"Man Up, Lincoln": Gender and Image in Civic Life

A new image of Abraham Lincoln appears with increasing frequency in video games, the web, and in film.  He is, in the words of one artist, “one bad ass dude,” who, as another notes, “kicks ass.”  This paper explores an expanding visual commentary on Lincoln, connecting it to efforts by younger male citizens to infuse the sixteenth president with a renewed masculinity.  From the stomping Lincoln of Mountain Dew ads to a Lincoln shrine in the video game Fallout 3, these representations are more than the “postmodern version of a nonsense syllable,” as sociologist Barry Schwartz asserted in Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era. Instead, these constructions offer insights into a subtle, gendered commentary on Lincoln, the presidency, and the American prospect.