I really didn’t want to write this review. I still don’t. Not because Meryl Streep is a lie (she appears for like 15 seconds). Not because the main character never existed in this supposedly historical film (the director calls it a “composite character”). Not because Suffragette is a bad film—it’s not. It’s fine. It’s Oscar bait. Whatever.
I didn’t want to write this review because I’m tired of writing about white people. I’m tired of fantasy worlds where people of color don’t exist. Where even the made up—excuse me—composite characters are white. It gets really disheartening to see yourself written out of popular culture, written out of history time and time again. It’s really hard to keep answering my son’s question: “How come there aren’t any brown people in this?”…