Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture
- Book Review,
by Carol Burke
From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on research, interviews, observations of ROTC training programs and seven years of experience teaching at the Naval Academy, Burke vividly describes how basic training breaks down new recruits’ former identities and instills military discipline. Shaving recruits’ heads, issuing new clothing, forbidding them any of the freedoms of civilian life and depriving them of sleep are just parts of the process. Any weakness on the part of trainees is dealt with, Burke says, by comparing them negatively to homosexuals and women. Burke, a folklorist and English professor who now teaches at the Univ. of California, Irvine, has previously analyzed the lives of rural women and those of inmates (Vision Narratives of Women in Prison). With regard to the military’s use of gender, she relates numerous informal and brutal initiation rites that are marked by unacknowledged homoeroticism, coupled with humiliation. According to the author, military hazing rituals have led to, at best, the marginalization of female recruits and, at worst, to incidents of sexual aggression towards women (a la the Tailhook scandal)-and now, some will argue, toward prisoners. Burke reads what she says is the institutionalized hatred of Vietnam anti-war activist Jane Fonda as a militarized myth of "the seductive woman who turns out to be a snake." She argues that the macho culture of the military is not only unjust, but will be irrelevant in a future where brute force will not be the primary military need. While Burke focuses on what she sees as weaknesses of military culture, she delivers her findings in an even tone, and with accessible examples, including a debunking of the mythic elements of Jessica Lynch’s captivity narrative.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
A folklorist who taught as a civilian professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, for seven years, Carol Burke analyzes the military as an occupational folk group, arguing that every detail of military culture—from the "high and tight" haircut to the chants sung in basic training—is laden with significance.Exploring the minute ways that "the cult of masculinity" persists in all branches of the United States military today, Burke unearths fascinating details and offers eye-opening anecdotes about basic training, military dress and speech, the history of the marching chant, the disdain some veterans still harbor for Jane Fonda, and the colorful—and sometimes questionable—rituals of military manhood.Postulating that culture is made—not born—Burke urges the military to consciously change its policy of "gendered apartheid" so it can evolve into the gender-, race-, and sexuality-neutral democratic institution it needs to be."As Carol Burke makes clear in this important book, American military culture is now driven less by soldierly professionalism or patriotic zeal than by a toxic combination of misogyny and homophobia . . . Razor-sharp in its analysis, and harrowingly well-informed, it is essential for those concerned with our military, democracy, and culture."—Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder"Carol Burke reveals how institutional cultures become sexist--and stay sexist. She uses her sharp feminist eye and ears to expose the boy-o jokes, marching chants, and initiation rituals that are the very stuff of privileging certain forms of masculinity, insuring not only that women are marginalized, but also that men police other men. After reading Carol Burke, the US Naval Academy and its counterparts throughout the military will never look--or sound--the same."-Cynthia Enloe, author of "Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives"
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