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tiamatschild) wrote2010-05-14 01:44 pm
tiamatschild) wrote2010-05-14 01:44 pm
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...The things we come to believe.
No, no, I got to say, a fictional narrative about war is not "of necessity" populated only by men. Women live through wars too. They fight in them, they spy in them, they nurse the sick, wounded, and dying, they staff operations posts, they run the phones, they take their turns behind anti-aircraft guns or on public safety details, they make the bombs and guns and ships and planes, they do the immense work of farming, they hold the fortress or take refuge in the subway. War is not something that happens solely to men.
That a narrative is about a war does not mean that it cannot have women for characters. Women don't stop existing when a war's on. They don't keep existing but somehow do so in a box off to the side, where there's no war. A war narrative that does not contain women is not truer and more authentic than one that does. It's true that war tends to be culturally constructed as a male enterprise, one in which the only possible role women can have is as far off motivation/potential prize but that's not the historical or present reality.
A book or television show or movie about war with no women in it is not telling the whole truth.
That a narrative is about a war does not mean that it cannot have women for characters. Women don't stop existing when a war's on. They don't keep existing but somehow do so in a box off to the side, where there's no war. A war narrative that does not contain women is not truer and more authentic than one that does. It's true that war tends to be culturally constructed as a male enterprise, one in which the only possible role women can have is as far off motivation/potential prize but that's not the historical or present reality.
A book or television show or movie about war with no women in it is not telling the whole truth.
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So true.
Do I want to know what prompted this?
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Admittedly, I don't watch a lot of war shows or movies - I have limited capacity for dealing with film and frankly, war movies are usually too much for me - so I haven't seen Band of Brothers or Pacific, but the lack of significant female characters in them certainly isn't because there weren't women involved in WWII!
(I think the last war film I watched was Sink the Bismarck!, which is British, and from the 60s, and features a very competent, confident young woman who's a naval... something or other, I forget, it was months and months ago, but she helps direct the operation. It might even pass the Bechdel test, but I can't remember.)
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