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One Woman, One Vote 
Actors : Susan Sarandon
Studio : PBS (Direct)
by PBS (Direct)
Release Date : 2006-02-28
Publisher : PBS (Direct)
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 0841887006095
UPC : 841887006095
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 2 reviews)
List Price : $29.98
Our Price : $18.60
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Description |
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How could America call itself the world's greatest democracy, but continue to deny the right to vote to more than half of its citizens? This program documents the struggle which culminated in the passing of the 19th Amendment in the U.S. Senate by one vote. Witness the 70-year struggle for women's suffrage. Discover why the crusaders faced entrenched opposition from men and women who feared the women's vote would ignite a social revolution. |
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Suffrage in a Sociopolitical Context |
This documentary brings viewers in to the spirit of the suffrage movement and puts the movement into a culturally, historically, politically, and socially specific context of the U.S. and Britain in the latter half of the 19th Century into the early 20th Century.
Although sometimes it seems cheesy, with purposefully bourgeois voices and old-fashioned sets to set the mood, the documentary is surprisingly fast-paced, revealing how dynamic the movement was, with numerous events and leaders continually making progress. However, this can be confusing to students.
Students may bore if watching this full-length video. I recommend either breaking in the middle of it or choosing only a few chapters to show, while filling in the rest of the time-line with lecture. It's hard to determine which parts are most important, but how some of the 1st Wave feminists were racist is an important piece.
The documentary uses Susan Sarandon as the spokesperson and uses Stanton and Anthony's letter-writing as a woman-centered perspective of woman suffrage. |
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Nice! |
PBS already produced a DVD about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I was worried that this would be a rehash. However, it looked at the suffrage movement with these leaders, but not only these leaders.
I think it's great that this work showed that more than just two women were responsible for the women's vote. This gives budding feminists more biographies to find and write. Because the Amendment had to be ratified by 2/3 of states, there is also room for history graduate students to describe what their states did in this regard. I liked that Susan Sarandon narrated this. If male actors (Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Harvey Fierstein, etc.) can be narrators, then so should actresses.
Many modern documentaries have people dressed up in costumes imitating the sequences of events. This work refrains from doing that. It shows photos and films (yes, films!) from the times. Otherwise, it would use objects to represent deceased people. Thus, eyeglasses on a book stand in for Cady Stanton; the paintings in the Senate stand for the 99 men in office at the time. This film is filled with jingoes and ditties from the time. They are poignant, but a bit corny. But hey, rock'n'roll wasn't invented until 30 years after the fact.
This film reiterates how some men have absurd notions that anti-sexism will turn the world upside down. In the same way that ERA opponents said a law would lead to unisex bathrooms, this film showed men washing clothes and caring for children (Heavens forfend!) as reasons not to support the vote. In the same way that Limbaugh rants about "feminazis," this film shows Charlie Chaplin (the supposed Communist) mocking suffragettes.
Very importantly, this film shows how racist First Wave feminism was. It repeatedly showed rich, white woman selling Black women and immigrant women out to cater to their privileged male counterparts. This happened even though Black women consistently supported the vote, and so did many Black men. Further, though Woodrow Wilson was so supposedly progressive, in the same way that he prevented civil rights for Blacks, he only halfheartedly supported women.
Finally, male viewers will be put at ease by this work. Not only were their supportive men at the Seneca Convention, it was a man who wanted to honor his mother that made the Amendment possible. The film shows supportive men of the time as well as having a male scholar chime in. |
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