{"id":1685,"date":"2012-12-10T20:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/12\/great-white-men-again-on-lincoln-and-our-civil-religion.html"},"modified":"2012-12-10T20:53:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T20:53:00","slug":"great-white-men-again-on-lincoln-and-our-civil-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/12\/great-white-men-again-on-lincoln-and-our-civil-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Great White Men, Again?: On Lincoln and Our Civil Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

When you hear the soaring John Williams music telling you to\u00a0feel<\/em>, and\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0to feel, before the scene plays itself out, you know you\u2019re in Stephen Spielberg territory\u2014and that\u2019s exactly where we are with\u00a0Lincoln<\/em>, a film which has already\u00a0generated<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0great<\/a>deal<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0discussion<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0debate<\/a>\u00a0among film critics and\u00a0historians<\/a>.<\/div>\n
Filmmaker Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (the author, of course, of the classicAngels in America<\/em>) pre-empted criticisms by historians, pronouncing their thanks for historical works (notably Doris Kearns Goodwin\u2019s\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/a><\/em>) that inspired their re-imagining of this story. \u201cYou gave us the history from which we made our historical fiction,\u201d Spielberg told one group of historians, noting that the job of art is to \u201cgo to the impossible places.\u201d But any faithful \u201cresurrection\u201d of the past is, he said, just a \u201cfantasy and a dream.\u201d<\/div>\n
So despite many notable efforts at historical verisimilitude, and the inclusion of a central role for the critical historical figure of William Henry Seward (Lincoln\u2019s Secretary of State) and Thaddeus Stevens (last seen in American film at any length in the horrendously distorted role of Augustus Stoneman in the D. W. Griffith\u2019s historical travesty\u00a0The Birth of a Nation<\/em>), it is the filmmaker\u2019s intent to use history to create art; or, in other words, to give us a myth for our times that will tell us something about what is necessary to make a more perfect union.<\/div>\n
In all its ugly sausage-making cynicism, the messy everyday business of lining up the votes sometimes achieves transcendent ends. And more power to the filmmakers to give us a redemptive story about politics, and even more so about a politician who would\u00a0not<\/em>compromise on his most fundamental principle\u2014even if he would test constantly the political winds on what would be needed to achieve that principle in practice. That\u2019s a grown-up story about politics (notably here including Lincoln\u2019s own qualms about the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation)\u00a0that many viewers will appreciate.\u00a0This is Lincoln as political realist, but one who is able to turn that realism towards visionary ends.<\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you hear the soaring John Williams music telling you to\u00a0feel, and\u00a0what\u00a0to feel, before the scene plays itself out, you know you\u2019re in Stephen Spielberg territory\u2014and that\u2019s exactly where we are with\u00a0Lincoln, a film which has already\u00a0generated\u00a0a\u00a0greatdeal\u00a0of\u00a0discussion\u00a0and\u00a0debate\u00a0among film critics and\u00a0historians. Filmmaker Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (the author, of course, of the classicAngels in America) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGreat White Men, Again?: On Lincoln and Our Civil Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When you hear the soaring John Williams music telling you to feel, and what to feel, before the scene plays itself out, you know you\u2019re in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/12\/great-white-men-again-on-lincoln-and-our-civil-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Great White Men, Again?: On Lincoln and Our Civil Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When you hear the soaring John Williams music telling you to feel, and what to feel, before the scene plays itself out, you know you\u2019re in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/12\/great-white-men-again-on-lincoln-and-our-civil-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-12-10T20:53:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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