Talk:Suffragette (film)

Re: claims of racial insensitivity

I think there's some language in this section that could be said to deviate from an encyclopedic point of view and to take one side in the debate over claims of alleged racial insensitivity. Here is the passage (emphasis added):

"Suffragette is set in London in 1912. The film focuses tightly on a small representative group of women in order to portray the specific political context of the time and to communicate the emotional impact on women who lose their children or livelihoods, for example, as a result of disempowering laws. Despite this focus, in the lead-up to its release, the film was criticized, largely on social media, for not being a different film in a different context; that is, for not depicting suffragettes of colour."

This language implicitly makes an argument on behalf of the filmmakers, implying that critics of the film were unfairly and anachronistically projecting present-day concerns on the film. This may well be a plausible argument, but it's still an argument. It seems to me that a more neutral way of handling this section would be to cite the objections to the film first (better sourcing would help), and then cite responses from defenders of the film. And if we're going to say what a film "aims" to do, shouldn't this be sourced with the filmmakers' actual statement(s) to that effect? 850 C (talk) 02:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I edited it to remove the impression that an argument was being made by doing you suggested - objections first then film-maker's rebuttal. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 10:16, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

That's much better. I think, though, that we should also remove the defensive words "for not being a different film in a different context; that is..." That presumably wouldn't be how the people who raised objections would describe what they were doing. 850 C (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

They probably wouldn't although that's what they were doing in effect. Every film and work of art has its focus and this one did not misrepresent that specific focus or the history. However, as the phrase sounds like an argument as you say, I deleted it. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 22:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I can't argue with that! Much better now, thanks. 850 C (talk) 02:28, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

claims of racial insensitivity removed?

This seems like a serious problem. This wasn't something that should be scrubbed from the history books. Its a part of the conversation, and not having it be on here gives some credence to the "it wasn't really important" line of thinking. There was a boycott, there were a number of articles written both in argument against and in defense of the movie, it's clearly something that some felt to be important. Why isn't it here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.189.172 (talk) 03:36, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Fascism

Might be worth mentioning that the real suffragette who claimed to have accompanied Davison to Epsom racecourse, like the film's fictional heroine, was Mary Richardson, who later attacked the Rokeby Venus with an axe in the National Gallery and went on to become a founding member of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was chief of its women's section from 1934-6, resigning only because of doubts about the party's policies on women. (The party's policies on Jews evidently did not bother her.)

Might also be worth mentioning that, while Morgan, the film's writer, claimed it had a working-class heroine because the part played by working-class suffragettes was under-recognised, there were very, very few working-class suffragettes like Alice Hawkins, and this for a good reason: working-class women like Hawkins would not have got the vote under the Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill for which the suffragettes agitated. The bill would only have given the vote to a mere one million well-off mostly single women, such as the suffragette leadership themselves, and the very best-off married women. (You couldn't register at the same address as your husband, so you had to have a town house and a country house, and you had to have some title to the property.) In addition, as Lloyd George and Churchill pointed out at the time, becoming hate figures among the privileged middle-class suffragette movement as a result, elections held on the basis of that franchise would produce a permanent Conservative government with a locked-in majority. Tory leader Arthur Balfour told the House in the second-reading debate on the Bill in 1910 that he favoured the Bill just because it would advantage his own party. If the suffragettes' campaign had succeeded (which it didn't), the cause of universal suffrage would have been set back for perhaps forty years, because the Conservatives would never widen the franchise again for fear of risking their majority. The actual Representation of the People Act 1918, enacted long after the failure of the suffragette campaign (and it did fail), recognised instead the work of women during the Great War and enfranchised not one million but about eight million women, over a third of the electorate at that time. The suffragettes never wanted that kind of thing to happen. As people said, in 1910, they didn't want 'Votes For Women', just 'Votes For Ladies'. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:41, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, quite. I came here on the offchance to see if there was any well-informed historical commentary by film critics about this film (in terms of historical accuracy it's just simplistic myth-peddling, little better than Braveheart), and rather sadly see that there isn't. Women in the early 1900s were actually quite liberated compared to their grandmothers - could own property, voted in local elections, were starting to attend university etc etc. Two-thirds of the Liberal Cabinet were in favour of votes for women, it was a Liberal electoral aspiration (as opposed to a concrete pledge, as we would nowadays say) in the December 1910 election, and a measure enfranchising women on the same terms as men (before 1918 about 2/3 of men had the vote) would almost certainly have passed Parliament. The militant suffragettes who are so absurdly lionised nowadays were not highly regarded at the time, and if anything probably held back the cause. People often get cross when you point this out to them.Paulturtle (talk) 00:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)