Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-And-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture

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.