LIBBY LARSEN (b. 1950)Songs From Letters: Calamity Jane to Her Daughter Janey, 1880–1902 (1989)

This chapter studies Libby Larsen’s work. It shows that her forthright, accessible style is flexible enough to allow for a sensitive response to words, and a close identification with the subject matter. Her wide musical tastes are reflected clearly here and she is notably responsive to the inherent rhythms of American pronunciation. Moreover, this chapter shows how ‘Jane’ in Larsen’s songs was caricatured and sentimentalized in popular culture, and how historical facts were distorted. The composer’s programme note informs us that ‘Martha Jane Canary Hickock’ (her real name) wrote these letters to her daughter Janey during the time when the child had been sent to live in a ‘normal’ environment. ‘Calamity’ raised the money to support her by taking on often humiliating and dangerous work in the brutal, uncompromising Wild West.

Retour sur un mythe moderne : Calamity Jane. Une légende de l’ouest américain en lettres et en images

Cet article présente une étude, de type qualitative et descriptive, fondée sur une expérience menée dans le cadre d’une séquence sur l’art épistolaire, avec des élèves de 4e en France. Dans un premier temps, cette séquence, qui s’appuie sur la lecture comparée des Lettres à sa fille de Calamity Jane (1997 et 2007) et de l’album Calamity Jane de Morris et Goscinny (1967), est présentée et, certaines des observations et des productions réalisées à l’égard de sa mise en œuvre en classe sont détaillées. Par la suite, des pistes de bonification théorique pour l’étude du recueil de lettres sont exposées. Ces pistes complémentaires visant l’enrichissement de la séquence initiale s’appuient essentiellement autour des variations énonciatives, des récits de vie entre fiction et vérité et, de l’intégration narrative et graphique de photographies réelles du personnage historique. Cette démarche enrichie est rendue possible par la réédition des Lettres en 2007, mettant en doute l’authenticité du manuscrit, et la sortie depuis 2004 de plusieurs romans graphiques reposant sur la première édition ou la suivante, tels Calamity de Fontaine (2004) et, Martha Jane Cannary de Blanchin et Perrissin (2007, 2009, 2012). Ces œuvres permettent d’étudier avec des élèves la réception du mythe moderne de Calamity Jane dans les pays francophones.

The Blonde Who Knew Too Much

Doris Day was one of the most iconic members of the postwar generation of “girl singers,” such as Rosemary Clooney and Patti Page, who dominated the pop music charts. The chapter traces how her performance of whiteness emerged over the course of her early musical film career, beginning in Romance on the High Seas (1948), continuing in Calamity Jane (1953), and in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Engaging especially with the work of Richard Dyer, the chapter explains how it was precisely Doris Day’s performance of whiteness, mixing a tightly wound inward focus with occasional eruptions of violence and singing, that became so particularly famous and influential.

Hollywood’s Postwar Feminine Masquerades

This chapter examines representations of women and issues of femininity and feminine performance with respect to anxieties about authenticity and passing. A number of Hollywood films featured masculine women who played with categories of masculinity, such as Calamity Jane, Johnny Guitar, Touch of Evil, and Sayonara. Other films, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peyton Place, and All about Eve, implied that women were performing femininity or raised the issue of “passing for normal.” The chapter considers how idealized, overly constructed gender representations in Hollywood films reinforced rather than negated the ambiguity of gender and how femininity itself was suggestively constructed as a passing performance. It explains how Hollywood's images of feminine masculinity lent credence to perceptions that gender categories were breaking down and how representations of ambiguous women in Hollywood films refused to focus on anxiety.