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The Butler Analysis
The 2013 fictional film, The Butler, focuses on racial issues in America. The story begins in the 1920’s in Georgia. At the time, Cecil Gaines and his family are all slaves. Cecil Gaines and his father were in the field picking cotton. The master told Cecil Gaines’s mother to come with him to the shed and raped her. Young Cecil Gaines asked his father why he didn’t say anything. His father responded “This is the white man’s world, we’re just living in it.” Then his father told him to get back to work. Soon after, the master comes out of the shed and Cecil Gaines’s father says “hey.” The master takes out his gun and shoots him in the head. This part of the film highlighted the fear that was used to control slaves during this time.
After a few years, Cecil Gaines left the plantation. At first, Cecil Gaines could not find food, work, or a place to sleep until he broke into a shop, got caught, and asked the man for a job. The man said “yes.” Shortly after, Cecil Gaines was offered another position at the White House as a butler. He took the position and joined a t...
The location alternated between Piedmont, South Carolina, Washington D.C, and Pennsylvania (IMDb). The film presents the south as a serene and peaceful place where all live in harmony with the racial power set the way God intended it to be with whites on top. However, according to author Eric Foner the treatment of blacks in the white south was very inhuman and psychologically destructive. Throughout the film the blacks are seen as subordinate to whites in every aspect even cultivation. The prosecution of innocent blacks was rampant and uncontrolled throughout the entire south even for many years after reconstruction. The large majority of African American prosecutions were unjustified and without probable reason except for the sole purpose of different skin tone. Many southerners predominantly white males in this time period believed that God had set an order in which blacks belonged under whites and had no other purpose besides loyal servitude to their white masters. Ideologies such as these removed any possible human aspect of blacks and victimized them under a corrupt system. However, D.W Griffiths film “The Birth of a Nation”, manages to twist the truth and victimize whites by presenting blacks as the prosecutors of whites, savage, dumb, cruel, and incompetent. Following this, the film then presents the KKK as the saviors of the
Summary of the Case On August 1987, Donald Butler opened a store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, called the “Avenue Boutique”. In this store, Butler sold and rented pornographic publications that were considered “hard core” and sexual paraphernalia. A couple weeks later, the City of Winnipeg Police searched and seized Butler’s sexually explicit materials lawfully. From this, Butler was charged with 173 counts under s. 163 of the Criminal Code. These charges included s. 163(1)(a) which criminalizes the distribution and the possession for distribution of obscene materials, as wells s. 163(2)(a) for selling and exposing obscene material to the public.
In his book, An Imperfect God, Henry Wiencek argues in favor of Washington being the first true president to set the precedent for the emancipation of African-American slaves. Wiencek delves into the evil paradox of how a nation conceived on the principles of liberty and dedicated to the statement that all men are created equal was in a state that still preserved slavery for over seven decades following the construction of the nation. Washington’s grandeur estate at Mount Vernon at its peak had the upkeep of over 300 slaves 126 of which were owned by Washington. First, it must be understood that Washington was raised on slavery receiving ownership of 10 slaves at the age of 11 years old and that Washington was a man of his time. However, it must also be understood that Washington’s business with slavery was in the context of a constrained social and political environment. Weincek maintains that this does not exonerate the fact that Washington maintained slavery however; it does help to quantify the moral shortcoming by which Washington carried until his last year of life.
Paul Butler says in his article, “Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No”, “If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote ‘not guilty’…As a juror you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you will become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.” This is in reference to jury nullification. It is an actual constitutional doctrine that is premised upon the idea that the jury (ordinary citizens), not government officials, should possess the final word on whether an individual should be punished. As Butler explains, jury nullification is for the most part a good thing. It was necessary to end prohibition, it has caused prosecutors over the years to change tactics when
On Easter of 1873 the city of Colfax experienced what is considered to be the last, but bloodiest battle of the Civil War and the end of the Reconstruction Era. This devastating event is known as the Colfax Massacre. In hopes of intimidating African Americans to keep them from voting, the Colfax Massacre resulted in the deaths of hundreds of black men. All of the incidents that occurred in the narrative were a result of the racism whites had against African-Americans which makes this one of the major themes of the book. The prevalence of racism in Colfax leads to many violent outbreaks, thus making violence a reoccurring theme in the narrative. In Nicholas Lemann’s work, Redemption: The Last Battle of The Civil War, Lemann illustrates the themes of racism, and the
In conclusion, readers identify with the human form and use it as a vehicle for defamiliarization to show the mechanical functions they serve themselves and others. The characters in “Bloodchild” behave as part of a process and show a lack of respect for their human qualities. As they desensitize their bodies, they allow the Tlic to engage with them in an unbalanced power relationship. Then, the Tlic interact with them in a sheltering way and inhibit their thought process. Through this interaction chain, Butler effectively conveys that the way humans treat themselves will dictate how others treat them. As the afterword said, “Bloodchild” is not about slavery; it’s about the relationships humans take on because they allow themselves to be
The criteria of this essay are just used to inform the readers about what black people had to endure during slavery. Also, showed how whites treated black people. The movie also showed how black people had to deal with how white people treated them.
The book follows Dana who is thrown back in time to live in a plantation during the height of slavery. The story in part explores slavery through the eye of an observer. Dana and even Kevin may have been living in the past, but they were not active members. Initially, they were just strangers who seemed to have just landed in to an ongoing play. As Dana puts it, they "were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors." (Page 98). The author creates a scenario where a woman from modern times finds herself thrust into slavery by account of her being in a period where blacks could never be anything else but slaves. The author draws a picture of two parallel times. From this parallel setting based on what Dana goes through as a slave and her experiences in the present times, readers can be able to make comparison between the two times. The reader can be able to trace how far perceptions towards women, blacks and family relations have come. The book therefore shows that even as time goes by, mankind still faces the same challenges, but takes on a reflection based on the prevailing period.
Because of the thirst of superiority whites had, they wanted to restructure the behaviors of blacks in ways that would make them behave inferior. This was aided by the Jim Crow Laws enacted during the Jim Crow period. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” in Uncle Tom’s Children explains how the natural behaviors of blacks were affected by Jim Crow laws. Wright explains how these laws affected him personally. Right from his childhood, blacks have been restricted from having anything to do with whites. Black children were brought up in ways that would make them scared of the whites. This continued even in his adulthood. Only few blacks were fortunate to work in places where whites were, but they were always treated badly. Wright got a job in an optical company, where he worked alongside two whites, Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease. When Wright asked both of his coworkers Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease to tell him about the work, they turned against him. One day Mr. Morrie told Mr. Pease that Richard referred to him as "Pease," so they queried him. Because he was trapped between calling one white man a liar and having referred to the other without saying "Mr." Wright promised that he would leave the factory. They warned him, while he was leaving, that he should not tell the boss about it. Blacks were made to live and grow up under conditions that made them regard whites as superior. Whites also used blacks’ natural behaviors against them by sexually abusing them. It is natural for people to have sex, but if they forced or abused sexually this means that their natural behavior is being used against them because sexual abuse is not natural. Sarah, in “Long Black Song,” is an example of a black female that was sexually abused by whites. Sarah was married and had a child but when the white man came to her house he did not hesitate to have sex with her. She resisted him initially
In the middle of the night, four white men storm into a cabin in the woods while four others wait outside. The cabin belongs to Alice and her mom. The four men pull out Alice’s father along with her mom, both are naked. Alice manages to scramble away. The men question Alice’s father about a pass, which allows him to visit his wife. Her father tries to explain the men about the loss of the pass but the men do not pay any attention to him. Instead they tie him to a tree and one of the white man starts to whip him for visiting his wife without the permission of Tom Weylin, the “owner” of Alice’s father. Tom Weylin forbid him to see his wife, he ordered him to choose a new wife at the plantation, so he could own their children. Since Alice’s mother is a free woman, her babies would be free as well and would be save from slavery. But her freedom “status” does not stop one of the patroller to punch her in the face and cause her to collapse to the ground.
In the very beginning of The Butler, they show us how farm owners treat their slaves, and usually they never ended up like Cecil did. Later on in the movie we see that African-Americans no longer working as slaves, but whites still do not treat them equal. Researcher Robert Putnam notes, “those in more diverse communities tend to “distrust their neighbor…” (qtd.in Jonas 64). The movie does a good job showing this, when Cecil worked in the hotel before he was in the White House. As The Butler progresses they show us how some African-Americans took it in their own hands to get equal rights. By this they developed the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King Jr. came about, and so did the Black Panthers. They also told us that it took until Ronald Reagan to get equal pay in the White House. These are just a few things that they showed in The Butler has contributed to our
Racism was very evident in this story and also in the time period before the American Civil War.
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
Jimmy Butler still banners the trade rumors news as of late. For a couple of weeks, many reports have floated that the Chicago Bulls made him available for trade. Now, recent reports are saying that there is a possibility that he heads to the Denver Nuggets in exchange for 3 players.
Slavery has numerous brutal dehumanizing effects on thousands of slave families. Families were torn apart constantly, never knowing if they would ever see each other. In the interview with Mr. Fields, a former slave, he said “When I was