The Two Perspectives of The Butler

    I thought that The Butler was a great movie. This film was about Cecil Gaines, a man who was born into slavery. All he ever knew what to do was to serve. He served people at the hotel as a waiter, but then he became a butler at the White House. He served Presidents Reagan, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, and Eisenhower. The film had shown two different perspectives of the Civil Rights Movement, one of which was how Cecil Gaines fought it and the other was how his son, Louis Gaines fought. Louis chose to fight for Civil Rights by using violence. He did a lot of violent protests and riots. He also joined the Black Panther Party and the Freedom Riders. Cecil Gaines fought segregation in an undercover type of way. He talked to each of the Presidents about how his son was out there fighting for their Civil Rights and how African Americans were being treated differently by the way color of their skin. The film needed these two perspectives because both of these things were happening during this time period. There were a lot of people that were using violence to end segregation, while there were others that were trying to talk to people to see if they can end this. By using both of these perspectives, it proved that they were able to end segregation together. The director did do a good job portraying both of the perspectives because it gave us a general idea of how the fight for Civil Rights went. The reason why was there tension between Louis and Cecil was because Cecil did not want his son to be killed by doing these protests, but his son was very stubborn, so there were a lot of arguments between them, which caused the two of them to have a lot of tension between them.