On March 26th I attended the free matinee screening of the film “Suffragette” at 1pm in the Oklahoma Memorial Student Union. Suffragettes are women working towards the right to vote. “Suffragette”, follows character Maud Watts and her efforts during the fight for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom during the early 1900’s. Maud becomes involved in the suffrage movement after being encouraged by a fellow co-worker, Alice Haughton, to give testimony at parliament hearing on women’s right to vote. After attending a rally to see if women were granted the right to vote, the police turn on the women and beat them. Maud is consequently put in jail for a week. Upon returning home, she receives judgement from those around including her neighbors,…show more content… The suffrage movement was fueled through the use of communication, both verbal and nonverbal. Mass and Public communication are widely used by suffragettes and their opposers. Speeches at secret rallies and testimonies given in parliament are both examples of public communication used in the film. Within these speeches, nonverbal vocal behaviors such as inflection, volume, articulation, and silence are used to further their message. Mass communication was used to allow the public to follow the movement through newspaper articles and radio broadcasts. There is also a scene where the police force newspaper publishers to refrain from publishing a story on police brutality towards protesting women at one of their rallies. The film also emphasizes the influence of mass communication on the public when police officers pressure the newspaper publishers not print some of the police brutality towards women. Also, during the film, Maud faces conflict with her husband as she violates the female gender role norms of her time period. She was expected to listen to her husband, mind the home, and take care of their child but she instead made the suffrage movement her priority. Maud nonverbally communicates to Sonny that the suffrage movement was more important to her than family because of her use of time, also known as chronemics. Without Maud to fulfill the female gender role, Sonny eventually gives their son George up for adoption because he felt he could not properly fill that role for
