battle for civil rights from differing viewpoints and generations. Cecil believes that things will slowly get better if black people work hard, avoid trouble, and keep their heads down and their mouths shut, evidenced by the great job and fine household he\u2019s managed to attain, even if it means remaining silent when he could influence those with the power to enact change. But his son Louis, who had a comfortable suburban upbringing and looks down on his father\u2019s subservient job, believes in a more confrontational route, taking part in sit-ins, becoming a Freedom Rider, being arrested multiple times, following Martin Luther King Jr., and even joining the Black Panthers.<\/p>\n
In that sense, I understand Lennix\u2019s claim that \u2018The Butler\u2019 is \u201chistorical porn\u201d. From what I\u2019ve read about Eugene Allen, he lived a very quiet, humble, drama-free life, consistently turning down book offers and speaking requests to dish on his time in the White House. But \u2018The Butler\u2019 often plays out more like a tour through the Worst Of 20th Century American Racism, starting with Cecil\u2019s youth in the deep South, but mostly playing out through Louis as we watch him get beaten, hosed, screamed at, firebombed, and demeaned. While it\u2019s important to remember the horrors of America\u2019s racist past, we shouldn\u2019t wallow in it, and \u2018The Butler\u2019 doesn\u2019t give you any insight into it other than that it happened and we\u2019ve come a long way since then. If Lennix wants to say that scenes of historical racism can be hackneyed and as instinctually and emotionally manipulative as scenes of horror or sex, he may not be wrong.<\/p>\n
The bigger problem may be that \u2018The Butler\u2019 doesn\u2019t adequately use Louis\u2019 confrontational activism to better explore Cecil\u2019s aversion to it, and how the silence and obsequiousness that serves Cecil so well as White House butler may be a survival mechanism created to deal with and mask both specific and cultural trauma, as it did for many black people in the Jim Crow south. While I agree with some of Lennix\u2019s criticisms, \u2018The Butler\u2019 is easy to recommend for its ambition, scope, and its great performances. Besides, if someone stumbles on your HISTORICAL porn stash, it\u2019s a lot less embarrassing.<\/p>\n
‘The Butler’ is rated PG-13 and is in theaters now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37659,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37657\/revisions\/37659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}