Iron Jawed Angels

"We're legitimate citizens. We're taxed without representation. We're not allowed to serve on juries so we're not tried by our peers. It's unconscionable, not to mention unconstitutional. We don't make the laws but we have to obey them like children."

- Alice Paul, Iron Jawed Angels



You know the Women's Suffrage Movement? Yeah, that one. Remember when they got the vote? Well, I think we can all agree that was an important moment in American History? Yeah, it's great, from Susan B. Anthony to Alice Paul, such perseverance, such power of spirit, such... No wait don't go! What if I made it sexy?!

BOOM! Iron Jawed Angels!

Iron Jawed Angels is a 2004 movie detailing the tail end of the American campaign for Women's Suffrage. Most of the events in the movie actually happened, the story is compelling, the acting is good, the writing is tight... but, well, it gets kinda weird at times.

Maybe it's weird in order to make the movie more accessible to a younger generation, maybe it's just the Hollywood machine getting its dirty hands all over another well-intentioned historical drama, but what with the experimental camera work, the especially forced romantic subplot and the anachronistic slang and hip-hop soundtrack watching this movie can feel kinda surreal. Not bad, just kinda surreal.


 * A Date with Rosie Palms: The slightly random bathtub scene.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: And how.
 * Force Feeding: Happens to Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and a few other suffragists during their prison hunger strike.
 * Godwin's Law: Nominally averted, since Adolf Hitler is still a no-name Corporal on the Western Front. However, one of the angry sailors at a protest yells something to the effect of "MAYBE YOU'D RATHER GO TO GERMANY?!"
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were a real life example of this.
 * Historical Beauty Update: There were some lookers in the Women's Suffrage Movement, I'm sure. But not quite like this.
 * Hotter and Sexier
 * Line in the Sand: Knowing anyone who joins the picket line in front of the White House after war has been declared will be imprisoned, Alice asks for volunteers and stresses that this is a choice.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance
 * Truth in Television: Though it does invent a few characters, film is pretty accurate historically; there really was, for an example, a senator who voted "yes" at the last second because of a note from his mother.