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Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television since World War II

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From 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.

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Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

791.45 TAS s

Publisher

: ., 2011

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781478091479

Classification

791.45

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

History & Criticism
Performing Arts / Television

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Yvonne Tasker

Other Information

Cataloger

umi

Source

https://openresearchlibrary.org/content/b7013b08-c329-4998-a4d9-433c88facb48

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