This is so fascinating! Interestingly, even when I was picturing Timothee Chalamet's hair for the Joan of Arc comparison it was at a longer, flouncier stage. Is it also that our imaginations are limited when it comes to what it actually looked like for people from the to defy norms and live in their truth? Like we can picture short but not short short?
This! "Our imaginations are limited when it comes to what it actually looked like for people from the past to defy norms...." This is so sharp. Let me follow the thread of your thinking for a bit ....Joan was so unorthodox in many ways -- wearing men's clothes, cutting her hair, having a personal relationship with divine voices (the church did not like this at all) -- but maybe we have a hard time seeing her as defiant both in a historical way and in a way that jars us now. She has become a hero, and so we need to see her that way. Which means that representations of her can't offend our sensibilities or confuse us; if they did we wouldn't be able to heroicize her.
This is such a fascinating exploration of Joan's media presence. I find that a similarr type of uneasiness occurs when depicting a public figure who is disabled. The creator often feels pressured to sanitize an image of disability so that someone doesn't look "too" disabled or "messy" even if these changes compromise the accuracy of a person's embodied experience.
Hi Emily, thanks for your comment. What you are saying is really interesting, and something I hadn’t realized. I’d love to know more. What is this saying about the goal? Are they sanitizing images of disability to somehow appeal to the audience? For fear the viewer will be bothered? For Joan, I am assuming that part of the issue stems from people thinking the thoughts and feelings of the historical figure doesn’t matter much anymore (because she’s dead) - what matters more is what she means to us now. But that wouldn’t be the same case if we are dealing with, say, a disabled person living now.
I think there are two forces at work when altering depictions of disability: 1) the prevalence of an "overcoming narrative" and 2) the desire to make an audience comfortable.
When a disabled person gets publicly noticed, especially for something positive, we feel the need to say "they must not be that disabled" or "they have overcome their disability." But as a blind woman, I can tell you that my blindness is always with me. I have not "overcome" it even if I appear to be successful. So the underlying idea is that success and disability can't seem to coexist. I think we can consider medieval femininity as a kind of disability since women were seen as "failed men."
And yes, if someone is alive, their image is in continual conversation with their reality. I think once they die, they can be more easily co-opted by groups with different agendas.
As a military woman, is Joan a pioneer? Or is it just that she is one of the first iconic women to be depicted? It would be interesting to see how female soldiers from other cultures are shown.
A great book on female soldiers is Pamela Toler’s Women Warriors! She does just what you say - looks at female solidiers from a range of cultures. And, notably, she does not treat Joan (and she talks about why in her preface, if I remember correctly ).
As I’m reading your explanation here, I couldn’t help but think that we (and by “we” I mean humans) seem to have such a narrow idea of what “success” means - and that is true whether we are speaking of physicality or embodiment, of finances, of achievement, etc. Another interesting fact about Joan is that, on some level, she was not a success. Yes, she managed to lead Charles to Reims, but she actually failed militarily in her other endeavors. And yet, now we don’t associate her with failure at all.
If you read the work of @15th-ceturyFeminist here on Substack, you’ll that Joan was not a pioneer. So many other women took up arms to defend their villages, people, castles. I think Joan’s story especially resonated, and continues to resonate, because her mission was so nationalistic, as well as supposedly divinely inspired. But she was also exploited - really used actually - by Charles VII and his advisors (including his mother-in-law Yolanda of Aragon), who recognized Joan’s symbolic capital and took advantage of it.
Yes, I love to expand the idea of human flourishing. I think it allows us to be morre sensitive to each other's limitations, challenges, and motivations. Thank you for the recommended reading!
Loved this!! Thank you Leah!
Thanks for reading, Madeleine!
This is so fascinating! Interestingly, even when I was picturing Timothee Chalamet's hair for the Joan of Arc comparison it was at a longer, flouncier stage. Is it also that our imaginations are limited when it comes to what it actually looked like for people from the to defy norms and live in their truth? Like we can picture short but not short short?
This! "Our imaginations are limited when it comes to what it actually looked like for people from the past to defy norms...." This is so sharp. Let me follow the thread of your thinking for a bit ....Joan was so unorthodox in many ways -- wearing men's clothes, cutting her hair, having a personal relationship with divine voices (the church did not like this at all) -- but maybe we have a hard time seeing her as defiant both in a historical way and in a way that jars us now. She has become a hero, and so we need to see her that way. Which means that representations of her can't offend our sensibilities or confuse us; if they did we wouldn't be able to heroicize her.
Super interesting. Thank you.
This is such a fascinating exploration of Joan's media presence. I find that a similarr type of uneasiness occurs when depicting a public figure who is disabled. The creator often feels pressured to sanitize an image of disability so that someone doesn't look "too" disabled or "messy" even if these changes compromise the accuracy of a person's embodied experience.
Hi Emily, thanks for your comment. What you are saying is really interesting, and something I hadn’t realized. I’d love to know more. What is this saying about the goal? Are they sanitizing images of disability to somehow appeal to the audience? For fear the viewer will be bothered? For Joan, I am assuming that part of the issue stems from people thinking the thoughts and feelings of the historical figure doesn’t matter much anymore (because she’s dead) - what matters more is what she means to us now. But that wouldn’t be the same case if we are dealing with, say, a disabled person living now.
I think there are two forces at work when altering depictions of disability: 1) the prevalence of an "overcoming narrative" and 2) the desire to make an audience comfortable.
When a disabled person gets publicly noticed, especially for something positive, we feel the need to say "they must not be that disabled" or "they have overcome their disability." But as a blind woman, I can tell you that my blindness is always with me. I have not "overcome" it even if I appear to be successful. So the underlying idea is that success and disability can't seem to coexist. I think we can consider medieval femininity as a kind of disability since women were seen as "failed men."
And yes, if someone is alive, their image is in continual conversation with their reality. I think once they die, they can be more easily co-opted by groups with different agendas.
As a military woman, is Joan a pioneer? Or is it just that she is one of the first iconic women to be depicted? It would be interesting to see how female soldiers from other cultures are shown.
A great book on female soldiers is Pamela Toler’s Women Warriors! She does just what you say - looks at female solidiers from a range of cultures. And, notably, she does not treat Joan (and she talks about why in her preface, if I remember correctly ).
As I’m reading your explanation here, I couldn’t help but think that we (and by “we” I mean humans) seem to have such a narrow idea of what “success” means - and that is true whether we are speaking of physicality or embodiment, of finances, of achievement, etc. Another interesting fact about Joan is that, on some level, she was not a success. Yes, she managed to lead Charles to Reims, but she actually failed militarily in her other endeavors. And yet, now we don’t associate her with failure at all.
If you read the work of @15th-ceturyFeminist here on Substack, you’ll that Joan was not a pioneer. So many other women took up arms to defend their villages, people, castles. I think Joan’s story especially resonated, and continues to resonate, because her mission was so nationalistic, as well as supposedly divinely inspired. But she was also exploited - really used actually - by Charles VII and his advisors (including his mother-in-law Yolanda of Aragon), who recognized Joan’s symbolic capital and took advantage of it.
Yes, I love to expand the idea of human flourishing. I think it allows us to be morre sensitive to each other's limitations, challenges, and motivations. Thank you for the recommended reading!