liz_marcs | When the victim tied to the train tracks was a man...

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When the victim tied to the train tracks was a man...

Sometimes you overhear something so strange (in this case, two theater majors talking in the women's locker room at the gym) that you think, "This can't possibly be true."

Yet, something about that thing overheard compels you to check it out for yourself. If it's not true, it's just two college kids who misheard something in class.

If it is true, however, well...

And then when you do a little digging and discover (to your utter and complete surprise) that it's true, you honestly don't know what to think about it.

I'm sure there's someone on my FList who can take this information and run with it. By run with it, I mean writing a well-thought out, cogently argued essay about feminism, and the constant infantalization of women in the popular press and entertainment, and society's insistence on hiding a woman's power from herself.

While my natural sympathies certainly lie in that direction, I'm not nearly thoughtful enough or deep enough to even begin composing an essay like that to change hearts and minds, even while showcasing "Exhibit A" right here on this journal.

Instead, I'm reduced to this: o_O

And possibly this: >_<

Everyone knows that all great clichés start somewhere (just watch Casablanca sometime and you'll see what I mean).

The eponymous "helpless girl tied to the train tacks by the mustache-twirling villain and rescued by the studly hero and then they live happily ever after," it goes without saying, is no different.

But what if I told you that in the first recorded instance of this cliché appearing in the U.S. the victim tied to the train tracks was a man, and the studly hero who saves the victim at the very last minute was a woman?

After all, images from The Perils of Pauline and Rocky & Bullwinkle and approximately a gazillion other examples are so ingrained in our culture and our subconscious that it's nearly impossible to imagine this is true.

That's okay if you don't believe me. I didn't believe it either when I heard it.

And if you're like me, you want proof.

If that doesn't convince you, how about a playbill from the 1867 play, Under the Gaslight, depicting that very scene here faithfully displayed under the LJ-Cut?

Believe it or not, the melodrama had a point: That women deserve the right to vote because, when the chips are down, they are just as capable as men.

Can someone explain to me why the victim tied to the train tacks was changed to a woman? Can someone explain to me why the hero was changed to a man?

And can someone explain to me why this scenario was repeated over and over and over again to the point that we now all believe that it's always been this way?

I don't know about you, but now that everything I thought I knew about this cliché has turned out completely wrong, I have an overwhelming urge to go outside, stand on my head, and look at the world from a different angle for awhile.

If you're looking for me, I'll be on my front stoop and standing on my head with this expression on my face: o_O

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It's not in me now (or maybe ever) to organize my thoughts well enough to write something on this, but I read this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/opinion/07faludi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) in the NYT yesterday. Maybe you could throw it into the mix for anyone who's interested in putting something together....

Then again, maybe there's only a link 'twixt the two in my head.

Oddly enough, in grammar school we were taught about the skirmishes between the Native American tribes and the colonial outposts in New England (no surprise — I am a New England native). It seemed invariably it was the colonial women who repeatedly kicked ass and took names.

So, the article actually pretty much outlines something I already knew.

But still, you've got a very good point. How many people outside of the New England region are even aware of these stories? And why have they all but disappeared from the American historical narrative. And more importantly, why have they disappeared?

I don't think you're being nuts at all in making the connection. It's not one I'd leap to, but it's an interesting connection nonetheless.

...girls who read the "Dear America" books know.

Seriously! I learned more from that series of books than I did in all of my history classes combined.

*nods* Those are good books. I used to sell a ton of those to parents who had girls who didn't like to read. They were great at convertin' 'em into readers.

as someone who grew up reading heaps of 'classic literature' (my father is a professor, my mother taught American and Russian literature at a private school), i grew up aware of the absolute absence of a woman's narrative. women are erased with every generation and must start fresh, outside of the oral narrative provided by mothers or relatives (which i didn't get, as a child). that's why books like Harriet the Spy were so important to me as a child. because they were about US.

I think there is a bit of a connection? Men appropriating dramatic images/events to use to assure their own... usefulness/invulnerability? Just to verify it's not all in your head.

Though I can't help picking at the thought in the article that "War of the Worlds" was not a post-9/11 drama. But it's one of my favorite books, so...

Ummm, yeah. With you on War of the Worlds.

I'm pretty sure that H.G. Wells would be pretty surprised to hear that he wrote a post-9-11 book. Orson Wells would be pretty shocked, too. If they weren't, y'know, dead...

There are actual films with actual people tied to actual train tracks with actual moustache-twirling villains doing the deed? I always thought it was, you know, a metaphor or something. Wow.

Used repeatedly in silent movies and Saturday morning serials as an actual point of for-real drama.

I'd say that in the last 30 to 40 years it's been used as a point of comedy (in the case of Rocky and Bullwinkle or as an "ironic" replaying of something that was once considered a legitimate plot point.

But the point is that everyone in the U.S. who sees "woman tied to tacks-man comes and saves her-live happily ever after" knows that it references old Hollywood movies going back decades.

The fact that the actual source material is very different is a bit mind-blowing.

***Can someone explain to me why the victim tied to the train tacks was changed to a woman? Can someone explain to me why the hero was changed to a man?***

Damn. I can't believe it, and by that I mean, I don't want to believe it, that this has been almost obliterated from popular knowledge.

Right there with you, sister.

The implications are just...

*waves hands*

It's a bit big, isn't it?

It's beyond big, yo. This is huge. How did we not know this before?

I have been the girl on the railroads, I've played rescue as a child and I was the girl in the railroads, with a bike just about to 'kill' me. No one ever told me I could be the hero, no one ever told me I could be the rescue-er not just the victim there.

It's- *sigh* It makes me retroactively furious I guess.

I'm oh so incredibly happy you've discovered this, and I want everyone to know, because yeah, it is depressing, but also, it is, it happened and people should know this. Not only that this is the original, this is where a thousand references come from, but that somehow, some way we forgot.

Permission to quote and link the hell out of this?

Go to town! All public posts are always linkable.

I'm curious to see how people react to this little historical find.

I knew going to the gym on a regular basis would have immediate benefits...*laughs*

I kind of love you for discovering this, but it also depresses me a little bit as well. Depressing because it's another example of a male dominated culture silencing women. I can just imagine the uproar the original play stirred... amongst men. Who were just eager to see the situation reversed.

But I'm glad you brought this to light. It's quite the out-of-left-field revelation!

I'm depressed right along with you.

Cause all I can think is that given the prevailing attitudes of the times, wouldn't it be more dramatic to have the "plucky" heroine rescuing the guy tied to the train tracks?

And what kills me is if someone, somewhere played this scene like it was originally meant to be played, people would look at it as a feminist re-interpretation of a cliché, and not a faithful rendition of the original.

I need to lie down now.

Well I imagine that when the original play was staged it had a dramatic impact for that very reason - because women were always damsels!

And you're right, it would now look like a feminist reinterpretation of the cliche. What's worse is that there still aren't many films or plays where strong women rescue weaker men - whether that's physically or emotionally. And that's ridiculous.

Oooh, there was a film version made in 1914 with Lionel Barrymore.

I saw that in my Internet travels. But you know me. I had to dig up the play it was based on, right?

It's really a "holy tomato" moment.

It's still cool that they made it into a film...

Ah, I wasn't sure what you found first. I wonder how much of the play made it into the film. I don't even trust 1914 Hollywood :-)

You have blown my mind.

My mind is blown as well.

Completely, and totally blown.

Every time you write something I end up thinking. But this one, blew me totally away. And then a poster mentioned the NYT article. And that led a a jaw drop. Becuase I used to read a lot about Western History, and the women were always the little ones who needed protection. Which prompts the question, where are the Westerns featuring strong women who didn't have to be saved by male gunfighters? But then, I Didn't even know that there were black cowboys until two years ago. So why would we have strong, capable women in the frontiers days celebrated in popular culture? Would you mind putting this in the "feminist" community?

The Colonial women were a really, really tough bunch. And I'm sure the women that cross the Plains were totally no different because, in many ways, they were in the exact same situation as the New England women living on what was then the colonial frontier.

In New England that kind of stuff is still taught about the French and Indian Wars because it's basically the core of local history, which (it just so happens) is the core for Revolutionary War history (Molly Pitcher was not an abberation), which (as it just so happens) is the core of American history.

I know this is going to sound strange, but I always thought that Western Frontier history was much the same thing: tough women toughing it out and going eyeball to eyeball with danger. I guess I assumed that it was taught that way in regions where the Western Frontier was "the local history" and not something that's half-a-continent away.

But, yeah. Popular culture doesn't do women any favors, especially when it comes to historical drama. (See: Tough colonial women not being common knowledge, unless you read the Dear America books.)

I'm not a member of any feminist comms (believe it or not), mostly because the snipping between different feminist types tends to drive me bats.

But if you want to link it elsewhere, be my guest. All public posts are free to being linked.

If you can't beat them, join them. It was a blow against men, so they turned around and used it against women.

"A businessman is dynamic, a businesswoman is aggressive. He loses his temper, she bitches. He's a go-getter, she's pushy. When he's depressed, everyone tiptoes past his office; when she's moody, it must be her time of the month.

"He follows through; she doesn't know when to quit. He has the courage of his convictions; she's stubborn. He's a man of the world; she's been around. He handles his liquor; she's a lush.

"He isn't afraid to say what he thinks; she's mouthy. He exercises authority diligently; she's power mad. He's close-mouthed; she's secretive. He can make quick decisions; she's impulsive. He's a stern task master; she's hard to work for. He climbed the ladder to success; she slept her way to the top."

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=26&ID=352197&r=6&Reporter=JEAN%25NERO

If you study psychology, you learn about cognitive misery and perceptual filters. This is one of them.

Christ. Don't I know.

It's like that book, Don't Think of a Elephant. Language and how it's used says a lot more about an individual and prevailing society that is comfortable.

I suppose what takes me by surprise in this case is:

1) The source material is exactly opposite of what has been played out over time

2) The source material is so old

3) The source material was designed specifically to underline that women are capable and rational human beings

The best example is Shakespeare's Kill all the Lawyers.

This is fascinating. I looked up some references - here is one from an article on Victorian melodrama (http://dspace.unitus.it/bitstream/2067/190/1/saggini_transporting_scenes.pdf)

- sorry it's a bit long!

"First produced at the New York Theater on August 12 1867, Augustin Daly’s Under the
Gaslight, a Totally Original and Picturesque Drama of Life and Love in These Times is
remembered as the first melodrama to bring trains onto the American stage (in Great Britain a
similar effect was achieved in The Engineer, Victoria Theatre, London, March 23, 1863.) In this
drama, the climax during which the realism achieved by the staging is transformed into pure
spectacle is even more accentuated. Laura, the heroine, locked inside the station house of the
Shrewsbury Railroad Station watches in horror the approaching train which will kill Snorkey
who has been tied by the villain to the railway tracks. The piercing whistle of the locomotive
enhances the kinetic excitement aroused in the audience whose hypertextual competency has
prepared for the inevitable and fatal collision.
BYKE (fastening [SNORKEY] to the rail) I’m going to put you to bed. […] When you hear
the thunder under your head and see the lights dancing in your eyes, and feel the iron wheel
a foot from your neck, remember Byke. (Exit L.[eft])
LAURA: O heavens! He will be murdered before my eyes! How can I aid him?
SNORKEY: Who’s that? […] Where are you?
LAURA: In the station.
SNORKEY: I can’t see you, but I can hear you. Listen to me, miss, for I’ve only got a few
minutes to live.
LAURA (shaking the door): And I cannot aid you. […] (in agony) O, I must get out!
(Shakes window-bars). What shall I do?
SNORKEY.: Can’t you burst the door?
LAURA: It is locked fast.
SNORKEY: Is there nothing in there? No hammer? No crowbar?
LAURA: Nothing. (Faint steam whistle heard in distance). Oh, heavens! The train!
(Paralysed for an instant). The axe!!!
SNORKEY: Cut the woodwork! […] (A blow at door is heard). Courage! (Another)
Courage! (The steam whistle heard again – nearer, and rumble of train on track – another
blow). That’s a true woman. Courage! (Noise of locomotive heard, with whistle. A last blow
– the door swings open, mutilated, the lock hanging – and Laura appears, axe in hand.)
SNORKEY: Here – quick! (She runs and unfastens him. The locomotive lights glare on
scene). Victory! Saved! Hooray! (Laura leans exhausted against switch). And these are the
women who ain’t to have a vote!
(As Laura takes his head from the track, the train of cars rushes past with
roar and whistle from L.[eft] to R.[ight]"

(my emphasis)

As you say, when and by whom was this changed to helpless female saved by male hero - and did they know of this specific forerunner. Definitely thesis material for someone here!

I love how they're working together to solve the problem and she's the one who finds the solution (an axe, the one option our guy didn't think of).

This is totally fantastic and still mind-boggling.

It's like finding a great and terrible secret, innit?

I take you have not read many romance novels? This type of thing, the woman needing to be rescued regardless of what level she has reached.

It is our pedestal.

Heeee, I'm not a huge reader of romance, so yeah...

Unfortunately, how many examples do we see in movies/television where the competent kick-ass female turns into a puddle of whimpering goo at the most inopportune times so she can be rescued by the local hot stud?

Someone really needs to kick over the pedestal and start reminding people that people with breasts are still human beings. For serious.

Breasts? o_0" How about man boobs?

Just a random note here:

I know a woman who is a published author in erotic romance. I asked her why this is so; why do all the female leads, no matter how strong and snarky and wonderful, go to jelly in the arms of a man who is stronger, snarkier, and a true "alpha"? I also asked her why there are no BDSM books featuring a male submissive and female dominatrix.

She told me that these things don't sell. Women want the fantasy of a man in control, not the fantasy of being in control.

I couldn't help but think if this is true, and the majority of women really DO only want the fantasy of being controlled, then I fear for my gender. We might as well be living on Gor.

I couldn't help but think if this is true, and the majority of women really DO only want the fantasy of being controlled, then I fear for my gender.

If I can jump in here, I'd like to suggest that things may not be as grim as they seem -- well in one sense anyway. As often as not people fantasize about what they don't have in their everyday lives. Considering the number of women who not only support themselves but are often the main everything to their families I could see why the fantasy of someone else actually doing things for them would be very appealing. I think the number of men in our society who never grow up and never take responsibility for much of anything are legion. The fantasy of a man who is calm, competent and able to take control is often just that. I think there are probably few women who want to be controlled but more who would like to have the burden of responsibilities lifted from them from time to time.

And regarding the post itself, it's just a fascinating find, thanks for sharing it. I came over from

diachrony's post and will be passing along the link to a few others.

*browsing from friendsfriends* Wow! Thanks a lot for making this post. I do recall that Tintin In America had him tied to train tracks too, though he wasn't rescued by a woman.

It is a big wow, isn't it?

Tintin...heee! During my Borderseverse days, I used to like browsing through those books when I worked the children's department.

Well, I don't really see much of a difference between this and say, redefining the meaning of "Liberal".

Or, like something that happened more recently, a movie came out that had americans retrieving the Enigma box from a German sub during WWII. What are the chances of audiences coming to think of that as the truth?

Something sucessful comes along, spreads it's message and drowns whatever was there before.

Wow. Who'da thunk?

I pretty much knew about Colonial women. Men were often gone for days and weeks at a time so women had to know how to shoot and defend themselves.

And this is one of the many reasons Buffy remains my girl. Because she saves herself, over and over again.

Holy cow! I hadn't a clue that it was changed throughout history. D: Very interesting to know. And more than a bit disturbing. But it shows how easily history is subverted and changed without people being the wiser.

And you always thought that TV shows were bad about Retconning.

History books can be much much worse.

I particularly barfed at one history text, which described the Great Leap Forward (which is estimated as having killed 14-80 million Chinese through starvation), with the lovely epithet "moderately successful." Sure, if your idea of success is turning 16 million tons of iron tools into low grade pig iron useful for jack-all...

Well, you get the idea.

You know, this leads me to ask a question. Where did that *other* "iconic" image of "woman tied up and in need of rescue" come from, that probably goes all the way back to early Hollywood if not before? The one with the woman tied onto the log or otherwise put onto a conveyor that is heading inexorably if slowly towards a giant spinning sawmill blade? What's up with that image? People today complain about so-called "torture porn" and maybe they have a point, but really, the idea of "I'm going to leave you, poor helpless immobilized woman, to wait in horror as you move slowly towards a gruesome and bloody death by being sawed in half from the head down, mwah-hah-hah!" just seems so...*shudders*. And of course, it's always a handsome alpha male hero who shows up and saves the helpless female, usually by shutting off the conveyor or sawblade at the last second! There's even a variation of it in the 90's Fox Kids Batman animated series, with Batman saving Catwoman from being ground up into cat food.

There's also a twist version of it Brisco County, Jr., where one of the first-half cliffhangers has Brisco (Bruce Campbel) tied onto a log, feet apart and facing the saw blade, and he gets saved at the last second by a female guest star. And of course, Brisco isn't upset that he almost died a gruesome death, he's more upset that he almost got a sawblade to the manparts!

I saw the following paragraph in some reading for class, and remembered your comment:

"The rural melodrama Blue Jeans (1890) featured a scene in which the heroine unties the hero just as he is about to be bifurcated by an advancing buzz saw. In the sensational climax of Under the Gaslight (1867), the heroine, locked in a shack, sees the villain tie a one-armed man to a nearby railroad track. She furiously hacks her way free with an ax and rescues the victim mere seconds before a locomotive thunders past (moving the grateful man to exclaim, "And these are the women who ain't to have a vote!"). The concept was recycled in the cheap-theater favorite Saved from the Storm (ca. 1878), but this time the bound victim was (trendsettingly) the heroine, and her rescuers were two resourceful dogs! [....] There is a clear lineage from these stage antecedents to the types of scenes that would be found in many thriller movies of the next century. For example, the buzz saw from Blue Jeans becomes a laser beam that threatens to geld James Bond in Goldfinger (1964), and a variation on the bound-heroine/speeding-train scenario occurs at the end of Speed (1994)."
[from Thrillers by Martin Rubin, pgs 43-44]

I'm a bit upset that I'm not more shocked about this or about what

comeawaywasy pointed out. It's depressing yes but, really, I'm in no way surprised. It's seems like just the way history works with those with the power surpressing anything that might undermine the image of them as superior in all things and completely neccessary.

That's so creepy - my prof mentioned that play as the source of the train-track thing in class last week. (The class is Cinema of Action and Adventure, so we were talking about the influences of classical melodrama on the action genre) I can ask him if he knows any more about the trope in early film, if you like.

Wow! How did you find this? It's as cool as it is frightening. I am not the person to turn this into a coherent brilliant piece on masculine fear of the feminine. I'm very bad at debate. All I would be able to come up with is the very obvious observation that this scene must have been pretty darn effective to be leaped upon and translated over and over again until the reversal became the cliche.

I have to say I'm more surprised that people are surprised, and at their reactions than I am at this little historical tidbit.

I don't mean to offend, but a feminist essay detailing some cultural conspiracy to oppress women seems silly. Hanlon's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor) applies here methinks: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity; more importantly, human, gender-neutral stupidity, not male malice is the more likely culprit of this meme.

As Betrand Russel said:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Is there any simpler possible explanation? Authors heard of the train's use in a story's climax, and appropriated it for their own uses; but, as authors do, they injected it with their own bias. Given the timeframe, "women as the weaker sex" was obviously a prevalent prejudice at the time, so is it any surprise that displaying the woman as the victim was more widely used?

And as another poster pointed out: certain stories (or prejudices) sell better than others. Is it any surprise then, that those prejudices are selected for and effectively supplant history in people's minds? How many female historians existed at the time? How many female authors/scientists/anything existed at the time? Which explains the historical lack of female narrative, as another poster pointed out.

So in conclusion, I doubt very much that there was any conscious oppression intended; rather, it's more likely that people simply remembered what reaffirmed their own prejudices, and forgot evidence to the contrary. It's simply how people work, and it's not relegated to the male gender. I definitely think this historical fact should be spread, but seeing a conspiracy in it just seems like more historical rewriting.

Thankfully, modern day has many stories with strong female leads (Contact (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/) is one of my favourite movies), and females are better represented at all levels of society, so they will corresponding have a stronger historical representation in this time.

SDM (a man) :-)

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When the victim tied to the train tracks was a man...

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Meant to add...

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Because it worked as a visual.

Re: Because it worked as a visual.

Without getting into religion...

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