From the Department of How Convenient: Tony Kushner says yes, possibly maybe probably Abe was gay but the playwright excuses himself for avoiding it in the Oscar-groveling LINCOLN because he thinks the president wasn't having sex with anyone in January 1865, the month the film covers.
Never mind the gay question, the interviewer should have asked Kushner why he didn't write a movie. It's a stage play. Characters stand still or sit and recite noble, elegant speeches at one another. Tough luck if you expect a motion picture to have motion. Here, even the big dance scene is devoid of dancing; it's confined to a heated discussion in the receiving line. The film's core problem is that its plot consists of prolonged vote wrangling for an Amendment whose happy outcome the viewer already knows. Kushner withholds until the end the reveal that Thaddeus Stevens is sharing a bed with his black maid. A better movie about fighting for racial equality would have made their love a natural part of the story from the beginning, letting the black woman become an actual, complex character rather than silent, suffering symbol.
Readers frustrated by Hollywood's all-white degayed history can find men loving men during or after the Civil War in Christopher Bram's wonderful The Notorious Dr. August
Of course there's also C.A. Tripp's widely-criticized gay nonfiction The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln [Kindle], a book that never recovered from its author's pre-publication death.
I will definitely keep a hold of this list of books. Where can I find more about the criticism of C.A. Tripp's book? I'd seen a documentary that covered questions about Abe's sexuality but I've yet to read the book.
Posted by: J.P. | November 24, 2012 at 06:30 AM
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Posted by: ITProsperity Blog | December 17, 2012 at 12:09 AM