On Valor and Virtue

                                                                                              

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• Public DomainFile:Sugihara b.jpg  Created: before 1945 date

 

If you're not familiar with Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese  diplomat posted in Lithuania during World War II who saved 6,000 lives by issuing visas to Jews, you can learn about him and find references to look up here: ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/chiune-sugihara.

For the sake of this post, I'd just like to quote what he said about his own heroism in reply to the question the author of Pepper, Silk & Ivory: Amazing Stories about Jews and the Far East (p. 189) asked about it:
"Everyone in life as an opportunity to do a good deed. Do it and leave it alone. Don't write about it or publicize it; don't make money from it. Just do what's right because it's right."


The book also recounts that he had no way of knowing at the time if the visas would accomplish his aim of saving lives. Sugihara's son Hiroki reported that when his father found out how successful his rescue efforts proved, he said, "This is the happiest day of my life."                                                                   

Feminine feet: a study in contrasts

Two current exhibits at the New York Historical Society offer a study in contrasts in representing the feminine ideal as represented by their feet. In one feet are said to become worthy of their own cameras on the red carpet when they are encased in shoes like the diamond encrusted sandals pictured below:

$1,090,000 dollar sandals  decorated with 464  Kwiat diamonds.  In 2002, these diamond shoes were worn by Oscar nominee Laura Harring. Supposedly, that's what started the trend of a cameras placed to capture footwear at the Oscars. A replica of these shoes are  the first object in the current exhibit, Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes.

A number of problems I had with the exhibit:

1. The shoes are arranged in a particularly logical order like a chronological one or even an arrangement of shoes for work and shoes for parties and shoes for occasions. The arrangement keeps jumping around in history. There is some attempt to tie some shoes to historical events-- from changes in hemlines and dance styles to women's role in producing shoes, but there is no particularly cohesive story line.

2. The exhibit is about 90%  decorative but impractical high heels.  You can hear Weitzman talking about the eternal quality of high heels in the exhibit's audio tour. He claims they will always be around because nothing makes legs look better. He seems oblivious to the fact that not all women are willing to sacrifice their comfort and stability to heighten their decorative appeal. He also seems to be unaware of the trend since the 80s (as far as I recall from my own exposure to shoe brands and ads) has been to offer women shoe options that actually allow them to walk beyond a red carpet. Even before that, there were always women whose first priority for shoes had to be something durable.

This brings me to the point of contrast on what we idealize in women I noticed when viewing Norman Rockwell's famous "Rosie the Riveter" painting in full in the Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms exhibit.  One freedom that is not included in the four is the freedom of movement for women constrained by feminine fashion. Here we see a heroine for the World War II period named Rosie who is dressed in practical clothes with practical shoes (no high heels on a job that requires you to be stable on your feet). In fact, her comfortable loafers are poised over a copy of Mein Kampf. It is not delicate footwear that will defeat tyranny and hate but sensible shoes worn by a woman who is willing to get her face dirty and get the job done. 

Rosie is, in fact, shown as angel with a dirty face. As the description of the painting points out, her protective mask is pushed up in a position to assume the shape of a halo.  She is depicted as the strong female force of good that will stamp of evil. 

The exhibit also shows the usual poster associated with Rosie the Riveter, which is not a full length picture and includes the slogan "We can do it!" This version, which you can see in the still from the video below, was not created by Normal Rockwell but the Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller. Why more than one Rosie? The idea of Rosie the Riveter was depicted in song. You can hear it on this video. 

If you'd like to see a video that offers more information on the Four Freedoms and Rockwell's depiction of them, you can click on this video.

Retreating from Fake News: The Example of Dunkirk

If you're interested in history, (and a family that made film history) or if you're interested in how events get reported during and after a war, then you really should read  Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory by Michael Korda. For me, tt crystallized certain aspect of British history, the country's view of itself in relation to the rest of Europe, and what was highlighted in films of the WW II. Then, of course, there is the issue of how you truth can be more effective at boosting morale than false propaganda.

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Class divisions was not altogether absent from British consciousness, Korda notes, despite the attempts to put differences aside to work together:

The spirit of wartime unity between the rich and the poor was not altogether a fiction, but it was nothing like as strong as it became portrayed later on in British propaganda, let alone in films and eventually television. ... British class warfare was ever so slightly suspended during the war, but by no means eliminated. (451)

That particular issue is at the center of the book that was quickly adapted into a film, both with the title  This Above All.

As for the position the Brits saw for themselves within Europe, it is in the book's title. Though the country started its involvement as an ally to others, the big shift it found at Dunkirk was that it was free to focus on its own needs in the war, a feeling that Korada finds repeated in the Brexit vote: 

King George VI spoke for the whole nation when he wrote to his mother Queen Mary after the fall of France, 'Personally, I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper.' Dunkirk is not unrelated to the emotions of those who demanded 'Brexit,' the British exit from the European Union in 2016. There was a national sense of relief in 1940 at leaving the Continent and withdrawing behind the White Cliffs of Dover. (p. 461)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keep-calm-and-carry-on.svg

To return to another film of the time, They Met in the Dark features the song, "Toddle Along" at least three times. The lyrics stress exactly what the British felt got them through the war, carrying on, even when the going gets tough.  This is what Korda finds in the experience of Dunkirk and why the truth worked better than any lie could: "Churchill did not need a propaganda minister like Joseph Goebbels -- he was his own best propagandist, and his instinct that the British would rally when their backs were to the wall was proved correct." (432)

The British press embraced that approach, too, and that is why even a retreat could be seen not as a loss of honor but a symbol of the nation's resolution:

By now the British press was finally reporting on the Dunkirk evacuation with relative frankness." He cites the description of the withdrawal with a description of the "difficulties" involved. Then he say, "The piece marks a significant change from the Ministry of Information previous policy of manufacturing good news for home consumption and downplaying disasters, and also the first step in in the transformation of Dunkirk form a humiliating military defeat into a proud national epic even as it was taking place. 'Grin and bear it' might have been the new motto fro Britain, in which the ability 'to take it' rather than any significant victory, became a source of national pride, and even optimism." (439)