This post is adapted from a paper I presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Seattle, WA in March 2014.
In March of 1942,
April Kane was kidnapped. Not that this was unusual. Indeed, one of the Southern belle’s main
functions on Terry and the Pirates was
being kidnapped, advancing the plot by forcing her male friends – most often Terry
Lee and Pat Ryan – to save her. But this kidnapping was different. For one, April was kidnapped by Sanjak, a
woman, and a thinly veiled lesbian at that.
Even more interesting – since we can’t really know how many listeners
got the lesbian overtones – Sanjak saw April as more than just a hostage. Ultimately,
the nefarious foreigner hoped to make April her apprentice, promising to teach
her to use the power of hypnosis to control people and fool “the stupid men.” But – of course – April resists. The lure of Sanjak’s fabulous wealth doesn’t
seem to have any effect on the contentedly middle class April, and she remains
a virtuous, proper American girl, holding fast to her patriotic principles of
truth, honesty, and loyalty to her friends. Eventually, Sanjak is forced to abandon April
in order to save herself from an ambush by another criminal whose gold she’d
stolen. April’s friends rescue her from
a burning island compound and everything goes back to normal. Or as normal as it can get in war-torn Asia. At any rate, once she’s rescued, April
returns to her blissfully optimistic, empathetic, and deferential self – the
idealized embodiment of American femininity.
 |
| April Kane, all American girl. |
In this talk, I
look at some of the ways in which Terry
and the Pirates’ policed gender and nationality as part of American
broadcasters’ larger contributions to the national war effort. After a decade
of isolationism, programs like Terry and
the Pirates simultaneously promoted American involvement abroad and a unified
vision of a uniquely American identity – rooted in democratic ideals and historical
gender norms – at home. These values were frequently tested through female
characters like April, who – like so many women before her – was positioned as
a repository for the nation’s moral virtues.
While the comic strip on which the series was based often included more
complex representations of gender and race, the radio series drew sharp lines
between its American heroes and the foreigners they encountered in Asia –
particularly the women. Indeed, as Jason Loviglio and others have shown,
broadcasters were especially concerned with reasserting the traditional
feminine gender roles that were so visibly disrupted during World War II.[1]
In the case of Terry and the Pirates, we can see feminine virtue defined and
normalized directly – through characters like April – and indirectly – through comparisons
to exoticized racial others. The series’
few recurring female characters are either Americans, who embrace conventional
moral and legal codes despite their experiences in lawless, war-torn Asia, or
foreign criminal masterminds, who dominate large crime syndicates staffed by subservient
men. Through depictions like these, broadcasters reaffirmed women’s roles as
national conscience and moral protectors of the next generation, painting an
image of virtuous and incorruptible femininity.
Despite its focus on international adventure, Terry and the Pirates was most concerned with defining what it
meant to be an American in an increasingly international world for a mostly
juvenile audience that was presumably unsettled by the social and moral chaos
of war. Even more than the series’ emphasis on her male friends’ honor and
bravery, I argue that middle-class April’s refusal to let foreign influences
tempt her into criminal ambition reasserts the enduring strength of
old-fashioned American values against competing visions of the post-war social
order, here safely externalized as subversive and alien.
A little
context. Terry and the Pirates was an afternoon serial that aired
intermittently on NBC Blue and WGN between 1937 and 1948. It was based on the immensely popular Milton
Caniff comic strip of the same name, and followed the adventures of Terry and
his friends, a group of American adventurers travelling in Asia. The radio program – produced by the ever-busy
Hummert mill – appears to have resonated most with audiences during World War
II, when Americans were – understandably – much more interested in the
situation in China and Vietnam, where most of the storylines take place. As we’ll hear in some of the clips to come,
the program featured OWI messages about homefront issues like war stamps and
the importance of good nutrition. Many
of the series’ storylines were adapted fairly directly from the comic strips,
usually with a few years’ delay. April’s
kidnapping appeared in newspapers in the first few months of 1939, and it
served as her introduction to the strip, but April plays a more integral role
in the radio series, where she takes the place of a number of other relatively
interchangeable girls who served as Terry’s love interests throughout the
comic’s run. She is already a
well-established and integral character by the time Sanjak kidnaps her on the
radio.
As I’ve already
mentioned, April is a Southern belle. Unlike
her more worldly Yankee companions, she is identified with an almost antebellum
ideal of rural life, innocence, and – most importantly – feminine dependence. April is introduced to the comic strip at the
end of a visit to her older brother, Dylan, who manages a plantation in for a
white landowner in French Indochina. As
we can see in this early strip, we meet April in a time of need. Dylan has been kidnapped and she turns to
trusty Pat Ryan – who she’s only just met – to help her out, passively deferring
to his judgment because it’s too much for her “tired ol’ brain” to figure out whether
or not she should trust him. While
April’s rather flirtatious self-deprecation and reliance on strangers – think
Blanche Dubois, but without the nasty results – could be read as manipulative,
her kidnapping and subsequent efforts to escape Sanjak put any real doubts
about her sincerity to rest.
 |
| April meets Pat. |
April is
similarly aware of her own dependence in the radio series, though she is a bit
less overtly flirtatious. Instead, April
acts as the team cheerleader, providing emotional support and entertaining the
men with renditions of old classics like Camptown Ladies as they puzzle through
the difficult problems. Occasionally,
she accidentally helps to provide an answer through some innocent comment, but
again, her main skill seems to be getting kidnapped. Throughout the series, April refers to
herself with diminutives like “lil’ ol’ me,” as we can hear in this clip of her
arrival at the Laokai train station with Connie and Big Stoop – the group’s
loyal Asian friends.
(2:34-3:45)
Like Connie, a loyal friend who is limited by
his poor command of English and heavily stereotyped portrayal, April is
typically presented as a babbling, cheerful child. She is more aware of her surroundings in this
case, but that is only because her brother is missing – typically she remains
blissfully unconcerned with the larger events that guide her from place to
place until real danger strikes. The
diminutives she uses to describe herself, along with the fact that she cannot
travel without someone to physically guard her, further help to establish April
as someone requiring male protection, a characterization that is borne out when
she repeatedly fails to escape Sanjak, who controls her through hypnosis.
 |
| Caniff drawing of Connie and a monkey. |
As Richard Dyer
has pointed out, one of the best ways to highlight the values normalized into
representations of concepts like whiteness and Americanness is to compare those
representations to racialized others within the same texts.[2] As an adventure story set in Asia, Terry and the Pirates is a virtual
goldmine, and we don’t have to look very far.
Most obviously, we have the comparison between April and Sanjak, who is
presented as a sensationalized other from the very beginning.
(Begins at 13:24)
The fact that Sanjak is a woman gets
major play in the next few episodes, from Terry and Pat’s shock that any woman
could outwit them to Sanjak’s own crowing over her ability to fool men – both
of which we can hear displayed in this clip where Terry and Pat read a gloating
note sent by Sanjak
(11:29-12:57)
and this one, where Sanjak brags of her
powers to April
(Begins at 6:18)
 |
| Sanjak transforms behind April's back. |
As we can hear from these clips, Sanjak’s
powers rest on her ability to transform herself and act duplicitously – a trait emphasized in the comics in scenes where we
can see her transformation from frumpy hotel-keeper to sleek criminal
mastermind occurring literally behind April’s back. In marked contrast, April is honest to a
fault. Not only would she never lie to
her friends – she also proves incapable of lying to Sanjak in order to
escape. Shortly after arriving at Sanjak’s
island compound, April resolves to play Sanjak’s game
(2:50-6:40)
Still, April
wins at the thing that matters most – preserving her values. Sanjak can control her movements through
hypnosis, but she cannot get any deeper than that. Interestingly, Caniff pictures Sanjak’s
efforts to recruit April as a literal seduction – I don’t think I’m reading too
much into this scene when I say it evokes feelings of violation if not actual
rape (I’ve left in the next panel with the two men watching to reinforce the
feeling of creepy voyeurism). While he
didn’t believe that many readers got the reference, Caniff later confirmed that
he deliberately named Sanjak after an island near Lesbos. Even if audiences didn’t interpret Sanjak’s
hypnotism as sexual seduction, she is clearly marked as transgressive and
monstrous. On the page she looks much
more like a feminine man than a masculine woman, and recall the announcer’s
tone when he describes Sanjak as the “deep voiced” and dangerous woman, as well
as the way he reinforces Terry and Pat’s shock that she “had the nerve” to send
a note mocking them for failing to catch her.
 |
| Sanjak hypnotizes April. |
Sanjak’s
uncertain ethnicity and sexuality represent a double threat to young
April. Though she operates in French
Indochina, Sanjak is not a native. She sounds
French, connecting her to the old-world decadence and exploitative imperialism
that Americans love to define themselves against. A European who has apparently gone native in
the colonies, Sanjak is the worst kind of thief because she prefers to trick other
thieves into stealing for her rather than stealing herself. She uses this wealth to build herself a
secluded island compound near the river-side town of Yangkuk, where the locals
seem to regard her as a sort of feudal lord.
Her smooth voice drips sophistication, but we know that it can be
changed at will and depending on the character she’s playing, unlike April’s
breathy sincerity, which can hardly be controlled when her life depends on it. April has no interest in Sanjak’s isolated
wealth and fear-based power, which conflicts with her common-sense notions of
right and wrong, as well as reality and artifice. Even Sanjak’s offers to improve April’s
singing through hypnosis fall flat because – as April rightly points out – how
would she know she’s singing if she’s hypnotized?
(9:21-10:15)
Here, April’s self-deprecation
emphasizes her homespun wisdom, and Sanjak’s flattery proves her
insincerity. In the end, Sanjak proves
cold and calculating, choosing her gold over her potential protégée and leaving
April to die.
In addition to
foregrounding April’s genuine virtue, Sanjak’s selfish criminality provides an
opportunity for at least one American criminal to redeem himself. Slugger Dunn, a safecracker from San
Francisco, may have broken enough laws that he had to seek refuge in another
country, and he MAY work for an evil mastermind stealing gold from Chinese
refugees, but even he has his limits.
Unlike Sanjak, who leaves a paragon of feminine innocence to die in a
fire, Slugger risks his life to help save her, fighting off his heartless
employer in order to buy Terry time to get April to
the only boat off the burning island. Like
many of the American criminals who find redemption in Terry and the Pirates, Slugger is a simple working-class Joe who
somehow lost his way. For him, April’s
pure femininity – again reinforced by her helplessness – serves to reawaken the
better angels of his nature and rescue him from a life of crime. Slugger is but one of many male American
crooks to be redeemed by an apparently inborn moral code that is activated by the
white-woman-in-danger switch.
Interestingly, after April saves Slugger figuratively, she also helps to
save him literally by lying about his criminal past to her brother’s employer
so Slugger won’t get turned over to the police.
These two acts bind April and Slugger together and further cement his new-found
loyalty to the feminine – and American – virtues she represents. In the next narrative arc, Slugger becomes
her loyal cavalier, helping her to fend off a suspiciously smooth suitor and
just generally making sure she’s safe.
The redemption of characters like Slugger reaffirm
an image of American unity that goes beyond the different national regions
represented by Southern April and her Yankee companions. Apparently, even apparent criminals are good
deep down, and all they need is a good woman to bring that goodness to the
surface. April’s ability to travel
through the chaotic Asian wilds without ever being tempted to join a criminal
mastermind reinforces a sense of coherent national virtue. She serves as a beacon of the values that
make America great, on the vanguard of efforts to teach the world a better way
of life. Once freed from Sanjak, April is even happy to sing again, using her voice to cheer up the troops abroad.
 |
| April Kane encourages Harvard's crew team. |
(4:30-6:18)
[1]Jason Loviglio. Radio's Intimate Public: Network
Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2005); Philippa Gates. Detecting
Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film. Albany: State University of New York Press
(2011); Roy Grundmann. "Taking
Stock at War's End: Gender, Genre, and Hollywood Labor in The Strange Love of
Martha Ivers" in The Wiley-Blackwell
History of American Film, Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann and Art Simon (eds),
Vol. 2, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing (2012), pg. 495-529.
[2] Richard Dyer. "White" Screen 29 (4), pg. 44-64 (1988).
