{"id":878,"date":"2013-02-05T21:04:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T21:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nabourke.com\/?p=878"},"modified":"2013-06-04T06:38:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T06:38:17","slug":"going-to-the-movies-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=878","title":{"rendered":"Going to the movies (Lincoln)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Daniel-Day Lewis walks the Abe Lincoln walk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today I headed to the movies* to see Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster, this time the historical film Lincoln<\/i>, which concentrates on the last few months of President Abraham Lincoln’s life, and particularly the political machinations surrounding the passing of the 13th amendment (abolishing slavery) and the end of the revolution. I have no doubt that many Americans will applaud the film’s reverential treatment of both the story and the character of Lincoln, but as a non-American I found it difficult to connect with the film’s heavy-handed sense of earnest nostalgia.<\/p>\n

After two and a half hours of funereal dourness, what the viewer learns is that Lincoln drove the thirteenth amendment through in the dying days of the revolution because his closest political allies believed it would not be passed if peace was declared first. According to the film, Lincoln was a firm, if pragmatic, personal supporter of abolition (in reality, he was at best ambivalent about the political and social value of abolition). During his senate campaign, for example, he said:<\/p>\n

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Taken out of context – taken as though this quote and others like it represented the core of his political and personal identity – Lincoln might seem to be a very different man than the one shown in the film. Instead, the film shows a almost a flipside version of our \u00a0one-sided, out-of-context horror. Aone-sided, out-of-context hero. The film’s portrait is of a man whose flaws only highlight his humanity and greatness. In fact, many of the human flaws the film shows can easily be read as their opposite. For example, his determination to stop his son from joining the army comes across as an expression of his affection for a son he is otherwise cool and distant towards. It’s a glowing portrait of an important figure in American history, and a significant period of his presidency.<\/p>\n

Lincoln was a fairly moderate Republican, but a truly remarkable man. A highly intelligent, effective politician whose opinions changed as his understanding of the world grew, but he was also a man of his time. Perhaps if he had been more radical he would never have been elected president. Nevertheless, he did have around him men (and I presume, women) who were more radical in their support not only of abolition, but of black suffrage. For example, the fierce Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, also appears in Spielberg\u2019s film: an example of a more radical Republican who had to be convinced to soften his public stance on black rights in order to see the amendment passed.<\/p>\n

It’s no surprise that Spielberg\u2019s film is somewhat hagiographic. This is the man who made Schindler’s List<\/i> and Amistad<\/i>. Films that tell nostalgic, grand stories featuring men and women choosing right over wrong. They are glossy, emotionally simplified narratives that take history as a leaping off point for telling a story about the ultimate triumph of good over evil.<\/p>\n

All of which is a long, long way of saying that it is a film worth seeing. A worthy film, that will probably garner highly polarized reviews, because, even though the film is historical, it is a highly political film, too. A film about an issue that is far from resolved; and the fact that it isn\u2019t resolved means that how the history is told is important to many of its viewers. They are not just movie-goers looking for a bit of entertainment to go with their popcorn. They are political animals, looking for insight into how they get here, and where they are heading now.<\/p>\n

In the interests of balance, here are a few other quotations from the inimitable President Lincoln:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
The real Abe Lincoln<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.\u00a0As a nation, we began by declaring that\u00a0“all men are created equal.”<\/i>\u00a0We now practically read it “all men are created equal,\u00a0except negroes.”<\/i>\u00a0When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes,\u00a0and foreigners, and catholics.”<\/i>\u00a0When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty \u2014 to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. (Letter to Joshua Speed. 24 August, 1855)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*In fact, when I sat down to write this blogpost, I intended to write about the cinema where I went to see the film. One of the world’s most beautiful venues: Cinema Tuschinski. It’s coming. Promise \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I headed to the movies* to see Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster, this time the historical film Lincoln, which concentrates on the last few months of President Abraham Lincoln’s life, and particularly the political machinations surrounding the passing of the 13th amendment (abolishing slavery) and the end of the revolution. I have no doubt that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[383],"tags":[556,557,558,559,560,561,562],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-living","tag-abolition","tag-cinema-tuschinski","tag-emancipation","tag-joshua-speed","tag-lincoln","tag-slavery","tag-steven-speilberg"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/lincoln.jpg?fit=288%2C175","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-ea","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}