Greta Friedman

September 10, 2016 1:59 PM

Greta Zimmer Friedman, 92, has died. According to the New York Daily News, Mrs. Friedman led a long, eventful life. As a girl, she fled from the Nazis in Europe, and settled in New York, where she later studied theater and costuming at the New School. But her place in history is marked by a single snapshot. She was ambivalent, at times, about that place in history, which can well be characterized as sexual assault. Nonetheless, many years later, she became friendly with the man in the photograph, who had been, at the time, a stranger. (Previously, if incorrectly)
posted by Countess Elena (15 comments total)

In the second part of that link it talks about how Greta Friedman didn't appear violated by the kiss and spoke of the resultant fame in a positive manner, but then goes on to conjecture about whether or not she enjoyed it. Isn't this somewhat problematic? The facts state that the kiss was not consensual, and that he was strong. Okay, that much we know, but isn't it more appropriate to allow victims of sexual assault to be in charge of their own narratives, and if her narrative is that she was fine then we should allow that to be? And isn't it problematic to speculate on her enjoyment of it by taking her words out of context and using them to usurp what is nominally her narrative? I'm literally asking all of this earnestly because I don't know how to approach this and lack the knowledge.

It's not good that it was nonconsensual though. Did feminists or anyone else have things to say about consent and such back then? How did the movement back then talk about this photo?
posted by gucci mane at 2:37 PM on September 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

Like 99.9% of people who saw the picture, I thought it was consensual; I'm sure most of us assumed a story behind the event of a couple reunited. But knowing better now and knowing everything else we know now, it sadly makes the picture that much MORE 'quintessentially American'.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:52 PM on September 10, 2016 [17 favorites]

What's the story behind the misidentification of Edith Shain? Lots of those six year old links are now broken in the previously thread.
posted by zutalors! at 2:54 PM on September 10, 2016

it sadly makes the picture that much MORE 'quintessentially American'

Also that we were celebrating dropping nuclear bombs on thousands of innocents.
posted by zutalors! at 2:55 PM on September 10, 2016 [6 favorites]

That part I had long recognized, but the celebration wasn't RIGHT after we dropped the bombs, it was after Japan surrendered, which meant it WORKED and that made it Perfectly OK.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:09 PM on September 10, 2016

I sort of knew this was the picture... possibly just clues like her age or something. Those times seem so far away now, and hopefully better now in many ways.
posted by emmet at 3:42 PM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now that we know the whole story about that picture, maybe Facebook should have it taken down, y'know?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:42 PM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also that we were celebrating dropping nuclear bombs on thousands of innocents.
Or, alternatively, that people were celebrating that their sons, brothers, fathers weren't going to have to die somewhere in the Pacific.
posted by etaoin at 5:19 PM on September 10, 2016 [19 favorites]

Mod note: Just a quick note here to say, I know it's a perennial topic that folks love to dig in on, but we're absolutely not going to debate in this thread whether the dropping of the atomic bombs was justified. Thread is about the woman in the photo.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 5:25 PM on September 10, 2016 [17 favorites]

.


Some of the MeFite comments in your Previously link are.....interesting. I remember being disturbed by this photo as a child. I always felt he was strong-arming her. His hand isn't caressing her or cradling her, his bent arm is preventing her from moving away from him until he's good and ready. Revisiting it again as an adult, I see it the same way.

If you look at the three photographs in what I *think* is the right order (you can tell the last photo shown in the link is actually the first by the placement of onlookers walking towards the camera?) this is what I see. It seems that in the first photo, she initially put her fisted-up hand to his face defensively or to push him away. In the second, she became aware that her skirt was way higher than she was comfortable with, and her hand goes down to check that her butt is covered, and then in the third photo, she is just beginning to tug at the fabric to pull it down. See how bunched up her uniform is around her waist and back because of his hand? If you look at hem lengths and nurse uniforms from 1945, all are covering the knees. Her skirt was several inches above her knees and I'm guessing she was very aware of that. Again, these are just my interpretations, I have not researched this. Except for the hem thing.
posted by the webmistress at 6:23 PM on September 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

What's the story behind the misidentification of Edith Shain? Lots of those six year old links are now broken in the previously thread.

The Wikipedia page about the photo lists numerous claimants to being each of the principals.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:44 PM on September 10, 2016

I think it's pretty mindblowing that the quintessential American wartime nurse, who we've been celebrating all this time, was not actually a wartime nurse, and was in fact a Jewish immigrant whose entire family had been sent to the concentration camps just a couple of years earlier. There's a lot of context to unpack in that picture.
posted by miyabo at 7:44 PM on September 10, 2016 [16 favorites]

I recently passed a huge statue of this image in Royal Oak, MI and learned that the sculpture is called Unconditional Surrender, which is gross gross gross.
posted by palindromic at 6:11 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, Palindromic, love how the story says the statue is a "temporary installation." That's what they said here in my town, too. Then someone brought it back, and a WWII Navy vet coughed up a half-million to make it permanent, over the objections of virtually everyone in the arts community. Now it's been here in the heart of the downtown waterfront for 11 years.

The statue is little more than a giant gift-shop knick-knack, with the sculptor selling them all over the place. I pass the damn thing every day coming home from work and there's always a couple of tourists taking pictures and/or posing with it. Sigh.

At one point, somebody spray-painted a peace symbol (later removed) on the nurse's calf. Now that's art.
posted by martin q blank at 11:48 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Some of the MeFite comments in your Previously link are.....interesting

Place sure has improved, hasn't it? And even then I thought it had improved.

This story really caught me because, like everyone, I had always seen this photo as an icon of joy for the Greatest Generation. Then I saw that it had since been recognized as not only that, but an incidence of sexual assault. Without going into detail, I was once in this woman's position -- not on a national scale, of course, but publicly and repeatedly -- and for many years I considered that I was responsible for inspiring the overflowing feelings that caused it. So this tapped into a lot of complicated feelings for me.

But most importantly, and finally, the story is about a remarkable woman who never even considered being defined by a single moment in her youth.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:28 PM on September 11, 2016