“The Gettysburg Address is a movie”

The subject of a We Can Talk About podcast.

I receive a LOT of email from folks reaching out to have their content featured on the blog. 99% ends up in the ‘sorry, but no thanks’ file. This one caught my attention:

Based in Los Angeles, California, “We Can Talk About” is a weekly podcast about the moral values in politics and the language we use to transmit them.

The pod is hosted by Chelsea O’Connor, a writer/director/producer/film-maker and for one beautiful summer a coal-plant worker, and Michael Zannettis, a screenwriter and seasoned marketer and advertising executive with a background in the four disciplines of Anthropology — cultural, physical, archaeological, and linguistics — and a masters degree in Public Policy.

“We Can Talk About” is inspired by the ideas of political framing and moral politics, as explored by George Lakoff and others.

Check out their analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which per Chelsea and Michael is laid out like a movie.

THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:

SETUP

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

INCITING INCIDENT

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

EMBARK ON JOURNEY (BREAK INTO SECOND ACT)

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

MIDPOINT

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

BAD GUYS CLOSE IN

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here

FINAL PUSH

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

CLIMAX

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —

DENOUEMENT

And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Gettysburg Address is a movie called “America”, written and directed by Abraham Lincoln.

Here is the podcast episode:

I like this film version of our 15th president a LOT better than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Instead: Abraham Lincoln: Screenwriter!

For more We Can Talk About podcasts, go here.