Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since World War IIFrom Skirts Ahoy! to M*A*S*H, Private Benjamin, G.I. Jane, and JAG, films and television shows have grappled with the notion that military women are contradictory figures, unable to be both effective soldiers and appropriately feminine. In Soldiers’ Stories, Yvonne Tasker traces this perceived paradox across genres including musicals, screwball comedies, and action thrillers. She explains how, during the Second World War, women were portrayed as auxiliaries, temporary necessities of “total war.” Later, nursing, with its connotations of feminine care, offered a solution to the “gender problem.” From the 1940s through the 1970s, musicals, romances, and comedies exploited the humorous potential of the gender role reversal that the military woman was taken to represent. Since the 1970s, female soldiers have appeared most often in thrillers and legal and crime dramas, cast as isolated figures, sometimes victimized and sometimes heroic. Soldiers’ Stories is a comprehensive analysis of representations of military women in film and TV since the 1940s. Throughout, Tasker relates female soldiers’ provocative presence to contemporaneous political and cultural debates and to the ways that women’s labor and bodies are understood and valued. |
Contents
Military Women in Visual Culture | 1 |
Part One | 19 |
Part Two | 111 |
Part Three | 201 |
Afterword | 277 |
Notes | 281 |
301 | |
309 | |
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Soldiers’ Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television since World War II Yvonne Tasker No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
American Army associated auxiliary Bilko boot camp British celebrate centered chapter character characterization China Beach cinema civilian clearly combat comedy comic contemporary context contrast Courage under Fire culture discourses disruptive drill duty effectively emphasize Enloe explicitly explored featuring military women female soldier femininity fight figure film and television film’s Flight Nurse foreground framed G.I. Jane gender genres Gentle Sex GI Jane girls glamour Hollywood Houlihan imagery inappropriate insists involved Lieutenant Wore Skirts male soldiers Marine Raiders McMurphy media coverage mili military masculinity military nurses military service military women mobility movie musical narratives Navy officer Operation Petticoat played popular poster postwar potential presence Private Benjamin professional protagonist Proudly We Hail rape role romance scandal scenes Second World Second World War sequence serve sexual harassment Skirts Ahoy Spars status suggests tary women themes tion tough transformation tropes U.S. military underlines uniform Vietnam WAAF wartime woman