Fly Girls, Movie Review Example

Abstract

Through the whole history women had to fight for their rights in the process of emancipation. They faced numerous barriers and obstacles in changing their place in society from mothers and care-givers to fully-independent and self-sufficient individuals in charge of their own lives. In the recent years, various movies and books paid attention to the issue of women emancipation. The central theme was usually individual path of an individual struggling for personal emancipation and her final success. More realistic perspective of the issue was represented by in historical movies, which covered real life stories without hiding any cruelty and difficulties women faced in achievement of posed goals. One of such movies is “American Experience: Fly Girls” directed by Laurel Ladevich. This paper is a review of this movie.

Key words: American Experience, Fly Girls, the World War II, female pilots.

Fly Girls

In the history of women emancipation, there were numerous barriers and opposition of men and society in general against change of female roles from mother and care-givers to fully-independent and self-sufficient individuals in charge of their own lives. In the recent years, the issue of women emancipation was covered in various movies and books. They usually show individual path of a certain person struggling for individual emancipation and its final success or at least partial change of character. On the other hand, there are historical movies that tell real life stories without any hiding cruelty of reality and difficulties women were going through in their achievement of posed targets. One of such movies is “American Experience: Fly Girls” directed by Laurel Ladevich. The review of this movie is represented in this paper.

The story told in the movie is of extraordinary role women played in the World War II in the flying military flights for the American Air Force in 1942-1944. In this regard 1,000 of women with various social background devoted their time and 38 of them had given their lives in the name of their countries and people they cared about. It is not a story about flammable women emancipation and feminist struggle for complete equality of genders or abolishing of both (Ladevich, 1999). It is the story of devotion, courage, thoroughness and simple female creativity and flexibility under any circumstances of changing warfare environment. The movie outlines creation of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) with the initiative of a businesswoman Jacqueline Cochran, who was racing airplanes for sport. Women trained in Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, ferried aircrafts from factories to the air bases sometimes for days and thousands miles like Teresa James.

The success of the program was showed through high productivity, stress-resistance and flexibility of women under conditions of warfare. The greatest accomplishment of the program was career of Ann Baumgartner Carl who was the only female test pilot of the time and was the first woman to pilot Bell YP-59 A, the most advanced jet fighter of the time (Ladevich, 1999). The narrator tells not only the story of those remarkable women, but also shame of the state and military in denying them even military status and subsequent “veteran” status for 30 years until Carter’s administration revised the case.

The main peculiarity of the movie is its smooth tempo of actual videos of the time and live interviews with the veterans of those times who described their experiences and personal feelings in those days. The narrator does not express her opinion until the end of the movie, when the government and society denied women their courage and closed the programmed. The tone of voice and wordings contribute to audiences’ sympathy to those courageous women and condemnation of the social restrictions of the time (Cole, 1995). In this context, the strength of the movie is that it does not impose a strict point of view on the audience, but shows the facts based on eye-witnessed evidences, personal diaries, videos of the time , archival documents and real maps of flights which still survived the time and dust. In this context, the audience is provided with a profound historical research and freedom for decision-making and opinion-development. From influential perspective, I think that memories of those women had the greatest impact on audience’s opinion. Although historians’ analysis could have been more adequate and objective, these were their lives and they were the ones to die and not even be remembered for that.

Other influential effects of the movie include videos of warfare, artillery shooting and the rumor of airplanes, and female voice as narrator, which corresponded to the general feminine and sympathetic tone of the movie. Emotionality is achieved by changing video of war fear with interviews, making the link between past and contemporary events (Cole, 1995). The meaning of soundtrack of the movie might be viewed as speculative and manipulating leading towards general sympathy of those women and their lives. Music accompaniment of some parts of the movie was contributing to their emotionality and general sympathetic mood of the story. From a certain perspective, it may be argued that the movie itself is manipulating because it lacks scientific, mainly historical, profound exploration of the topic and investigation of some data represented. For instance, this refers to the investigation of sabotage and the statement that women were given the dirtiest work ever possible. In this context, representation of one point of view is indeed quite manipulating, though it has a right for existence.

From my personal perspective, the filmmaker did not really care much about complete and profound research of the target field; the main aim of his work was to attract attention of the contemporary American society to the role women played in the World War II. From his perspective, those women deserved respect and memory of the next generations and comprehension that current military service of women took previous generations plenty of pain to achieve this, and that today the situation is still quite sensitive, and there are still positions women still have to struggle for. From my perspective, the filmmaker was persuasive in his arguments or rather those women were. The movie is worth of viewing at least from the point of gaining new perspective on the role of women in the American Aviation during the World War II.

Overall, the target audience of the movie would be general public interested in the target topic. It is recommended for the high school and university students studying movie making and meaning of women emancipation in the American society. Due to the certain speculative aspects, movie should be viewed in combination with other historical materials in the target field, or actual diaries and archival documents of the time. In such case movie might contribute to the comprehension of one of the sides in the argument concerning role of women in American Air Force, but by no means should the movie be treated as an exhaustive source of information.

Reference

Cole, J.H. (1995). Women Pilot of World War II. Utah: University of Utah Press.

Ladevich, Laurel (Director). (1999). American Experience: Fly Girls [motion picture]. United Sates: PBS.