{"id":1198,"date":"2013-02-07T15:02:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T15:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2013-02-21T20:02:58","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T20:02:58","slug":"historians-react-to-the-lincoln-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/2013\/02\/07\/historians-react-to-the-lincoln-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Historians React to the ‘Lincoln” Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Pinsker \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0GO TO “LINCOLN” MOVIE TEACHER’S GUIDE<\/a><\/strong><\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The public reaction from most historians to the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie has been positive, although there have been a few important holdouts and plenty of corrections and suggestions from the academic community that should matter greatly to anyone attempting to teach the film.\u00a0 There has also been a revealing scuffle over which sources most influenced scriptwriter Tony Kushner.<\/p>\n

\"Eric-Foner\"

Eric Foner<\/p><\/div>\n

The leading academic critics of Spielberg\u2019s movie so far have been Eric Foner, Kate Masur, and Patrick Rael.\u00a0 Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and one of the most respected historians in the field, claims the movie \u201cgrossly exaggerates\u201d its main point about the stark choices confronting the president at the end of the war over abolition or peace (Letter to the Editor<\/a>, New York Times, <\/i>November 26, 2012).\u00a0 Masur accuses the film of oversimplifying the role of blacks in abolition and dismisses the effort as \u201can opportunity squandered\u201d (Op-Ed<\/a>, New York Times, <\/i>November 12, 2012).\u00a0 She follows up on that criticism with a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education <\/i>suggesting several other interpretive possibilities that Spielberg might have pursued to more fully integrate his film (November 30, 2012<\/a>). \u00a0Rael (Bowdoin College) provoked a lively discussion at H-Slavery by arguing in an extensive critique that the film is rooted in “some of the oldest, most out-dated strands of scholarship” (January 7, 2013<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Harold Holzer, co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and author of more than 40 books, served as a consultant to the film and praises it but also observes that there are \u201cno shortage of small historical bloopers in the movie\u201d in a lively piece which details many of them for The Daily Beast<\/i> (November 22, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 Along with Holzer\u2019s notably balanced assessment, one of the most helpful early historical evaluations of the film comes from Joshua Zeitz writing for The Atlantic <\/i>(November 12, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 Zeitz, who is currently preparing a biography of Lincoln aides John Nicolay and John Hay, considers the depiction of the president and his political challenges to be \u201cmasterful\u201d but finds extensive fault with the one-dimensional portraits of nearly all the president\u2019s men.\u00a0 He writes, \u201cWith the exception of Secretary of State William Seward (played convincingly by David Strathairn),\u00a0Lincoln<\/i>\u00a0presents almost every public figure as either comical, quirky, weak-kneed or pathetically self-interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other historian \/ fact-checkers have been more kind.\u00a0 Allen Guelzo, Gettysburg College, writing for The Daily Beast<\/i> has some plot criticism, but argues that, \u201cThe pains that have been taken in the name of historical authenticity in this movie are worth hailing just on their own terms\u201d (November 27, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 David Stewart, independent historical author, writing for History News Network<\/i>, describes Spielberg\u2019s work as \u201creasonably solid history\u201d and tells readers of HNN, \u201cgo see it with a clear conscience\u201d (November 20, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 Lincoln Biographer Ronald White also admires the film, though he noted a few mistakes and points out in an interview with NPR, \u201cIs every word true?\u00a0 No.\u201d\u00a0 (November 23, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 For the Chronicle of Higher Education, <\/i>Louis Masur finds the opening scene (where a black soldier recites the Gettysburg Address) \u201ccontrived\u201d but otherwise considers the rest of the film to be a masterpiece that truly \u201cconjures Lincoln\u2019s world\u201d (November 26, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 The Los Angeles Review of Books <\/i>produced one of the best summaries detailing the range of historian reactions in a piece by Kelly Candaele (December 14, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 The article quoted extensively from CUNY historian James Oakes who offers a particularly nuanced critique of Kushner\u2019s interpretive choices.\u00a0 Oakes has praise for the screenwriter\u2019s decision to draw together the politics of abolition and peace talks, but finds \u201cmore troubling in terms of historical accuracy\u201d Kushner\u2019s insistence that conservative Republicans (such as the Blair family) opposed the slavery amendment.\u00a0\u00a0 In his interview and in his new book, Freedom National <\/i>(2012), Oakes demonstrates that the Republicans were almost entirely united on nearly all wartime votes regarding emancipation and abolition.\u00a0 Their differences emerged on other issues, such as reconstruction, a fact that the movie obscures.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Schmidt, a graduate student from Princeton, has an eminently teachable piece in The Atlantic <\/i>on the film\u2019s linguistic anachronisms (January 10, 2013<\/a>).\u00a0 Schmidt was able to employ an arsenal of textual databases and easy-to-use tools such as Google\u2019s Ngram viewer<\/a> to figure out exactly which words and phrases from Tony Kushner\u2019s script were out of place for that period.\u00a0 Despite Kushner\u2019s brilliance with language, there were many problems of that nature, from important but modern phrases such as \u201cracial equality\u201d to gritty, non-period-style cursing.<\/p>\n

Writing for the New York Times <\/i>\u201cDisunion\u201d series, Philip Zelikow from the University of Virginia dismisses all such academic nitpicking and grandly dubs the filmmaker, \u201cSteven Spielberg, Historian\u201d (November 29, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 Zelikow, a diplomat whose specialty is 20th<\/sup>-century history, actually claims that the movie offers an \u201coriginal\u201d interpretation of the Civil War\u2019s endgame that will \u201cadvance the way historians consider this subject.\u201d\u00a0 Zelikow argues that Kushner and Spielberg have pulled together various strands concerning the slavery amendment and the Hampton Roads peace talks in a way that no previous historians have accomplished.\u00a0 Naturally, many historians working in the Civil War field find this claim to be seriously overstated.\u00a0 Michael Vorenberg, author of Final Freedom <\/i>(2001), was especially pointed in his comments to Brown University students on their Facebook discussion of the movie.\u00a0 Vorenberg calls Zelikow\u2019s piece \u201cway off\u201d and argues that \u201cit’s unfortunate that Zelikow trashes historians in that piece\u201d when \u201cit\u2019s clear that all he’s done is to skim a few pages of some books\u201d (November 30, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 Other scholars quickly jumped into this fray \u2013see especially thoughtful comments from Akim Reinhardt<\/a> and Gary Gutting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait\"

Michael Vorenberg<\/p><\/div>\n

What\u2019s most interesting about Vorenberg\u2019s strong reaction is that his work was critical to the making of the movie.\u00a0 Some even believe it might be the most influential secondary source behind the film \u2013at least that\u2019s what Timothy Noah has been arguing in The New Republic<\/i> (January 10, 2013<\/a>).\u00a0 Vorenberg\u2019s Final Freedom (2001)<\/a><\/i> is widely regarded as the best academic study of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which is the main topic of the movie. Noah points out the Steven Spielberg optioned Doris Kearns Goodwin\u2019s Team of Rivals <\/i>(2005) long before it was actually written and that Tony Kushner\u2019s final script bears little resemblance in style or content to the book from which it was \u201cofficially\u201d adapted.\u00a0 Both the online magazine Slate <\/i>(January 10, 2013<\/a>) and the Brown University student newspaper (January 13, 2013<\/a>) also reported on this brewing mini-scandal until Kushner responded by acknowledging that even though Vorenberg\u2019s book is not credited in the film, it is what he termed the \u201cdefinitive account\u201d of the congressional passage of the amendment and \u201cfantastic\u201d\u00a0 in its achievements. Kushner says that he read Final Freedom<\/i> carefully but denies that it was a \u201cprincipal\u201d source for the movie. To help allay any concerns about his use of sources, Kushner then shared with Noah a list of more than thirty sources<\/a> \u2013both primary and secondary\u2014which he claims were especially influential in shaping the script beyond Team of Rivals<\/i>.\u00a0 Vorenberg was gracious in his response.\u00a0 \u201cFilms don\u2019t have to have footnotes,\u201d he told the Brown student newspaper, \u201cIf my book helped add accuracy to the film, I can take some pleasure in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historical author \/ blogger Kevin Levin finds the whole process of historical analysis to be more than a little aggravating.\u00a0 Writing for The Atlantic, <\/i>he complains, \u201cHistorians Need To Give Steven Spielberg A Break\u201d (November 26, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0 I agree with Levin in some ways, but for the opposite reason.\u00a0 I have argued for Quora (and Huffington Post) that people must stop worrying about whether any movie which necessarily invents dialogue, characters and scenes should ever be considered as \u201chistorically accurate.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a work of art \u2013historical fiction<\/i>\u2014which we need to judge by other standards (November 27, 2012<\/a>).\u00a0 That\u2019s also the point, Spielberg himself made at the Dedication Day ceremonies at Gettysburg (November 19, 2012<\/a>) when he called his effort a \u201cdream\u201d and made a careful distinction between his historically inspired movie and actual works of history.\u00a0 The rest of this teacher\u2019s guide will help explain, however, specific areas in the film where students might raise questions about accuracy or interpretation, in order to help them decide for themselves what they think about the film, the challenges of the period, and ultimately, Lincoln\u2019s legacy –both as a president and as movie.<\/p>\n

Earlier versions of this piece have appeared at Quora and Wikipedia.<\/i><\/p>\n

GO TO “LINCOLN” MOVIE TEACHER’S GUIDE<\/a><\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Pinsker \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0GO TO “LINCOLN” MOVIE TEACHER’S GUIDE The public reaction from most historians to the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}