Journal Article Analysis

The article I chose for my journal analysis was, Carless Girls and Repentant Wives: Gender in Postwar Classroom Films. This journal was written by Megan Stemm-Wade and in it, she discusses the social hygiene movement of the 1940s thru the 1970s and the impact it had on popular culture at that time. Social hygiene is described in the reading as an innovation of its era to “regulate the social behavior of the viewer” (pg. 1).   The argument made by Stemm-Wade was that the social hygiene movement specifically focused on young women during a time in history where their influence on, and contribution to, society was considered minimal, or temporary while the men were at war.

The author’s main key points are broken up into four sections: Mental Hygiene – From the Battlefield to the Classroom; Repress and Deny: Films on Dating; Learning to Be June Cleaver: Films on Marriage; and The Office Wife: Career Training Films. To briefly summarize each, the ‘mental hygiene’ section discusses how the social hygiene movement came about. The author notes that as men were returning home from WWII, their children were rebelling, so to speak, with dancing, drinking, and young marriages causing a spike in divorce rates. Not knowing what to do with this ‘lost generation’, educators resorted to the original mental hygiene that was used on soldiers of WWI to teach them “how to remain ‘clean’ morally, as well as ‘physically’” (pg. 4), by establishing the social-hygiene myth. The belief behind this was that it would create a ‘well-bred’ young person. The ‘repress and deny’ section talks about the types of films created and the messages they delivered to their audience.  For the next section, ‘learning to be June Cleaver’, I think the message behind it is implied in the name. In this section, Stemm-Wade discusses the message behind the films and how they were applied to a woman’s role in marriage. In the last section, ‘The Office Wife’, discusses the films, known as ‘marriage readiness’ and ‘career-training’, which were part of the student curriculum to teach and prepare young girls for their minimal roles in society as secretaries or subservient wives. In this section, the author points out that these films ‘showed their audiences that submissiveness disguised as courtesy, and emotional repression masquerading as etiquette were the path to career success” (Stem-Wade, pg. 13).

Throughout the reading, the author argues that social hygiene was developed for, and directed toward, teenage girls. The author supports this argument through discussing the various films that were mentioned under each of the sections listed above. The author first supports this argument by drawing a correlation to the era in which they were first introduced. According to the reading, the social hygiene movement came about when the men went off to war and the women were left behind to fill their shoes. The decade prior to the introduction of social hygiene films in classrooms, there was an influx in the number of women entering the workforce and dominating roles that were previously held by their male-counterparts; however, once the war was over, she argues that women’s roles were diminished once again because the men were now home from war, but, ultimately, the women did not give up their role in society so easily. She supported this argument with the statistic that, “by the end of the 1950s, 40% of women over the age of sixteen held jobs” and the remaining women that remained home, “were not content with simply retrofitting their newfound independence to family life as it had been before” (pg. 2). Educators were fearful of this changing culture, so to curve this downward spiral, she argues that social hygiene films were created to deliver a similar hidden message, which was to teach young girls that their current and future place in society was to be submissive to men in all things but sex and be the attractive, non-working housewife that a woman should be.  Stemm-Wade claimed that most films under the ‘June Cleaver’ section carried the same three main messages, which were: “Being attractive is essential to catching a man; once caught, it is solely the wife’s responsibility to keep the marriage running smoothly; and nothing will sabotage a marriage as surely as a wife with a career” (pg. 8). I have never seen one of these social hygiene films, myself, but it is interesting to compare what she is describing with television shows of that era. Popular culture at that time was based on this ideology that the wife stays home to maintain order in the house, while at the same time, wearing an apron, skirt, low-heeled shoes and maintaining perfectly kept hair and make-up. It is evidenced by shows like “Leave it to Beaver” and “I Love Lucy”.

Another hidden message in these films, and the connotation Stemm-Wade claimed they had, were that females should “repress their sexual desires” and it’s their responsibility for “making the mature choice by turning down the male ‘in a friendly and appealing way’” (pg 5). Example of this can be seen in such films as, Name Unknown and Girls Beware; both produced by Sid Davis. In these films, it is made evident that if the female acts on her desires or seeks them out through less-wise decisions, if she were to get raped or killed, she would deserve it. No blame would be placed on the male, as the male is more or less doing what is expected of his kind. The following is pulled from the 1961 and 1971 version of Girls Beware, which further supports the author’s claims: “Edie dates an older guy who ‘has problems with girls his own age’ that knocks her up under a tree in the park. She is soon sent off to juvenile hall for getting herself into trouble where she will have ‘plenty of time to think about whether a few minutes of showing off or feeling sharp is worth a lifetime of regrets!’” (pg. 6).

The author continues to relate these curriculum films of that era to the repression of women’s roles in society. “In a culture that was not thrilled to have women in the workplace, career-training social hygiene films showed them how to be the proper kind of workingwoman. Whether through office training, lessons on marriage, or dating instruction, the roles of women in social hygiene films were hard to miss” (pgs. 12 and 15). Stemm-Wade’s article may seem cynical throughout but she is simply stating the facts of the perception and ideologies of popular culture of that time and provides support through various excerpts of these films. She supports her claims through examples of the films created and how the roles of both men and women were depicted. At that time in history, these social-hygiene films supported the myth that a woman’s role in society was minimal, at best, and subpar to her life partner’s. Much of the American dream back then was that the man worked outside the home to support the financial needs of his wife and kid(s) and the woman worked inside the home to support the emotional needs of her husband and children. Educators saw that popular culture was quickly changing (or a better term, evolving) on the heels of WWII and to head it off, they created these films to try and keep it in check. Today in popular culture, the majority of households are dual-income, or many are single-income with the woman working outside the home and the husband in. In popular culture today, if these films were shown in our schools, there would be equality issues, especially with regard to teaching the female to be subservient to her husband. Today, popular culture is striving more and more toward equality among all and, despite the attempts of educators and film makers of that era, women are just as much a contribution to today’s society as any man is. Though learning about these films some 60 years later, I think it is important to see what was driving pop culture of that time and see how it has evolved since then, especially being a woman. I just heard on the evening news last night that the first three Marine women ever just graduated from infantry training. I wonder what the educators of the 50s and 60s would have to say about that.

References:

Stemm-wade, Megan. "Careless Girls and Repentant Wives: Gender in Postwar Classroom Films." The Journal of Popular Culture 45.3 (2012): 611-27. Franklin University Nationwide Library. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://0-journals.ohiolink.edu.olinkserver.franklin.edu/ejc/pdf.cgi/StemmWade_Megan.pdf?issn=00223840&issue=v45i0003&article=611_cgarwgipcf>.