Prefatory Note:
I present this evaluation of the 2013 film, Lincoln, in an unfinished, draft form. I got a bit tangled up in my thoughts and, although I think the draft argument below is pretty much complete and rounded out, I never finished polishing things up, cleaning up the redundancy, tightening the organization. The part that remains in "draft notes" form is in a different typeface.
My view was that the film's purpose was basically the cathartic one of letting audiences off the hook for comprising with crime and injustice. In the end, sentimentalizing a hero's tragic demise, the film distances us from our present responsibilities by blurring the clear line between strategical indirection and moral compromise.
The Assassination of Lincoln - Expiation for Our Sins through the Scapegoating of a President
Lincoln, the 2013 film, depicts a moral dilemma that might be characterized in this way: How do we take right action in a wrong world? A classic case of catharsis, the film seeks to cleanse us of the worldly pollution of which we partake. Perhaps like all works of of art, it provides us with a structure to organize our thoughts and feelings in a satisfying way. As we shall see, the film justifies the compromise of high ideals, or at least of egotistical attachment to such, in the ultimate service of high ideals. Does the end of the film attain to a spiritual cleansing, or does a soap-scum film remain after the shower?To summarize the plot: Lincoln, the President and Chief Executive, pushes the historic 13th Amendment through Congress, making vigorous use of half-truths and bribes to do so. He wins the necessary votes needed to get the measure passed, primarily by offering government appointments to lame-duck Congressmen. Though this behavior doesn't square with the predominant mythical view of "Honest Abe," Lincoln's backroom political huckstering appears petty and justifiable, excusable one might say, relative to the great and noble historical objective: The chance to abolish slavery forever from the land. This is an opportunity that cannot be lost.
Through determination and dogged effort, and against the odds, Lincoln, with the aid of the henchmen-like accomplices he hires to do his dirty work, buys off the minimum number of Congressmen and the vote is won. The Amendment passes. The better course prevails. History is made.
Yet, of course, the story does not end here -- we have another few minutes to go before the credits roll. In the wake of the great legal victory, the President is tragically assassinated. Although we feel great sadness, yet our hearts have been lifted high. Here the film ends.
Classic catharsis.
We can identify two great halves to this film, psychologically speaking and politically or socially speaking: One half of the story is the story of the President's achievement, and the presumed underlying noble ideals that drive it. The other part is the depiction of the unsavory socio-political environment in which he succeeds. The "system," the general public, the elected Representatives of the people, the principles by which the economy operates -- none of these are idealized. All are shown to be deeply tainted. In this environment, the soldiers fighting for their ideals lift their heads from the trenches at great risk. Try to fight the system, and it might assassinate you.
The film's narrative seems constructed to tells us that not even the President -- nor any of us committed to the moral improvement of the nation -- can rely on free and open discussion, nor any presumed general goodness of the People or its elected representatives, for right principles and ideals to prevail.
To the contrary, the film conveys that high commitments to noble, but unpopular and "radical" ideals -- like Thaddeus Stevens' counter-cultural commitment to enfranchising black people (not to mention his own interracial love relationship, revealed only at the film's very end) -- must be toned down and hidden from the world in order not to inflame the conservative fundamentalist temper, in order not to risk backlash which could possibly overturn the whole applecart. Stevens is something like a stand-in for today's conspiracy theorists or whistleblowers who, dare they impugn the status quo, risk ridicule and banishment, along with anyone who associates with them.
Hence, in the end, the paragon of principle, Mr. Stevens, is ironically lionized for suppressing his beliefs that blacks should be entitled to vote. The right wingers' plan is to get Stevens to expressly link the proposed Amendment with an agenda to enfranchise blacks and deem them fully political equals to whites, an agenda they know is too radical to win support in the Congress. It's thanks to Stevens' strategic silence about his inner convictions that the right-wingers' plan gets no wind for its sails. Had Stevens admitted his support for black enfranchisement, the Amendment would have failed to win the necessary support. Expressions of radical conviction may jeopardize not only personal safety, but possibly any chance to make even minimal gains and improvements in the character and justice of the prevailing order. Not standing up for what he believes in, not speaking his heart, in this case, earns the man a halo.
This paradoxical compromise seems to be the core tension of the film. While the film simultaneously elevates Lincoln for his high commitments, and justifies his backroom dealing, it depicts a world that is deeply morally compromised. Idealists must be practical and sneaky, and not tell the whole truth to dirty ears.
Now to realize any value in this film whatsoever, we need to understand that, through the lens of 1865, the film of course is speaking to who we are today, and the choices and political realities we face.
This is not just 1865. It is
today. (Ultimately, just as any “story”
plays out on a group level the drama we experience in our personal psyches, the
backroom deals in this film are not just those of Lincoln – who’s actions we
rationalize, whose ultimate ideals we praise, and whose death we mourn – but our
own.)
[What the psychologists call splitting - We kill Lincoln to justify our complicity in supporting the unjust world, and we deify him to cleanse our souls. in the end, have we changed the status quo? ]
The conundrum of how to take live
rightly in a world where human beings cannot be counted on to act for the good
of all, where economic activity is exploitative and committed to the
self-interest of some over the well-being of others, a paradoxical and viciously
self-reinforcing dynamic where a people that does not have faith in itself to
act from high motives resigns itself to acting from base ones. How can individuals be
expected to act for the good of all, when others are not doing so?
This is a story that says
people, and our politics, cannot be trusted. There is no common vision. We need
manipulative, strategic leaders, we need to amass the critical number of votes.
Those fighting for the good
are consigned to win by numbers
The story is specifically
situated in a national political stage: the interactions of elected leaders,
the progress of the Civil War, etc. But
the analogies should not be lost. The
compromises we watch these leaders making on the political stage of 1865 in
this 2013 film, are directly analogous to the compromises individuals are asked
to make in their personal and professional lives every day in our present world. We work for
companies, we work in an economy, we participate in public rituals, we support
candidates – at every moment allowing intolerable injustices to slide by, at
every moment compromising with our own higher ideals. We must to get along in
this unjust world, and we do not know how to fix it, so what else can we
do? We live with daily compromise, we let the radicals who stick their necks out get assassinated, and we find ways to convince ourselves that we are clean, that, since our "deeper hearts" are pure, we are actually good people.
In such a system founded on a
rather base view of humanity, -- lacking knowledge of any better way -- most human beings must continuously expiate their
complicity in the general sin, this sin of suppressing the deeper ideals of the
heart. And we do so by deifying its
angels after we kill them or let them die. We are reperforming and thereby
validating for ourselves the inner psychic drama self-consolation that follows
the suppression of our best impulses, our desires for love, justice, and
freedom and to live our life, not in submission to the unjust requirements of
the day, but according to our heart’s love and desire.
The Celebration, which I
wrote about on a previous occasion, was a film about a civilization that molests
its own children, and transforms all of its children into molesters of children – the inner
children within ourselves and the generations born to us.
Lincoln: A film that is cathartic of our sadness, the sadness that derives from our assassinating our
loving nature, while revering that which we assassinate. A self that is split
between what it does and what it reveres, thereby creating a heaven that is not
of this world, and splitting faith and emotion from present action.
As I watched the film, I noticed the film and myself “okaying” petty moral comprises, buying off the U.S. Representatives and
“deceiving” Congress, in service to the larger goal of ending slavery for all
time. I thought about taking this logic farther: I asked myself, would I be okay
with supporting a few murders and assassinations to accomplish the necessary goal — given the
greatness of the cause? And, if not, where would I draw the line? Could it
be that the people who assassinate Lincoln, offstage at the very end of the
film — people to whom we are never introduced and who’s perspective is never
explored — were acting from the basis of a similar rationale?
The film does not explore this
and other moral ambiguities. In its morality, the film is rather black and
white. Against a mostly-hidden background of war, where
masses of anonymous soldiers fight and die, the elected representatives in the
House debate the proposed Amendment. There are three types of representative: The
negro-haters, who are bad. The anti-slavery people, who are good, if sometimes
a bit whacky – like the idealist Thaddeus Stevens. But even more importantly
are all the people in the middle. The film seems to frame the primary task of the
good leader as that of steering the recalcitrant, self-interested masses, by
hook or by crook, into service to the good.
This might well be the
fundamental message of the film: The assumption that human moral nature – at
least as represented by the bulk of politicians -- is inherently flaccid. We are creatures of the herd, given over to
practical expediency in the name of self-interest. In the herd, we will find
little or no source of moral inspiration or initiative. Given this overwhelming
collective proclivity, individual aspiration to something higher is a most
doubtful enterprise. The average human being opposes slavery and other wrongs,
but only the exceptional human being is willing to do something about it.
Against this background of
mediocre humanity, extending even to his closest advisors, Abraham Lincoln is
the great leader, taking risks to steer the country towards achieving higher ideals,
charting a course for others to follow, albeit with resistance and needing to
be cajoled, badgered and ordered to fulfill their charge. To accomplish
important moral aims, one must not quibble about petty compromises.
Of course, these roles and
dynamics map onto our present day view of politics: Democrats and Republicans
fight the battle of the enlightened vs. unenlightened, while the good leaders
(if we elect the right ones) do their best to activate a disengaged,
self-interested populace and to get petty warring party operatives to
compromise on a shared course. Meanwhile, those progressives of us in the audience
just keep trying to earn little victories one step at a time to make the world
a better place.
That’s where, it seems to me,
the film overall intends to leave us. We applaud the great work and
determination of the good leader, Mr. Lincoln, but we are also left with a
rather low view of common humanity.
In what ways does the present film serve as an analogue to and metaphor for our
present lived experience, as all films do?
The most striking statement
of the film is this: Civil War America is morally compromised, with the bulk of
the population committed to a tradition and an economy fundamentally unjust,
and even those with a sense that something is deeply wrong unwilling to resist
or take initiative for change. To undertake a task that would require
large-scale collaboration, yet failing to believe that the shared motive and
belief in the possibility of large-scale collaboration exists, we settle into a
belief in the mediocrity of humanity.
Perhaps we are not too
removed from the conditions of 1865. Then, the economy – even much of the North
– was dependent on slavery.
Today, we are dependent on … corporations
for employment, masses of people are living compromised lives performing jobs they don’t want to
perform, they obviously don’t believe that individual human beings can wholly
commit themselves to, or take our primary bearings from, ideals, moral
initiative, right action and justice. Compromise is obviously what nature and
the real world require.
And corporations depend on
cheap labor etc.
Humans can’t be counted on,
because we are at bottom self-interested. This belief is confirmed to us every
day in our observations of others -- or so it may seem, although I suspect our
judgment of others is rooted in our judgment of, and our desire to exculpate,
ourselves.
Ultimately, the film leads us
to accept the great Lincoln’s compromises, in part because the film helps us to
validate and rationalize our own. It’s
like a vicious circle. We must
compromise, because we cannot count of human beings to do the right thing. Policy must be set and imposed from above.
Yes, we all go along with
what we know deep down is not really right, but that’s “nature,” the way the
world works; it’s our economic and moral reality. It’s sad. It’s sad, and it’s
an issue for us that won’t go away. Our psyches resist it. That’s why we need
to keep telling ourselves the story, over and over. So we create films like
Lincoln, and we pay to go watch stories like Lincoln.
We need to keep telling
ourselves and each other a story of acceptance and of exculpation. It’s a story
that keeps us feeling better at the same time that we keep making the
compromise. A film like Lincoln helps to remind me that, despite the big pang
of compromise in our hearts, despite our low and mediocre view of human beings
in the collective, there are plenty of things to be glad for, things that can
distract us from that lasting dissatisfaction that keeps insistently knocking, and which is, after all, a sign of our secret inner moral goodness that perhaps in the end may save us. The committment to a good heart that will be recognized in an afterworld.
Even Thaddeus Stevens, the
radical, uncompromising idealist in the film, learns to tone it down. He learns
to make his compromises, and not to differentiate himself in public on the
basis of his higher ideals. And the film makes him out to be a hero for doing
so. Had Stevens’ inflamed the right wing
by insisting on his most radical ideals at the wrong moment, he could have
sabotaged the passage of the 13th Amendment.
At one point in the film the
right-wing Congressman accuses Thaddeus before the House: “You have stated the
radical idea in the past that negroes should be allowed to vote!!!” But
Thaddeus won’t cop at this moment to his crazy radical ideas. He knows better.
Best to tamp down our more radical thoughts, our hearts’ belief, in the name of
expediency. (Thaddeus is the film’s stand-in for the conspiracy-theory type.) And
even here the film reassures us, for of course we can make reassurances
whenever we need them: because, thanks to the benefit of historical hindsight,
we know that Thaddeus’ “radical” view in 1865 is no longer radical view today
in the post-1960s world, when equality and the right to vote has become
the norm. The film reassures us that, with time, the good will win out, truth
and progress march on. — You just have to keep doing things this way. Our
compromises are compatible with our ideals, in the long run. No use sacrificing
oneself going against the mainstream, especially when such sacrifice could be
hugely counterproductive.
We emerge from the film
feeling that the world is imperfect, and we’re sad, but it’s okay, and overall
— we tell ourselves — the world is getting better. Our sadness that good people
like Lincoln are killed shows us that are hearts are still good.
This is where the film ends. And yet, is its resolution successful? There
is a hope and yearning within us that won’t die. Yet we live in a world that
says we must accept our mediocrity. Does the film lay this tension to rest as
it lays Lincoln to rest? Is this
resolution psychologically healthy, or the sign of an unbalanced society?
This is not a film of deep psychological
exploration. No character crosses a gulf requiring psychic transformation. Interestingly,
the film refers to, but does not explore, Mary Todd Lincoln’s past mental
instability. Perhaps her psychic breakdowns indicate the psychic costs of the
compromise.
Similarly, the degree to which the United States has bridged the deep
gulf between North and South, the Gulf of the Civil War, is ambiguous. There is
no sign of real integration between sides, only the policy imposed by the North
upon the South.
Paradoxically, a film like
this, with its message of human mediocrity, also presupposes that all of us
have hearts that are moved by high ideals. And so the film is tinged with
sadness. It elicits those ideals, and lifts our hearts, only to re-enact the
drama of acceptance of less in the name of “reality.”
In the end, President Lincoln
is assassinated. We are sad. Our sadness itself lets us know that, in a
compromised world, our hearts still pulse in response to the good and the
ideal.
In our acceptance, are we compromising
ourselves in some fundamental part of our being? Is our sadness over the
death of Lincoln, really our sadness for an assassinated part of ourselves?
