The movie's historical perspective is bolstered by vintage footage from the time - including film snippets of movie star Rudolph Valentino and other cultural moments, as well as news reel clips of political marches for equality and unity. Teens may be able to make the connection: Which current "safe" or "healthy" products might later be shown to actually cause harm? We now know that radium can cause debilitating health conditions, but it's sobering to be reminded that, at the time Radium Girls takes place, the substance was being hawked as a health elixir and put in beauty products and makeup to help create a "glow" in users. Young women who were hired to paint glow-in-the-dark marks on time pieces using radioactive paint were instructed to create a fine point by putting the tips of their just-dipped brushes in their mouth. female factory workers' legal battle against the rich, powerful heads of United States Radium Corporation (renamed "American Radium" in the film) have been largely forgotten, but the tale is worth remembering lest it repeat itself.
With the words "teen" and "activist" becoming increasingly synonymous, this historical drama is incredibly relevant and feels made to appeal to and encourage today's passionate youths. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails. While it's never stated in the movie, the film was created as a warning that similar horrors could recur due to the many EPA regulations and labor laws rolled back under the Trump Administration.
There are also disturbing scenes of a young woman's teeth and jaw falling out due to radiation poisoning. Real footage from the 1920s is used to show marches that echo contemporary issues, including demands for equal rights and to abolish the police (there's a clip of a cop swinging his baton at protestors). A subplot shows Black and White activists working together for racial unity, but the story centers on a White woman's experience. It's an intersectionally feminist story in that it's about a range of women - low-income laborers, Harvard professors, scientists, and legal counselors - banding together to make change. The film reflects what happened in real life: Doctors were paid off to tell the girls they were suffering from syphilis, rather than radiation poisoning, to shame them into silence. When trusting 17-year-old main character Bessie ( Joey King) realizes that her sister's mysterious illness might be related to toxic materials at work, she sets out to fight a powerful system that prioritizes profits over people. It's based on shocking real events that led to government regulations to protect U.S. News clippings and period photos enhance the thoroughly sourced text, but it’s Moore’s personal, captivating prose that renders this shining piece of history unforgettable.Parents need to know that Radium Girls is an inspiring coming-of-age drama set in the 1920s and executive-produced by Lily Tomlin. A larger narrative of workplace safety and accountability emerges from the wreckage of the radium girls’ lives that continues to protect people today. She tells this story through those of several of the women who were dial-painters, relaying not only their strength of spirit while enduring the pain of their illness but also how they took on the companies that knowingly exposed them to such dangerous work-and lied in the name of profit. Radium Corporation and the Radium Dial Company, disintegrating their bones and giving them a ghostly (radioactive) glow.
In this young readers’ edition of her popular adult book, Moore rivetingly sketches the creeping nightmare that was radium poisoning as it worked its way through the women of the U.S. Radium Corporation opened its doors in New Jersey, giving young working women-most in their teens and early twenties-the opportunity to handle the glamorous substance as dial-painters, meticulously applying luminous radium paint to watch faces, it was welcomed as a boon to the community. When radium was discovered as a cancer treatment in the early 1900s, it launched a craze for this miracle element that saw it added to expensive health tonics, ointments, and more.
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