From Reality to ScreenThe Representation of th Civil Rights Movement in Lee Daniels' "The Butler"

Abstract

From Reality to Screen: The Representation of the Civil Rights Movement in Lee Daniels’ The Butler The aim of this Ph. Dissertation is to look at one of the most traumatic events in the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and focus on one of the best Oscar winning movies of the last decade, Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013). I will try to prove the unmistakable relationship that exists between real live events in the North-American history and those explicitly tackled in Lee Daniels’ movie, to later focus on the impact that the figure of the African- American major-domo who works in the White House makes on the African- American community. I will use as my primary sources the movie The Butler (2013) and the documentary series The Eyes on the Prize (1987). In spite of existing controversy between fiction and cinematic discourse and to what extent a movie can or cannot offer a fair representation of a historical time, The Butler does depict the Civil Rights fight and some of their most important figures and events. With this work, I attempt to show that movies can be a source of truthful knowledge and representation when coming to study and understand the history of the United States.