RBG (PG)
JULIE Cohen and Betsy West have made a heartfelt documentary tribute to US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton and still serving at the age of 85: a tough, old-school liberal feminist whose dissenting positions and elegant, distinctive public profile have turned her into an A-list celebrity.
T-shirts, posters, gifs and memes recast her as the Notorious RBG. In response to a fan’s question about being compared to the Notorious BIG, Ginsburg humorously replies they have something in common, being both from Brooklyn. (However, she does not comment on the late rapper’s lyrics — which include lines such as “Bitches I like ’em brainless” — perhaps unwilling to be drawn into the “context” debate.)
This lively film tracks Ginsburg’s brilliant legal career, fighting for women’s workplace rights while shrewdly also taking on cases where men suffered discrimination. It pays a moving tribute to the important role played in Ginsburg’s life by her devoted husband Marty, to whom she was married for over 50 years until his death. It also highlights her most compelling pronouncements, such as that in Shelby County v Holder in 2013, in which she argued that the regional protections of the Voting Rights Act in preventing race discrimination were still necessary even when they appeared to have been rendered obsolete by precisely those improved conditions they continue to maintain. Abolition was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”.
But for good or ill, the film does not directly engage with Ginsburg’s views on contemporary feminism and sexual harassment and what is sometimes derisively called identity politics. It was made well before the appointment of the self-pitying and shrill Brett Kavanaugh to the bench — in comparison with whom Ginsburg looks even more like an intellectual giant — and so she could hardly be expected to comment on the Christine Blasey Ford case. But she serves alongside Clarence Thomas, whose denial of harassment allegations from Anita Hill at his own confirmation hearing in 1991 is a matter of public record.
Did the film-makers consider it improper to ask Ginsburg anything at all about that? There is a strange silence — it would have been interesting, and highly relevant, to hear from Ginsburg in general terms about the legal implications of #MeToo.