HC docu tonight: Lincoln "transcended depression, turned it into light"

[DeepModem Mom]

Lincoln's Toughest War
Documentary Traces a Lifetime of Inner Turmoil
By Patricia Brennan
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page Y05


Vikram Jayanti wanted to call his portrait of the nation's 16th president "The Darkness of Abraham Lincoln."

In fact, he said, that was the production's working title for nearly three years. Rather than create a biographical documentary, he planned to show how one man "transcended depression and turned it into light."

Jayanti's film airs under a simpler title, "Lincoln," but it still focuses on the traumas the president endured over his lifetime, ending with a war that claimed more American lives than any other -- including his own.

The New York-born filmmaker acknowledged that his own struggle with depression informs the film. "Our model of depression, as a society, is that you're broken and lost if you're depressed," Jayanti said. "Here's a man who, because of his depression, becomes a transcendant human being."

In a film he saw as youth, Jayanti said, "Charlie Chaplin says, 'Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the world.' Well, Lincoln freed himself by freeing the slaves."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011101941.html

[Wilber_Stool]

1. Do you think that Lincoln

would have been the President he was had he been medicated? Something tells me he wouldn't.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Wow -- very interesting question! Many, I think...

owe their lives to medication, but they're, of course, not Lincoln!

[lisby]

3. As someone who has battled with lifelong depression....

While it may seem noble to the nonsufferer, the possibility of transcendence does not outweigh a sufferer's right to take medications that enhance quality of life. If Lincoln had been able to take a drug to alleviate his depression, I feel almost certain he would have. And I don't think it would have changed his decision making or the course of history at all. He simply would have been free to act without having to battle through a fog of pain.

One does not have to suffer to make the right choices. Everyone can be transcendent if they choose to be. Suffering is not a mandate.

Lisby