Spielberg's Lincoln

 Review

 By Owen Liddle

LINCOLN  the film was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg; starring  Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, Sally Fields as his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stephens. It was based on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns.

I had read that John Logan had initially been signed to write the script and that the film would focus on the friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the Black emancipator, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman but that Spielberg had demanded at least two rewrites using other script writers. So I went to see this film with trepidation that it was simply going to be a portrayal of the myth of Lincoln as the great altruistic emancipator and I was not wrong.

 The film depicts the struggle of Lincoln to get the Thirteenth Amendment – the one that abolished slavery forever – through the House of Congress. Lincoln has just been elected to a second term as President of the United States and he needs to get this Bill through quickly. The civil war is drawing to a close and soon the southern states will once again be represented in Congress and they with the help of the Democrats certainly block this Bill forever and the civil war will have been fought for nothing.

 You could argue that Lincoln is driven purely by moral and altruistic motives – as portrayed in the film. But a cynic might argue that there were other motives; abolition would destroy the economic and political power of the South forever. The film did not explore this angle.

 The biggest travesty of the film is that it makes no mention of the long hard struggle of the abolitionists and of freed slaves – people like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass – to put pressure on Lincoln and his government to support the emancipation of slaves.

 The only abolitionist portrayed in the film is Thaddeus Stephens, played by Tommy Lee Jones. He was a Pennsylvania Congressman, a radical Republican from a working class immigrant background who campaigned not only for abolition of slavery but also for black and female suffrage.

 But you can tell this is a white, middle class film because Lincoln leans heavily on Stephens to drop his demands for black and female suffrage because this would be a step too far for the Conservative Republicans and wavering  Democrat Congressmen whose support they desperately need to get the Bill through. The message is that social advance can only come through middle class compromise and the benevolence of those in power.

 The role of the slaves in emancipating themselves, fighting in the civil war and their political campaigning is almost completely missed out.

 The film does show Lincoln in a couple of conversations with black people where they talk one-to-one with Lincoln with regard to the abolition of slavery. One is a corporal, Ira Clark, played by David Oyewolo, who argues that there should be Black army officers and black suffrage. The other is Elizabeth Keckley, played by Gloria Reuben, a former slave who is Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker.

 There is no mention of the level of organised political pressure from people like Tubman and Douglass to persuade Lincoln to adopt abolitionism. Some historians report that prior to the civil war Lincoln would have done a deal with the South to keep slavery if they would not secede from the Union.

 This is a feel-good movie for the white, liberal middle class sit-in-their-house anti-racists, convincing them social change can only be effected by altruistic powerful political figures and totally ignores the role of mass movements and campaigns.

 I wonder if the script changes were influenced by the myth in Hollywood, and on mainstream US television channels, that white audiences in the US will not go to see films with strong leading Black stars and predominantly Black cast.  The acting in Lincoln was superb, especially from Daniel Day Lewis and there was a lot of typical Spielberg schmaltz with Lincoln and his relationship with Mary and their two sons that does nothing to enhance the plot even though the actors playing his sons do a very good job.

 Spielberg has said that the film has sparked a lot of interest in the period of American history and has said he will send 45,000 DVD copies of it to American schools along with special learning packs. If these also fail to include any mention of the real struggle for emancipation and the role of the Black slaves themselves and other activists, there is a danger that these people could be written out of history for most of the American public.

Lincoln (12A) is on general release

Les Miserables – not so glum after all!

By Carole Barclay

VICTOR HUGO’S book Les Miserables was first published in 1862 and is considered to be one of the greatest works of fiction to come out of the 19^th century. The novel, which follows the life of reformed criminal Jean Valjean, is a tale of struggle set against the backdrop of the social crisis in France following the restoration of the monarchy, after the defeat of Napoleon, which erupted in the 1830 French uprising. This understandably made Hugo’s book a firm favourite in the Soviet Union.

As with Hugo’s novel, Cameron Mackintosh’s stage adaptation in 1985 was met with a somewhat lukewarm response by the critics, with one journalist calling it The Glums and another “a sentimental load of old tosh” Fortunately for the future of the show the public railed against the critics and took it to their hearts with the entire two-month run at the Barbican selling out in three days. It has now been seen by over 60 million people in 42 countries.

This month saw the opening of the film based on the stage version, which was adapted to the big screen by Director Tom Hooper of The King’s Speech fame. Hooper’s vision made £8.1 million in Britain in its first weekend, beating the previous record for a musical held by Mama Mia (£6.62 million)

Being a huge fan of Les Mis and lucky enough to catch some of the filming at Greenwich Naval College, I was hugely anticipating this and it has certainly lived up to my expectations. Tom Hooper’s adaptation is simply stunning from the cinematography to the beautiful close ups of the actors singing live on screen, the first time this approach has been used in a film musical to this extent and which certainly adds to the raw emotion of the piece. It is a visual masterpiece.

The tale is a very melodramatic, both uplifting and sentimental in equal measure with the only light relief provided by the comic turn of the despicable low-life innkeeper Thenardier and his wife portrayed rather convincingly by the superb Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. Other standout performances for me were those of Hugh Jackman as the reformed villain Jean Valjean and the very pure and raw performance of Ann Hathaway as Fantine, a young woman broken by circumstance.

This film is truly wonderful and can be enjoyed by everyone and not only the diehard fans of the musical – even though there seemed to be plenty of those on the night I attended, to which the spontaneous round of applause at the end testified!

Les Miserables (PG-13) is on general release.

What is to be done?

by Eric Trevett

Theory without practice is sterile; practice without theory is blind.

THE DEEPENING capitalist crisis arises from the over-production of goods that the market is incapable of absorbing. The proof is plentiful to show that capitalism is in ever deeper political and economic crisis. But this has not put the capitalist class on the defensive.

 All capitalist countries are engaged in swingeing attacks on the working class, and to a degree the middle strata, from democratic rights to economic and living standards.

 Recent price hikes in transport and fuel costs have provoked further indignation and the repercussions include many individuals and families joining those already in poverty conditions.

 The wages movement to offset the worst effects has been lagging. Some workers have endured a three-year pay freeze.  The scourge of unemployment is a huge problem and the official figures cover up the reality. In some countries, like Spain, the figure is 40 per cent.

 What is to be done?

The labour and trade union movement has been weakened by politically motivated the closure of the mining industry and the attack on manufacturing. This has been another short-sighted action by the employing class and adds to their problems in achieving the market’s capacity to absorb goods. It has also meant more difficulty in resolving the balance of payments deficit.

 There are three main areas of struggle going on:

1)         The trade-union led campaign against the cuts.

2)         Students, who have held a number of large scale demonstrations on the issues of fees and grants.

3)         The peace movement, leading with the demands that Trident should be cancelled and British forces should be brought home from Afghanistan.

 Basically all three movements are directed at defeating Government policies and therefore it is obviously necessary for them to merge into a river of discontent and determination to defeat the austerity programme.

 Laws such as the one criminalising the squatters’ movement are likely to be ignored as more people become evicted – unable to cope with mortgages or cuts in housing benefit. Such action should be supported and applauded.

 The role of communists is to encourage the widest participation and to encourage the movements to merge, but also to campaign for an ideological shift in the main body of workers’ understanding of capitalism and the necessity for socialism.

 Without the guidance of the revolutionary party the working class will not be able to escape from its continuing exploitation. The movements on various issues may well give rise to a revolutionary situation but without the guidance of a revolutionary party that understands the necessity of smashing the state machine of the ruling class as a prerequisite to building a socialist society they will not succeed.

 Following such a revolution there will be a sharpening of the class struggle as the old ruling class tries to re-establish its authority. As stated above, our priority in calling for the merging of the various movements that are opposing the austerity strategy includes the essential struggle for working class unity around the revolutionary programme, taking into account the specific conditions in Britain and its class composition.

 With the historic development of the labour movement we see the formation of the Labour Party and general unions coming into being – such as the dockers and gas workers and actions such as the match girls strike. Those engaged in struggle saw the need for working class legislation, especially to counter new laws seeking to make trade unions financially liable for any loss of profits the employers suffered as a result of industrial action.

 The Labour Party was formed by the trade unions and socialist societies. But it did not have the aim of creating a socialist Britain in its constitution. It was a force for better representation of the working class within capitalist society.

 Only after the First World War did the Labour constitution incorporate Clause Four, which called for the heights of the economy to be taken into public ownership.

 In the 1990s that Clause Four was replaced because it hindered the right-wing policy of privatisation. And in Britain major parts of the labour movement support a right reformist policy.

 Labour is still the workers’ party by virtue of the fact that the trade unions, trades councils and cooperative bodies are the main source of its being and its financial basis.

 Its leadership has often betrayed the interests of the working class. But anger at such treachery by the leadership should not blind us to the reality in Britain of a reformist ideology and the myth of gradualism: the idea that socialism can be brought in piecemeal through parliamentary democracy.

 This overlooks the fact that the capitalists have a state machine capable of negating Parliament – a state of Parliament, councils, the armed forces, police and civil service. All swear their allegiance to the crown.

 To make the case for voting Labour in elections and working within the labour movement – with the trade unions and the Labour Party – is the best method of winning the working class for revolutionary ideology.

 In opening our columns to a discussion on these issues we challenge anybody to put forward a more realistic strategy than that contained in our 17th Congress document, discussed and debated over many months and voted on and passed at our 17th Congress last December.

 We face the future with confidence that the working class will triumph and overthrow the exploitation and oppression of capitalism.

 The new technology forces society to embrace the more fundamentally efficient means of production. Only in socialist conditions can these new developments be used for the good of all humankind.

A Feminist dialogue

Judy Chicago's Gunsmoke: the artist as the victim in one of her early works

By New Worker correspondent

Feminist artists have been around for a   long time but is there really such a thing as feminist art? Well we may find the answer to this at an exhibition of the works of four major women artists currently showing at the Ben Uri art museum in north London.

Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick and Tracey Emin have all achieved critical acclaim over the years and this collection of the output of these American and British artists has been brought together for the first time under the banner of  A Transatlantic Dialogue.

Judy Cohen changed her name to Chicago in 1970 in a protest against patriarchy.   A pioneer of the feminist art movement, she coined the term ‘feminist art’ and she was clearly an inspiration for the other three artists.

 Her most famous work is probably The Dinner Party which is an installation which uses 39 symbolic plates at the table  to illustrate the “progress” of women throughout history while Tracey Emin is best known for her  controversial ‘unmade bed’.  But while this exhibition concentrates on their small scale works they typify the output of these four artists over the decades.

The themes deal with sexuality, male domination and female assertiveness in differing ways but they largely ignore the reality of the life of working women. These semi biographical images of menstruation, birth and female servitude may tell us a lot about the artists and their self-obsession but they do little more than convey a feeling of indifference and depression.

Any serious student of modern art of the latter apart of the twentieth century would probably find this exhibition fascinating but whether it concretely contributes to the struggle for equality is debatable.

The Ben Uri Gallery, which incorporates the London Jewish Museum of Art, goes back to 1915 when the Ben Uri Art Society was founded in the East End of London in 1915 by the Russian emigre artist, Lazar Berson to provide an art venue for Jewish immigrant craftsmen and artists to exhibit their works. Today it  houses the world’s most distinguished body  of work by artists of European Jewish descent.

The gallery holds over 1,200 works, representing major avant-garde movements and encompassing a broad range of 20th-century modern British art. Though only a fraction of collection can ever be displayed in the current cramped building in Camden it nevertheless provides a window to the contribution made by Jewish artists to the avant-garde movement.

The Ben Uri Gallery is at 108A Boundary Road, London NW8 0RH and the exhibition runs tol 10^th March. Admission is £5 and it is open Monday 1pm - 4pm, Tuesday  to Friday  10am - 5.30pm and Sunday 12pm to 4pm.