Historical accuracy and effectiveness in Bad Girls (1994)

Bad Girls

It is evident that the things that are historically accurate about the film Bad Girls are few and far between. Also, given the plot line and theme of the film, Bad Girls is clearly directed at women who sought to be entertained by tales of female empowerment. In the film, four prostitutes -- Cody Zamora, Anita Crown, Eileen Spenser, and Lily Laronette -- leave their former lives behind after Zamora commits a justifiable homicide and escapes from police custody. After Zamora and her cohorts escape, a duo of Pinkerton detectives is hired to apprehend Zamora and bring her back to Colorado, where the homicide took place. While on the lam, Zamora and company are faced with bank robberies, kidnapping, and a seemingly unattainable dream of owning a sawmill, which they hope will provide them peace and stability.

Bad Girls focuses on four women and the social conventions and limitations that they attempt to escape from. During westward expansion in the 1800s, women's roles began to slowly expand to become more equal to the roles of men. The expansion of roles, however, was limited within the roles that had already been established. For instance, women expanded on their role as homemaker by taking in and cooking for boarders, establishing restaurants, opening up laundries, and mending and making clothing (Lewis). In essence, "women's domestic skills became the basis for a profitable business" in the West (Lewis). In the film, Zamora, Crown, Spenser, and Laronette do not subscribe to these traditional roles, but rather have "fallen" into prostitution in order to make a living. While the film makes it appear as though these women have no other choice but to be prostitutes. Furthermore, Bad Girls makes it appear as though prostitutes during this time were denied many rights, while in fact, they probably had the most rights of women during the time. "When women were barred from most jobs and wives had no legal right to own property, madams in the West owned large tracts of land and prized real estate. Prostitutes made, by far, the highest wages of all American women. Several madams were so wealthy that they funded irrigation and road-building projects that laid the foundation for the New West" (Russell). While Zamora has been responsible with her money, wiring $12,432 (~$41,398.56 adjusted for inflation) over six years to a bank in Agua Dulce, Texas, it appears as though her fellow prostitutes have not been as careful with their money and the only other person that has anything valuable in their possession is Crown, who has homestead paperwork in her possession (Bad Girls).

While on the run, Crown reveals that she and her now deceased husband, applied for land as allowed by homestead laws. She also reveals that it was their dream to open a sawmill that they hoped would be extremely profitable. However, since her husband died, Crown was forced to continue their dream by herself. As such, when Crown attempts to file her homestead claim, she is denied her claim because the land office official with whom she talks with tells her that the only way that she can claim land is if her husband is with her. This may be one of the most jarring historical inaccuracies in the film. Given the environment, social and technological, in which the women find themselves in, it is evident that the action in this film, although not clearly defined in the film's narrative, takes place in at least 1862, but most likely takes place thereafter. If the film takes place during this time, then it is probably that the Homestead Act of 1862 would have already been passed. The Homestead Act of 1862 "required that a prospective homesteader be either a head-of-household or a single person over the age of 21. (Single women were eligible to claim homesteads, and many did. Depending on time and place, approximately five to twenty percent of homesteaders were women)" ("The Museum Gazette: The Homestead Act of 1862). In order to for a homesteader to stake a claim, he or she had to: 1) be a citizen of the United States, or had to have filed his or her intention to become one; 2) begin living on the property claimed within six months of filing said claim; 3) build a dwelling and raise crops sometime within the five years of required residency; 4) not establish a legal residence elsewhere nor be absent from his or her property for more than six months in any given year; and 5) publish his or her intent to "close on the property in order to allow others to dispute the claim" after the five-year required residency term was completed ("The Museum Gazette: The Homestead Act of 1862). Given these requirements, Crown could have staked a homestead claim on her own, in her own name. Therefore, her contention that she was worthless before she met her husband and worthless again after he died can be construed as a personal opinion and not something that would hold up in court. Furthermore, given the requirements of the Homestead Act of 1862, the other women -- Zamora, Spenser, and Laronette -- can also stake a claim provided they are over the age of 21 and citizens of the United States. Additionally, if the women joined together in acquiring land, they would be eligible to claim at most 640 acres of land, as opposed to the 320 acres that Crown and her husband could lay claim to.

It can be estimated that the events that transpire in this film take place in at least 1862. This claim can be supported through the analysis of weapons that are used in the film, specifically the Gatling gun that Kid Jarrett and his posse are conspiring to and successfully steal during one of their hold-ups. Given that the Homestead Act was signed into action by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862 and the Gatling gun was patented on November 4, 1862, it is highly unlikely that the women were denied any claims to land as the film so depicts (Stephenson 1). The Gatling gun is the machine gun that is depicted in the film. The Gatling gun could shoot upwards of 200 bullets per minute. Although Richard Gatling suffered some setbacks after his company burned down in the fall of 1862, by 1865, after Gatling further improved upon the gun, the United States government held firing trials at the Washington Naval Yard and by 1866, the federal government "adopted the gun for its armed forces" (Stephenson 2). Because the gun is a focus of attention in the film, its presence plays a pivotal role in helping to determine the year in which the action takes place. Because Kid Jarrett stole this gun from the U.S. Army, then it can be argued that the action takes place during or after 1866. This claim is also supported by the fact that Zamora justifiably killed a former colonel, who most likely fought during the Civil War.