Visions of the Maid: Joan of Arc in American Film and Culture

Cultural Frames, Framing Culture

by Robin Blaetz

Representations of Joan of Arc have been used in the United States for the past two hundred years, appearing in advertising, cartoons, popular song, art, criticism, and propaganda. The presence of the fifteenth-century French heroine in the cinema is particularly intriguing in relation to the role of women during wartime. Robin Blaetz argues that a mythic Joan of Arc was used during the First World War to cast a medieval glow over an unpopular war, but that she only appeared after the Second World War to encourage women to abandon their wartime jobs and return to the home. In Visions of the Maid, Blaetz examines three pivotal films―Cecil B. DeMille's 1916 Joan the Woman, Victor Fleming's 1948 Joan of Arc, and Otto Preminger's 1957 Saint Joan―as well as addressing a broad array of popular culture references and every other film about the heroine made or distributed in the United States. Blaetz is particularly concerned with issues of gender and the ways in which Joan of Arc's androgyny, virginity, and sacrificial victimhood were evoked in relation to the evolving roles of women during war throughout the twentieth century.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Blaetz looks at the way Joan of Arc's story was used during the 20th century (an appendix looks at previous centuries): an inspiration for women to support the war, a symbol of French resistance, a warning against women getting too independent (yes, that takes some distorting) and much more. As Blaetz' primary interest is the tension between the concept of a virgin warrior and a culture which told women they couldn't be warriors and should find themselves a husband, she only touches briefly on the post-Vietnam era when the barriers against women in the military began fading. Overall, interesting, though specialized.