Double Consciousness and Intergenerational Relationships in ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler’

When I walked out of my screening for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, I was sure that I had seen a good movie. It’s probably why I wrote such a rave review over at Awards Circuit. However, the film has grown in estimation over the past few days to be one of the more impressive films in recent memory that dealt with issues in the African-American community. Black issues in films are very difficult to tackle on-screen, partially due to the fact that everyone is so used to the white heteronormative narrative. But I thought it would be nice to give kudos to Lee Daniels’ The Butler and analyze why it worked so well.

Double consciousness is a concept that is not mutually exclusive to African-Americans. Everyone, whether they are aware of it or not, has at least two faces. Whether it’s code switching between workplace talk and talk with your friends, everyone has to have new versions of themselves. For African-Americans it’s a totally different ball game because unlike our white counterparts, we need multiple faces in order to simply exist. Highlighted in The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois explained the situation:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Cecil, in a bit of voice over, realizes his double consciousness when he’s at the State Dinner and he’s being served by his former coworkers. This might be the least subtle thing the film did, but I applaud for having the gall to spell it out. Here is a man who has to struggle with the fact that just to simply to his job he has to look at himself through the eyes of another and subscribe to that. It’s a powerful moment, that realization, because in it’s like he takes one skin off and finds himself in another. I mean just think about what it takes for a man like that who grew up on a plantation to serve in the White House and still maintain his dignity as an African-American. But more so than that, I thought it really helped ground this character and especially, bringing him into stark view along side his son.

I don’t recall a mainstream film in recent memory handling familial relationships like Lee Daniels’ The Butler has. Ever scene with the Gaines family just felt like it was pulled from everyday life. It was so wonderful seeing screenwriter Danny Strong and Lee Daniels really take time to just let the scenes play out in all their glory. The best scenes come from the struggles of Cecil and Louis relating to each other. The movie pulls no punches in showing us how these two men just don’t see eye to eye. But rather than vilify them, it celebrates both causes. Louis and Cecil are two shades of the Black experience that happen to reside in the same place. They have different ways in how they want to achieve, Cecil with employment and Louis with confrontation, and being in the same space just doesn’t work. The scene of them after he gets arrested is so poignant of two men who cannot see eye to eye in how black people should advance and how they should fight for their rights.

I thought about me and my father when watching these scenes. Sure I’m not a freedom rider and my father is not someone who grew up on a cotton farm and ended up serving the President. But we have our struggles in relating. I can recall so many conversations that we’ve had that just weren’t going to go anywhere cause we’re from different generation. I’ve grown up in an age where much of the oppression I face isn’t as upfront as a white man telling me I can’t sit somewhere, while my father grew up in South Carolina and participated in sit ins. There’s just things in the way we approach the world that don’t mesh, but that doesn’t mean either of us is wrong.

I’m really glad Lee Daniels The Butler dug into these aspects of Black life in a major motion picture. Hopefully going forward more films will be able to do this kind of work in presenting diversity.