Chalk it up as another indignity to women that not only has there never been a comprehensive documentary on the movement, but that the formidable one that has appeared, “Makers: Women Who Make America” (PBS, 8 p.m., check local listings) has its entire three hours stuffed into one evening’s TV.
Rather than having its three chapters run over three weeks or even three days, which might raise its profile through word of mouth, it’s jammed nonstop in one epic length.
Still, the film by Dyllan McGee and Betsy West, narrated by Meryl Streep, is an essential chronicle of social change that rocked the world, when housewives shook off their newly earned shackles (after tasting work as workers in World War II) and demanded change in so many areas – from jobs to home life to public policy.
A number of faces you know, chief among them Gloria Steinem, are seen as well as many whose names might remain obscured in history except for their standing up. Accordingly, a preface to the film is the simple and now shocking story of Katherine Switzer, who in 1967 signed herself up for the Boston Marathon, only to find that the race’s organizer would try to yank her from the course.
She finished, embarrassed the organizer and literally blazed the trail for all women runners behind her. She’s a good metaphor for many of the women depicted in the film, who defy odds to break barriers many take for granted today.
At the same time, “Makers” makes clear that the movement that affected men as well as women still has a ways to go, even as it chronicles its setbacks, as when the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated by an uprising of conservatives that would go on to elect Ronald Reagan and create the political right.
It treats very delicately and fairly what’s going on now, how young women don’t necessarily consider themselves feminist or disregard the work that went before them; how the focus has shifted internationally, where women’s oppression is on a scale unimaginable in the states; and what remains to be done in the states (it is a marathon, after all, not a sprint).
It’s recent enough history that most of the heroes depicted are still alive and many have seen the very changes through their lives, not the least of which is PBS CEO Paula Kerger, who when introducing a panel on the film at the TV Critics press tour last month in Pasadena, said “I realize that, as president and CEO of a major American television network, I would not have had this job 30 years ago.
“Now there are a number of women running channels and networks, and this is extraordinarily important and heartening,” Kerger said. “But I remember, as a girl, being aware that I didn’t have quite the same opportunities. But I also recognized that there were changes that were happening around me and that I envisioned a future in a much different way than my mother had or my grandmother had. So I feel a personal connection to this documentary and this project, and I know that many men and women, actually, will feel the same way.”
“It is a groundbreaking film,” West says. :Nobody has really looked at the history of this movement…the largest social transformation in everyday people’s lives in the 20th century, and we haven’t had a look back at this.”
But what of the title, which some may confuse with a film about construction workers or a brand of whiskey?
McGee said she remembered Steinem’s interview about naming her Ms. — it had to be something short. “That stuck with me,” she said. “So when we were looking for a name for this, for this project, we wanted something that was short. We wanted something that would fit both on the web and in the documentary and that was inclusive.”
Also, she said she wanted something that sounded active. “I think ‘Makers’ gives you the sense that this is still a movement, this is still moving forward.”
Also, McGee said, “specifically we didn’t put the word “women” in there because we wanted it to be inclusive.”
“Makers: Women who Make America” premieres tonight at 8 on PBS.
An interview I conducted with Marlo Thomas for Salon.com on the project can be found here.