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The lessons of Lincoln
It was a little surprising on Saturday night to stroll into the Roxy Theatre for the early performance of Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln (nominated for a dozen Academy Awards), expecting to see maybe a score of hard-core movie buffs scattered here and there, and instead find the place packed to the walls.
You might expect to get a full house south of the border, where American history is fervently taught year after year in grade school, and where Honest Abe remains a legend even after all the other lessons have faded away. But in Canada, where most of us would be hard-pressed to name a single fact about Lincoln other than “He ended slavery!”, why the fascination?
Maybe it’s the Spielberg name, or that of Daniel Day-Lewis, the Irish actor as famous as Meryl Streep for totally immersing himself in his roles. But maybe it’s that the movie is focussed on that single fact we mentioned above, on the month that led up to the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery forever in the U.S. As the movie demonstrates, the amendment very nearly didn’t happen, as fear-mongering Democrats ranted of scenarios where (among other horrors) blacks, and even women, would eventually be given the vote.
Ironically, of course, in the almost century and a half since that fateful vote, the roles of the two principal American poltical parties have been reversed. If he were in politics today, Abe would almost certainly be a Democrat, while it’s the Republicans who persistently depend on the fears of the populace to buoy their chances at the polling booth. In the Toronto Star this week, there was a brilliant editorial cartoon which showed the statue of Lincoln giving Barack Obama a fist bump as Obama headed off to give his second inaugural address.
What made the cartoon so appropriate, of course, is that as Obama wades into his second and final mandate, he can afford to be as bold as Lincoln was forced to be in those last months of the Civil War. The movie, in fact, ends with Lincoln’s own second inaugural. In the coming months and years, particularly as he tries to deal with the agonizing gun control issue, Obama will undoubtedly (considering the divided Congress in Washington) have to resort to tactics as complicated as those which eventually brought about the 13th Amendment.
But Spielberg’s movie doesn’t just have application to 21st-century America. It has lessons to teach to the citizens of any country which holds itself up as a stronghold of democracy. Although in many ways Canadian democracy doesn’t bear a strong resemblance to that of the Americans, it has a similar foundation to that which grew in the British Houses of Parliament. So even for us, Lincoln is a story about how democracy really works when the going gets tough.
The “Harper Government” in Ottawa isn’t renowned for compromise, particularly now that it has a majority. But it’s to be hoped that the Prime Minister has taken a couple of hours out to see the film, and maybe taken away an idea or two about how to be an inspired, and inspiring, leader.
November 22, 2012
July 14, 2011
