Ginsburg has become a pop-culture icon.
It’s a superhero movie with a twist. RBG, the magnificent new documentary about American hero U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, begins with the voices of her male, conservative critics. They call her “witch,” “evil-doer,” “wicked” and “a zombie.” Their insults contrast perfectly with scenes of the octogenarian charming live television audiences and doing planks, squats and lifting weights in a gym — over a hip-hop track. Ginsburg is probably the only justice to have inspired a rap name (“The Notorious RBG”), comic books and a sketch comedy impersonator (SNL’s Kate McKinnon).
She’s become a cultural icon, especially for young women, and that’s mighty heartening when the country is being led down some scary paths by a Grabber-in-Chief. “I am 84 years old and everybody wants to take a picture with me,” says Ginsburg, before a rapt live audience.
RBG screened to a packed Shannon Hall at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival, and I know many of us were moved to tears by the story of this woman’s quiet determination to change the world, one decision (or lately, one dissent) at a time. The film shows her loving long-term relationship with her husband, Marty; they met at Cornell University when he was 18 and she was 17. “He was the first boy I’d met that cared that I had a brain,” Ginsburg says. “Most guys in the ’50s didn’t.” Marty was gregarious, while Ruth was introverted. As a friend put it, “You always thought that she wasn’t listening and didn’t know what was going on — but she knew what was going on.” We also meet her kids, and her grandkids, who call her “Bubbie.”
Ginsburg was inspired to study law after witnessing Sen. Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunt. “Our country was straying from its most basic values by these politicians who were seeing a Communist in every corner, but there were lawyers who were defending people’s rights to think, to speak, to write,” says Ginsburg. “And then I got the idea that you could do something to make society a little better.” In 1956 she entered Harvard Law School, where she was one of only nine women among 500 men. She transferred to Columbia, where she graduated at the top of her class before going on to shatter more glass ceilings than most people are aware of.
Despite what her critics say, Ginsburg is not a radical. She tended to believe in steady, incremental change, and chose her cases carefully. But before her 1993 appointment to the high court, she founded the Women’s Rights Division of the ACLU, and successfully litigated groundbreaking equal rights cases.
I have only one quibble with this must-see documentary. Because cameras aren’t allowed while the Supreme Court is in session, the film employs the device of scrolling Ginsburg’s words (including her brilliantly worded dissents) over shots of an empty courtroom. After all the dynamic historic footage and the insightful interviews with the justice, this technique becomes tiresome. Give us more RBG.
