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Winning the Right to Vote in 2004

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14680770802619516

1471-5902

Kristy Maddux,

Irish and British Studies

Abstract HBO's 2004 feature film, Iron Jawed Angels, won popular and industry acclaim for its compelling portrayal of the US woman suffrage movement. For making this historical narrative accessible to contemporary audiences, the film deserves the praise of feminist critics, but it also necessitates careful feminist analysis of its retrospective framing strategies. This essay argues that the film appeals to twenty-first-century audiences because it (1) draws upon contemporary televisual aesthetics, (2) renders the suffrage movement in postfeminist and third wave feminist terms, and (3) speaks to the liberal citizenship ideology so prevalent in contemporary discourse about voting rights. Important though these frameworks are for making the film's subject accessible, I argue that they have at least two ideological consequences: the film deflates the possibilities for radical feminist activism directed toward structural change, and it eschews the specifically feminist ideology of the woman suffrage movement. Above all, the film's limitations remind us of the need for more memorials and more complex memorials to the history of feminist organizing. Keywords: woman suffragethird wave feminismpostfeminismliberal citizenship ideology Iron Jawed Angels collective memoryretrospective framing Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Bonnie J. Dow and the reviewers and editors of Feminist Media Studies for their guidance with this project. Notes 1. These averages were accurate as of January 22, 2009. 2. Certainly other films, such as Thelma and Louise Thelma and louise (film) (1991) Ridley Scott (dir.), USA [Google Scholar] and Fried Green Tomatoes Fried green tomatoes. (film) (1991). USA: Universal Pictures. Jon Avnet (dir.) [Google Scholar] touch upon feminist themes. The children's film, Mary Poppins Mary poppins. 1964. UK: Walt Disney. R. Stevenson (dir.) [Google Scholar], even depicts the mother's involvement with British suffrage activism. None of these films, however, focuses on dramatizing US feminist organizing. Additionally, a handful of documentaries have been made about woman's rights activism, such as the 1996 One woman, one vote One woman, one vote (documentary) (1996) PBS, USA [Google Scholar] and Ken Burns' 1999 Not for ourselves alone: The story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Not for ourselves alone: the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (documentary) (1999) Ken Burns (dir.), USA [Google Scholar]. Important though these films may be, they operate by a different logic than feature films and their reach is always limited to a more niche audience. 3. Of course, music has a much longer history of being political—at least from the spirituals shared by slaves in the US through the folk music common to the anti-Vietnam War movement. 4. To be clear, I do not join the scholars who use the term “postfeminism” to refer to feminism influenced by postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism. As Lotz (2001 Lotz, Amanda. 2001. Postfeminist television criticism: rehabilitating critical terms and identifying postfeminist attributes. Feminist Media Studies, 1(1): 105–121. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) delineates the confused uses of the term “postfeminism,” she describes how US scholars, especially media critics, have talked about postfeminism as a cultural phenomenon sedimented in fictional and non-fictional media texts. I employ the term in this way.