Ep 69 Flying into History
Pencils&Lipstick podcast ·
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Transcript
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This
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is the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a podcast for creatives, for those who are beginning to be creative or those who have built a business around their creativity. Here, we allow creatives to tell their story about how they got to where they are today. And we give some tips on how to make your creative business better than it was yesterday. Hello, everybody.
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Did you know that you could support the Pencils and Lipstick podcast and help it keep going into 2021 and beyond? And we are over at patreon .com forward slash pencils underscore lipstick. You can find three different levels over there in which you can help keep the show going. Part of the structure of Patreon is that anyone who helps the creative keep going
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in their creativity gets sort of these extra bonuses. These sort of thank yous for being a supporter of that artist or show or whatever it is. I have three different levels over on Patreon for the Pencils and Lipstick podcast and going
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into 2021, I decided that I was going
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to take some time to go back and talk to some of the creatives that came on the show last year and get a little bit deeper about how they survive 2020, what their thoughts were, what they think 2021 will be like, and how they think art contributes to all of this stuff that's going on. So those conversations will not be coming out on the podcast, but they are going to be on Patreon behind the tiered walls over there. They are going to be trickling out fairly
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soon, like next week, I'll start dropping
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the first ones. If you want to get to know the creatives a little bit more and hear a little bit more about their story and how they have handled what's going on in the world, head on over to patreon .com forward slash pencils underscore lipstick and sign up today to help keep the show going. I have the honor today of interviewing Molly Merriman. Molly Merriman wrote a book called Clipped Wings, the Rise and Fall of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, the WASPs, of World War II. Now, there was not much about this history that I knew. It was almost completely brand new to me. And I found that strange because I love history and for a while I was completely addicted to learning about World War II. So I found it interesting that we really don't talk much about the wasps. Now the reason behind that is also very interesting, so I think you're gonna have a really fun time meeting Molly, hearing about all the things she's done, and learning about this book. And the documentary about this book is gonna come out soon, so watch out for it. I think you're gonna have a really good time learning about this, and you might be
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as surprised as I was about a couple things.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome
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back to another episode of the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. I'm really excited to have Molly Merriman on with me today. She is the director of the Center for the Study of Gender
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and Sexuality. It's a really long title. Welcome, Molly, to the show. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for
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having me on your podcast. Thanks. I really wanted to talk to you because I really like this idea of the multifacetedness of people. I don't think that we're created to just do one thing in our life. And I am excited to talk to you because you are part of the university system, the academia, the people we look up to as they know lots of things, but you also do film, you're also or an author. So let's get started a bit, like what came first? Was it academia, was it film, or were they intertwined? Yeah, well, you know, for me, writing and, like writing was first, and then it was through writing that I got into filmmaking. Before going into academia, I was doing a lot of public relations work, because as I think most of your listeners know,
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it's very difficult if you're a creative writer to actually make a living. And so I was writing a lot of poetry and short fiction and then I was doing public relations writing. And as it happened, the company
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I was working for needed a video made and so they asked me to write it and I'd never done anything, but I had always loved film. So I got into that and then discovered
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I really, really loved filmmaking. And so there was a person, Tom Bellman, who I did a sort of a PR
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film with.
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And then when
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we were doing the late night edits on that, I was like, we should do a film together. So we did a documentary together. And then that really bit me.
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And so then I got my PhD and really brought the filmmaking and the writing into it. Wow. So they just asked you to write a screenplay and you're like, yeah, might as well try. Yeah, but it was not good.
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I hope those tapes have disappeared. So you were part of, I guess this was just a small team, you have to write it, you have to edit it, you were kind of just thrown into the lion's den then. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And yeah, the first piece I did was terrible. It was I worked
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for workers' compensation. And so it was this thing of like, you know, how to file a claim. And it was just terrible, absolutely terrible. And then from there, I had switched
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jobs and worked for Big Brothers Big Sisters and decided at that point, because I thought scripted, you know, corporate film was terrible. And so what we did was just sat people down and interviewed them and, and we had a camp that we would take kids to. So we just filmed that. And that's when I realized that the documentary filmmaking bug had me because, you know, it's a different way of writing, like you're not writing words, you're writing with your questions. And I realized there was a real art to that. And I found that I thought that people's own stories were so much more interesting than most of what's conjured up in fiction. Yeah, yeah, so getting people to tell their own story, though, is quite the art. So when you're in there, maybe not with kids, were kids a little bit easier to pull their stories out as they're interviewing? Yeah, they are, they are. they don't have and and so you know they're not worried about the camera they could care less and and yeah it worked really well. I love that that kids are really they're like what humans could are supposed to be without you know all the societal pressure. Yeah it's like we break them it's like you know every kid is a writer every kid is an artist every kid is is a singer and and and we just you know break that we say you have to be this good you have to do this. And, and, and so we just choke the creative spirit out of most people.
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That's terrible. And now I'm, I'm hoping with a little bit of encouragement, whoever listens to this will be encouraged that you can, you can go back to what you wanted to be as, or do as a kid. But as you were, you, you sort of found that love for film in letting other people tell their story, but are you going back to do your PhD at the same time? So are you reentering academia at that point? I did, and that's actually how Clipped Wings, the rise and fall of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, came about, because Tom and I decided to do a film about the Women Air Force Service Pilots, and at that time, it was, that was in the early 90s, and there was talk of women in combat, and then the Gulf War, and, you know, they'd realized that women pilots were doing some different things. And what had happened at that time was that, well, there were a couple of things. One is that President Clinton declassified
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a whole bunch of World War II documents, which included the significant amount of documents about the loss program, which was considered top secret. There were aspects of the program where they were actually studying in World War II the experiences of these pilots because they thought it mimicked combat more than anything else. And because these women would pull targets that live ammunition was fired at. So it really
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was pretty dangerous. And wanted to see, now we look back on World War II as though, oh, we were always gonna win, but we thought we were gonna be invaded. And both Japan and Germany had much better militaries than we did. And so our war department was studying what would happen if we involved women in the military as a defensive force.
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And so that was one thing that was happening. The other thing was that, because they were talking again about women in the military, the WASP veterans, they were like, hey, remember us, you forgot about us four years ago. And so we heard about an event that was happening in Ohio, where they were going to honor them. And we thought, let's go and talk to them. And so I did, you know, extensive interviews with them. And around that same time, I was getting into my coursework and looking for a topic, and I was thinking of some other topics, and I was talking to the head of the program, and I was telling him about this film, and he looked at me, and he's like, why are you doing two things? That should be your dissertation. And I was like, oh, okay, and it was, you know, probably the best advice I've gotten
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in my life is, you know, that what was sort of ironic about it is we never did get the funding to make the movie. So we, we had made a short film, a teaser film, but we couldn't get completion money. And so the book became, you know, what was out there and, and not the movie. Wow. Well, good advice then to get that dissertation all written out. So
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when you're, when you go out, you're talking about funding and things as you're doing documentaries, is that primarily how you got
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the film and got, I mean, what does that all involve with funding? You decide that you want to do something, you and your partner, Tom,
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but what avenues do you have to go through in order to get that done? Yeah, you know, it's a real challenge. And I think that this has been, for me, one of the more rewarding aspects of being an academic because, you know, as it happened, Tom only ever made one other movie, you know, because we kind of went our different ways. I moved somewhere else and all of that. And funding to make films is just overwhelming. And what I was able to do was to basically utilize some internal monies and then also sort of, as a scholar, there's certain money pools you can do. And I do really small films. like they're big budget, you know, stunning graphics films. They're very basic, ethnographic, simple documentaries, and they're not that expensive to make. And
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I've gotten to the point now where I don't have any filmmaking partners except for the newest film I'm working on. And so that way, it was just like funding my own travel,
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you know, upgrading my equipment, and then you're just talking thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
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And so that made it very possible. And that's how I've been able to make nine films is that I do most of the work myself. Okay, so you've gone into like, you script the interviews, you interview, you film. Do you handle the equipment as well? Yeah. Wow, and then you edit? Yeah, I edit and what I'll do is I'll,
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you know, depending on the project, like sometimes I'll bring in some additional cameras. Like I did a film once that looked at combine harvesters, those giant farm equipment. There's a demolition derby of those. And it's hilarious. I think that's, you know, sort of one of the more fun films I've ever made. It's just, you know, a blast. And for the day of the event, I found about, I think it was like I had 10 people that joined me to do all sorts of different filming. But again, being at a university, I was able to go to our film program and bring in some faculty and bring in some students, and all the equipment was provided because those are the things that really raise the budgets of films, is paying for the crew and
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paying for the equipment. And in that case, it was, let's find people who want to be part of a film that appears on public broadcasting.
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Yeah, what a great opportunity if you're just a student at the university and you get to be part of that project. I wouldn't even care that my name's on it. I'd be like, I get to do this and learn, like actually learn in the field. Yeah, yeah. And it really does provide a lot of opportunities. And doing a project now.
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I'm the research
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director for Queer Britain, which is a national museum in the UK. It's the National LGBT Museum. And because of COVID, there was a project I was supposed to have started, I was going to take some students to England and, and have them do some interviews with me this this past summer. And of course, everything got
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canceled. So what I decided to do was I looked into the technology we're using right now, Zoom. And so we're just launching a project that's called Queer Pandemic. And we're, We're interviewing people all throughout the UK about their experiences with the pandemic. And we're using Zoom as the platform. So I've got students here at Kent State that are interviewing people in London, in Belfast, all around the UK.
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And it's a great opportunity because I'm showing them that you can still do field research, even though we don't have a field that we're walking in. Yeah, I think that is one of the good things of the shutdown, at least, like technology has made us, well, the shutdown has made us rethink things and technology has helped us be able to rethink things and do stuff. I think it's great if you're not super sick that you can do a teleconference with your doctor, maybe not take your cough into the waiting room. You know, you can interview, I mean, I'm in Virginia. I think you're in Ohio.
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Yes, yes. So we can do these interviews and I think it's great. So you say that your film style is more oral history, more, is it because of those kids, a big brother, big sister, that you really saw that as a way to tell stories on your film? I think that definitely showed me the potential. and then I started, like I always loved documentary films. Like I was that geeky kid, you know, like watch documentaries. And so I always liked them. And I realized that the more authentic they were, the more I liked them. And then, you know, when I started doing my own films, you know, what I realized was that when you spend time with people, when you get comfortable with them, like that, you know, the journalistic style definitely has limitations for revealing the truth.
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And really is, you know, so I do sort of a combination of oral history and ethnography and ethnography is immersion. It's about, you know, getting to know people. So like typically what I do is I'll, about a year before I start really filming, I start inserting myself in the community that I'm going to film. And I, you know, I really get to understand like, who do I need to talk to?
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What are the real issues? And I get people to trust me. And then, you know, then the camera comes out. And I'll sometimes have like 100 hours of footage for an hour long film. But it really is like getting people comfortable and getting to the truth. And then I let that footage tell me what the story should be. So not like going in like, you know, I mentioned the Combine Demolition Derby film. Like with that film, what had happened was I'd seen it. I live in a rural area and I'd gone to the fair and saw it. And I had all these questions. It was like, well, aren't these expensive? How did this come about? Like, you know, it just was so quirky that I wanted to know. And so I went in and I really didn't have a story to tell. I had questions. And then what I realized when I got into talking, you know, to these guys, and they were all guys, was that it really existed because of the collapse of family farms and the industrialization of agriculture, because what they were crashing was the older combines, which are still large, but now everybody has these massive hundreds of thousands of dollars of
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farm equipment machines.
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And so these were just sitting in fields rotting, and where there was the decision to do it. And then, you know, I realized that this also was a story about masculinity, because in hanging out with the guys, and if I would have just sat them down and interviewed them, this never would have come to light, but in spending like almost every weekend for a year with them, I realized that they had these very intimate, caring relationships. You
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know, these were guys that if I would have said, tell me about your intimate caring
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relationships, they would have been like, oh, you know, I play tricks on my friend, but you realize that they really loved each other. And, you know, and that for these guys, like, you know,
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doing something like working on equipment
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was a way for them to connect and have time together. And so it really was, you know, it's, I think a very sweet story. like it's there's the spectacle part of it but it also is a story about men and a culture that's uh i think often ignored and disregarded and and kind of left behind right for us or maybe even misunderstood i mean i think i love history and ancient history and men used to get to go out and do a lot of things together and they're kind of different you know men are just different sometimes and you think like, oh, why do you have to go do that? You destroy something. And it's not until you look into it that you really see it. It's just the relationship, the way that they interact with each other
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that I, as a woman, do not really understand all the time. But yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So do you find it better to go in just with questions or is it sometimes better to have a storyline when you're going into it with the film idea? Do you, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, it really just depends on the project. And the film that I'm currently working on, which I'm back now to working with the filmmaking team and it's a documentary called Coming Home that is, and this time I'm not the director, Matia Corral is the director and the rest of the filmmaking team is out in Los Angeles. us. And what had happened was, she and her team came across my book. And for, for a long time, they've been raising money and, you know, trying to do a documentary about the Women Air
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Force Service pilots. And when they interviewed me, I realized that they were raising the questions that I had wanted to do in our film like 20 some years ago. And I thought, well, you know, maybe I should get more involved with the team. And and they wanted my involvement. So in this case, we definitely are working with a script and a story, and this is gonna be one of those much more expensive productions. So there's gonna be some animation, there's gonna be voice actors, there's gonna be recreations. And it's gonna be more like the type of historical documentary that many of us are used to seeing on television. You know, one of the key parts of my book that we're going to work into the movie is
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the congressional hearings. So what happened with the WASP was every branch of the military created women's auxiliaries during World War II. And at that point in time, the Air Force was not a standalone, it was the Army Air Force. And yet the WASPs simply were Air Force. And so there was the WAC program, Army Corps, and they realized that they couldn't fit these pilots into that because there were certain age expectations and job expectations. You know, it was very much this unique standalone where the women simply were pilots. And, you know, in World War II, being a pilot was more dangerous than being a Marine. And, you know, there's that characterization, you know, the fly boy, it was the hottest, sexiest,
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most masculine thing that could be done. So to have this group of women that was doing it was really defying those gender expectations of the military and the war. And there also were some assumptions. And interesting that these assumptions still hold true and still control our lives. Like, for example, initially, the general of the Army Air Forces, when they were proposing the program, they didn't think they had to get congressional approval because there was a law that said that all persons who
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were pilots
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could become, you know, like, they could be militarized and named, you know, appointed as officers without going through any kind of process, as long as you were a licensed pilot with a certain number of hours. Well, what they realized after a couple of years and working with that assumption was that because we've never had an equal rights amendment, when you go back to constitutional law, women, and this is true to this day, are not persons. Oh my gosh.
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Yeah, we're not legally persons. Like it would take ERA to correct that. So what we have are a variety of congressional laws that have sort of, you can think of it as temporarily changed our status. And primarily that's the Civil Rights Act, which didn't come along until 1964. And by the way, something I often tell my students is that the Civil Rights Act was intended to be about civil rights for African -Americans. It was to update the 14th and 15th Amendment. And the only reason that women got thrown into it was that there were some Southern senators who didn't want it to pass. And they thought, well, these Northern senators, they don't care at all about race. They don't have the so -called race problem like we do in the South, but they do care about gender. And so if we add sex to it, they'll vote it down. So in committee, they put that in. And that is actually, you know, the primary basis of why women have anti -rights at all have to do with, you know, it was intended to be this political subterfuge to deny African -Americans their rights. You know, so as a consequence with the story of the loss, they ended up having to go to Congress to say let's militarize these pilots. And these congressional hearings are fascinating
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because they denied it. even though these women had been providing an essential service for several years, and even though the Air Force was begging, you know, not to do it, they're like, you know, if you shut this program down, we don't have any men who could fly these planes, because, you know, the women were trained to fly everything. So if you finish the WASP training program, you could fly a fighter, you could fly a bomber, you could fly a cargo plane. Men were brought in, they were put into a very specific channel, so it's like you're a fighter pilot, period. You don't know then how to fly something that has four engines.
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And there ended up being
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backlogs of planes after they ended the program, and it did impact the war effort. And those were the documents that until Clinton declassified them, people didn't know about. So my book was the first that was able to show that side of things. Did the WASP even know why they were shut down? No, and that's actually one of the reasons, besides my program advisor telling me I should
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write about it, that I decided to write about it. Because when we were interviewing them, they had said, if you can find out why this happened, because they were spread out. It wasn't like there was a collective place where all the WASP were. What would happen is, you know, one would get sent to like Wright Air Force Base in Ohio, another one would get sent, you know, down to a base in Florida. Sometimes there would be several working together, but they were spread out on a mission -based way. And so when the hearings were happening, they really didn't know a whole lot about it. And they just assumed everything was going to be fine until they got the orders telling them to go home. Wow.
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And there was a lot of misinformation out there. You know, a lot of them thought that maybe, maybe the Air Force really didn't want them because around the same time their bill was coming forward, Hap Arnold, the general of the Army Air Force was already pushing to have the Air Force be a standalone, which then happened in, it was either 47 or 48 right after the war, that they became a standalone. So there was some thought that, well, maybe we were the sacrificial lamb. The media had portrayed that there were sort of catfights, that sexist, you know, thing that we, you know, that's conspired. There were catfights between, there were two sections of the loss program. One was the ferrying division and the rest was the training.
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And so there were these stories that the fighting between these two women was so strong that the Army Air Force had to end it. And it's yeah, it's such a ridiculous idea because you know, we know that like George
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Patton and and Eisenhower didn't get along Yeah, and it's oh, well, we're just not gonna fight in Europe anymore because they don't get along. I can't get along Well, does the Congress say like what
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their issue was? Was it pure sexism? Were they afraid that really the American people were we're gonna like the optics of it? It's that that's a really good question and and it's it's you know, it's some of both and you know, primarily what happened was that the timing of the bill was sort of bad because there had been when you look at the
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The women in the Navy the women in the Marines the women in the army all of their bills went forward in 1942 and in 1942, that's a time period when we're still losing most battles and, you know, it's very much a crisis. And anything that the military was asking for, Congress was like, you know, sort of a blank check. Yeah, yeah, you know, do it, do it, do it. Well, 1944, you know, there still is a lot of death that's going to happen. There still are some vicious battles. There's still no idea of when the war is going to happen. Like, I don't think most people projected in a year's time it was going to be over. But they did know the European campaign was going to be over. They knew that was was winding down that D -Day had happened. And and that was going well, they hadn't been the Battle of the Bulge yet. So they thought everything was fine with Europe. And so one factor was that then what also was happening is because being a pilot was so dangerous, pilots only had to do well, the entire air crew only to do a certain number of missions. And when they met that cap, they got sent home. And so there were starting to be by 1944, these men, including pilots coming home. There also were a large group of men who had been, they never had to go to combat because they were identified as cadets. And so they were just waiting to be replacements. Well, early on was when it was so devastating, the air wars. By 1944, we have better planes, we've achieved air superiority. Obviously, there still are combat fatalities, but it's nothing like that, you know, we're desperate, we're going to have to throw anybody into a cockpit that we can. So these guys were going to get released from the cadet program, and they were going to be assigned to the invasion of Japan. And they didn't want that. They were like, wait, I'm getting paid to be here in the United States. I've got a girlfriend. I've got a nice life here. And they're saying that they're going
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to throw me at the Pacific, you know, campaign, which is even more bloody than what we've been experiencing. I'm going to write my congressman. And so what they started to do was to use the WASP as this reason why they should stay as cadets. And they were like, well, we, you know, why are we letting these women fly these planes when we're here?" And was a really illogical argument because these men couldn't do that. They didn't have the training and they didn't have the experience. And the Army Air Forces kept saying that. When Congress was like, hey, listen to these guys, the Army Air Force was like, you don't get it. These guys can't do this. It would take us more than a year to train them. We've got to keep this going. And then these guys got a lobbying group and they started lobbying the media and and so what they did was they managed to Really demonize the wasp and to say, you know We have these patriotic men that want to serve their country and these these glamour Fixated women who are in it to have nice uniforms and to have boys in every airfield Who don't care about the country are doing this Wow Congress, you know, and it was it was very much sexism. It was very much this, you know, you know And then there's numbers of Congress who say things like well, I don't let my wife drive a car Why are we letting these women fly planes? Yes, of course Well, and what is that? Like this is why there's sometimes when people get together in a group So I'm like, are actually lobbying for this? Are you lobbying for the opposite?
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like so you get rid of the WASP program and these guys that don't want to go over obviously gonna go over because yeah, the Like, what were
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they thinking?
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I know, I know. They should have just kept quiet. Yeah, yeah, and it was really damaging. And, you know, and I think, you know, the other thing that still holds true in my book that I talk about that sadly
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is still part of Congress is Congress often votes on things they know nothing about. And, you know, and in the same way
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that like the Civil Rights Act bill, most people didn't read it. Most senators didn't know that they'd added sex, you know, into the mix. And and so people didn't read it. And and people didn't pay attention to the testimony because you had all the top military people saying this is going to be damaging. This is this is going to hurt the war effort. And, you know, and they would say things like when when, you know, members of Congress said, well, I don't let my wife drive a car. they would say, well, let's look at the safety record of the women and the WASH program had a significantly lower crash rate, lower death rate, more deliveries on time, like their record was better than the men and so you couldn't say that they weren't capable of doing it, they were actually better. Wow, I'm thinking of all the things that have been pushed backwards because of that. That's terrible because, you know, among the things that happened was, you know, Congress basically then said, we're not militarizing them and we're not, we're ending it immediately. So then what happened, which is really tragic, you know, these women, you know, there
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were 38 of them that gave their lives. There were some who were injured and lived with lifelong injuries. They didn't get
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the VA bill. You know, they didn't get to participate in the lifelong benefits that veterans had. And then one of the things that many of them that I talked to had found seriously damaging was that they had got in with the idea that, you know, we're pilots. Like you had, like to become a, if you're a man, you didn't have to be a pilot to be, to become a pilot. Like the military would train you. The WASP, you had to be a pilot and you had to have a certain number of flying hours and that the number changed So they did it privately and then joined. Yeah. Yeah, so out of their own pocket there Yeah, and that's that's why they probably were better pilots They had more experience and then they had hoped that you know Many of them wanted to stay as as pilots and to have a military career there. Others thought this would be the door opening because there were a lot of weird rules regarding flying that were
SPEAKER_02
00:35:17
in play in the 1930s,
SPEAKER_00
00:35:20
1940s. And
SPEAKER_02
00:35:21
so they thought, well, I
SPEAKER_00
00:35:23
could become a commercial pilot if I proved myself as a military pilot. Like for example, one of the strange ones is that the FAA, the Federal Aeronautics Commission, they had a rule that women couldn't fly when they were menstruating. And their reason, and of course it's not a factual reason, is they believed that the loss of blood would be so extreme that when you went up into high altitudes, you could lose consciousness. Oh my gosh. That and we still hear that as women, that not your best when you're on your period and that you're more emotional, all of these things that are just patently untrue.
SPEAKER_00
00:36:09
So the FAA had a rule that you had to ground yourself when you were menstruating. Well, the WASPs had this lovely story about when they trained in Sweetwater, Texas, they had a doctor, a military doctor that was assigned to them, and they all referred to him as this lovely Southern gentleman. Well, he didn't want to broach the subject of menstruation, and so he had shared with them via, I think, a memo, you know, that you're supposed to do this. And then he assumed they were doing it. Well, at a certain point, there was someone in D .C. that was like, hey, how's that going? And, and he realized that nobody, you know, it was like, I guess no one's menstruating. And so he reported that back. And then there was a person like a statistician who decided, well, we can show, you know, when they were, we're going to look at, you know, their, their flying performance and days off and all of this.
SPEAKER_00
00:37:08
And they realized that they couldn't show anything. So as a consequence, like that data got the FAA to change its rules. Oh, well that's one good thing. Yeah. You know, but sadly for the women who thought, you know, this will be my entry into being a commercial air pilot, because they weren't militarized, they had no official record that they served as pilots. And pilots were given these cards, you know, that was, you know, sort of when you got your discharge papers, you also got a certification of how many hours you flew and what you were capable of flying. And these women who were more capable and had won more hours than almost any men
SPEAKER_02
00:37:53
that were
SPEAKER_00
00:37:54
in the Air Force didn't get those certification cards. And then there wasn't much known about the program. So they would go to airlines and say, I want to be, and they'd get laughed out. It was like, you're not a pilot, you know, yeah, you know, we're gonna do it, you know, you didn't do that go away How frustrating? Yeah, how did this not make you mad as you? I
SPEAKER_00
00:38:19
Was very mad. It was it was really outrageous, you know to realize what was done to them Yeah, you know and like the GI Bill which provided education which provided home loans they weren't eligible for any of that and And and then when the when the Air Force became a separate standalone Congress, there were still members of Congress several years later that had been part of of the the body that overturned, you know, lost militarization. They made sure that there was language in there that said that women could could enter
SPEAKER_02
00:38:54
the Air Force because that by then we'd already had the Armed Services Act that extended military
SPEAKER_00
00:39:00
service for women in peacetime, but they specifically said that women couldn't fly planes. And so then what happens is from the 1940s up until the 1970s, no women are flying military planes because they weren't allowed. They typically said they can't. And then in the 1970s, because that's when there's the second wave of feminism and, you know, the issues of women entering the workforce become in the forefront. And there were women who began petitioning the Air Force Academy to come in and be pilots. And that's when the WASP sort of came out of the woodwork again. Like most of them had been just separate and they'd been made to feel ashamed of their service and so they just kept quiet about it. But there started to be debates again about women aren't capable of flying airplanes. And so the WASP actually sort of came out of the shadows to support this next generation of women and to say, we did it. And so they testified before Congress about the women in the Air Force Academy. And then as a consequence of that, it was decided to retroactively have a bill to militarize them. And it was debated. In the 1970s, there still were very aggressive debates. And the Veterans Administration, they literally testified that it would sully the good name of veterans to allow these women to be called veterans. There were a number of military advocacy groups that testified that these women should not have that. And then, interestingly enough, one of the people who I thought gave the best testimony is the son of Henry Hap Arnold, the general. And his son was, I a colonel in the Air Force at time, and his dad, you know, had died, you know, before the 1970s, but he testified, and he basically said, like, tell me how this woman who flew this plane, who died in service doing her mission, is less important than this guy over here that spent the entire war as a clerk in Colorado. You know, like, how, how can you say this and, you know, and I think that testimony, you know, really, you know, flipped the, the members of Congress and they did extend veterans benefits and status to the women, but by this point, you know, the women were, you know, in their fifties and sixties and so it wasn't like they could use this and go to college or buy a house, you know, they had houses, you know, so it was like this really low stakes thing. There really wasn't much left with the bill, with the exception of medical care, you know,
SPEAKER_00
00:42:06
so they did buy them for that. But then interestingly enough, just a couple of years ago, there was a refusal of burial of a wasp in Arlington Cemetery. And so, and this is under the Obama administration, that once again, you know, the Arlington Cemetery is the Army's cemetery, you know, they were in the Army. And, you know, and by Arlington rules, you know, anyone who served in the Army is qualified and, you know, and there are rules about do you get buried in the ground versus having your ashes in turn. But they, this family of a lost veteran, they refused to inherit the ashes and basically said, oh no, that was like this retroactive thing and it really didn't mean anything. And that we're, you know, having the war on terror spaces of a premium in Arlington. And so we really just can't do it.
SPEAKER_00
00:43:09
And fortunately at this point, there were, it was a bipartisan group of women in Congress, Republicans and Democrats, some of whom themselves had served in the military, who then led a push to get Arlington to change their mind on that. But it had to be a campaign again. And so like, each step of the way, even now, when women or the families of these women try to get access to the veterans benefits, they're told, well, we didn't mean that, you we really didn't mean that, you know, and you sustain fight. Wow, that's so sad that it's like 70 years later and we're still fighting that. And interesting how the son of the general, he clearly was very impressed by these women, if he has even told his son about them. So he must have been very frustrated, and yet Congress, who, I mean, in the end, they're just sitting in their chairs, quite safe, you know, don't listen to this general who says, I need these women, I don't care what you think about, I don't care about your sexism, I need these women.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:24
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he was, he was very impressed with them. And, you know, and initially he didn't think, and he actually says that, He gives a speech at the, it was the last graduation of the WASP trainees, and he acknowledges in that speech, he says that, you know, when I first heard that, he referred to it as a young slip of a girl could command a B -17 bomber, I didn't believe it. And so what he did when there was a,
SPEAKER_02
00:44:55
she ended up heading up the WASP program, Jackie Cochran, She was a very experienced pilot and she actually stayed not in the military, but after the war, she was a test pilot of jets. She, along Chuck Yeager, were breaking sound barriers and breaking all of those records. He did that as a member
SPEAKER_00
00:45:16
of
SPEAKER_02
00:45:16
the military. She did that as a private pilot hired by the manufacturers. She was this incredible pilot. She was also very wealthy.
SPEAKER_00
00:45:29
She was an orphan, but she managed to create this cosmetics industry that was very, very successful. That funded her excursions as a pilot in the 1930s. She did those races and all of that. And she was in this social circle that allowed her to interact with Eleanor Roosevelt and generals and all of that. So she'd gotten the ear of the general and said, you know, you need pilots. I know all these amazing women who were competing in these races, were doing these things. And what he did was he sent her to England because in England, And they had the ATA, which was sort of their version of a ferrying unit, and they were having women do that work. Now that becomes a little bit more interesting because those women were actually flying in combat situations, because this is when Germany is coming in and bombing England. So if you're ferrying an airplane, you might get attacked by a German plane. And so they were doing that work. And what General Arnold said is, select a group and go over there and show us what you can do. And so when she sent back the first report, he was like, I'm calling you back.
SPEAKER_00
00:46:48
You know, we're gonna do this. Yeah, send them into the more dangerous area. Just let me see if you survive and then I'll free you. Yeah, if you're not good, maybe my problem. No, oh man, humans are weird. So is that, so this is Clipped Wings, your book, The Rise and the Fall of Women Air Force Service Pilots, The Wasp of World War II. So, and that is the, the Coming Home is the film that you're working on, on bringing their story into film. But was that, researching Clipped Wings, was that how you really got involved in wanting to validate minority voices? or was that already part of your book, your work? You know, I think it really crystallized that that's what I was going to do, because when you get into that congressional testimony and just realize it's absurd, what they're saying is so absurd,
SPEAKER_00
00:47:47
but their power allows that to make determinations and to realize that the stupidity of Congress in the 1940s was impacting, you know, my life in the 1990s because, you know, at that point in time, you know, women were the minority in higher education, you know, very few faculty
SPEAKER_02
00:48:06
were women, you know, discrimination is a pattern that extends into all of our professions.
SPEAKER_00
00:48:14
And yeah, I think when I, when I realized,
SPEAKER_02
00:48:16
like, how much uncovering injustice has mattered to me. And definitely with my filmmaking, more than my writing, although all of my writing also deals with inequalities and issues related to race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. But with films in particular, and I think this is why I decided to make these small movies that, and by small I just mean like low budget films that really allow people to present themselves, is that, you know, I realized that, you know, as an academic, as a filmmaker, as a
SPEAKER_00
00:48:52
writer, I could reach more people than the people who I'm interviewing can. And that particularly with filmmaking, you're giving voice to people. You people get to see their faces, hear their voices. And I think, like, when I write off of my films, and I'm sort of transcribing and quoting, it doesn't fully capture the energy of the person, whereas, you know, the films do. And you know, you see their passion, you see their, you see who they are. And, you know, like you'd said at the beginning, you know, about the totality of people, you know, there were so many different things. And I think that film can capture that. Yeah, and probably your background as an academic and maybe even having the resources to research or really the know -how sometimes, Sometimes we have an inkling that if this isn't fair this must come from somewhere, but we're not really sure how to Get the proof of it. So maybe that helps you think a little bit in like Validating these these feelings we have a deep inkling like this is this is absurd. Why is society like this? They're like, oh it goes all the way back because the FAA doesn't think you should fly with you
SPEAKER_00
00:50:04
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right I really agree with you I saw, I love how you have merged these two. So what, what other films have you done? And, and I know you say like low budget films, but your films have been on PBS. They have been through, you know, can people still find them with this day and age of Netflix and all that? Where can people find all of your films? I have a Vimeo channel. Okay. If you, you know, just enter into Vimeo and enter my name, spell it right, the last name has a Y in it.
SPEAKER_00
00:50:37
You know, you can find most of my films that, yeah, it's everything except like ones that are just coming out that aren't available because typically what I do is I'll get them broadcast somewhere and I'll show them at academic conferences and, you know, and then I make them available. And so in terms of topics, the very first film that Tom and I did together
SPEAKER_02
00:51:00
was on drag queens, you know, female illusionists. And then from there, I did a couple films dealing with race. One looked at racial segregation in the North because, you know, the assumption always is that, you know, because the South blatantly had the signs that said, you know, and worse things. The North didn't, but you still had separate drinking foundings. You still knew which
SPEAKER_02
00:51:25
bathrooms not to use. And so we interviewed people about their experiences. More recently, I did a film that looked at prisoner re -entry,
SPEAKER_00
00:51:35
and was people, African -Americans who'd been in the federal system for drug
SPEAKER_02
00:51:40
crimes, many of whom were serving life
SPEAKER_00
00:51:42
sentences for
SPEAKER_02
00:51:43
drugs. In the Obama era, this of course was all canceled under the current administration, but in the Obama era, there were efforts to look at these cases and look at if it was violent versus non -violent crime and then began to let
SPEAKER_00
00:52:00
people out on probation. And I connected with a group who actually had reached out to me because they'd seen my other film, but it was actually the federal judges and prosecutors that reached out to me and said, we've got this program and we're trying to get people who are incarcerated to trust us, because what they have to do to be eligible for this program is they have to agree that when they're released, there'll be greater scrutiny. You know, we're going to have programs for them, but we're also going to be monitoring them. And a lot of people don't trust us. And they, you and why would they? Because they put in prison for a life sentence.
SPEAKER_00
00:52:40
And we're saying, hey, trust us now. And a lot of them, you know, worried that like, oh, this is just setting me up because I'm getting really close and they just want me to stay in longer. And so what they said was, can you do a film that looks at this program so that we can start showing it to people and their families and maybe they'll trust it? And so what I said was, yeah, I'd love to, but you have to let me have complete freedom with what's done. And I'm gonna talk to the people in the program and they're gonna tell me how to do it, not you. I thought for sure they were gonna be like, well, bye,
SPEAKER_00
00:53:16
but they trusted me. And it totally focused on the people who were in this one class. And I spent like nine months with those people and did that film. I did a film on sex worker rights where I actually filmed out in San Francisco because of stigmatizing and also the criminalization of sex work. San Francisco was one of the places that had a community where sex workers were willing to talk to me on camera. And you know, when you think about like whenever you see stories about sex workers, their identities these are usually hidden and all of that. And was like, well, I don't, you know, I want people to look in their eyes and to see that these are human beings. And I did a documentary that looked at activism within the sex worker community, particularly related to ending violence and the murder of sex workers. And then more recently,
SPEAKER_00
00:54:10
I've been doing short films for Queer Britain that are, we've been doing video -based oral histories of LGBTQ people in the UK. That's quite the extensive resume you have of all different aspects. I love that. So you're involved with coming home and you have your students right now working with Queer Britain. Do you know what your next project might be or do you think you're just full enough right now with those things? You know, the thing I, you know, I think, like, for the next year, I'm pretty full. And you know, what I'm thinking about doing is actually exploring a new topic of discrimination that I've never looked at, which is animal rights. And so I'm thinking about doing a documentary that looks at farm animals and farm animals. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that either.
SPEAKER_00
00:55:04
But that's interesting. Well, we will keep an eye on you for sure, because all of these things sound really interesting. Again, I want to tell people that your book, which you said was published in the 90s, but it's come back around, correct? Yeah, yeah, we were able to, my press, New York University Press, they have what they call classics editions. And I was very fortunate that the book always stayed in press, which is really unusual, you know, that books just, if their sales don't make it, they just go away. And it always stayed in press, but we felt it needed some updating. And so the bulk of the book hasn't changed, but we did add a new prologue to talk about, because when I first wrote the book, women were still not allowed to fly in combat. There's been a lot of changes with with women in flight in general. And then for The Wasp, I wanted to talk about what happened with Arlington and the problems with burials. So there is a new prologue to it, but it's now been released as one of their classic editions. That's amazing, congratulations on that.
SPEAKER_00
00:56:14
But I think it's a really important story to understand. I if anyone listens to my podcast, I am passionate about telling people that they have a story and you just need your way of telling it,
SPEAKER_02
00:56:27
whether it's writing or film or painting even. But really, I've been thinking lately about our grandparents' stories. And because we live in a society where we're really kind of separated from each other, we no longer live next door, even the oral histories can get really lost, even if you sort of remember what your grandma said, but
SPEAKER_00
00:56:46
it's just not like it was 100, 200, 300 years ago. in different cultures today that aren't America, where you heard your grandmother telling you the same story over and over again until it was ingrained in you. You knew where she grew up, or what she did, or what she faced. And I think it's really important to understand what women, our grandmothers went through, and how it kind of set things back or set the stage for
SPEAKER_02
00:57:14
what's going on today. This sounds like a fascinating book. I want to tell the title again, Clipped Wings, The Rise and Fall of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, The Wasps of World War II. And then to be
SPEAKER_02
00:57:28
on the lookout for Coming Home, which is your film
SPEAKER_00
00:57:30
that's going to be coming out. Yeah, it's a little bit slow down the production of that, but... It's going down everything. In the meantime, we can read the book and I'll put the links to the Vimeo account and and you guys can find Molly Merriman and as she says it's with a Y if you just look her up on Google quite honestly she's right there but thank you so much for coming on I've learned so much it's been fascinating talking to you. Oh thank you it's it's been wonderful talking to you and I I'm glad I've now come across your podcast because it's it's really good but I love the creative energy of it. Oh, thank you so much. You're gonna make me blush. Hey, you're still listening. Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you're listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show? It would really help the Pencils
SPEAKER_02
00:58:33
& Lipstick podcast get out into the world. and if you're enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well.
SPEAKER_02
00:58:42
If you wanna find out more about me, you can head over to katcaldwell .com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one -on -one coaching information and information on my Creative Writing Community membership group. If you're looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market, and all the things that go into being an author these days, check out the membership group. There is a 14 free day trial that you can try it out, get into the masterminds, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.