{"id":1269,"date":"2024-09-23T16:45:14","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T20:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2024-09-23T16:45:14","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T20:45:14","slug":"ladies-is-it-desperate-to-sign-up-for-world-war-i-to-get-your-guy-or-is-it-just-romantically-comic-an-analysis-of-wings-1927","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/09\/23\/ladies-is-it-desperate-to-sign-up-for-world-war-i-to-get-your-guy-or-is-it-just-romantically-comic-an-analysis-of-wings-1927\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladies, is it Desperate to Sign Up for World War I to Get Your Guy? Or is it just Romantically-Comic?: An Analysis of Wings (1927)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note- this is a plot summary for this nearly century old, largely culturally irrelevant movie for context, not analysis. The analysis will begin after this paragraph:<\/p>\n

You may not have heard of Wings, <\/em>the 1927 silent, first best picture Oscar-winning film, but you have seen it before. Jack, an all-American boy, pines for aviation and dignified city-girl Sylvia. Slyvia\u2019s kindness makes her reticent to break Jack\u2019s heart; she really loves David Armstrong, and equally kind rich boy. When World War I calls and both answer, Jack asks for and receives Sylvia\u2019s picture, unbeknownst to him, that professes love to David on the back. Both boys become friends at training camp, and the friendship soars like their careers as star fighter pilots. The friendship eventually again strains when David destroys the picture to prevent Jack from finding out the truth. In the next battle, David overexerts himself and is shot down trying to prove friendship despite Jack\u2019s anger. David survives, and commandeers a German plane to fly back. Jack sees this German plane and shoots it down to avenge his loss. After landing, Jack realizes the flier was<\/em> David, and they forgive, caress, and kiss as David dies. Later realizing his foolishness towards Sylvia, Jack returns home a hero, ending the film romantically involved with his neighbor.<\/p>\n

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How Mary Imagines the Plot of Wings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, who is this random neighbor?<\/p>\n

She, Mary Preston, played by top-billed megastar Clara Bow, only receives about a tenth of the overall screentime, despite appearing on all the posters. Her scenes are relatively disconnected from the plot; though Sylvia appears for five minutes, her existence causes tension in the main war plot. Mary causes no such tension, and Jack\u2019s first words to her of \u201cGee, can\u2019t you let a man work in peace?\u201d encapsulate their relationship (Wings, <\/em>00:03:26) But though Slyvia affects the war plot more directly, Mary commands her own rom-com subplot to win Jack\u2019s love. When Mary appears on screen, all the other themes of brotherhood(?) and war are forgotten, essentially creating a fusion of a war and rom-com movie, with Mary as the clear lead in the latter. This does not make Wings <\/em>an \u201cempowering movie,\u201d for a closer look at the genres themselves a deference to prevailing social structures, allowing both to cohere and \u201ccome home\u201d in a socially acceptable manner- a heterosexual relationship.<\/p>\n

From the opening, Mary\u2019s active pluck sets up a familiar binary with Sylvia. Sylvia literally swings onto the frame with David, sitting, and playing music (Wings, <\/em>00:06:48).<\/em> Mary, after upturning her lacy undergarments on the drying line- creating a more risqu\u00e9 association reinforced by a later scene of her changing topless, even if the character herself is not sexual- to get a better look at Jack, and the climbs a high fence to be next to him (Wings, <\/em>00:02:59).<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Despite his rebuffs, she puts an apron on to help fix Jack fix his car (Wings, <\/em>00:04:09). Though Sylvia has her music, Mary can drive a car, and these driving skills land her in the women\u2019s Motor Corps (Wings, <\/em>00:26:20).\u00a0 Slyvia dresses as an older ideal of women with her elaborate curls and ever-present lacy long dresses, whereas Mary\u2019s flapper bob, risqu\u00e9 associations, and later smart uniform indicate she belongs to a newer era.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Though modern, she has a sensitive heart. When Jack drinks himself to incapacity and dallies with duplicitous women on shore leave, too drunk to realize he must report back- or else, court-martial, Mary must save his career (Wings, <\/em>01:07:50)! The scene follows Mary\u2019s point of view, taking long shots of her despair as her attempts at reason don\u2019t work, at one point doused with champagne (Wings, <\/em>01:12:59).<\/p>\n

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(01:10:52)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But through a random kindly old French woman’s intervention of a glamourous dress, Mary uses her revealed sexiness to save Jack (01:13:50-01:18:00). Unfortunately, after putting him to bed, officers barge into the room while she changes. Assuming her waywardness, Mary tearfully but willingly resigns from the military, and the top-billed character does not return for another hour (01:24:00). Mary expresses her femininity in different ways that Sylvia- sexuality, action, and skills- but she remains a girl in all the ways that matter- obeying authority and standing by \u201cher\u201d man despite his lack.<\/p>\n

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(01:18:02)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Wings<\/em>, two plotlines exist. The war plot follows the false love triangle of jealousy and brotherhood(?) that culminates in patriotic tragedy, and other involves our zany rom-com top-billed heroine desperately trying to get the protagonist, and thus implicitly the movie, to notice her. For her efforts, despite Jack not remembering her Paris sacrifice, she gets her desired relationship. Mary also joins the chorus of characters at the end assuring Jack that he shares no guilt in David\u2019s death, which includes David and David\u2019s parents- it\u2019s simply the war\u2019s fault (02:06:34-02:17:28). Instead of focusing on the actions of men that comprise the war, responsibility is taken away from Jack so the prevailing social structure and the type of men they produce needs no critiquing. Jack is a hero. End of story. Heroes must get a girl. Rom-Com Heroines must get their man, no matter how terrible they may be. End of story. Though both Mary and Jack lead different genre plotlines, both the patriotic war movie and the rom-com encourage adherence to the status quo. Mary never questions why she loves Jack at any point. Despite Jack\u2019s dismissiveness towards Mary and deadly jealousy toward David, he gets to go home- by virtue of his \u201cheroism.\u201d By virtue of Mary\u2019s rom-com plotline, she gets her man in the end, despite his previous lack of interest. In the end, there are no possibilities, whether that be more romantic interpretations of Jack and David, or Mary alternatively using her independence and can-do attitude to do literally anything else.<\/p>\n

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The Real Plot of Wings (IMBD.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

Wings.\u00a0<\/em>Directed by William A. Wellman, Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, 1927.<\/p>\n

Poster and photoshoot taken from: https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0018578\/mediaindex\/?ref_=tt_mv_close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note- this is a plot summary for this nearly century old, largely culturally irrelevant movie for context, not analysis. The analysis will begin after this paragraph: You may not have heard of Wings, the 1927 silent, first best picture Oscar-winning film, but you have seen it before. Jack, an all-American boy, pines for aviation and … Continue reading Ladies, is it Desperate to Sign Up for World War I to Get Your Guy? Or is it just Romantically-Comic?: An Analysis of Wings (1927)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4983,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}