I wrote this paper for a Semiotics class I took in December of 2012. Semiotics, according to Wikipedia is ,"the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification and communication." I know, I never truly understood semiotics either, but I came across this paper and decided it was interesting enough to place here. Regardless whether you understand semiotics of not, I hope you enjoy reading about Amelia Earhart.
If you were asked to name some famous aviators of the 20th or 21st century, how would you respond? Perhaps you would say The Wright Brothers (they only count as one), Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, and last, but certainly not least, Amelia Earhart. But, suppose you were asked to name three female aviators of modern time. Hmmm……that is a little more difficult to answer now isn’t it? While there were many female aviators that preceded her, I’ll bet that your one and only answer was Amelia Earhart. Why do you think that is? Is it because she was a fearless woman that trespassed into a mostly male-dominated territory? Was it because she broke all kinds and numerous records? How about the rumor that she was a spy or that she was captured by the Japanese? Certainly all these theories lend themselves to her mystique. Because we don’t know the answers to any of these questions it makes her elusiveness even more mysterious and intriguing. What we do know, is no one has seen or heard from her in 75 years. Did she sink or survive?
Earhart’s legend remains so compelling that people the world over are still immensely interested in her and are drawn to the least bit of evidence that archeologists might dig up from time to time. There was a movie made about her recently that was very well received, due in part because the nostalgia-driven myth of her is still alive and well. It’s as if she re-surfaces from time-to-time, like a spirit in a haunted home, reminding us that we humans, in good conscience, can’t give up on her because to let go would mean that we would have to let her die. “By disappearing, she remains both dead and alive, a symbol, a myth, a star on which to hang our fantasies,” (1) writes Jane Mendelsohn, a journalist for the New York Times.
In an article entitled, A Wind And A Myth, which was featured in the New York Times on December 27, 1996, Jane Mendelsohn wrote, “there’s something magical, outrageous and deeply strange about a person who disappears. A person who disappears is neither dead or alive. What does it mean to be neither dead or alive? It means you can be dead and alive. Earhart is both.” What Mendelsohn aludes to is that we don’t have to accept either and as long as we don’t accept one or the other. That way Amelia Earhart lives on in our hearts and minds as a strong and courageous person; not just as a woman who stepped out of the prescribed boundaries of the times of wife and mother, school teacher or nurse, but a woman who wasn’t willing to accept societal restrictions, one who stepped out of the proverbial box.Women love her and identify with her because they are able to live vicariously through the myth of her, knowing that she broke male/female boundaries, accomplished great things for mankind in regard to aeronautics and aviation, and made it possible for women to believe that they could be anything they wanted to be, which was in complete contrast to the norm of society at the time. As long as there is no conclusive evidence of her death or capture we can all remain flying about in the sky above right beside her. Somewhat of a fantasy, yes, but isn’t that the favorable view that we need for ourselves from time-to-time?
This myth isn’t just for or about women though. Men too hold the notion of an elusive Amelia Earhart. They admire her skill, bravery and courage, whether they care to admit it or not. Let’s face it; she did great things for all of us. Would we be where we are today in regard to avionics if it hadn’t been for Amelia Earhart? She is someone for all of us to admire.
Every time someone comes up with a new theory, or a supposed piece of her Lockheed Electra airplane, or an item found on or near the island where she may have crashed, her story re-emerges and the old mystique returns. The reification of the myth of Earhart helps to preserve her humanness in our minds. An article written by Jane Mendelsohn in June of 2012 in the New York Times entitled, “Amelia Earhart, Found and Lost,” sums it up nicely. She writes about an article she once read in which a search party believed that they had found a piece of Earhart’s plane on an atoll in the Pacific, and maybe a piece of her shoe. “I didn’t know much about Amelia Earhart,” Mendelsohn writes, “but the idea of her surviving on a desert island, even if only for a little while, appealed to me, sang to me, waved furiously to me from a great distance.” Mendelsohn was in her mid-20s at the time that the article was published and was able to relate to Earhart in much the same way many of us do. “I felt at the time,” she continues, “as if I was flying hopelessly around the world and searching for land, longing for one of those islands of stability some of us keep looking for in our 20s, a braceleted wrist held up to the face, hand shielding our eyes from the harsh sun of adulthood, not realizing that we will have to build that island for ourselves.” Obviously, Earhart was a metaphor for her life as I think she was (or still is) for many of us today.tells a story.
My favorite picture of Earhart is one that shows her in her flying helmet with goggles raised to her forehead. It tells such as story and I wish I could show it here, but it wouldn't transfer. It shows the many layers of contradiction that was Amelia Earhart. She was a tomboy, “(a young Earhart climbed trees, belly-slammed her sled to start it downhill and hunted rats with a .22 rifle);” (2) yet she was glamorous and was often pictured wearing a single strand of pearls; she was a great heroine breaking all kinds of records, yet she eventually failed, (she crashed or got captured or both); she was a romantic, yet she was always pragmatic. In a letter to her husband, Earhart wrote, “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.” (3) She was feminine, and often refused to don typical flying gear. Instead she preferred more feminine attire: a suit or dress instead of aviation togs. “She didn’t put her goggles on until she taxied to the end of the field and removed them immediately upon landing,” (4) yet she was masculine; she did things that only men had done previously. She had a passion for life yet she also had a suicide streak; she pursued a career in a male-dominated field as opposed to a typical women’s role of wife and mother; she was strong and never a victim; she was not wealthy in financial terms, yet “was lifted by her own accomplishments.”(5)
Consider too the old and the new, the bits and pieces of the old that return time and again. The courage and boldness that Earhart displayed is similar to what some of our current heroines depict. We’ve voted for them, applauded them, cheered them on, and been inspired by their words and actions: Rachel Carson, writer, marine biologist and nature lover who helped raise environmental awareness worldwide; Gertrud Elion, an American pharmacologist who developed drugs to fight leukemia; Grace Murray Hopper, who developed computer programs for the Navy during WWII; Carrie Chapman Catt, organizer and leader of women’s suffrage; Rosa Parks, who changed history with a simple courageous act by not giving up her seat on the bus to a white man. With the same clarity of vision as Hillary Rodham Clinton or Condoleezza Rice, Earhart set the stage for modern woman who want careers and want to succeed in fields that are primarily male-dominated. Earhart inspired women to take risks
There are thousands of pictures available on the internet or in books and magazines of Amelia Earhart - mostly head shots and mostly posed. She always smiled, her hair always slightly messy (but sexy messy), she sometimes was shown in aviation garb, her trademark outfit, with many taken in front of her plane. She looked happy, in shape, yet elusive even then. We knew as little about her then as we do now. Not much was written about Earhart’s personal life; what were her likes, dislikes, what was her favorite color, if she were a tree, what kind of tree would she be? Yet, a great deal was written about her as a precocious child and an aviator. There are countless references to rummage through about her aviation life and accomplishments, but little about her personality, her family life, her ideals and beliefs. Isn’t that also part of the elusiveness, the mystic, the myth?
Earhart was important to us and still is. “She made such an impression on the public. People often wrote to tell her that they were naming their baby after her. Many towns named lakes and streets in her honor.”(6) Hillary Rodham Clinton once said that Earhart was an inspiration to her and she “gave people hope and inspired them to dream bigger and bolder.” She was so important to us that the US government spent $4 million looking for Amelia Earhart when she first disappeared on July 2, 1937, making it the most costly and intensive air and sea search of that time. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery announced that they would spend $2 million in 2012 on a search operation based on a 1937 photo of what looks like the landing gear of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra in the water off Nikumaroro, a tiny island in the South Pacific. Isn’t this proof that the myth of Amelia Earhart is engrained in our psyche?
This whole mystique thing is reminiscent of Elvis except they never found Amelia’s body. People from all over the world refuse to believe that Elvis is dead and have reported sightings of him since his death in 1977. For many, Elvis was a part of their past, their first love, their first kiss, their first crush. He represents a time in their lives when they were carefree, without responsibilities. Elvis represents their youth and perhaps a happier time in their lives. Perhaps Amelia Earhart is a part of that past too, our first adventure, our first daring feat, our first time away from home with no one to blame our misfortunes on except ourselves.
It seems to matter to people everywhere whether we find out what happened to Earhart. But, if we do find out, are we willing to believe it or do we prefer to keep the myth alive, to choose it over reality? Perhaps by doing so we make her mysterious disappearance and her miraculous life relevant and inspiring to a global society, to the point where women might take her lead and empower themselves and their daughters in order to end poverty, starvation, prostitution, and domestic violence? As Amelia might tell you, yes they can.
“Earhart’s mystery endures because of who she was as a person, the pilot of her own destiny, mistakes failures and dreams, reachable and unreachable. She still beckons.” (7)
As Amelia Earhart herself once said, “Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.
Sources:
1Jane, Amelia Earhart, Found and Lost, the New York Times, June 9, 2012.
3 From the official website of Amelia Earhart by the Family of Amelia Earhart, www.ameliaearhart.com,
4From the official website of Amelia Earhart by the Family of Amelia Earhart, www.ameliaearhart.com
5 Mendelsohn, Jane, Amelia Earhart, Found and Lost, the New York Times, June 9, 2012.
6 From the official website of Amelia Earhart by the Family of Amelia Earhart, www.ameliaearhart.com
7 Mendelsohn, Jane, Amelia Earhart, Found and Lost, The New York Times, June 9, 2012
