Wonder Woman

I read an interesting article in The New Yorker today, "The Last Amazon," by Jill Lepore. It discusses the history of the comic book character Wonder Woman, in the context of the upcoming film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Wonder Woman will be featured, played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot.

The history of comic books featuring women is spotty, to be charitable. I can only think of two in lead roles, and they were both spectacular bombs: Catwoman and Elektra. There have many fans, of both sexes, who would like to see Wonder Woman, or some other female superhero, get her own movie. With the success of Hunger Games, Divergent, and Lucy, I think the time is right, and if the movie isn't directed by some hack and dumped in a bad opening weekend, a studio could just accidentally find themselves with a hit.

I was under a misapprehension about the creation of Wonder Woman. Somewhere along the line I thought I read that she was created as a male fantasy by some guy who was into bondage fetishism. That's not true--she was created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. He wrote about how he thought the comic books were an excellent form for children (unlike Dr. Frederick Wertham, who nearly drove the industry into the drink with his hearings on the dangers of comic books for children in the '50s). D.C. publisher M.C. Gaines (the father of William, who later founded MAD) hired Marston as a consultant.

Wonder Woman first appeared in 1941, and she was not a pin-up come to life, but as Lepore writes, "comes straight out of feminist utopian fiction." Her origins lie with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the feminists and suffragists of the late 19th and early 20th century. Marston was related to birth control advocate and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and was himself in a polyamorous relationship with two women: his wife Elizabeth and Olive Byrne.

The '40s were an interesting time for feminism. Shortages of men who had gone of to war made it necessary for women to take men's jobs, but when the men came back, they were forced back home or to their jobs and secretaries (this was even true of Wonder Women, who was in the Justice League of America, but served as its secretary, and her alter ego, Diana Prince, was also a secretary) and women who wanted to work or be independent were seen as somehow dangerous (as I discussed in my article on the femme fatale). Wonder Woman was handed over to new writers, and was somewhat defanged, eventually losing all her super powers and being just a very good fighter.

Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess of Green mythology. Warrior tribes of women have been around for a long time, and existed right up to the present day, in sci-fi movies (invariably, Venus is populated only by women--they must have known they would be named for a goddess). Some of Wonder Woman's powers were connected to Marston's scholarship. He was one of the innovators of the lie detector, hence Wonder Woman's "Lasso of Truth." I'm not sure where the invisible airplane came from.

Though Wonder Woman has always been a knockout (in truth, I can't think of a female superhero who isn't pneumatically built) she has been a feminist icon since she was created. Ms. magazine made her their first cover subject. There was of course the cheesy TV show in the '70s starring Lynda Carter. I never saw an episode, and was interested to read that the first season took place during World War II, and the subsequent two series were switched to the present day. Unlike other heroes, like Batman and Superman, there has not been an animated version of the series.

Gal Gadot is a very fetching actress, though not quite as voluptuous as Wonder Woman usually is. I have no idea if she can act (I've only seen her in a Captain Morgan rum ad, though I understand she has been in many Fast and Furious films) but I hope the character is a hit. Girls deserve their own superhero to emulate. Let's have a Wonder Woman film soon.