Disclaimer: This is not a pseudo-review of the movie The Butler and there is only one slight spoiler.
My son asked me the other week if I had seen the movie The Butler. I told him I had not. When I asked if he’d seen it, to my surprise he said he had and then proceeded to tell me that maybe I should see it. The reason I was surprised was because he’s been on a comic and action movie kick for a while now. I then recalled when it was released and how it made my list of… movies I probably won’t see. Reason? That same year 12 Years A Slave was also released. These two movies, although significant in their productions, just didn’t interest me. As a half-white, born & raised in suburban HELL #Americant who managed to jump ship in the nick-of-time, I’ve been worried ever since the election of Barry-O, how the greed $hitshow is gonna deal with the next historical wave of racism run amok that built the greatest land of free to be stupid the universe has ever seen. Wait. Maybe that’s too harsh. Let me try again.
My biggest concern after Barry-O won the Democratic primary, edging out Hillary in 2008, was that my beloved & missed #Americant wasn’t ready for this. Oh how right I was! In fact, it still isn’t ready for Barry-O. Or have you missed what he left behind? And although I love the guy, he has been a huuuuuuge disappointment when it comes to tackling the single issue that determines all the hate that is #Americant: the greed $hitshow. I mean, let’s face it. The reason for slavery, racism and all-things-greedy–and of course the advent of #Trump–ain’t just animosity and skin colour and $hitty piss-hair. I mean, come on. How much have things really changed since #Americant must, for every single step forward, take five or so steps backward? With that in worst-mind, movies dealing with race and slavery and and and and… don’t interest me if they don’t also deal with the greed $hitshow.
Am I glad I finally got around to watching The Butler? Sure, why not. Great acting mixed with mediocre directing and loose-with-truth writing can be fun (see link below for more about the fiction of this movie). I have to admit though that from the beginning to the end the film shocked me and I had to stand up to watch most of it with both hands either covering my shameful face or holding my jaw shut. But the scene that really got me was the one where Cecil Gains is confronting Nixon for the first time and Nixon uses the word entrepreneur in the context of what he should do (politically) about the black problem. Whaaaaaa?
Entrepreneur is one of those pop-words that I associate with having been stolen from original pseudo-French so that #Americants in the 1990s can find consolation with their compulsive behaviourism, i.e. nobody works anymore they only behave. So it was kind of a shock that writers of The Butler thought they could link a cultural byproduct of the fail-upward 1990s with Nixon’s $hitbag 1960s. But that’s all neither here nor there–as I still and will forever hate the word Entrepreneur.
Oh well. Here’s to pop culture continuing the ruin of everything so that nothing need be faced. Ever. Ever. Ever.
Rant on.
-T
Links that motivated this post:
worstwriter 