The least important thing about the smashing film “The Butler” is the likelihood that Forest Whitaker will be walking away with an Oscar because of it, and that Oprah will get back to doing one of the things she does best, acting.
More importantly, a critical moral story has been retold. Like other truth-telling films, “The Butler” weaves together the personal and public in such a way that it is not only believable but convincing.
I sat in the theater with my daughter, a young woman who had not yet been born when the freedom riders crisscrossed the country and demonstrators were assailed by batons, bullets, water cannons and dogs. She was not alive to witness the integration of white-only restrooms, drinking fountains, lunch counters and schools. And she sat, speechless, before the story that was her own, the story of her nation not so long ago.
After the movie, as we walked to our car, my daughter’s grandmother said to her, “I remember when this took place. My mother, your great-grandmother, worked in a segregated café in St. Louis. The signs were up. People knew where to sit.” To that, my rough-and-tumble daughter was silent. Yes, that was and is us.
The civil rights movement was a critical social moral moment in the life of our country. Many resisted and many rose to the occasion. And the place and role of religious communities – far from being some opiate of the people – was the progenitor of the pursuit and support of those reforms. The black church, in particular, provided the spiritual nerve to prevail.
One of the most realistic portrayals in the film was the division between movements in the black community; the Ghandian-Martin Luther King movement that stressed active non-violence and the Black Power movement that insisted the time for rigorous force had come. This played itself out in the family as well as society. And it was part of the fabric of the time.
Yes, go see “The Butler.” Take not only hankies, but someone you love to share it with you. You’ll want to talk about it for a long time afterward.
Tim Carson is presently the senior minister of Broadway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Columbia, Mo. He writes for Columbia Faith & Values.
