The Butler And The Truth Summary

In the commentary article, “‘The Butler’ and The Truth” from The Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts reports on the film “The Butler”, the tale of a White House servant, which portrays “The Truth. As in The Truth of How Things Were, and how that shapes How Things Are” (Pitts). Pitts opens his article by setting a scene, that of a crowd of people waiting in line to see ‘The Butler’. He describes the varying shades of what we call ‘black’ people, specifically adults, but draws attention, not to just their skin colors, but to the children trailing behind them. This then leads the author to discuss why the children were chosen to be brought along: because the movie accurately displays history in it’s hard times of slavery. Pitts then explains how Hollywood …show more content…
The article was my first introduction to the film, and I pretty much agree with the author’s ideas: though I haven’t seen the movie, I can tell that it reveals, instead of conceals, “The Truth” (Pitts), by giving us a glimpse into the harsh reality of the past. Along with this, the author is definitely correct on the fact that other Hollywood films change the unpleasant truths of the past “[prettying them] up with so many Disneyesque evasions, [dulling their] hard edges with so much buttery compromise” (Pitts). It is also pretty much true that “we are guilty of ignorance in this country”, as I have never really heard of many people discussing the topic of black history, other than in school. In conclusion, I had never encountered this movie before we read about it in class, nor knew much about African American history, but I can agree that ‘The Butler’ “is The Truth. As in The Truth of How Things Were, and how that shades and shapes How Things Are” (Pitts), which directly agrees with the article’s main points. Both our views on the topic of the article do not stray far from each