Unconditional Surrender ? How feminist vandalism offered us a ‘new’ perspective

Written by Melody House, MSc Applied Gender Studies 

This the fourth and final instalment in our 2019 series of twinned blog posts from students on the class ‘Feminisms: Continuity & Change’, inspired by their work at the Glasgow Women’s Library archive. Here Melody House discusses how the apparent romance of a familiar image has been challenged in a contemporary take on second-wave feminist tactics.

Hailed as one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ is an instantly recognisable image celebrating the end of war. The moment was so beloved, that it inspired a book, ‘kiss-in’ events, and a series of statues which can be found in San Diego, Florida, Michigan, and even Normandy. It has been described as a ‘wonderful’, and ‘cherished’ moment. Yet when told through the lens of ‘#MeToo’, a different narrative emerges. A far more sinister narrative of sexual assault.

'V-J Day in Times Square', photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt: originally published in Life, 1945 (fragment)

Although the story, and its accompanying replicas, have been criticised in the past for glorifying sexual assault, that part of the story has mostly been overshadowed by the romanticised retelling of two ‘perfect strangers’ locked in a ‘passionate embrace’ to celebrate the end of WWII. The reality is far less picturesque. In an interview, Greta Zimmer Friedman (the ‘nurse’ in the photograph) explicitly notes that the kiss was nonconsensual. She describes being grabbed and held in a ‘vice grip’, noting how strong he was. 'It wasn’t my choice to be kissed', she states, adding, 'he took the action. I was just a bystander'. Her story reads like a textbook case of sexual assault. Why, then, has it taken so long to be seen in this way?

'This ad exploits women', Spare Rib, issue 68 (1978), p.11: Glasgow Women's Library archives

On the 19th of February 2019 one of the statues, titled ‘Unconditional Surrender’ by artist J. Seward Johnson, was found with the words ‘#MeToo’ spray painted across the women’s leg. The grafitti went viral, and finally the stories focused on something other than the ‘joyous moment’. #MeToo activism has mostly taken place online in the form of a twitter hashtag. However, by physically tagging the statue with spray paint, the person responsible has harked back to feminist activism of the 80s. 20th Century Feminist magazines, like Spare Rib, would highlight and support similar acts of protest. I am certain part of the success of the protest against the 'Unconditional Surrender' statue was due to the redeployment of this classic feminist tactic. However, the new social media dimension to activism cannot be ignored. By tagging the statue with ‘#MeToo’, the person responsible gave us a way of re-examining this moment of ‘unconditional surrender’ in the context of sexual assault. Re-examining history is a necessary feminist act. History, as they say, is written by the victors. In our patriarchal society, ‘victors’ tend to be men. This is why Zimmer Friedman’s sexual assault was nothing more than a side note in a tale of ‘unbridled joy’.

What shocked me most in the reporting of this event, was how it was continuously framed from the sailor’s (George Mendonsa’s) perspective. Lawrence Verria (et al)’s book inspired by the event is called The Kissing Sailor. Articles talk about Mendonsa’s ‘timeless kiss’. Even Zimmer Friedman describes her role as ‘bystander’ (above). No wonder the sexual assault was an afterthought, when our focus has been on the sailor’s experience. Professor of psychology Nicola Gavey explains that this is due to our cultural understanding of sex acts that privilege the male experience of pleasure (discussed in Gavey’s book Just Sex? The cultural scaffolding of rape, 2019). The result is that the absence of female desire becomes unremarkable to us. The danger of this type of thinking is that we begin to associate a woman’s role in sex as being passive. She becomes a bystander in her own sexual experience. This takes away her agency to refuse an unwanted advance, like a drunk soldier grabbing her in the street. Furthermore, because our attention is focused on the pleasure of the man, we not only dismiss her unpleasurable experience, we deny her an opportunity to express her displeasure because we can only see it through the man’s perspective, who thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Not only that, but we deny her the language to express her displeasure, because we only recognise sexual assault when it is violent and brutal. In the end, her only option is to brush the experience off. Unconditional surrender.

Spray paint images from Sarasota Police Department's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SarasotaPoliceDepartment/posts/2232621080110690

The #metoo era has equipped us with a new way of drawing attention to sexual abuse. However, it was the deployment of a classic form of feminist protest, combined with the modern lens of #metoo, that got this story acknowledged for what it is: a sexual assault. This is an important lesson. We cannot simply ‘point things out’ anymore. We need to combine our criticism with action, like feminist movements in the past. If not, we risk finding ourselves stuck in a culture where a woman recounts her experience of sexual assault, and we thank her for sharing her ‘wonderful story’.

Click here to read Melody House’s second blog, interrogating calls to revive second-wave feminist ‘consciousness raising’.