Saturday, May 30, 2015

“I’ve Got My Eyes Open and I Can’t be Crooked”: Female Virtue and National Identity in Terry and the Pirates


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 but quickly breaks
(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).

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

I haven't been very inspired to read "fun" books lately (I reread Emma at the beginning of the summer, but it was a lot longer and much less funny than I remembered), but I decided to make myself bring at least one to DC. I'd finished Jennifer Hayward's Consuming Pleasures a couple days before I packed for my trip, and her discussion of Dickens' serialized fiction had me craving a Victorian sensation fiction fix. I can never seem to get through a Dickens novel - too much virtue, not enough vice - but I did find the copy of Thou Art the Man (Mary Elizabeth Braddon) that's been sitting on my bookshelf for years (I bought it in a fit of Braddon/Wilkie Collins-mania, but you can really only read so many books about Victorian crazies at once).

As usual, I finished Thou Art the Man surprisingly fast (it took me at least a week to get through the same number of pages in Emma), but that's not unusual for me and sensation fiction. I don't know how people waited for the next number to be written - I think I might go crazy. Most of the book was pretty standard fare (spoilers start here): youthful passion is blighted by a dread disease (epilepsy) and a horrible murder. The young epileptic man, Brandon, is convinced to run away rather than stay and face judgment by (surprise, surprise) the real murder, Hubert Urquhart, while his virtuous lover, Sibyl - believing he's died in a storm - is convinced to marry an Earl to preserve her good name. Ten years pass before the murderer's plot is uncovered, but by the end of the novel the good are (mostly) rewarded and the evil die of cancer.

It's the ending that I'm torn over. I always feel this way about Victorian novels - no matter how insane the ride, they always seem to conclude with everyone in their "proper" place - the place 'for which they were born,' even those who have spent the bulk of the preceding pages trying to escape that place. Brandon and Sibyl can never actually be together because Brandon is tainted by his hereditary epilepsy and the insanity that everyone believes goes with it. In the end, he has to die so that she can safely marry the virtuous (but still noble) preacher (Urquhart having also killed Sibyl's first husband - and his older brother - for his title and property). Sibyl's niece, Coralie (Urquhart's daughter), also has to be married off by the end, and Urquhart's villainy is punished by the cancer that symbolically disfigures him.

On the other hand, there are no damsels in distress. Sibyl is blonde, beautiful and virtuous, but she hardly ever faints. Yes, she marries a man she cannot love, but unlike Collins' Laura, she does so by choice, not because her dead father said so. Even after her marriage, Sibyl retains control over the massive fortune that her father - a commoner - built up for her, just as she retains her ability to act for herself. She relies on a man to follow through on the more active parts of her sleuthing, but it is clear that she would take those steps herself were it not for her keen awareness of social strictures, or if there were no man she could trust.

Even Coralie - the plain daughter of the wicked man (of noble birth) - manages to escape the hereditary stain and degeneration that the men around her are subject to (her father's family is cold and unfeeling, Brandon inherits his epilepsy from his mother, but it is always referred to as his father's curse for making an unwise marriage). When we first meet Coralie, she is well on her way to becoming as hard and selfish as her father, but by the end she redeems herself and her family name by cutting off her father, though she still cannot bring herself to expose his crimes.

In addition to her ability to change, Coralie is intriguing for her frank discussion of marriage. As she tells her aunt, Coralie accepted her difficulty early on:

"When I was twelve years old I found out the difference between beauty and ugliness. I heard all the pretty little girls admired...while I observed that people called me good, or clever, or sensible! So I looked steadily at my image in the glass, and I faced the unpleasant fact. 'You are plain, Coralie,' I said to myself; 'unmistakably plain...Never forget that you are plain...and then perhaps other people won't remember the fact quite so often...' So if I have come to nineteen years of age without being admired, I have at least escaped being laughed at!" (7-8)
Instead of relying on her looks to land a wealthy husband, Coralie relies on her wits. She finds hope in the stories of plain women who have managed to land the most eligible bachelors, based on the power of their personalities. In her diary, she is unmercifully direct - especially regarding her efforts to attract a husband. She quickly learns that men prefer to be listened to than to listen, and sacrifices the sports and revelries she prefers in order to attract a suitable partner. Naturally, she eventually does find a wealthy landowner who finds her vivacious wit and enthusiastic approach to fox hunting irresistible, but Coralie's marriage is still a far cry from the 'virtuous damsel is rewarded with a rich husband' model that seems to dominate Dickens' work. Together with Sibyl's first marriage, Coralie's musings emphasize the planned - even mercenary - nature of Victorian marriage.

Braddon saves the most politically interesting bits for the epilogue. Formulaic as Sibyl's second marriage may be, it does force her out of her comfortable country home - where her coal-tycoon father was able to forestall union organizers through strong applications of noblesse oblige - and into a busy metropolis:

"In this busy centre Sibyl learns to understand new phases of life. She finds herself no longer in a small community, where one man's wealth can achieve wonders of order and prosperity, and one man's influence can shape all things to his liking, but in the thick of the bitter battle, among the revolts and conspiracies of labour against capital, and the exactions and injustices of capital against labour; the contest of strength with strength the appeals to public opinion; the power, sometimes reckless and fatal, sometimes wise and beneficent, of a free Press; the heat and strife of politics...here she has to discover how little her wealth can do where needs are so constant and so manifold." (328)
I have to admit that this part surprised me. Braddon was one of the more radical sensation fiction authors, but she seemed to establish herself as fairly anti-union in the first half of the novel and this addition caught me off guard. Not to say that she's pro-union in the end - she seems to describe the wars between labor and capital as a more or less evenly matched battle between the two sides, but it's heartening to see a popular author discuss capitalism's inherent ambiguity. It's also interesting that she chose to incorporate that ambiguity into the 'happily ever after' part of her novel. The labor-capital battles do have a more prominent place in novels like Elizabeth Gaskill's North and South, but Braddon does less to resolve the conflict - instead she fairly directly says that there is no neat solution, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try. I guess I can forgive 'forced' marriages for that.