Filmanalyse af 'The Butler'

The film ”The Butler” tells the story about the black Cecil Gaines. He grows up under slave-like conditions in the 1920s, with hard work in the cotton fields. But Cecil Gaines has a strong will to survive, after his mother gets raped and he saw his father gets killed infront of him. Therefore he decided to escape, and works as a servant for a white american. Cecil Gaines learns advances skills from the master servant, who after several years recommends him for a position in a Washington, D.C. hotel. Cecil Gaines served eight American presidents over three decades in 34 years. While Cecil Gaines worked at the D.C. hotel, he meets and marries Gloria. At that time the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other major events affect Cecil Gaines life, family, and American society.

Cecil and Gloria has two sons, Charlie and Louis. Louis, the eldest son, becomes a student at Fisk University in Tennesse. He joins a student program led by Southern Christian Conference, which led to a nonviolent sit-in, in a segregated restaurant, where he is arrested. Sit-in is an organized protest demonstration in which participants seat themselves in an appropriate place and refuse to move. In 1961 Louis and some others gets attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan while they was on a freedom ride to Birmingham, Alabama.