Ad-Express and Daily Iowegian, Centerville, IA  December 27,
2012  Slate: For 'Django' and 'Lincoln,' a woman problem  By
Alyssa Rosenberg  — The release of Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti
Western slavery revenge drama "Django Unchained" on the heels of
Steven Spielberg's rather more sober biopic "Lincoln" has given
moviegoers a holiday season full of questions about one of the
darkest periods in American history. Are we capable of reckoning
with the racism of one of our most beloved presidents? Was
vengefulness or reconciliation the more useful emotion in
governing the reintegration of the seceded states - and
individual slaveholders - into the Union? Did slaveholders
really pit slaves against each other in fights to the death?
But one question raised unintentionally by both movies is why
they ignore so much of the work that black women did to fight
for their own freedom. In "Lincoln," which portrays the
machinations of an all-male legislature and Cabinet, with
interjections by the president's wife, Mary Todd