I See France by Wendy Wallace

I See France by Wendy Wallace is going to be performed on August 18 as part of Island Theatre’s inaugural ten minute play festival. Hooray! The island is Bainbridge Island, Washington, and I See France is the winner of best play in the adult category. No, the San Fernando Valley’s adult film industry hasn’t moved to lovely Bainbridge Island. Apparently, Island Theatre solicited plays for an adult category and a teen category, so adult category in this instance doesn’t mean x-rated even though Wallace’s play is ostensibly about panties, which some of us realize immediately thanks to the clever title.  But Island Theatre might actually believe the story is about panties, for this is the one sentence summary of I See France that’s on the theater’s website: In a women’s lingerie department, panties from different eras argue about their popularity. Hmm. Based on this description, I’d conclude that I See France is simply personification run amok. Fortunately, that’s hardly the case, and there’s more to Wallace’s play than argumentative underwear.

Wallace’s play energetically illustrates the concepts that women are commodities and that female sexuality is a commodity. The three main characters are panties being sold in a department store, for goodness sake, and the fact that each panty is a different style representing women in different life stages means that no woman is exempt from being a commodity. The panties, whose names amuse and signify, are Granny, Hipster, and Lacey, and they exhibit a strongly internalized understanding of their social roles in relationship to men; they are all hyper aware of the connection between panties, sexuality, and desirability. This leads to a lot of seemingly superficial bickering but actually exemplifies the very real issue of women being pitted against each other in order to gain the attention of men. This fighting of women amongst themselves results in divisiveness; however, I See France also suggests, mostly via Hipster, that female solidarity is preferred to female infighting, and it is this potential for female unity that makes I See France transformative, for female solidarity would ultimately threaten male dominance and disrupt the consumption and circulation of women.

But I can hear it now: Men can be commodities too.  Sure they can, and Joe Boxer Shorts makes a quick appearance in which he brags that he is universally adored.  And that’s the difference: He’s universally adored, and his bragging implies that he isn’t a commodity in quite the same way as the ladies-- oops-- the panties are.  And this is further exemplified a few minutes later when the “next best thing” in the panty industry comes along, literally, in the lingerie department and causes Granny, Hipster, and Lacey to be put on sale. In other words, in pedestrian commodity speak, these darn things are not only no longer adored, they’re no longer useful, so we’ve gotta get rid of them and fast. Yep, nothing can subjugate, depress, and dishearten panties more effectively than being blatantly and unapologetically devalued. Now that’s something that can cause your undies to get into a twist.