RIP Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a legendary jurist, feminist icon, and incredible personality. Whatever your political beliefs, Ginsburg was undeniably an intellectual giant who shaped the legal landscape of America for over half a century and drastically improved the lives of women today, whether they are aware of it or not. In her later years, Ginsburg (dubbed by her fans “RBG” and later on “Notorious R.B.G.”) became a rare judge who turned into a bona fide pop culture celebrity and a source of endless memeable content. The documentary RBG chronicles this story.
The film opens to a mashup of audio clips of white male politicians and commentators describing her as “wicked”, “a witch”, “a zombie”, then cuts quickly to hip hop music playing over a montage of Ginsburg, at 84 years old, working out with her personal trainer. This pretty well sums up not just the rest of this documentary, but the rock-star, bad-ass image that Ginsburg acquired late in life.
Her story, chronicled intimately and admiringly in RBG, is a remarkable one. She excelled at Harvard Law School as one of only nine women in her class (with over 500 men) while raising a daughter and caring for a sick husband, before transferring to Columbia Law and graduating at the top of her class. She faced discrimination at every step of her career, from being questioned by her law school dean for taking a man’s place at the school, and upon graduating, getting rejected from every law firm in New York.
Ginsberg’s legacy on equal protection is staggering, and it serves as a stark reminder of how recent and precarious much of our progress in this country is. The film covers both the arc of her professional achievements (which, not coincidentally, tracked the progress of the women’s rights movement) as well as her personal journey, using a mix of archival footage and talking heads. Documentarians Betsy West and Julie Cohen were clearly enamored with Ginsburg and unafraid to flex their access to Ginsburg and those around her.
In more recent years, Ginsburg became a hero to liberals when, for a period of time as the lone woman on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, she began authoring her famously scathing and spicy dissents. But RBG reminds us that Ginsburg was already a force of nature, tirelessly fighting for women’s rights and equality for all Americans long before she was being given rap nicknames and parodied on SNL.
Nominated by Clinton in 1993 as only the second woman ever to be appointed to the Court, the clips of her Senate confirmation hearings bring on nostalgic pangs of bipartisan common ground, given how deeply divided we are now (a 96-3 confirmation vote of a Supreme Court Justice is unimaginable today). So does the wonderfully heartwarming friendship between Ginsburg and her ideologically conservative counterpart Antonin Scalia, who was equally witty and brilliant. Most people these days can barely hold a civil conversation with someone of a different political persuasion, much less go to operas or take vacations together like the famous “odd couple” of the Supreme Court.
RBG also shines a light on Ginsburg’s beautiful relationship with her gifted and generous husband Marty, who was her greatest champion and made numerous sacrifices in his own career to support hers. It’s a reminder of the role that men can and should play in the the fight for equal rights and equal opportunity, and a stirring example of a loving and supportive relationship.
It’s telling that when RBG was released in 2018 (a wildly successful year for documentaries), this film grossed over $14 million at the box office – an extraordinary amount for a documentary and an indicator of Ginburg’s widespread cultural appeal. Funnily enough, a biographical drama based on her life called On the Basis of Sex was also released in the same year, but this was an occasion where Hollywood’s imagination fell short of the real thing.
RBG is admittedly a bit hagiographic, but rewatching this in the wake of her passing, it feels much less like fangirling (as initially charged by some critics) and more fitting as an inspiring panegyric of a woman who faced so much discrimination throughout her life yet never stopped trying to better the lives of others. Ginsburg’s seat will soon be replaced, but her shoes will not be so easily filled, and her impact never forgotten – this documentary reminds us just why.
Currently streaming on Hulu.
