Walter Rhett: Answering The Call (The Butler)

[DemocratsForProgress]

A friend called from California to ask had I seen the news of Skip Gates’ screening of Lee Daniels’ new movie, The Butler (starting Forest Whitaker), which led at the box office over the weekend in ticket sales, grossing more than $25 million. Already, conclusions are being drawn about what it means, the lessons of the creative celebration on the screen and on the lives beyond.

I spend the weekend looking backward. Thinking about Stepin Fetchit and the Bundy boys, William and McGeorge. Stepin Fetchit, a stage name, was born Lincoln Theodore Andrew Perry of West Indian parents who migrated to Florida in the 1890s, his father a Jamaican cigar maker, his mother a Nassau seamstress. Perry received the first screen credit for a person of color and was Hollywood’s first black millionaire, earning its twin coins of recognition and money for his character portrayals of offensive stereotypes.

But Stepin Fetchit (“step’n'fetch it,” laughing remainder of ordering a lackey about; it misses the hidden admonition: go and get it) took us beyond belief—and beyond disbelief. So exaggerated and absurd was his character, so obvious a stretched, ridiculous caricature of the stereotype itself, it became both an indictment and parody of those who accepted his image in their looking glass as it portrayed and revealed the inner fears and social uncertainty that were barriers to progress.

His work was a revolutionary cautionary tale. Deliberately calculated, it made fun of the fears of lynching and brutality by mocking the physical forces that regulated black life, then monitored and adjudicated by a privileged, random citizenry...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/08/22/answering-the-call-the-butler/

[Tx4obama]

1. Hmmm...

I think the author of the article up in the OP must not know much about the 'real White House butler Eugene Allen'.


Four links below to the WaPo articles (which inspired the making of the film) regarding the real WH butler Eugene Allen

A Butler Well Served by This Election - 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110603948.html

White House Butler Eugene Allen Witnesses Swearing-In (of Barack Obama) - 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012004301.html

Eugene Allen, White House butler for 8 presidents, dies at 90 - 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040103444.html

White House butler Eugene Allen's humility recalled at funeral - 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/04/01/ST2010040103462.html

I hope everyone takes the time to read the articles and also has the opportunity to see the film