Iron Jawed Angels: Review and Commentary

How do you do,

   I don't consider myself a feminist given that the feminist movement in recent decades has become, to a greater extent, a three ring circus (which is something for another blog entry). Yet, I was involved in the later years of my undergrad days with a few feminists who were part of a pro-life movement. These people invited me one night to watch a movie about women getting the right to vote. This was the film Iron Jawed Angels. 

   The best way to summarize the movie would be a group of actress most people have never heard of portray an event in US history that most people know how it ends and Angelica Houston is in the movie. It is not an old film, though old by today's standards. It came out in 2004, though most might not have heard of it. Maybe most of the advertising of the movie was not as great as, say, The Notebook or The Cinderella Story, both of which are watched by women on both sides of the political spectrum the past decade, yet Iron Jawed Angels passed under everyone's radar. No doubt, the same can be said to many of such movies of similar themes. So, this may have to go deeper than summarize it.

   Actress Hilary Swank plays Alice Paul and Frances O'Conner plays Lucy Burns. The two women played by these actresses were suffragettes who formed the National Woman's Party a century ago. The film has them returning from England (in September 1912, so they missed the Titanic) and meet with leaders from the National American Woman's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to push for women's rights. Of course, the women in this group will support them if it's done on their terms, so the two eventually part from them and set up their own group. 

  If one was expecting the US Government, especially the recently elected President Woodrow Wilson, to simply hand women the right to vote after a few simple actions, then you are naive. What happens in the film's conflict is that Miss Paul and Miss Burns meet opposition from every corner. Not only do they face men who are refusing to give them the rights but they also must fight off misogyny of the times as well as their fellow suffragettes. Wilson is portrayed, in the movie, as a silver tongue politician (perhaps the closest to the truth from most portrayals) who is almost always isolated from their cries of freedom, and yet is willing to give freedom to others. So, the NWP then goes out to oppose him in the reelection and any who doesn't move on the Suffrage. Then America goes to war and suddenly the actions are considered treasonous.
    First time viewers may be amazed at how things went differently back in the 1910s. None of the Suffragettes had to go through security check points to see the president (though it was no longer simply walking up to the White House, ring the door bell, present a card to the butler, and then be led to the Oval Office), yet they also unimpeded on Capital Hill. When they picket the White House, only city policemen are called, not a Swat team, the Secret Service, or the Homeland Security. One would even be amazed that people use to cut into parades and throw things and not get arrested for it (unless the people in the parade were important people). Then there are moments that many feminists might be shocked to discover in the movement. The women seen marching are all white. The one African American woman who wishes to march is told she and her fellow black women must be in the back. Many of the suffragettes, including our heroes, are depicted looking down their noses at black women also, forcing that one to sneak into the line during the march. Those who may not know much about history of US presidential inaugurations may find it odd that Wilson is shown heading to the White House for the first time as president in what looks like a spring day. This is before the date of the inauguration was changed from March 5 to January. In 1913, people smoked -- not as much as they did in the fifties and sixties due to cigarettes not as mass produced -- and this time period marked a start in the more common instances of women smoking. So, it's no surprise to see Miss Paul and Miss Burns smoking, even after brushing her teeth. While sex is not openly discussed among most people (in some places, not even among married couples), the word "sex" is used frequently to mean male or female (something that should have stayed on in more places than Jurassic Park -- where Dr. Grant says "Some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment" -- as opposed to gender). I am cataloging all this to illustrate how history films present the past, which is a world quite different from the one you and I are occupying. No doubt, a century from now, people may find our habits very strange (i.e., renaming locations for the sake of political correctness, make protests and riots over tragedies, make a fuss about a minority in a place of power, be very judgmental to others, et cetera et cetera et cetera).  I admit, there were a few things that surprised me right away. In the Senate scenes, the US flag is displayed with the blue field on viewer's right, instead of the left as the Flag Code dictates. Looking into the Flag Code, I was amazed to discover that the Flag Code in question wasn't enforced because it wasn't around during Wilson's administration. According to USFlag.org, the code was first set up on June 14, 1923 when "there were no federal or state regulations governing display of the United States Flag" (USFlag.org). So, until then, there wasn't a defining rule on how the flag would have been displayed, either horizontal or vertical, in the Senate. But, I am positive, and I don't know how many historians would agree, that flag would have had the blue field in the north-west corner regardless as far back as 1777.

     While Iron Jawed Angels was good enough to presenting the way people behaved in 1913 to 1919, it doesn't get all of the historical inaccuracies down. Miss Paul and her fictional lover are seen eating sandwiches on a fire escape in one scene. The bread appears to have been sliced industrially, which is odd because sliced bread wasn't on the market until 1928. If they were eating sandwiches, they would have had to cut from the loaf directly (and there was a scene of something that looked like a loaf or cake on the table in another). This seems picky compared to a few other things. I mentioned the smoking habits in the time period. Yet, the film doesn't pick up on the drinking habits of the time and of the suffragettes who fought also for prohibition. It is mentioned in one scene when some man complains about what the women are marching for (though the film refrains from going into the common cliche of men claiming the women seeking equality are going to make them effeminate, even though there was a wide cultural hysteria over masculinity at the time). The one thing the film can really get to is the dialogue. As with Hollywood films, Iron Jawed Angels has everyone talk as common, and as earthly, as the audience as opposed to the methods people normally talked. Many reviewers have noted the way Miss Paul and Miss Burns have interacted with eachother, as opposed to the more in the times portrayal of Missus Carrie Chapman Catt (played by Angelica Houston), who exhibits the stiff, formalized, and sometimes condescending type of oration that is commonly attributed to Victorians, along with the older suffragettes. This can actually make viewers think they were from today and were trapped in the early 20th Century.

      This can make me add about the music, which is actually more in tune to the 2010s instead of the 1910s. While the clothing seems accurate, a few things like the bonnets and cars seem to be in advance years instead of in times. The film does present the rivalry between Miss Paul and Missus Catt, yet it has them reconciling, which never happened. There were times I considered Hilary Swank too pretty to be Alice Paul and the Australian actress, Frances O'Conner, doesn't really know how to hide her accent in playing Lucy Burn (I am also noting with sadness that we have American characters played by foreign actors in greater numbers).

     One reviewer called it "a 1912 version of Sex in the City", which is justified. The footage of the film is jagged in some scenes, with an MTV style editing that gets the viewer confused. Miss Burns and Miss Paul discuss the latter's lover in manner of school girls talking about some guy, mostly for the sake of adding romance into the story. The character Ben Weissmann is fictional, only added to make Miss Burns more relatable by giving her a boyfriend. Yet, the romance seems cliched or forced, depending on the scene, which is interesting as neither Miss Paul nor Miss Burns ever married (it wasn't unusual at the time for two women to live together without a man in their lives). To handle the spirit of feminism, the film doesn't allow them to do the old fashioned (read, "sexist) courtship that was common at the time to the more relaxed type of dating that was common in the Twenties. Fortunately, there's no sex scene, yet one scene has Alice Paul taking a bath and based on her hands and leg position, the implication is that Miss Alice Paul is having, as TV Tropes calls it, a "date with Rosie palms." As awkward as the romance is, the moment is completely unnecessary because it causes the film to confirm what critics of feminists tend to believe: that feminists reject virtue and chastity in favor of sleeping around, for the sake of advancement, then disregard the men they slept with to cling to their sisters, considering another woman as the only man in their life. I may not be a feminist, but if I was I would find the portrayal too generalizing. I know a feminist who is planning on becoming a nun and she is not straying from that path with sex, drugs, and rock n roll. I know another who is in a chaste relationship with her boyfriend. Not only that, both are pro-life, which clashes the common stereotype that feminists support abortions (by the way, they told me of when the Feminists for Life started, one of its members actually met Miss Paul who told them that, with a few exceptions, the suffragettes were opposed to abortions). I am positive if Miss Paul, Miss Burns, or any of the suffragettes of the times saw this film, they would have protested their portrayal. 

     Yet, the darker side of the picketing is not something portrayed lightly. During the time the US was at war with Germany, Miss Paul and the others picket the White House, with signs that compare Wilson to the Kaiser, as the Silent Sentinels and are arrested on trumped up charges. When Miss Burns was arrested, she and the others refuse to pay the fine all because it "would be admitting guilt." They are sent to a workhouse in a set up that appears like something you'd hear in the Holocaust (the women are stripped of their clothes in one scene and shows their nudity, largely to cater to the male audience). In real life, the women were given only one bar of soap to wash with upon entry, after being stripped, so they refused to use it. Some of the other horrors of the Occoquan Workhouse are kept out of the film, however. The conditions were unsanitary and the prisoners shared things with others who were sick (there is a moment where maggots are found in soup). The film also doesn't include the day when the wards brought in black sex workers to humiliate the suffragettes with anything imaginable (show the racism in the parade, but not have white women resist a horny black man from rape?). President Wilson did pardon the prisoners, though they refused and had to be forced out. This gives us the Night of Terror where Miss Paul goes on a hunger strike, happening in November. Miss Paul is shown being forced fed raw eggs and milk by the wardens, something that is appalling, even for the time. 

     The film merges the two events together, has a fictional senator attempt to rescue his wife (who he was about to divorce for joining the Suffrage movement), the news of the mistreatment is announced and the women are released. What the film excluded was one of the women actually died of a heart attack during her time. It is in this that Wilson is further pressured into moving for the 19th Amendment. This is shown to pass in 1920, with Tennessee making the deciding vote of the necessary 36 votes to pass. Thus, the film has the times right when white men were making and passing laws to be the ones who pass this amendment and allow women to vote (just in time for Warren Harding's election). However, the fact that it records the deciding vote done because the man who voted was told to by his mother does give the results an anti-climatic feel (as opposed to the idea that he grew a back bone and voted "aye"). The film doesn't include the days when President Wilson suffered a stroke and his wife operated the White House (which one could conclude was the one time we had a woman running the country in a time when women were attempt to get the right to vote nationwide). 

    Iron Jawed Angels barely passes the Benschel Test on most occasions. Ben Weissman, the senator, and his wife, are fictional characters added to give the audience suppose this happened sort of characters. These are the things that make it hard to see how good the film is, along with the MTV style editing, the Sex in the City moments on a view occasions, the sight of a few anachronisms, and the music score that doesn't fit. It's a secular film, for the most part, despite it taking place in a time when Christianity (specifically Protestantism) was ingrained in the American society. Alice Paul's faith as a Quaker is hardly explored, which is sad because there are plenty of times to explore how she felt of her community's (and her mother's) stance on suffrage. In the matter, the discussion outside of the film is all too brief: non-Christians fire off specific passages in the Bible that are deemed sexist by today's standards (Genesis 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:11-5, etc.) while Christians offer essays explaining a passage and allow it to be timeless instead of archaic (Bible Reference). Of course, neither has their views brought up or examined by anyone in the film. It's also noteworthy that none of the Quaker wisdom is issued forth in the film (only something to be referenced by Miss Paul on the matter of her background). The course language that arises is questionable and the inaccuracies of history are kept down, but not completely. So, Iron Jawed Angels does make for a mediocre film. If there is any lessons from it, it's that there really was a struggle for women to acquire the right to vote and it shows as an example of how far our nation is from its ancient inspirations (Athens and Rome). As I mentioned in "Food for Thought: Republic vs Democracy", suffrage is universal today, with only a few exceptions given to minors and incarcerated citizens. However, when the 19th Amendment was passed, African American women had to deal with the Grandfather clause and other restrictions to vote while the younger women couldn't vote until the 1970s. Also, as history shows, getting the right to vote was not the end of feminism or sexism (and to some, the battle for sex equality is still being fought on today). Yet, it is nice to see what our fore-mothers went through to make what came after possible.