wives

Entangling Alliances: Foreign War Brides and American Soldiers in the Twentieth Century

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

When men are shipped out to foreign locations to engage in wartime activities, it seems inevitable that they will become romantically and sexually involved with foreign women. In Entangling Alliances, Susan Zeiger explores this phenomenon, examining governmental, military, and societal responses to American soldiers’ desires for sex, companionship, and marriage while engaged in combat overseas. She argues that the changing ways Americans treated war brides over the course of the twentieth century demonstrates shifting American sensibilities regarding foreign policy, race, and gender. More than anything, because war brides involved an exchange of women across cultural and national boundaries, American discourse about war brides was ultimately about what constituted American manhood, men’s relationships with women, and the role of the nation in its relationship to other countries.

During World War I, the military preached sexual abstinence while devising methods to keep American soldiers and local women apart, in particular African-American soldiers and white European women. The army’s response to marriage requests vacillated until an official policy was handed down that marriage was a personal, not military, question. Meanwhile, domestic policy concerns in the U.S. triumphed over an internationally-oriented political outlook; xenophobia for newcomers was inevitable and Americans wondered if these foreign women could become good American wives. Though many predicted the demise of these marriages, evidence reveals that the majority made it.

In World War II, military policy differed depending on location. It encouraged marriage in Great Britain and Australia, both Allied countries with similar cultural backgrounds to white middle-class America. Likewise, American society welcomed these brides, suggesting that American women should emulate their domesticity and loyalty to husbands. Alternatively, the military encouraged prostitution, rather than marriage, in both Italy and the Philippines, while American society viewed these war brides as less desirable immigrants. Zeiger argues that both policies—encouraging prostitution or marriage—“shared... the intention to preserve and extend male control over women.” She also points out that though many of these local women showed independence and an assertion of personal freedom by going out with American men, sometimes against their family’s wishes, their stories “end with marriage and dependence.”

Race played a huge role in war bride stories post-WWII and throughout the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Congressional policy actively limited brides from Asian countries, outright barring Japanese spouses for several years, while all interracial couples faced social discrimination and, occasionally, found that their marriages were not legal when they moved from one state to another.

Zeiger argues that the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam saw the “demise” of the war bride as a phenomenon considered and debated by the American public. The military did not provide transport to war brides the way they did in WWI and WWII, and it actively encouraged prostitution rather than marriage, extending its WWII policy of creating red-light districts where prostitutes were regularly examined by medical officials and given “safe” ratings to prevent the spread of venereal disease. Korean and Vietnamese wives were not written about widely in the American press and they have not written about their post-war experiences in America, the way war brides from earlier eras have done. They have been, Zeiger writes, “all but invisible in American culture.”

Demographic information suggests that these Asian war brides tend to be isolated, even in comparison to other Asian immigrants though they have sponsored family members to come to the U.S., unlike earlier war brides. Though Asian war brides were an untold story, there was a lot of media attention paid to the mixed-race children left behind in Vietnam and, sometimes airlifted out and brought to the U.S. Zeiger argues that the story of Amerasian children, and the efforts to bring them to the U.S. allowed Americans to re-conceptualize the war, seeing both Amerasian children and American soldiers as victims in the story. “The American nation becomes father and, also, paradoxically, child. Vietnam, the mother, the war bride, is not part of this reconciliation.”

Entangling Alliances is a compelling read, illuminating twentieth century social struggles encountered by men and women on both domestic and foreign soil over questions of gender, race, and nationality. Though Zeiger argues that the war bride phenomenon died out with the Korean and Vietnam wars, clearly, soldiers still took wives and fathered children with Korean and Vietnamese women. More recently, stories of male American soldiers marrying Iraqi women have been exploited in the media. Because Zeiger only covers the period from WWI up through the Vietnam War, she leaves a perplexing question unexplored: What has happened with female soldiers and local men in the conflicts that the U.S. has engaged in the last twenty years? Have female soldiers, like male soldiers, engaged in romantic and sexual conquests with non-U.S. citizens? I suspect their experience has been radically different than their male counterparts.

Written by: Jessica Powers, June 5th 2010

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Directed by Rebecca Miller

Elevation Filmworks

It's always a relief when the author of a novel decides to take its film adaptation into her own hands, especially if the author also happens to be a fairly seasoned writer-director for the screen. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller recreates her original character study in her own image, bringing the story of a misguided youth-turned-Stepford Wife to brilliant, riveting life.

The film starts off quietly, with the kind of domestic dinner party scene we've come to expect from tales of unfulfilled suburban housewives such as these, but the event actually turns out to be in honor of Pippa's fiftieth birthday. I must admit it took me more than a few minutes to accept Robin Wright Penn (Forrest Gump, Nine Lives) as a fifty-year-old woman; even with the aging makeup, the forty-three-year-old actress' youthful glow still manages to emanate. However, there is a method to this casting choice; it quickly becomes apparent that Pippa's physical appeal is an integral part of her character, a beguiling mask that has always brought her just as much trouble as it has helped her to avoid.

Pippa is a doting wife to her much older husband (Alan Arkin) and a loving mother to her son and daughter, even in the face of their disapproval, but there is little life or substance to her. Penn's interpretation of the character is a remarkable transformation, as she uses a much higher vocal register and carries herself with almost no conviction or purpose. Her Pippa—at least for the first part of the film—is a bit of a ghost, a stark contrast to the independent, inaccessible roles the actress has often portrayed in the past. When Pippa makes the terrifying discovery that she is having a nervous breakdown, the character is inspired to reexamine all the traumas that have led her to her quiet suburban life, and she—and Penn—take an acute turn right before our eyes. Pippa gives up her mask, revealing a resilient woman who is both piteous and funny as she drives herself mad.

If you haven't read the book (which I haven't), the film is delightfully unpredictable. I was pleasantly surprised to be transported to Pippa's unorthodox childhood, to spend so much time on her carousel of questionable caretakers, from her speed addict mother (the wonderful Maria Bello) to her über-cool, über-liberal Aunt Kat (Julianne Moore). As a Gossip Girl skeptic, I gave a huge sigh when Blake Lively first appeared as teenage Pippa, but she turned out to be surprisingly effective, standing her ground in the formidable shadow of Penn. A scene between Lively and Bello in which Pippa takes her mother's drugs as an experiment in empathy is absolutely heart wrenching.

Winona Ryder is also a surprising highlight as Pippa's extremely neurotic, needy, and often hysterical friend. She provides a hilarious counterpoint to Penn, sweating the small stuff very publicly while Pippa suffers a lifetime of disaster in complete silence.

To reveal more about Pippa's past (and future) would detract from the joy of watching it unfold on screen—and it is an utter joy, even as upsetting as the protagonist's circumstances sometimes are. Though I have yet to read Miller's book, I would imagine that Pippa's tale of rediscovery could not have found a better interpretation.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, January 13th 2010

The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:48:00 +0000

Edited by Autumn Stevens

Inner Ocean Publishing

More than just an anthology of essays about marriage, The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives is a collection of unique perspectives on committed relationships and the human condition - more specifically, the female condition. Complied by Autumn Stevens, a seasoned editor, the book covers topics from infidelity to adoption and cross-cultural marriages to same sex relationships so it's sure to contain something everyone can relate to.

Keeping in mind that “this book is not for the faint-hearted,” as was so eloquently stated in the preface by Marilyn Yalom, it's easy to get lost in the pages. The essays were written by women, the book was edited by a woman, and it is targeted toward women because, honestly, who knows women better than women?

The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives touches on humor, sorrow and everything in between, and I found myself forced to take a step back and examine my own relationships as well as my personal role in society. I feel empowered having done that, and, most of all, I feel accepted knowing that other women experience the things that I experience. The essayists paint a very realistic picture of what it means to be a woman both independently and in relationships by examining real-life situations; their problems, my problems, and your problems in a new and refreshing light.

Written by: Jonna Vercellini, March 8th 2007