Here are some photos of humanist-not-feminist Meryl Streep and feminist Carey Mulligan at the London Film Festival photocall for Suffragette today. Um… I guess Carey gave birth to her baby and didn’t tell anyone? Because she was heavily pregnant a few months ago and I guess I sort of believed that she was still pregnant because we hadn’t heard anything about anything. Carey is a very, very private celebrity and she barely even mentions her husband or their life together. I wasn’t expecting the first baby photos in People Magazine or Hello, that’s what I’m saying. But I did think that there would be some kind of statement at some point, like “Carey Mulligan welcomed a healthy baby. No more details will be released.” So that’s a little bit weird. Update: Okay, now E! News has a story with a source saying “Carey have given birth to a healthy and happy baby. She is just enjoying this time with her family and close friends.”
Anyway, we’re still talking about the Suffragette t-shirts reading “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” The whole thing has created a huge war online, especially on Twitter. Personally, I don’t think Meryl and Carey are the ones who should take the heat for it – the PR people should have known better and someone, somewhere down the line should have said, “Huh, maybe this quote is sort of problematic taken as a stand-alone, out-of-context statement to promote a movie.” Meanwhile, Time Out London tried to fall on their sword, releasing this statement:
For a recent photoshoot to document Suffragette, the first feature film to tell the story of the violent and historic struggle of women in the UK for equal rights including the right to vote, Time Out London invited the lead actresses from Suffragette to wear t-shirts with the slogan: ‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.’
This is a quote from a 1913 speech given by Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the historic British suffragettes whose fight for equality is portrayed in the movie. The original quote was intended to rouse women to stand up against oppression — it is a rallying cry, and absolutely not intended to criticize those who have no choice but to submit to oppression, or to reference the Confederacy, as some people who saw the quote and photo out of context have surmised.
Pankhurst’s full quote was: ‘I know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion. I would rather be a rebel than a slave.’
Time Out published the original feature online and in print in the UK a week ago. The context of the photoshoot and the feature were absolutely clear to readers who read the piece. It has been read by at least half a million people in the UK and we have received no complaints.
I have a problem with Time Out London’s statement, specifically the last part: “The context of the photoshoot and the feature were absolutely clear to readers who read the piece.” Yes, that’s just the point. You have to understand the context of the quote, which is why the t-shirts were a bad idea. “It has been read by at least half a million people in the UK and we have received no complaints.” Well thank God the film is only going to be released in the UK and no one is putting any money into releasing the film worldwide, plus spending the cash for an awards season campaign in America, right? Incidentally, all of those people complaining on Twitter? Those “count” as complaints.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
What is Carey wearing???
Ah you beat me to it. It’s harrable!
Hilarrible!!
This should be seen only from a great, great distance. From space, by the Mars Rover.
It’s really, really bad but I still love her.
She looks like she’s trying to win an ugly sweater contest.
Sweatshirts are F’IN IMPORTANT, as reported on Lainey!
I’m thinking someone needs to “Garaminal tag” Carey’s clothes for her so she can match things more easily.
On the plus side Carey’s hair color is great and her face looks lovely.
Maybe it’s just me (cough) but her hair color looks super ashy, almost green.
I can’t even with Meryl. There I said it.
Um, having you been eating those brownies again mimif?
I see no green.
No seiously, enlarge and look again. I’m almost seeing shades of chartreuse.
*rolls off on skates*
But she’s so incredibly beautiful, it kinda works. I could stare in her face for days it’s so stunning.
Why is Meryl’s hair always so afwul? Why doesn’t she get a better haircut?
Meryl’s hair is so incredibly awful AT ALL TIMES. Seriously.
I think Meryl just has super thin, not good hair and says no to weaves and falls and whatnot. And for godsakes could everyone think for a second before using words like slave and rape? Even if you’re quoting someone.
this. I love Streep’s dress and then I took a good look at Mulligan and was dumbfounded. that top looks like Gramma’s “fancy” sweatshirt that she wears to bingo night and the skirt is UGGO.
it’s probably Versace or some similar high end brand. I swear, sometimes I think some designers purposely put out something SO SO UGLY just to see who’s enough of a “brand-slut” to wear it.
One: the outfit is a special kind of hideous.
Two: I feel like Carey lacks personality on the red carpet, making the outfit even louder!
Aw, i like Carey outfit.. it is horrible but she somehow pulls it off. Her facial expression looks embarrased..
I just watched a Fashion Police where they gushed over Alexa Chung in a gold lame pleated skirt and rainbow colored sweater … so this appears to be a “look”.
And while I get the explanation offered about the slogan, I think it’s also another way to publicize what is likely a dull movie.
Damn….I liked it.
lol, Me too.
It’s proof of faux-feminism: refusing to match a top and bottom of an ensemble.
I love it! I was thinking when I saw it that I would wear this outfit in a heartbeat. Meryl Streep looks really girlish here.
Right?! I love it. Thank god someone like it too.
It hides her Mom-boobs, that’s why.
Okay but wtf is Carey wearing??
Oh man, replying to my own comment. I’ll see myself out now. Mods delete me pleeeease.
Yes, mods save mimif from herself and delete!
It is gonna be one of those kind of days. LET’S BOOGIE.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bea4N_xwX9Y
Oh my, the memories you just conjured up of “rinking” with my pals as kid. Thank you, mimif!
mia girl gets all the credit for bringing that one back. She is the ROLLER BOOGIE bomb dropper.
Wow, that looks like an excellent movie. How did I miss it?
Meryl is wearing her BIG COMFY CARDY and will not apologise for it.
I may get credit for dropping the link to the cinematic materpiece that is Roller Boogie, but @mimif gets credit for bringing up skates in the first place. As a result she and I are teaming up to produce a reimagining of GOT on skates. It’s going to be brilliant! Cher will also sing our opening number.
Well now you know they’re not gonna delete it, LMAO.
Meryl’s forehead paralysis is really bizarre-looking when compared to the muscle action on her nose bridge. You’ve waaaay overdone the botox, Meryl… it’s a bad, bad look. Yeesh.
Say it isn’t so, Meryl. Not you…..please!!
I like the sweater hate the skirt, is she wore a black relaxed fit pair of trousers it would look a lot better.
Meryl’s dress looks as if it’s ill fitted and a big for her, just the lavender was a good enough colour didn’t need the other colours
I’m the exact opposite. Keep the skirt, burn the sweater!
I’m not convinced that periwinkle looks good on anyone.
I know, it’s like a taint. Is it blue, or is it purple?
The skirt or the sweater by itself with something solid to offset all the pattern are fine and fun . Together – a big no.
It just amazes me that nobody caught that. One of my college friends went on to work in the film industry/promotions, and he says that each time a major film is going to be released in multiple countries or continents, there is usually at least one person who goes through the promotional materials and sees if there is anything that needs changing to accommodate cultural and/or religious sensitivities (for example, images of a scantily clad woman would routinely be changed/remove from promotional materials if the film will be airing in majority Muslim and/or conservative nations). Did nobody see these images and think “This is going to appear in America, where “rebel” and “slave” have really different meanings than here. Maybe these images would be better off not being shown there?”
I get what Time Out is trying to say, but didn’t they figure out that the images were not just going to be seen in England? If it’s solely a British film for British distribution, then cool. But it’s not. Just seems slightly lazy to me.
Do you know what else is lazy? That photo shoot! “Here, let’s just put them in t-shirts with a provocative slogan pulled from a longer speech… oh, wait. People have been provoked? Well, their own fault for reading the t-shirts we made and not the speech that appeared nowhere in the photo shoot.”
Well, even the image obsessed Swifty tried to market a shirt with “TS 1989” on it in China. No one caught that either. What do the shirts marketed for Americans say?
Even Time Out’s own office in NYC would have known better, had anyone bothered to ask.
Also: there’s a wealth of barely-stealth, huffy stuffy undertone to be heard in their non-apologia.
Also the UK’s not as progressive on political correctness stuff as the States so just because the good old subjects of the Crown didn’t find anything problematic, it doesn’t mean it isn’t.
so the eff what? even with the context of the quote this just serves to further illustrate what little of a shit the WHITE FEMINIST suffragette movement gave about everyone else BUT themselves, tone deaf then and tone deaf now
#WhiteFeminismIsntForEveryoneElse
Also Droopy Dog sad Face Carey… I cant even understand those clothes
Yes, I said below that even in context, it’s pretty lame. You explained it better.
Not entirely true, QQ. Read that article I link to below for an overview. You REALLY would not have liked Emmeline Pankhurst. But you’d have loved her sister, Sylvia.
Settle down. JUST KIDDING. Meryl is my mom’s greatest hero. 😉
Not to mention the quote just further emphasizes how willfully whitewashed this film is. No matter that there were black, Indian, and Asian women fighting for their rights too, and no matter that white suffragettes tried to block women of color from their movement, etc. This whole thing is one big clusterf*** of oppressive white lady feminism.
THAT^^^^^ the fuck There
Seriously, ladies. I can get with the monumental stupidity of the t-shirt choice and with silly statements put out about it. I really can.
I can get with being annoyed that the contributions WOC made to the British suffrage movement get so little attention that they’ve been effectively whitewashed from it. I really can.
But WOC WEREN’T regularly excluded from the British suffrage movement when it was happening. In fact, it was more commonly the opposite.
Not EVERYTHING is the American experience. This film (and it pains me to say this because I don’t think it’s going to be that great) is about how CLASS impacted the movement. And – whatever the t-shirt choice – that was the most significant, LIVED aspect of the movement in Britain.
Like I said yesterday: cultural ethnocentrism goes both ways. People here are happy to call out Britain for its class obsession on every single other topic involving Britain or Britons, but not here, where it interferes with American cultural sensitivities? Here it’s just to be written off, along with assumptions that whatever happened during suffrage to WOC in America MUST have happened in Britain to the same extent and in the same way? Because it didn’t.
Can you not see the irony?
Thank you Sixer. And I’m not even a Brit!
Sixer – I always find myself agreeing with your comments. I saw the film tonight – I was lucky to get tickets for the London BFI premiere. I thought it was brilliant a powerful and important film. It doesn’t shy away from showing the brutality inflicted on these women. There are some excellent performances – Helena BC – much prefer her in non-kooky roles, the incredible Anne Marie Duff, Carey Mulligan and Brendan Gleeson come to mind. A central character is a working class girl working in a dodgy factory who lives in Bethnal Green. Basically a slum. It’s her story and those of her close friends. I can’t see the comparison between “check your privilege”” type feminists of today and women who endured beatings, imprisonment, force feeding and being apart from their families .
@Sixer Thank you Thank you Thank you
My great aunt wrote speeches for the Pankhursts and was in the inner circle and was not a nice lady by all accounts -one of my distant cousins did quite a lot of research about her and the movement and is interesting.Definitely racist and my impression was not supportive of the working class-cannot speak for the rest,
When the movement closed down at the start of the war she joined the fascist party believing it was the best way forward for women’s rights as did some of the others
Mosley’s Old Suffragette: A Biography of Norah Dacre Fox (Revised Edition
Those outfits are ugly and so is the message on those shirts. I agree that some pr person should have vetted those shirts. But why didn’t the actresses involved question the wisdom of putting them on? Stupid.
One of them is afraid to be called a feminist so I would say not much thinking happens. I have heard bad reviews about this movie so I wasn’t inclined to see it in the first place, but this is not encouraging me. Besides I don’t think the feminist movement (which Meryl Streep apparently doesn’t want to a part of) will stand or fall on this movie.
There are real every day issues like working for equal pay, better care for women and children and in the US in particular stopping republicans from trying to get rid of planned parenthood, all of which are more important to focus on then going to watch a movie which does not raise money for anyone but the pockets of the producers.
Careful QQ you’ll offend the white feminists.
And?? they are gon’ come to my house and make me feel excluded? more? I guess? LOL
@QQ Lol. I’m sorry that was just too funny.
Let’s boycott a movie about women’s right and their fight cause the original suffragette movement, one century ago, was part of its century.
Let’s only do movie about flawless PC movement and about flawless people (And I am the one to judge who is flawless or not).
White feminists, as “problematic” as they have been opened doors for other people.
But no, let’s bash them and erase their fight, cause you know other people were more miserable.
Thank you freebunny! That was the exact argument I made last night
hearing you & agreeing
What do you mean by “cause the original suffragette movement, one century ago, was part of its century”. Is that supposed to be a way of rationalizing racism? If so you could justify a lot of horrible shit by saying it was as a product of its time.
Acknowledging what happened in the past is not the same as condoning it as acceptable behavior.
No, it’s not about telling a flawless story, it’s about telling the WHOLE story, including all the different women (Asian, Indian, Black, etc.) who were fighting for equality at the same time. You can’t focus on one aspect of a historical and ignore the other relevant parts.
Tons of books are racist and antisemitic (Stocker’s Dracula for exemple, and many others), cause racism and antisemitism were common and acceptable at this time.
Now, is it fair to judge those books with our criterias? Or should we recognize that those books were a product of their time?
Saying that those books were productions of a more racist time is not an excuse for today’s racism, just the acknowlegement that societies change and progress and that what was acceptable before, is not anymore.
woodstock_schulz
Yes, you can. You can make a film about CLASS and the British suffrage movement. And it’s a good thing if you do. You can’t make a two-hour film telling the whole story. But what you CAN and SHOULD do is tell the other stories too.
Hey, LAK, if you’re reading – let’s start a petition for a film about Princess Sophie!
@MND, it WAS a product of its time. Forgive me that I don’t faint in shock that people in the 1910s were racist. They were racist, exclusionary, and they changed the world. History is full of such contradictions. Extraordinary achievements and troubling backgrounds. No perfect heroes.
Wonder if the film will touch on their racism?
i have been in two minds about going as i suspect it is a whitewash but I may watch it to see just how much
Perhaps poor Carey is too exhausted from her new baby to notice that she’s wearing 2 different outfits.
lol
I’d say that must be it…I went to work wearing two different shoes once after a long night up with a toddler.
I did that too! To an outdoor party! I had 2 pairs sitting by my back door, same height heel. Noticed it when I went to the bathroom after the party and sat down and looked at my feet in horror! Here I’d been trying to look and act so cool! Ha!
A friend of mine went to school (she’s a teacher) and she had forgotten to dress her skirt.. Luckuly the coat was long, but of course she went back home to finish dressing…
Is she still pregnant maybe? Hard to tell in that gigantic top!
WTF are both of them wearing?
I’m tired of backlash.
Me too. We can’t rewrite history but we can learn from it.
Oh bloody Nora. This is going to turn into another ENDLESS saga, isn’t it? Phenomenally stupid choice for a promotional effort followed by ongoing backlash whose main success is in delegitimising the one big ticket film we’ll have this year that is about women, stars women, was written by women and made by women. SIGH.
ANYWAY.
Lots of you were interested in WOC contributions to the British suffrage movement and, given the stupidity and the backlash yesterday, The New Statesman actually put out a decent overview in an article, which puts into context race, caste, class, colonialism, sexuality and all the other factors we were talking about. So you guys might be interested.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2015/10/what-did-suffragette-movement-britain-really-look
Well, I was interested, thank for posting that Sixer.
awesome!
This is what I was thinking too. Like “let them be so upset about something, like always, and so demeaning the chances of this women-oriented film to win awards”.
And that article you linked is amazing! It got me really interested in Sophia Duleep Singh, and it would’ve been great for her to be a character in the film.
I posted about Sophie before I saw your post. A friend of a friend wrote the new bio on her and it’s really good. She would’ve made a great addition to the film. Not only bringing some women of color but she’s just interesting herself. I’d love for her to get her own movie/miniseries. Get on that bbc! The Indian actress from Quantico (whose name escapes me right now) is gorgeous, talented, huge in India and getting a big profile boost stateside now. I’d love to see her produce it and star.
Yes, Priyanka Chopra would be amazing for that role!
Or Amber Rose Revah? Or Preeya Kalidas?
Konkona Sen Sharma.
Archie Panjabi or Vidya Balan would be great options too
You always make so much sense, sixer.
Yup, this one is going to run forever.
My issue with all this is that we need more films about non-white women and that one single lone film can’t show everybody’s story. We need MORE films, MORE diversity. This is a movie about a white woman – instead of running it into the ground because it doesn’t show the experience of everyone – we should just accept it for what it is (and no, it’s no inclusionary and it wasn’t meant to be) and lobby for more films with more diversity. The lack of diversity in general is the issue not that they chose to focus on white characters. We need more Ava DuVernays, Amma Asante etc.
We are tearing each other to shreds simply because there is only one film being made about this and this one film has to cater to everyone. It can’t.
As far as the slogan is concerned, yes, context matters, after all this is a direct and historically accurate quote. Would you want to choose this quote for a global marketing campaign: I’m not sure. Probably not. However, global translation is difficult, for example the Swastika is massively offensive, but in India the Swastika is a symbol of prosperity, happiness etc and is part of the life for 1 billion people, it’s been around 1000+ years before Hitler came along.
Edit: I’m not sure the Swastika is the best comparison for this – what I was trying to say – and obvs very awkwardly – is that different regions will have different levels of sensitivity. For better or for worse. And yup, for a global marketing campaign you better bloody be aware of those issues.
Precisely.
This. Criticism is fine, but in order to keep moving forward we do need to support the films that tell women’s stories. Every movie will be problematic and it’s okay to deconstruct and understand the aspects of it that make it problematic and see how people think and react. But I don’t agree with boycotting it. Dollar support unfortunately matters in this business and I’ll make sure I vote with my dollars.
+100
Was this really part of a global marketing campaign though? It was on the cover of Time Out London, not an international or even a national mag. I don’t think it’s even available in the rest of the UK outside of London. And I thought I read that the t-shirts were the magazine’s idea, so I doubt they would’ve given much thought to how it would’ve been received outside of London, let alone on the other side of the Atlantic.
Thanks for this, Sixer! And I agree with your post further up, a film about Princess Sophie would be an awesome idea!
Thanks Sixer..
Thanks Sixer, interesting reading.. Now I guess I’ll have to find the book abou Sophia.. 🙂
Well, exactly. I don’t think it’s that great of a quote even in context, but to take the one line and print it on a t-shirt was just dumb. It definitely reads like people were choosing between victim and slave and chose slave.
Also, a waiter once once asked me why I had only eaten two bites of my appetizer, and I answered honestly that it was far too salty for me, and I love salt. He just sniffed “hmmp…I’ve never heard THAT before.” And I said, as I say now to these people who claim that no one else complained about it, “So? You’re hearing it now.”
Your waiter is qualified to moonlight as a doctor.
“The medicine made you break out in hives and vomit? Hmmp…I’ve never heard THAT before.”
(And I answered the same exact way. And it’s happened more than once, and with different doctors, too.)
Ugh. Why don’t they just say “who cares?” And move on. People.
Yeah, I usually respond to that by saying “Well, now you have”
With a waiter it would be tooooh tempting to say, “I’ve never given a bad tip before but…”
Why are we all so sensitive?
Humorless too.
Yeah. The quote is ridiculous and it was not a good idea to print it in a shirt. But I still fail to see the promotional campaign of a movie as something truly important, significant and worthy of worldwide outrage. Can’t you just say “oh, that’s dumb”, and flip the page? It’s not like anybody is getting murdered.
Exactly!
I don’t know if it’s outrage so much as pointing out what might be absent from a certain discourse. Maybe people are more nuanced in their thinking nowadays or have more of a voice through the internet to register what they notice as absent. The article posted upthread about the suffragete movement I might not have seen if people not have voiced why they found the slogan on the t-shirt problematic.
People simply pointing out and explaining why the message is stupid do not bother me at all. Outrage culture does. I’m 27, so using social media is not much of an option but almost a necessity for me. I see this outrage everyday over the most mundane things.
I’ve come to the conclusion the internet does more harm than good for this causes. The internet trivializes everything. People have paragraph-long discussions full of insults about cats and dogs. CATS AND DOGS! When you see people being so, so angry about dogs being liked better, you wonder… does this person REALLY care about racism/sexism/etc., or is (s)he angry just for the sake of fighting people online? Trolls can have good grammar and be well-read as well.
@Josefa You can ignore it if you want to to. Is it hard to never encounter? Yeah, but just do like you said. Flip the page and be done with it. It’s there it’ll always be there (it has always been there people are just allowed to say it). I mean there are people outraging about outrage culture. Like writing articles and articles and articles on it. Everyone does something. It’s an unfortunate reality that some subset of the population will get mad about something and the internet is the tool that provides them (and our 24 hours news cycle) with the space to be vocal about it.
The internet (like any human invention) brings out the best and worst and everything in between about humanity.
Social media is an entity unto itself. I don’t even know if it counts as part of the mainstream media since even peasants like me can post on it. Usually people forget what happened on Twitter 48 hours ago. So that’s probably why I don’t even register what happens on social media as outrage, but as more of an outlet where any kind of discussion, weird or not-so-weird, can happen. If people are out in the streets protesting the t-shirt or throwing rocks at each over it, I would register that more as a form of outrage.
@korra
I try my best not to engage, but fail. I’ll admit the blame is on me for that.
@perplexed
Which goes to prove my point of the internet trivializing everything. Sometimes people are outraging online about very, very serious subjects; only for them to be forgotten 48 hours later.
I don’t even get this controversy!!!
Who exactly is offended here and why?!
Sometimes I wonder if I offend people without knowing it purely for having a sense of humor and for not taking myself too seriously….
I think readers understand the context very well– hence the many, many complaints. I do not get this statement from Time Out.
Well I got the context even with just the t-shirt quotes and I believe so did the people who are crying into their soup and clutching their pearls but just wanted everyone to fall in line with their way of thinking.
It makes me kind of sick that we live in a world where obviously contextual quotes or statements must come with fifty caveats or a four page explanation afterwards when everybody knows what it was intended to mean.
And again your last sentence seems so self centred, Why should makers of a British film kowtow to American standards when nobody is crying out for Hollywood to be more sensitive to anything a British person may decide to take offence to?
I can see this topic is going to be the next Emily Blunt citizenship debacle milked for all it’s worth…
Thank you for being rational though you’re a lone voice : )
Yes. Also if they are so concert about other’s feelings, I would kindly ask them to stop calling the country “America”. America is a continent with millions of people and many more countries.
Well said! I have no time for this rubbish. This is British History not American, just like when all those British and other non-American allies carried out ‘The Great Escape’ and captured that first Enigma machine. We shouldn’t have to accommodate the US into everything from our past.
“Why should makers of a British film kowtow to American standards when nobody is crying out for Hollywood to be more sensitive to anything a British person may decide to take offence to?”
A-BLOODY-MEN. And I’m an American. This “backlash” is ridiculous.
Well, obviously every single film in the world should be oriented to an American audience just because. It is amazing to me that a culture that ignores anything that is not deemed by them as “American” is being demanding in this issue. Please, not everything is related to the US and this type of controversy is what makes people all over the world to get annoyed with you. I am not from the U.S and every time an American movie tries to show my country I want to scream to the utter ignorance I witness. And, yes, as @Saks says, America is a continent. I think you need to get over yourselves.
All of this.
Fine. UK movie for UK audiences who have no problems with the statement. Well God Bless. I just won’t bother with it. Nor write anymore commentary explaining what real slavery was to people who think it was the equivalent of privileged White women’s struggles (which were hard just not on the same level) who were also co-oppressors along with their husbands of slaves.
This is the problem when history education barely mentions American slavery.
“This is the problem when history education barely mentions American slavery. ” – May I ask in which country?
lol, good one.
Well, she’s probaly refering to the US, but here we did mention slavery in the americas, but we focused more on slaves in ancient times and serfs in Europe because they were more relevant to my country.
And even with that, the word slave is sometimes casually mentioned in conversations as a figure of speech, I don’t really know why it isn’t a taboo word here.
My UK history GSCE course (the exam you take aged 16) covered 1760-1914. Topics covered included the UK process to abolition and the US civil war, which included an overview of the US slave system.
As a UK high school student I was also taught about Britain’s role in the slave trade and the American Civil Rights movement. That doesn’t mean I have to weigh up degrees of suffering before using appropriate words from my own language or honouring the struggles of my own ancestors. If you are not interested in British History, fine! don’t watch the film, there are plenty of films out there that will tell you exactly what you want to hear.
I know right? Because these threads and especially her comments showed US education in its “best” light, no doubt. What is impressive is she keeps going about something she clearly has no idea about. Amazing.
Original T.C.
Thanks for your posts on this and the other thread. I really appreciate your contribution.
We kind of only talked about World War I. It was strange.
Really? In Portugal you study World History for 7years, from the Stone Age to nowadays…
You’d have to be an idiot to be offended by a statement made in the UK about the UK that has no relationship to slavery in the antebellum southern United States. The things people get worked up over amaze me, especially since they don’t bother to educate themselves about the issue or context.
+1
How many UK only movies star Meryl Streep? As a Canadian we were taught both about the end of slavery in the British Empire as well as it continuing in the States. After all Canada was the end of the Underground Railroad. Whoever okayed that quote was apparently completely oblivious to the issues with the word slave and the history of the biggest English language movie market out there.
Besides there is a strong element of racism with the early suffragette movement, which someone who is a part of the movie Suffragette should be aware of. This is women’s studies 101. While I get that the producers of the next Transformers movie may not be familiar with that, the producers of the Suffragette should have been.
It’s like pretending blackface isn’t offensive to anyone but Americans. That is bs. Racism is worldwide. And so is slavery.
As a sort of side note to your comment, I wish more people studied or even googled to understand just how long the British Empire – combined with its colonialist adventures and mentality – actually propagated & profited from slavery rather more privately, even as many of their fellow citizens of the realm were publicly and vocally promoting abolition elsewhere.
The Brits were knee-deep and long into slavery and racist adventurism; they merely kept it away from openly sullying their home shores quite as blatantly.
belle
But people in Britain ARE perfectly aware of the Empire’s role in slavery. We learn about it in school, together with the domestic abolition movement and the role the navy subsequently played in destroying the trade it had helped to set up.
Further to the BBC suffrage documentary series I posted above, here are a couple of links to another BBC documentary series aired this year about Britain’s slave owners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxx1CkB-7pw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxx1CkB-7pw. It got a LOT of publicity, was well received, and came off the back of research done by UCL (my alma mater) from which any Briton can now check their own family history for slave ownership https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/. Well worth watching if you get a couple of hours: it’s brilliant.
People in Britain are also highly aware of the iniquities of slavery in the US. We learn about that at school, too.
What is infuriating is the complete lack of American reciprocity, which comments on both the posts here about this betray.
WOC may have been purposely excluded from the US suffrage movement but in Britain, they were actually largely encouraged (albeit with more than a whiff of white saviour about the motives).
And, while race is probably the biggest and most significant painful generational conversation from the 19th century until now in the US. In Britain the biggest and most significant painful generational conversation from the 19th century until now is CLASS. Our significant domestic trials with race began later, with the Windrush generation. Why wouldn’t a British film concentrate on a British sensibility?
I’m certainly not saying that choice of t-shirt slogan wasn’t a monumentally stupid one. It was. Or that history’s attention hasn’t whitewashed a WOC contribution that was celebrated at the time. It has. But I do take exception when Americans insist on projecting their experience onto the rest of the world, whether that’s accurate or not, and complain about other people’s lack of education on a topic while openly displaying their own (not you, just generally).
THANK YOU Sixer! For this post, and the others I’ve seen posted by you. “What is infuriating is the complete lack of American reciprocity, which comments on both the posts here about this betray.” Yes. I simply do not understand how or why people can expect others to learn about their country and history and then not take at least SOME interest in return. It’s not difficult. You’re on the World Wide Web for goodness sake. Even many comments on this site can be informative, I’ve learnt alot about race issues in America, such as why cultural appropiation is so offensive, etc. It’s sadly ironic that people keep pointing the finger at us for being ignorant about the slave trade without bothering to find out whether we DO know about it. If you care so much, educate yourself first, please. Sigh.
But it seems there are many people in the USA who do not want to learn about other people, their lives, perspectives and their histories even when it’s their fellow citizens and it’s THEIR OWN history too. Maybe it’s to much to hope that they would make an effort to learn about the rest of us. Sigh.
(Except for those of you who DO make an effort, of course. To you, thank you.)
Sixer: I appreciate your comment, for several reasons; I’m a mutt, educated on both shores, and am well familiar with some of the differences to which you refer. It’s been my experience that both educational systems (speaking in the broadest terms) have lapses and emphases particular to their own curricula and agenda – be they educational or social.
Class in America has historically been a rather taboo topic, as many prefer to think of the supposed lack of its distinction – or even existence here – as a defining attribute that distinguishes this ‘new’ country from the old. Of course it exists anyway, and is tied to both race and economic status in its own unique American blend. By far, the best and most astute general analysis of this phenomenon here is a book called Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell (http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253).
Not only is it dead on – and even evilly gleeful in what it points to out loud at the dinner table – but it manages to be a funny and entertaining read as well.
My comments re this thread were very deliberately general, as I often do wish people had access to education that included – and especially that compared and contrasted – far more world history for a ‘bigger picture’ perspective.
That said, I have no personal or creative issue whatsoever with a British film portraying a very British perspective on a very particular moment or movement in British history; I certainly don’t feel like art must be inclusive, pass a committee, or focus on anything larger than the mite on a butterfly’s wing. One of my favorite books of all time is still Joyce’s Ulysses… and I do not believe it is merely about a single day in the life of a very Irish man in a particular city.
belle
Thanks for that. I typed a lot, which generally means starting a fight on the interwebz, which wasn’t my intention at all. And I was speaking generally too.
I will look out the book!
Sixer: No worries at all. Your points are well taken, and I was sincere in that I genuinely appreciate your perspective; I merely thought I might do more to clarify my own. (Half from Southern aristo here, and there are many more purposeful similarities than discrepancies to be found in that odd combo, as well.)
It is a pleasure to have an internet discussion that is NOT an all-or-nothing tussle. I love reading your posts.
As I gather from your others that you are quite an avid reader, I really would urge you to try this book. In an odd way, it is similar to a York Notes or Penguins or Cliff’s Notes key to a forbidden subject territory that no one here likes to admit to… much less go spelunking through with an expert, unflinching guide.
I really will look out the book. I want to understand perspectives as much as I want others to understand them, you know?
I’m glad I had a rant now (although sorry if any of it came off personal and you’re too polite to say) – this has been most informative!
+100000000000000000000000000000000
Maybe Meryl Streep wearing the t-shirt is throwing everyone off since she’s American. I’ll admit I assumed at first the movie was a US production because of her. Maybe if the movie starred Helen Mirren and she wore the t-shirt, people would have immediately clued in that it’s a British movie and that the quote might possibly have a different context. But if you have American Meryl Streep in a promotional campaign going viral in the US, I can see how that would make the text on a t-shirt seem to have an American context as well.
Indeed.
Sorry but the usa isn’t the entire world. I’m American and live in the us but find this “controversy” ridiculous. Not everything is about AA slavery ( or the holocaust for that matter)
Thank you!
The Internet is being ruined by people who are offended by history. That’s a great damn quote.
I’m offended by that.
hee
There’s a great book out on Princess Sophie Duleep Singh. Her father was an Indian prince who was raised in England and close to the royals. Queen Victoria was Sophie’s godmother. She became an outspoken suffragette and her story would’ve made a great addition to the movie as she was a very well known figure and with a great personal history.
I have not seen the film yet but my understanding is that the focus is on Carey Mulligan’s character as a working class woman. Working class woman often suffered the most, both in their everyday lives and when they fought the system. Most accounts of this time focus on the women from privileged backgrounds, this is something new. Yes Princes Sophie’s story sounds very interesting, but princess’ in general are not under represented in film. A black working class woman working alongside Mulligan’s character would have been interesting, but maybe comparing black-white as well as male-female and rich-poor was considered too much in one film. It is something that I would be interested in seeing in the future though, I had no idea that the suffragettes actively distanced themselves from the race issue.
Did you watch the recent film “Belle”? It was about a mixed race girl raised by her aristocratic family in 18th century England. It was based on a true story and is a very good little film.
@JellyBean I loved Belle, It was such a great film and true life story. It was great to see such an unusual and real circumstance of a mixed girl raised by her Aristocratic white family and the different affects this had on her.
Carey is so lovely
aside from the interpretation of the quote… wtf with the quote itself!?!
Is being a rebel bad thing? Is it even a choice between two equal things?
Wouldn’t everyone rather be ANYTHING but a slave?
obviously the quote needs the article as explanation… and that makes it not a oneliner suitable for T-shirts.
I just cannot fathom that PR put it in an article in the current time, and saw the word Rebel and Slave in the same sentence and didn’t think of any other history but the suffragettes, knowing that they were hoping for Oscar success which means the PR needs to be tight and USA proof. But it happened. Mindboggling.
Context – rebel and rebellion had strong negative connotations in the UK in the 18th and 19th and early 20th century. The US was built by rebellion so it is celebrated there. The English civil war killed a huge percentage of the population and was ultimately rejected; every 5th of November we burn effigies of Guy Faulkes – a rebel. In the 19th century the revolution in France impacted greatly on the UK, leading to many French citizens fleeing to England and costly war with France. The political climate in the UK at the time wasn’t that stable and there were fears that rebellion would spread. So to someone from the establishment, like Pankhurst, rebel would be a dirty word, probably nearer to traitor than anything else. Yes, using the word ‘slavery’ was extreme, a husband or father couldn’t get away with killing a wife or daughter, but they could beat them, take their possessions and have them committed to a mental institution if they didn’t do as they were told. So ‘rebel not slave’ would have been a powerful statement and Pankhurst said it and this is a film about her and the people who listened to it.
Maybe using that quote on a t-shirt was a bad choice, but I feel like there are not many women who understand history and what it was like for women to live at that time. No right to vote. No right to own property (for many). Your husband effectively owns you. Not many career or life choices–get married, or be considered a spinster. Many women did not have access to education. In an ideological sense, women were slaves with no rights.
If more people understood how far women have come only in the last 100 years, and how much further we have to go, perhaps they would identify as feminists.
Up till 1974, in Portugal if a single woman wanted to work as a nurse or a primary teacher (for instance) , she’d have to have written consent by her father. And married women, would have to have consent and a declaration by the husband stating that the husband earned more money than the wife, otherwise she wouldn’t be allowed to work by the state. If married and mother, she couldn’t work, because the place of a woman was to be a wife and a mother, nothing more.
Up until the 70s?! Jesus. I guess one of the good things communism brought in my country was some equality between men and women after WW2. Of coures it wasn’t perfect, but on paper they were at least equal. We had a female prime minister, Savka Dabčević-Kučar, in 1967 making her the first female prime minister in Europe.
It’s quite shocking when countries that are much more economically advanced than we are, like Switzerland for an example where women were given the right to vote in 1971, were so behind us in some regards.
Franca, not all was bad (though most things were) during the fascist years, for instance, every single child was obligated to go to school, at least primary school. Salazar (the fascist dictator) said that every portuguese should know at least how to read, write and count. He actually built primary schools in every single town, city, village, no matter how small they were. Of course, I truly believe that schools were a way of propaganding his ideals. But equality in gender was … enfin… Portugal followed the napoleonic civil code of 1867 – that forced the married woman to reside at her husband’s house; obey him, and didn’t authorize her, without his consent, to administer, acquire, alienate propertu, and so on… During the Estado Novo the woman was the pilar of family and moral, and her job was that of a mother and educator of her children. Men should handle the life outside the home and the woman should defend inside the house. Well in 1974 , the revolution took place and in 1979 we had a woman for PRIME MINISTER… 2 months after Thatcher was elected… 😀 , She was the 3rd female Prime Minister after yours and Thatcher in Europe… Talk about a rapid change… 😀
Agreed. Women were legal property owned by men.
Your husband could not rape you and you couldn’t get divorce without his consent. You couldn’t own anything, inherit anything, vote for anything or have a say in anything as a woman. In fact you were lucky if you could read and write.
Moving off the main subject slightly….
I really admire Carey Mulligan. In today’s era of over sharing on social media, fake tans, fake hair and trying to dress/appear hyper sexualized…she’s a throwback to the ladies of yore who weren’t begging for attention and wanted to work hard and be noticed for their work, not their plastic surgeon’s work. And she’s doing her part to protect her baby from a life in the limelight. We need more women like her.
Wait what? What controversy? What’s wrong with that quote?
If the movie’s called Suffragete I’m guessing the quote means women would rather fight for their rights than be slaves to men.
Why is that insulting?
Nevermind I found the original article.
Facepalming so hard.
I visited Algeria many years ago with my parents. I remember my confusion as to why my mother had to suddenly behave and dress differently while we were there.
I also remember my confusion when me and her were scheduled to return early home but were stopped at the airport and almost arrested because she was travelling alone and worse, she was taking a man’s child out of the country without his formal consent. So dad had to come to the airport and sign a statement that it’s ok for my mum to take me out of the country.
Now I don’t know much about American slavery since I’m not American and the rest of the world isn’t as obsessed with this period, but I think it’s a fact that for the most part of human history women were considered property, either of their fathers or husbands or brothers or sons.
Women weren’t treated as badly as black (not saying African because they werent brought in just from Africa) people in America, of course, but they were deprived of their basic human rights.
And they still are to this day in some countries.
So no, I don’t see the outrage with this quote, not at all.
In fact I’m sad that people want to fight about a 200 year old past instead of focusing on the current still existing problems of all kinds of slavery (yes, slavery) in the world.
If this film brings into focus women’s rights by emphasizing how they were denied basic human, legal and civil rights for a long, long, long time, then by all means, stir away!
Great comment! Slavery existed and still exists in many different ways (the same as colonialism) all over the world. People from both genders, different nationalities, religions, skin colours, etc. suffered it and still do. In cultural studies you can see how the term of “slavery”, “slave”, “colonialism”, “imperialism” is still much used in present contexts.
Carey Mulligan is so much better-looking with long brown hair.
She was so boring looking with that blonde short hair.
This is going to sound weird, but I don’t think it’s about the shirt. I really don’t. A lot of people who… aren’t of colour seem to be seeing a series of incidents in which they’ve forced to engage with race and history in ways that may sometimes seem unreasonable. People of colour are seeing a series of incidents in which they feel forced to embrace a movement and history that was often hostile towards them. In the end, I don’t it’s about ethnocentrism, either. I think it’s about inclusion. I’m not going to pretend that I understood everyone’s problems with it (the rebel thing threw me for a loop and made little sense to me) but I saw that this was one more entry in the ‘Mainstream Strikes Again’ book.
I think that in a really messy way, what with all of these actresses being asked if they are feminists and with a lot of them giving speeches and using their platforms we’re grinding up against the fact that a lot of people don’t feel like feminism is looking at them. They may wholeheartedly support its tenets and have reverence for it, but there’s still that feeling of separation. Who is being asked about their stance on feminism? White ladies. Who have we seen giving speeches? Same answer. That these women are so close to the movement is a good thing, but when only one segment of the population feels so close to it, one must ask why?
There’s a Dave Chappelle bit that I think gets to the heart of this. How does a white person see George Washington as opposed to a black person? One sees the Founding Father and the other sees that, too, but that person also saw someone who owned people like them, so the relationship is uneasy. A white woman may more closely identify with feminism because in some way, it has always been working to your benefit, but that’s not the case with everyone and that’s not limited to America. I’m not American, but I have the same issues with feminism that Americans do. Women of colour see the heroic actions of the Suffragists/Suffragettes/Feminists, see the amazing things that were accomplished and recognises and feels grateful for that. But at the same time, women of colour can’t ignore that the movement constantly writes them out of the picture and then chides them for feeling alienated by it. People understand how the Overton Window works, they’re not stupid, but it hasn’t closed on this and that’s real to them.
So here’s the thing, at the this very tense point, right, or not, this is kind of the way it is: if you’re going to tell a woman of colour to stop regarding any facet of this feminism talk, you’re going to get a heated response. I think people are just OVER it and are so over it that they just can’t take being told to be quiet. People are assuming that people who have problems are ignorant, don’t know their history, want to be angry, don’t understand the context. They understand it, they know it, they know why they’re bothered.
I’ve spilled a lot of words trying to explain why I think people are disturbed. The shirt itself gets little more than an eye roll from me, personally, but I’m trying to explain the position of people who feel this a little more than I do. But let’s just think about this past year and how feminism has addressed women of colour. Those addresses have never been positive. The Arquette thing, the Viola Davis thing, the Annie Lennox thing etc., just imagine how you would feel if the only time feminism addressed you was to tell you that ‘You were bad, you are wrong, you’re not doing it right’?
People of colour understand that white women suffered horribly and are sensitive to that, just as they’re sensitive to the fact that many different kinds of people have and do suffer horribly under slavery of one sort or another. i don’t know a single person of colour who would look at what they went through and say, ‘good’. What they’re feeling is that that sensitivity hasn’t been reciprocated, and it’s starting to harden them. They feel that people have looked at their issues with feminism and said, ‘Yeah, okay, but back to me’.
I believe we’re at a boiling point. So when you see people bubbling over, it’s not because the water became instantly hot, it’s been getting hot and was being ignored.
This is interesting Jo Mama and you’ve touched on the same difficulties I had when trying to take on the label of feminist. Which is why I understand when certain people can say intelligently why feminist can bother them because they talk about this. As an aside I dislike the people who blather on about how they’re for a nice easy balance like Meryl and many of her male/female colleagues and just regurgitate the propaganda about how feminism hates men or what not. It makes me think they are incredibly lazy people who lack an ability to be introspective and think critically.
I’ve had this conversation with other WOC and some of us do different things. I know a few that take on the label and join and make change from the “inside” so to speak. Others choose not to take on that label and do it in other ways. I’m the former. I was the latter for quite a while. It’s just where I’m at in my own journey. This kind of criticism is good and helps us to understand how to fight for certain things better and be inclusive. It’s not like the feminist movement doesn’t change. It’s changed a lot since it’s inception wherever you want to pinpoint that.
I’m feeling what you’re saying though. Not sure if it sounds like it. . And I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately too what I can do myself. It’s unfortunate, but you can’t find a perfect solution. You have to make those mistakes and take those steps along the way to get to a point where change is happening. I don’t know.
This was a really amazing and thoughtful comment. Thank you for that.
These threads are hard for me to comment on because I have to deal with this dismissive attitude towards WoC issues so much in my daily life it becomes tiring to come on here and do the same. But your comment really touched the way I, and I think a lot of WoC feel, so thank you again.
Aw man, Marty, that sucks that you feel like that and I can only imagine how exhausting that is.
Let’s just hang out on The Bloke threads from now on.
Thanks Kitten, your support truly means a lot to me. 🙂 Unfortunately I’m an Afro-Latina living in the South, lol, that’s just life.
Deal. The Bloke looks like he would give amazing cuddle sessions.
I hear you Marty, over and over again and I empathise.
EXCELLENT post that I hope everyone reads.
You gave me so much to think about.
Amazing how even when white peeps like myself try so hard acknowledge, validate, and support WoC, there’s still so much that we’re blind to, still so much work to be done and progress to be made. I really rely on you ladies to help me see and I appreciate it so much.
I’m definitely going to let Jo’s post marinate in my mind for a bit.
I wish more people were like you, Kitten.
I wish there were more people like you, too, Kitten.
I hear you.
I think people need to know that there are white women, like myself, that are completely disappointed with history. The “founding fathers” were astute enough to write “All men are created equal”, but it is monumentally wrong that they didn’t apply that idea across the board. How did it take until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s to change some of these profound violations of that principle that were written into law? How could women who were working to get the right to vote not see that women of color were worthy of equality right along with them?
Subjects like this film can bring out really complex feelings and thoughts. People can admire the strength and courage it took to fight against the status quo that said women were lesser than, and still be HORRIFIED that those same “courageous” women were supporting discrimination against other human beings.
Honestly, I really do abhor the way my country has treated people of color. There is no excuse. I know that these abuses have long lasting effects that impact generations of people. I consider myself a feminist, and I absolutely want to make sure that the “feminist” movement is all inclusive. It might not have been in the past, but it needs to be going forward.
Thanks. I think people can get put off by the reticence that a lot of women of colour about feminism. All I can say is my feminism is intersectional.
Thank you for actually taking time to understand the context of the outrage surrounding the film and t-shirt. Most people here are simply eye-rolling the t-shirt, but it isn’t all about the shirt, nor is it only American POC who are upset by this.
I wish more people were like you and took time to actually think beyond criticizing POC for having “anger issues”.
Jesus Christ you freaking nailed it.
All of the applause. All of it.
I was born white in modern day US. I was born into a lower middle class family.I was told I could do better.Be better and stronger and smarter and happier.I was told that It was up to me.I learned for myself what a feminist is.It is any woman of any color or creed who stands up to a man and says I’m your equal.So this white feminist says to her sisters of color THANK YOU.Thank you for being there then and thank you for being here. Now.No one can put us down.Not ANY OF US. And not over a tshirt.Screw that shirt in its connection with promoting this film.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/suffragette-premiere-protesters-lie-on-red-carpet-and-let-off-purple-and-green-smoke-in-a6685236.html
Sisters Uncut (I LOVE them) have managed to close the red carpet for the premiere, protesting the cuts to DV services here in the UK.
Adding: here’s a Vine – https://vine.co/v/e2LmAFYM969
This is awesome!
Miss J – they’re a fabulous group, doing a lot to expose the nasty underbelly of Austerity Britain as it affects women. Worth following them on Twitter: @sistersuncut. Also @WritersofColour, currently sticking it to The Sun over its outrage that a hijab-wearing Muslim won just won Great British Bake-off.
I personally see no offensiveness meant with the shirts. I think too many people today sit on the edge of their seats just waiting for the least little thing they can stir controversy with. Personally, I think we all should be worrying about far greater things.
What do you think about the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s ideas? He says this “outrage culture” is due to alienation and the wish for resonance. (“Empörungsresonanz”).
I think thats a lot of fancy B*ll S**t. I think the “outrage culture” is a “soft way” to accomplish dominance and attempt to establish moral and literal superiority.
That sums it up perfectly.
My grandparents lived through these times and the overwhelming amount of people in the UK were of ‘white’ background.The issue was class and gender here
This does not dismiss other things happening around the world but there were horrors happening here especially child labour and suffragette torture..workers rights ..
My grandfather was a bus driver and a suffragette threw herself in front of the bus and was killed…He was traumatised by this,and he had been an ambulance driver during WW1 and dealt with the trenches
My family always then insisted women vote as people had died for the cause
This is just part of a wider story
Please don’t be offended but just consider the issues raised.No everything can be covered in a movie.
Just an observation but many British people had not met people of colour until WW2 ..it is just that there were areas people lived..people did not travel.There was no TV or much in the way of films ..many were not educated about the world they lived in,
My mother left school at 13 in 1935 and started in a bakery the next day and that’s how it was…even then..
The world has changed vastly since then..
Yes to all of this.
Off topic but Carey looks really lovely with that hair. I even like her outfit.
No one has mentioned this but I love the cynical way neither of them “glommed” up for their red carpet. Hardly any make up on Carey and zero on Streep. Love the idea of the movie and will go see but laughing up my sleeve that, apparently, they felt they would be castigated by feminists if they dolled up a little…..notice the high collars on both of them…dowdy outfits. No make up apparently equals “feminists.” and then feminist wonder why most women don’t want to claim them? Well, uh, us modern day feminists actually LIKE our lipgloss, ok??
What?
I guess Time Out London forgot Britain’s MASSIVE role in the slave trade. Yeah. Just because they kept their slaves offshore.. Pankhurst’s quote was also tone-deaf as hell.
I canNOT appreciate Carey while she’s wearing those ugly clashing clothes.