I finally saw "On the Basis of Sex" last night. As a historian/teacher/scholar, I appreciate any effort to make research and written and oral argumentation seem exciting and suspenseful! I also enjoyed Kathy Bates as Dorothy Kenyon, an earlier feminist lawyer who had not been able to do what RBG ultimately did, and the conversation between Kenyon ---> RBG ---> RBG's let's-protest-in-the-streets teenaged daughter, Jane Ginsburg, as representative of the changes happening across the generations and the feminist "waves" working together. Nice touch, Hollywood.
Speaking of Hollywood, an older man outside the theater was handing out papers to all of us before we went in, on which he somewhat sloppily explained the the movie was full of LIES. In particular, he warned us about a scene in which young RBG notes that the word "freedom" is not in the U.S. Constitution. His handy-dandy handout helpfully pointed out that the word "freedom" is, in fact, right there in the 1st Amendment, regarding "freedom of speech."
(Hmmm.. so, he had a point, but I don't know why Hollywood would LIE about the Constitution, especially if it makes it seem like RBG doesn't KNOW her Constitution....If liberal Hollywood was going to lie, they'd want to prop up our heroine by making her look even smarter than she is, right??!)
Obviously it was my duty (as a citizen, a government teacher, and as a fan of RBG willing to turn a blind feminist eye to pesky facts like the Constitution) to respond to this dilemma, so I looked up this man's complaint and found a couple of articles that refer exactly to that scene and explain that, as a Constitutional scholar, Ginsburg was referring to the *original* unratified and unamended Constitution - in fact, her entire point in that scene in the movie was that, starting from the beginning (with the Bill of Rights), we have expanded the definitions of freedom and equality to protect citizens' rights and liberties that were not in the original Constitution. That the Constitution CHANGES, including through interpretation of the laws.
Hmph, take that old guy with nothing better to do than type up complaints about Hollywood, make a bunch of copies, and then stand outside the movie theater in the cold & rain trying to protect our democracy from RBG.
