Paul H (2024)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2024
Book Volume: 46
Pages Range: 368-380
Journal Issue: 3
DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2024.2332244
This paper re-directs attention from a narrow focus on U.S. re-education measures abroad to an examination of repercussions of this program at home with regard to regimes of gender and domesticity. It argues that in the 1950s an ideology of ‘re-education’ is at work in curbing women’s emancipation and liberation, countering the easing of traditional gender roles during wartime. This becomes obvious in 1. narratives of re-education as conversion to domestic ideals in Hollywood films such as Pillow Talk; 2. in the demonstrative upholding of the ‘other’ woman (i.e. the Japanese woman) as a model of submissiveness and domesticity for U.S. women to emulate, as in Sayonara, both book and film; and 3. in portrayals of the ideologically dangerous ‘other’ woman (i.e. the German woman) in her attempt to undermine U.S. democracy as well as the integrity of American families, for instance in A Foreign Affair. As scholars have shown, Hollywood was by and large entangled with re-education efforts and propaganda abroad. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that such efforts would spill over to a domestic context and also recalibrate notions of gender and democracy in the cultural imaginary of Americans at home. The paper examines selected films and reveals some of the paradoxes that re-education (as a kind of social engineering) and its proclaimed commitment to democratic values entail.
APA:
Paul, H. (2024). American Gender Politics and ‘Re-Education’ Abroad and at Home in Postwar Film. International History Review, 46(3), 368-380. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2024.2332244
MLA:
Paul, Heike. "American Gender Politics and ‘Re-Education’ Abroad and at Home in Postwar Film." International History Review 46.3 (2024): 368-380.
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