Butlering through history

It's easy to dismiss (Lee Daniels') The Butler as just another movie about the plight and oppression of blacks in US history. I certainly did so and hesitated to watch it for a while. But the movie really does go beyond that to weave in the greatest identity struggle the US faced within itself with the story of the son of a cotton picker turned "housenigger", whose life eventually leads him to serve a succession of presidents at the White House.

The mix of seasoned actors really brought alive the story. What is a butler but a servant with no voice, who hears nothing, who sees nothing and who is invisible? Yet, in the movie, the butler is a potent metaphor of subservience and generations of those who have gone before him. The black butler's skin colour is a constant reminder of the inequality of status and hierarchy he as a servant is born into and subject to from birth to (almost) when he grows grey and infirm.

There were several scenes that moved me to tears. Scenes depicting the cruelty of southern whites who so violently and viciously discriminated, attacked and even killed blacks because they were blacks. Scenes of a father's struggle to accept his rebellious son and eventual recognition that the son's rebellion is standing up for the cause of racial equality that he himself have deliberately been deaf and blind to, just as he must be deaf and blind to the politicking and discussions at the White House. It is a movie that reconciles, connects and weaves through the history of a black man and the the history of black people in modern day US, with enlightening and at times light anecdotes of events, characters and going-ons of various presidential administrations.
 
It's ironic to watch this movie, which ended with images of the first black president, Obama, and his famous "HOPE" posters. In the real world, right now, he and his merry men are beating the drums of war vis-a-vis Syria (why only after 100,000 civilian deaths in the unfolding tragedy in Syria did the US president suddenly threaten military action is beyond credibility...).