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Apr. 10th, 2013 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI watched Lincoln last night. I found it really disappointing. The production values are excellent--set, costume, lighting (the interior lighting is dim enough it's actually believable as gas light)--and of course it's brilliantly acted. But it doesn't interrogate any of the questions it raises at all.
I watched the little making of featurette where they talk about wanting to humanize Lincoln and get past the myth. But--they didn't. You learn he told dirty jokes, sure. And that his family life was miserable. But learning that being the leader during the Civil War cost him his happiness only serves to make him more heroic and more mythical. I wanted something like Milk, where you admire him but end up hating him a little, too. Lincoln is too enamored of its subject to allow any of his decisions to sit ill with the audience. You come out with the same warm, fuzzy feeling toward the man that you went in with.
The real problem, though, is that it's a white savior film. There are black people in almost every scene, as servants. They exist only to weep with joy over what the white people are doing for them. If there's a Bechdel test for black characters, this would fail it. While the people at this time would have seen no problem with discussing whether or not black people are human while they were standing in the room, the movie doesn't seem to have a problem with it either, and that's really hard to take.
There were two moments that really rubbed me the wrong way. One was seeing S. Epatha Merkerson kowtowing as a house maid. I'm used to seeing her as the lieutenant on Law and Order. It felt humiliating to me that this was the role she got in this film. Not that I think that that couldn't have been a great role--if the film had focused at all on that character. But it's just a cameo where she gets to be deferential and then grateful to the white man.
The other was Lincoln's manservant, as he watches him leave at the end of the film. We all know he's about to be assassinated. But the way this servant pauses, then watches him go, tears in his eyes, with some prescience of what was about to happen--it was like being mugged with magical negro.
The movie also does not question the modern moral view of equality of the races at all. By this I mean, we know who the heroes are because they believe slavery is Wrong and black people should be equal to whites. And we know that all the other people with different views are EVIL RACISTS.
Which--come on. Lincoln himself wasn't an abolitionist. He had no problem with slavery before the war, and was quite willing to keep it to stop the war. Freeing the slaves became a strategic necessity. So don't give me this bullshit that he's some forward thinking moral giant that knows that this must be done because it is the Right Thing to Do.
Plus, Lincoln did a lot of really quasi legal stuff in his presidency, which the movie brings up. But all the people who accuse him of being a tyrant, of suspending habeas corpus, censoring the press, and ruling by dictatorial fiat are Evil Racists, so we know that they're just being petty about these complaints. Which, these were some valid fucking complaints.
The more I learn about American history, the more I realize how profoundly the Civil War affected everything about this country, especially its identity and its myths. The Civil War is grubby and complicated and full of contradictions, from racist abolitionists to patriotic secessionists.
This movie, which had the star power to tackle some of these difficult issues, and purported to be doing just that, settled for a shallow reiteration of the accepted myths of Lincoln and the abolition of slavery. So despite all the great performances, I can't really recommend it.
I watched the little making of featurette where they talk about wanting to humanize Lincoln and get past the myth. But--they didn't. You learn he told dirty jokes, sure. And that his family life was miserable. But learning that being the leader during the Civil War cost him his happiness only serves to make him more heroic and more mythical. I wanted something like Milk, where you admire him but end up hating him a little, too. Lincoln is too enamored of its subject to allow any of his decisions to sit ill with the audience. You come out with the same warm, fuzzy feeling toward the man that you went in with.
The real problem, though, is that it's a white savior film. There are black people in almost every scene, as servants. They exist only to weep with joy over what the white people are doing for them. If there's a Bechdel test for black characters, this would fail it. While the people at this time would have seen no problem with discussing whether or not black people are human while they were standing in the room, the movie doesn't seem to have a problem with it either, and that's really hard to take.
There were two moments that really rubbed me the wrong way. One was seeing S. Epatha Merkerson kowtowing as a house maid. I'm used to seeing her as the lieutenant on Law and Order. It felt humiliating to me that this was the role she got in this film. Not that I think that that couldn't have been a great role--if the film had focused at all on that character. But it's just a cameo where she gets to be deferential and then grateful to the white man.
The other was Lincoln's manservant, as he watches him leave at the end of the film. We all know he's about to be assassinated. But the way this servant pauses, then watches him go, tears in his eyes, with some prescience of what was about to happen--it was like being mugged with magical negro.
The movie also does not question the modern moral view of equality of the races at all. By this I mean, we know who the heroes are because they believe slavery is Wrong and black people should be equal to whites. And we know that all the other people with different views are EVIL RACISTS.
Which--come on. Lincoln himself wasn't an abolitionist. He had no problem with slavery before the war, and was quite willing to keep it to stop the war. Freeing the slaves became a strategic necessity. So don't give me this bullshit that he's some forward thinking moral giant that knows that this must be done because it is the Right Thing to Do.
Plus, Lincoln did a lot of really quasi legal stuff in his presidency, which the movie brings up. But all the people who accuse him of being a tyrant, of suspending habeas corpus, censoring the press, and ruling by dictatorial fiat are Evil Racists, so we know that they're just being petty about these complaints. Which, these were some valid fucking complaints.
The more I learn about American history, the more I realize how profoundly the Civil War affected everything about this country, especially its identity and its myths. The Civil War is grubby and complicated and full of contradictions, from racist abolitionists to patriotic secessionists.
This movie, which had the star power to tackle some of these difficult issues, and purported to be doing just that, settled for a shallow reiteration of the accepted myths of Lincoln and the abolition of slavery. So despite all the great performances, I can't really recommend it.