"Lincoln":
The movie with the most Oscar nominations 2013, "Lincoln" is also competing for the prize for best costume. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film chronicles the political career of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and as well as the plot promises, the costumes also follows very true to the story.
It is the first Oscar nomination of costume designer Joanna Johnston, who worked with Spielberg for years.
In "Lincoln" no styling of clothes and all the creations were very faithful to the period from 1861 to 1865. Photographs, paintings, objects and clothing of the era were the object of study of costume. Besides the top hats, suits, coats in sober tones, Lincoln was well known for wearing scarves and costume designer let the actor Daniel Day-Lewis chose which scenes he would like to use them.
The slightly brighter hues of the costumes appeared in Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field). The looks of the character represented well the Victorian Era, with opulent dresses with full skirts, full of ruffles, lace and details. It is a great film. I watched at St. Jonh's University.
Antonia Iris.
What Spielberg's film does not say about Lincoln
- March 3, 2013Publicado in: Articles and Papers, Culture, Humanities
By Vicenç Navarro in esquerda.net
The film narrates how this president fought against slavery and the transformation of workers into slaves. What the film work does not count, however, is that Lincoln also struggled for another emancipation: slaves and workers in general were not only masters of their activity itself, but also the product of his work.
The feature film Lincoln, produced and performed by one of the most popular U.S. filmmakers, Steven Spielberg, revived a great interest in the figure of the president, one of the presidents who, as Franklin D. Roosevelt, was always present in the American ideal with great popularity. We highlight the political figure as the guarantor of the U.S. unit after the defeat of the Confederates who aspired to the secession of Southern states that federal state. It's also a figure that stands out in U.S. History to have abolished slavery, and for giving freedom and citizenship to descendants of immigrant populations of African origin, ie, that the black population in that country is known as african- U.S..
Lincoln was also a founder of the Republican Party which, in its origin, was directly opposite the current Republican Party that is now highly influenced by a movement, the Tea Party, chauvinistic, racist and highly reactionary and behind which are economic interests and financiers who want to eliminate the influence of the federal government in economic life, and social policies of the country. By contrast, the Republican Party founded by President Lincoln was a federalist party which considered the government as the guarantor of human rights. Among these, the emancipation of the slaves, a central theme in the film Lincoln, Lincoln was the one who most steadfastly defended. Ending slavery meant that the slave came to be employed, own your own work.
But Lincoln, even before being president, considered other social achievements as part of human rights, including the right of working to control not only their work, but also the product of his work. The right to emancipation of slaves turned them into free persons employed, together - according to him - by fraternal bonds with other members of the working class, regardless of their color of skin. Their demands of the slave cease to be and the worker - both white and black - to be the owner, not only of his work as the product of their labor, were equally revolutionary. The emancipation of slavery required that the person was mistress of her work.
The emancipation of the working class meant that this was the owner of the product of their work. Lincoln demanded the two types of emancipation. However, the second type is not even mentioned in the film Lincoln. Actually, ignore it. I use the term "ignore" instead of "hidden" because it is not at all possible that the authors of the film or the book on which it is based, did not know the real story of Lincoln. The Cold War cultural and academic world in the U.S. (which still exists) and the huge area than there refer to as Business Class (class of owners and managers of big business) about life, not just economic, but also cultural and civic, explains that the formal U.S. history taught in schools and universities is very skewed, purified of any ideological contamination coming from the labor movement, is socialism, communism or anarchism.
The vast majority of American students, including the most prestigious universities and known, unaware that the party of the 1st of May, celebrated worldwide as the International Labour Day, is a celebration in honor of unionists Americans who died in defense of the eight-hour day (instead of twelve) victory that started the same claim successfully in most countries of the world. In the U.S., this day, the 1st of May, in addition to being festive, is the day of Law and Order - Law and Order Day - (see the book People's History of the U.S. by Howard Zinn). The real history of the U.S. is very different from the history promoted by formal power structures of the country.
The sympathies ignored and / or covered Lincoln
Lincoln, when he was already a member of the Legislative Chamber in the State of Illinois, clearly sympathized with the demands of the socialist labor movement, not only the U.S. but also the world. Actually, Lincoln, as I indicated at the beginning of the article, considered as a human right the right of working control the product of their work, attitude clearly revolutionary for that period (and continues to be so even today), which is not the movie nor the dominant U.S. culture recalls or knows conveniently forgotten the ideological apparatuses of the U.S. establishment by Corporate Class.
In fact, Lincoln believed that slavery was the maximum area of the Capital Labour and its opposition to the power structures of sovereign states was due precisely to the perception of these structures as supportive of an economic system based on exploitation absolute. Then he saw the abolition of slavery as not only the liberation of black people, but the entire world of work, also benefiting from the white working class, whose racism he saw that it was contrary to their own interests. Lincoln also stated that "the world of work before the capital. The capital is the fruit of labor, and could not exist without it, who created it. The world of work is superior to capital, and deserves the utmost consideration (...) In the current situation, the capital has all the power and we must reverse this imbalance. " Readers of the writings of Karl Marx, a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, remember that some of these phrases was very similar to those used by the analyst of capitalism in its analysis of the relation Capital / Labor under this economic system.
Surprise to a lot of readers know that the writings of Karl Marx influenced Abraham Lincoln, as documented in great detail John Nichols in his excellent article "Reading Karl Marx with Abraham Lincoln Utopian Socialists, Communists and other German Republican" published in Political Affairs (27/11/12), and from which I extracted the quotes as well as most of the data published in this article. The writings of Marx were known among groups of intellectuals who were deeply dissatisfied with the political and economic situation in the U.S., as was the case with Lincoln. Marx wrote regularly in the New York Tribune, the newspaper influential intellectual in the U.S. at that time. Its director, Horace Greely, considered himself as a socialist and admirer of Marx who invited him to be a columnist for the newspaper. In columns included a large number of German activists who had fled persecution that occurred in Germany at that time, a highly agitated Germany, with an emerging labor movement that questioned the existing economic order. Later, some of these German immigrants (known in the U.S. at the time as "Red Republicans") with federal troops fought in the Civil War, led by President Lincoln.
Greely and Lincoln were friends. Actually, Greely and his newspaper supported from the beginning of Lincoln's political career, and Greely who advised him to apply for the presidency. All evidence suggests that Lincoln was an ardent reader of the New York Tribune. In his campaign for the U.S. presidency invited several "red republicans" to join their team. In fact, even before, as a congressman, representative of the city of Springfield, Illinois, often supported revolutionary movements that were emerging in Europe, most notably in Hungary, signing documents in support thereof.
Lincoln, a great friend of working American and international
Your knowledge of the revolutionary traditions existing in that period was not the result of chance but his sympathy for the international labor movement and its institutions. U.S. encouraged workers to organize themselves and establish unions and continued to do so when he was president. Several unions named him an honorary member. In response to the unions in New York stressed "Do you understand you better than anyone that the struggle to end slavery is the struggle to liberate the working world, ie, release all workers. The freeing of slaves in the South is part of the same struggle for the liberation of the workers in the North. " And during the election campaign, President Lincoln promoted position against slavery explicitly stating that the freedom of slaves allowed workers to demand salaries that enable them to live decently and with dignity, helping to increase the wages for all workers, both black and white .
Marx, Engels and also wrote enthusiastically about Lincoln's election campaign, at a time when both preparing the First International Labor Movement. At some point the sessions, Marx and Engels proposed International to send a letter to President Lincoln congratulating him for his attitude and posture. In their letter, the First International congratulated the people of the U.S. and its president for by abolishing slavery, have favored the liberation of the entire working class, not only American but also the world.
President Lincoln responded in cordial note thanking and saying that valued the support of the workers of the world and its policies that certainly created great concern among establishments economic, financial and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. As later noted the American socialist leader Eugene Victor Debs was clear that internationally, in his own campaign "Lincoln had been a revolutionary and paradoxical as it might be, the Republican Party had its origins in a red tint. "
The democratic revolution that Lincoln started and never developed
Needless to say that none of the data appears in the film Lincoln, nor are widely known in the USA. However, as well as notes John Nichols and Robin Blackburn (another author who has written extensively on Lincoln and Marx), to understand Lincoln shall mean the period and context in which he lived. He was not a Marxist (term used in literature and historiography that Marx himself denounced) and it was not his intention to eliminate capitalism, but correct the huge imbalance that existed between Capital and Labour. But there is no doubt that was highly influenced by Marx and other socialist thinkers, with whom shared his immediate desires, sympathizing with them, taking their position to high levels of radicalism in its democratic commitment. It is a misrepresentation ignore such historical facts as does the film.
There is no doubt that Lincoln was a complex personality with lots of gray areas. But the sympathies are clearly defined and written in their speeches. Further, the intense debates that occurred in the European left is reproduced in progressive circles of the USA. In fact, the greatest influence on Lincoln was the utopian socialists Germans, many of whom sought refuge in Illinois to escape repression in Europe.
The communalism that characterized these democratic socialists influenced the conception of Lincoln, interpreting democracy as the political institutions of governance by the people, in which classes were most popular. His famous phrase (which became the slogan splendid democratic world's most popular - Democracy for the people, of the people and by the people - clearly highlights the impossibility of having a democracy of the people and for the people without being held and carried out by the same people. follows that saw the freeing of slaves and the world of work as essential elements to such democratization. Their concept of equality inevitably led to conflict with the domain of political institutions by capital. And in reality still exists today in the U.S. and I describe in my article "What is not said in the media about the U.S. elections" (Public, 13:11:12) is proof of that. Nowadays Corporate Class controls the political institutions of that country.
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Again, none of these realities emerges in the film. Spielberg is not, after all, Pontecorvo, and intellectual climate of the U.S. is still stalled in the Cold War that impoverishes. "Socialism" is still a bad word in view cultural establishment circles that country. And in the land of Lincoln, that he dreamed democratic project never materialized due to the enormous influence of the power of capital over democratic institutions, which decreased significantly influence the democratic expression in that country. And the painful paradox of history is that the Republican Party has been converted into the more aggressive policy instrument currently exists to serve the capital.
By the way, thank you all the people who judge this article interesting distribute widely, including to film critics who, in their promotion of the film certainly does not say anything about the other Lincoln unknown in his own country (and in many others, including Spain). Do not even recognize as such one of the founders of the democratic revolutionary movement. The emancipation of the slaves is a major victory that should be celebrated. But Lincoln went even further. And it is not spoken.
