Abrahams cussing

[Mike B.]

Not sure which post(s) the above post was directed at.

I didn't think there was too much violence in the Lincoln movie at all, especially since a huge war was going on at the time.

Whether the cussing in the movie was intended to be iconoclastic or not, can only be answered by the people who made the movie. I don't know if Lincoln openly cussed alot. There seems to be some disagreement among Lincoln buffs about that. If he did, it was certainly understandable, given the circumstances. As I said, it didn't bother me much, and I only wondered after reading this thread, why the movie-makers included so much of it (most of it by people other than Lincoln).

Most people knowledgeable about Lincoln, say he would never have struck any of his sons. Yet the movie showed him doing just that, and it didn't enhance his image as an understanding father.

I have been wondering about the bedroom scene, with Lincoln apparently sharing a bed with two other men. Maybe that was commonplace in Victorian times, but the makers of the movie must have given at least a passing thought to how that scene might be interpreted by the average moviegoer who is not knowledgeable about the customs of the time.

I've also been wondering about the fight between Lincoln and Mary, where she says that Lincoln had hostile feelings toward Robert because he was conceived prior to their marriage, and may have been the reason why they "had" to get married (something to that effect.) Are any of those things established facts? If there is any doubt at all about it, why was it included in the movie?

And all the political maneuvering (what little of it I managed to stay awake through), left me with the impression that there may have been some underhanded things going on in getting the Thirteenth Amendment passed. Maybe there were, I don't know.

All of those things together, sort of lean toward an iconoclastic movie, IMO. Maybe I'm way off the mark. One thing I'm pretty sure of...I would have been a Lincoln fan had I lived in his time. I'm not so shallow that the way a person looks or walks or talks is enough to make me write them off, along with all his/her accomplishments.

Kate,
I just had a total different impression of the movie and didn't see it as iconoclastic at all. The Lincoln in the movie is a man of action that wishes to finally blot out slavery and is willing to go to extreme lengths to do it.

Remember too this is not a documentery. It is a film, so there is a bit of freedom a screen-writer gets. I did not like the scene where Lincoln slapped Robert and I think they portrayed him as too much of a prig.

The Lincolns got married because Mary was pregnant theory was floated by Lincoln scholar Wayne Temple in his "From Skeptic to Prophet." It has been accepted by Michael Burlingame in his huge two volume biography of Lincoln. There is some circumstantial evidence of it. Yet one could never prove it, either way. I go with the Scottish verdict, "not proven" myself. Though, if true I disagree with the idea that Mary was "trapping" Lincoln.

On the other point of violence...
Check out this link:

http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives...t-country/

While America is a far more violent country than other First World countries we have had a 30 year decline in violence. It peaked in the late 1970s. And remember other First World countries with the low violence levels have the same violent popular culutre. In fact, in some ways places like Japan have a more violent popular culture than we do, but have very little real violence in the country.

What has increased in America over the past few years is mass shootings and that is beyond I think the perview of a Lincoln forum.