Seeing the USC campus and the 17,000+ "extremely blessed" undergraduate students made Daniels wish he had the same opportunity as we do to receive a great education and college experience. But unfortunately for Daniels, college was not his first concern; growing up in the South Western Philadelphia Projects, just surviving was a daily feat. Daniels struggled with a lot of hard issues growing up, particularly his homosexuality and his relationship with his father, who died a tragic death when he was a mere 13 years old. His father always told Daniels one thing: that he "wouldn't be anything." The doubt from Lee Daniel's father is what motivated him to strive for the impossible, push boundaries never been touched before, and overall, become that something his dad said he could never be.
After his father's death, Daniels was left to raise 4 younger siblings. He learned to read from the segregation signs that read: "Whites Only" and "Black Only". He tried to sell drugs to support his family, as that was the only market in his area, but it didn't work out. Daniels moved to LA and began his artistry as a theatre director. He watched some of his closest friends die in his arms due to HIV. Nobody even wanted to be around Daniels, because as a gay man, everyone assumed he had HIV and that it would spread by contact. While Lee Daniels was heavily involved in hard drugs, Daniel's brother went to jail. The wife didn't want to take care of their kids, so his brother's kids were thrown into his custody. What Daniels thought was a favor for his brother, ending up being a favor for himself– his newly adopted children helped him get sober.
After fighting his way up the film industry in LA, Daniels finally found a way to support his family while helping turn his own life around– “I live my life through my films, they’re very therapeutic for me" he states. Issues that he dealt with in his life are common themes in his movies: poverty, illiteracy, death, drug addictions, obesity, sexuality, shootings, racism, etc. Something that struck me in particular, because we talked so much on the taboo of racism in society and the media, was how afraid Daniels was to explain to his children why some White people treat them differently. Daniels was able to combat this taboo for himself through the creation of his film The Butler, and he ensures us this by explaining how “it is politically incorrect to talk about racism in Hollywood or America, it’s just not cool, you’ve got to shut the f**k up and do your thing. And I’m not that guy anymore.” Indeed, after what some may view as the creation of an iconic film, Lee Daniels is no longer that dad too afraid to talk to his children about racism.
Sometimes throughout the filming of The Butler, Daniels had to stop filming because the scenes became too real for him. He mentions the bus scene in which the Whites and the Blacks lashed out against each other and how it struck a chord with him, saying it's "not good to not act because it reaches a level of reality”– that reality being what his mother, aunts, and uncles went through in the Civil Rights Movement. Listening to the extremely successful and refreshingly humble director Lee Daniels speak cemented the bridge between modern-day story telling and the history and race relations I am learning about in Writing 140 and my Black Social Movements courses.
Your post provided a synopsis of Lee Daniels' lecture and how it relates to our courses. When he said he could not film at one point because it became too real for him, it reminded me that these movements addressed in the movie occurred only around 50 years ago and are still relevant today. How did his speech affect your ideas on race and media? What do you think he was trying to say about the media's portrayal of African Americans and the U.S.?
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