Lincoln, the Man Was Better Than the Movie
By Lowell Thompson
Writer,
Lowell ThompsonOK, I'll admit it right up front.
I stopped watching or caring about the
Academy Awards/Oscars years ago. Maybe I was just jaded. I'd spent my
whole adult career in the ad game and there was something about watching
this 2 - 3 hour-long trailer for the movie biz that made me feel
er...uh...stoopid - almost as dumb as dropping my hard-earned shekels to go
to the auto show.
Don't get me wrong. I grew up like most poor, "colored" kids in America. I
was as big a sucker for this stuff as anybody else. Bigger. When you're
poor, young and black in America, watching, reading and hearing white folks’
half truths, myths and fantasies about themselves is 99% of your
"education".
I think I really believed George Washington never told a lie until I heard
Malcolm X or H. Rap
Brown tell a different version. That was the beginning of my adulthood. But
‘til then, pop culture was all I knew...or wanted to know.
But now I've lived 65 blackyears in America. EurAmerica’s myths and
fantasies are not so much fun these days. Watching the AAs is not a
priority. Besides, I'm sure my friends, family and every "news" outlet in
the country will make sure I know who won...whether I ask or not.
So, at least I give Steven Spielberg's Lincoln
credit for one thing. It revived my interest in the event. I’m really in
suspense now to know how many Oscars the “Academy” will award this motion
picture mess. What does it say about the state of the artistic union that
this mini-biopic received one nomination, let alone 12? (Although I must
admit Sally Field made a very good Mary Lincoln.)
But if Lincoln (the man) had been as boring as Lincoln (the movie), no one
would ever have made a movie about him. I know this is heresy among my white
liberal friends but I can’t let this stand. The picture would have been more
exciting if they’d filmed a History 101 text book...and more historically
accurate. (More on this later.)
For my money, Spieberg should go back to film school and learn how to make
entertainment based on real people and events. (I won’t even get into the
audacity of naming this long, drawn-out photoplay about 3 months in his
life, Lincoln). Can you say P-R-E-T-E-N-T-I-O-U-S?
Then he and his co-conspirator, Tony Kushner should go back to high school
to take a few current courses in American history. Evidently the lessons
they learned as teens were still under the influence of the Texas State
Board of “Education”, whose right-wing standards made sure most of us over
55 never learned anything about our nation’s past that might upset parents
in Selma, Paducah or Tupelo.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no quarrel with Spileberg's intentions. He
obviously wanted to produce a fitting tribute to ol' Abe on the150th
anniversary of his most famous act. His intentions, like many well-meaning
liberals, were honorable. But good intentions alone don't make good actions,
good results or good movies, let alone great ones. The proverbial road to
you-know-where is paved with them - which brings me to my problem with
Lincoln, (the movie) that I never had with Lincoln (the man) in spite of his
now well-known racism and love of minstrel shows and nigger jokes, (I was
waiting for at least one joke or scene referencing any of this in the movie.
It never came. I guess it got in the way of the halo Spielberg wanted to
keep above Lincoln’s head.)
(Speaking of presumably well-meaning white Hollywooders making bad, boring,
historically-challenged movies, did anyone see George Lucas almost comical
treatment of the Tuskegee Airmen, ” Red Tails?)
I’ll say this here. I respect Lincoln (the man) infinitely more than
“Lincoln” the movie because, unlike that Great American Hypocrite, Thomas
Jefferson, he went beyond his feelings and supposed intentions and did
something that none of our much-touted FFs ever did. In fact, he took the
first step toward undoing the damage they had done. He freed 4 million
slaves. And whether it was for economic, spiritual, moral, social, etc.
reasons, he did it. And he was killed because of it.
I’m old enough and black enough to know that no man or woman, “black”, “white”, “brown”, “red”, “yellow” or other is the saint hypemiesters like Spielberg portrayed Lincoln to be. But Lincoln (the man) came as close as any politician in America ever has -including his would-be Mt. Rushmore companion, Barack H. Obama. These words about the still ongoing Civil War from his 2nd Inaugural Address are the most honest ever uttered by any American President:
“Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."
By contrast, our current president didn’t mention a word about race or
racism in his recent 2nd Inaugural - even though racial inequality is as bad
or worse now in many ways than before the Civil Rights Movement. (A CNN
study last year showed white America’s average household wealth = 22 times
that of black America’s.)
Now, Back to our feature. A little background.
The day before Thanksgiving, I was dragged, kicking and screaming to see
Spielberg's Lincoln in Las Vegas. I was out there for the holiday visiting
my sister Benita. The whole family wanted to go....so I went under duress.
The argument we had afterwards will go down in the Thompson archives as one
of our best. And that was before we even got around to the movie. Then it
was on.
This whole column is my last word on the subject. If my siblings disagree,
they can write their own.
I had already heard the hype and maybe read a few reviews and I was not
impressed. And it's not like I'm some kind of "artsy-fartsy film snob". I'm
easy. Give me Casablanca, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Treasure of
Sierra Madre or even, Glenngarry Glen Ross, The Player, The Shawshank
Redemption and I'm happy. The flick doesn't have to be pure fiction either.
I thought Spielberg's Amistad was very well done. The perfect blend of
Hollywood history and fact.
But when I read a list of characters and the actors cast to play them, I
was....uh....amazed, astonished, gobsmacked.
I read, then re-read the list. Maybe I missed it. Who was playing
Frederick
Douglass? Was it Denzel? or
Morgan or maybe even the hardest working man in
showbiz once again, Samuel. Let me read it again, slowly. No. Nobody was
playing the man who played a major role in real life to get ol’ Abe to first
issue the Emancipation Proclamation, then the 13th Amendment. (This was
another major failing of the Spielberg/Kushner project. I’d bet 90% of the
audience don’t know the difference and had no clue what was happening for
the first 30 minutes of the film. Even I was confused, and I’m probably
better versed on this stuff than most.)
Then I found out something that made the omission even more suspicious.
After a little googling, I found out Speilberg's original screeplay for
Lincoln was written by well-known screenwriter/playwright, John Logan. It
was based on the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and, guess who,
Frederick Douglass.
Look it up. In 2001, when Spielberg announced this would
be his next project, he hired Logan to write the screenplay. How he got from
there to a Douglass-less movie I'm dying to know.
Anyone who knows anything about the period depicted in the movie knows the
influence of Douglass and other abolitionists on Lincoln, who was, as
Lerone
Bennett, Jr.'s famous controversial book title,
Forced Into Glory. Douglass,
the escaped slave, great orator and leading AfrAmerican abolitionist was
almost as famous as Lincoln himself. To ignore him in a movie about this
period is, to my mind, the same as taking Abel out of the biblical twosome.
If Lincoln had been made in the early 1900s (like that notorious
award-winning Hollywood historical travesty, Birth of A Nation) maybe I'd
understand. But this is 2013, the second decade of the third
millennium...right? I just finished a whole book by noted historian, James
Oakes, titled, The Radical and the Republican about Lincoln and Douglass’
relationship.
In fact, to my AfrAmerican mind, Lincoln could well be the Birth of a Nation
of our times, perpetuating another white American hypestory as history for
generations to come. The fact that it was done by white liberals today with
a half-black man in the White House, makes it all the more galling. For the
Academy Awards judges to give Spielberg and Kushner any encouragement would
be a travesty.
What were Spielberg and Kushner thinking? Did they believe that they
couldn’t make a profit in a movie where a black man shares top billing with
the title white character? Did they think Lincoln (the man) would have
objected to Douglass stealing scenes from him in Lincoln (the movie)? How
much did Amistad gross? Maybe that burned Spielberg enough to never let
historical accuracy stand in the way of making a good return on investment.
Did the black stars want too much moolah? What?
I heard Django, Unchained did pretty well.
(Speaking of Django. A well educated, not easily pleased, bourgeois coffee
colored fellow adman friend I may run into a few times a decade, called me a
month ago and left an ecstastic voice message. He’d just seen Django and he
couldn’t contain his glee. “I just saw one of the best movies ever!”, he
screamed (or words to that effect). “You gotta see this”. I’ve heard similar
breathless endorsements from lots of black folks. The sight of an ex-slave
getting 250 years of revenge on his former masters really moves that popcorn
and lemon heads.
These intelligent AfrAmerican (mostly) men were even willing to put up with
Tarantino’s wall-to-wall use of the n word (he and old Abe had that in
common) to finally get back at whitey, if only on the silver screen. But I
won’t go see it. Not because I wouldn’t enjoy it but because I’ve spent too
much time reading about how white leaders used the excuse of black
retribution to justify not freeing the slaves. It’s been a big crowd-pleaser
in the movies since DW Griffith’s “masterpiece” of racist propaganda.
Tarantino is only playing into the fears and fantasies that have fueled Ku
Kluxers and White Aryan Warriors since way before the Emancipation
Proclamation.)
Which brings me back to Lincoln (the movie).
Maybe I'm biased. But a movie made by a fellow Chicagoan, Edward Zwick,
about the same period as Lincoln almost ?? years ago shows you don't have to
sacrifice storytelling, plot, action and entertainment value to make a
historically important (and pretty accurate) drama.
I was flipping channels when I stumbled across one of those stations here in
Chicago dedicated to old movies. I saw the shocked, young face of a bleeding
Matthew Broderick in Glory. He was playing real life hero and abolitionist,
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who led the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first
black regiments in the Civil War.
And even though it followed the same pop movie dictate of making the white
guy the hero (like Lincoln), it did give black folks parts with courage and
dignity (just like in the real life people and events they portrayed). They
even made room for a cameo by the guy Spielberg/Kushner just couldn’t find
room to squeeze in, Frederick Douglass.
And, in case you think it's just moi - an angry bitter old black man,
Maureen Dowd, the big-time pontificator at the New York Times finds faults
with this 12 nomimation mediocrity. Even though her February 16 column
confines itself to only one political pseudo-fact in the drama, it only adds
to my ever growing list. I read a piece in an online blog called Crooked
Timber by a writer named Corey Robin and a New York Times op-ed by the
historian Kate Masur that holds Steve and Tony’s feet to the fire for
their...er...ummm....creativity with history.
[begin spoiler alert ]
Fact checkers are going wild. When I saw the scene near the end, when Tommy Lee Jones' Thaddeus Stevens jumps in the sack with his "dusky" mistress/maid, I assumed it was based on incontrovertible fact. Didn't you? But all I could find in reference to it was that Stevens’ relationship with his house maid was only a rumor by his conservative enemies, (unlike the now historically accepted relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.) The effect in the movie (at least to moi) gives the impression that Stevens' life-long fight against slavery and for equality was at least partially influenced by his sexual preferences.
[end spoiler alert ]
OK, OK, I know you're getting bored. But, in my own defense, this column is
not nearly as boring asLincoln ( the movie.)
I'll wrap it up with this:
Last week, I ran into a friend who is a retired Chicago school teacher. She
is of the un-colored and Jewish persuasion. I asked if she had seen Lincoln.
I wanted her opinion because I was going to write this review.
She looked at me with an embarrassed but knowing smile.
"Yes", she said, "but I can't tell you a thing about it. I fell asleep".
I rest my case. (pun intended).
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