What Book to Read?

Readers of this blog will know that I’ve recently reviewed two books that dealt in very different ways with civil rights and racism in the southern states of America – Home by Marilynne Robinson, and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. So I was fascinated to find that this film is also about these issues.

The film is loosely based on the true story of a man who worked as a butler at the White House for around thirty years, serving Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan. (Ford and Carter don’t really get a look in.) In the film he is called Cecil Gaines and given an even more traumatic childhood than the real butler. His parents are black share croppers on a cotton plantation, the owner of which rapes his mother and kills his father. Cecil is taken into service – he becomes a ‘house nigger’ – and ends up serving in a hotel in Washington, from where he is recruited to the White House. From reading books about English country houses I always thought the butler was the head of the servant establishment, but apparently in America butler is another word for footman. And for almost all Gaines’s time at the White House, no black footman got equal pay with white domestics, let alone promotion to running the place. However though at first he is invisible, over time he becomes valued as a person as well as a butler. He also gets to hear lots of political discussion.

The counterpoint to this is the story of Gaines’s son, who becomes involved in the Civil Rights movement. Through Cecil’s eyes we see Eisenhower dithering about whether to send federal troops to support the desegregation of the Little Rock High School, Kennedy’s indecision about supporting the Freedom Riders who were taking on the Jim Crow laws of the Southern states, Johnson’s support for the Civil Rights Act, Reagan’s  continuing attack on the Black Panthers and his refusal to condemn apartheid in South Africa. Through his son’s eyes we see black people beaten up for trying to integrate a luncheon bar, a Freedom Ride bus destroyed by the Klu Klux Klan and protesters jailed for asserting their civil rights. Father and son see these issues very differently; the national drama is played out in the conflict between them.

I’ve often found that the film or TV mini-series of a book is disappointing because it imposes a common denominator vision that stifles the picture of people and events you build up as a reader. Though The Butler was never a book, I found that the images added tremendously to my understanding of the civil rights issues raised in the two books mentioned above. Cutting from black servants setting up for a State dinner in the White House to a diner where young black people are being beaten up for being there, and back again, is something you can only do on film. The visual jolt of seeing a burning cross wielded by the Klu Klux Klan was something I don’t think I could have got from reading about it a book.  Some critics of the film thought this counterpointing was a bit overdone, but I didn’t find it so. Perhaps such images are commonplace in America, but for me they still carry great weight. And it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that such events are relatively recent – it all happened in my lifetime.

The film takes a little while to get into its stride, and I sometimes found it difficult to catch what was being said because of the strong southern accents – though I’m told that Forest Whitaker, who plays Gaines, always has a tendency to mumble. But once the conflict over civil rights is set up, the film gains in pace and power. The presentation of the various presidents is on the whole well done, though I could be picky and say that Nixon isn’t coarse enough, or that Regan is too bland – notwithstanding how bland he really was. While there are only minor attempts to make them look like the real person, there are enough similarities of appearance and manner to make their presentation credible. There is a strong cast; Oprah Winfrey in particular surprises as Raines’s wife Gloria, who has her own battles with loneliness and alcohol – she is a much better actress than I expected. I noticed that in 2011, she invited all remaining freedom riders to appear on her program as a tribute to their courage. The film is dedicated to all those who worked to secure civil rights for African Americans.

The film is certainly worth seeing, especially if like me, you don’t have a strong background in American history. You can find more about it here – including details of the well-known cast. Too much information and too many stars?  You can read reviews both sympathetic and critical here.

PS The proper title of the film is Lee Daniel’s The Butler (2013), this mouthful being necessitated by the fact that there is already a much earlier – now lost – film called The Butler. Only in America. 

PPS There was also a freedom ride in Australia in 1964-5 to highlight the poor living conditions of Indigenous Australians and the racial discrimination they suffered. I don’t think they’ve made a film about it though.