I find this tragic, mainly for two reasons. First off, what does it say about our society and about the industry that it's taken this long for a studio-backed retelling of the suffragette movement? Universal suffrage (for women and people of color) is one of the most significant issues of human rights and yet we're only beginning to tell their stories with films like Selma and now Suffragette. They faced atrocious horrors in striving toward these rights--and I do say striving not achieving as we still have work to do. But that leads to the second reason this is so tragic: because we're still struggling over the same basic questions. As Dorothy Sayers so bluntly put it Are Women Human? And, though it's 2015, Suffragette reinforces, "I'm worth no more, no less than you."
But I also find it so very beautiful. For the United States, August 18, 2017 will mark 100 years that women will have had the right to vote--making 2016 only the 25th presidential election women had any say in. Long and not long at the same time, the right to vote can never be appreciated enough and the sacrifices it took to earn should never be forgotten.
