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Date and Issue: Volume 220, Number 2851 / July 1-7, 1978.
Wonder Woman Saturday 6.0 BBC1. Which 40s comic-book character has come back to help us through the 70s? Whose virtues are staunchest? Whose profile is noblest? Who's that up there?
Is it a bird? Is it a planer? No, writes Colman Andrews, it's Wonder Woman.She's a very feminine woman, who goes through a great deal of hassle to be with a particular man.' She's both dependent and independent. She's very bright, but has a -lot of catching up to do. She's beautiful, but she accepts . her beauty and isn't overly impressed by. it. And she's interested in being a part of the American cause hi World War Two.'
' She ' is Wonder Woman, a remarkable comic. strip character invented by an American psychologist in 1941 and rediscovered in the 70s by the Women's Movement, which found in her an early pop-culture champion Of the virtues of sisterhood and female self-determination. (As such, Wonder Woman was once honoured as the cover subject of the feminist magazine, Ms.) Now, Wonder Woman is the heroine of an American television series, and the above appraisal of her qualities comes from the actress who portrays her therein, Lynda Carter.
Chosen as Miss World-USA in 1973, Carter is tali, bright-eyed, and strikingly pretty. (And no one connected with her series, apparently, can resist mentioning how stunning she looks in her abbreviated Wonder Woman get-up.) She was . something of a novice actress when she was cast as Wonder Woman she had appeared in no more than a handful of television shows and films, though one of the latter was Francis Ford Coppola's forthcoming Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse Now — but she was no stranger to the character she was to represent.
' I was always an avid comic reader,' she says, ' and Wonder Woman was one of my favourites. It was neat that she could be anything she wanted to be I liked Spiderman, too, because he was blind-I liked-his vulnerability. The same thing with Wonder Woman. As Diana Prince, she wears glasses, which is like a lesser degree of the same vulnerability. Unless you wear glasses - which I do - you don't know how, power-less you can feel behind them. I like the fact that Wonder Woman isn't invincible. But she has very strong weapons on her side - truth, . simplicity and wisdom.'
William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who concocted Wonder Woman's adventures under the pen-name Charles Moulton, behind that young girls should have super-heroines to look up to, just as young boys -had their Superman, Batman et al. It's true that most of these- male characters had female equivalents at one time or, another - Superwoman, Bat-girl, Mary Marvel, and so on - but their appearances were irregular and their characters were ill-defined; and they often got themselves into silly feminine predicaments from which they had to be extricated by their male counterparts.
Moulton's creation was different: her personality was strong, and she could be, as Lynda Carter says, anything she wanted to be-nurse, confidante, protector, detective, counterspy . . She had comparatively few super powers or tools - bracelets that could defied bullets, a lasso that made its captives submit to herwilt, a silent invisible plane but she- had heroic self-confid-. once and she had, said Moulton, the strength of love on her side. His point seemed to he, though, that all women had it, and that they needed only to believe in themselves in order to succeed at any task. 'Wonder Woman proves that women are superior to men,' be wrote, `because they have love in addition to force.'
Wonder Woman's origins, as related in her first comic-book appearance and paraphrased in a previous television series in the US, are fairly standard for the genre: in 1941 an American army intelligence officer, Captain Steve Trevor, crash-lands on an island inhabited by-Amazons (who most obviously have not suffered the traditional Amazon mastectomy): As Amazon doctors restore him to health, the spirits of Aphrodite and Athena appear to the island's queen, Hippolyte, in-forming her that the very future of democracy depends on Trevor's safe -return to
America, and asking her to send her best Amazon back with him to aid him in his struggle against. ' the forces of hate and oppression'.The strongest of the Amazons proves to be Diana, Hippolyte's daughter — who is already some-what taken with the handsome American officer. Trevor is made- whole, given a memory-
blocking drug to eradicate his knowledge of the Amazon empire, and flown to Washington by Diana soon to be christened Wonder Woman by the press. She adopts a more conventional identity (Princess Diana becomes Diana Prince, army nurse) — which the otherwise brilliant 'Trevor is- never able to penetrate - and takes her place in a reverse version of the Superman .1 Clark Kent / Lois Lane two-sided triangle, changing into Wonder Woman- whenever trouble beckons but otherwise enduring Captain Trevor's respectful condescension.Throughout Wonder Woman's early comic-book adventures, as she does battle with foreign spies, radical misogynists and the insecurities of American wartime womanhood, she liberally dispenses Moulton's philosophies: ' The only way you- can rule anybody, Steve, is the way we women do it -by inspiring affection' or `This man's world of yours will never b' with-out pain and suffering until learns love.' When another female character, says: 'I've learned my lesson-I'll rely on myself, not on a man!' Wonder Woman replies, presumably to her female readers as. well as to the character: Don't forget that!'
But Moulton died in 1947 and, as Gloria Steinem has pointed out, Wonder Woman's ' feminist orientation began to wane',-to the extent that she eventually became little more than in female James Bond - but far more boring since she was denied his sexual freedom.'
On television 'the old-style Wonder Woman is back. ` She feels apart from men, says Lynda latter, though she has the utmost respect for men of dignity. In fact, she is much more tolerant of bad men than of bad women, because she thinks that women should know better.'
The series is set in the 70s but some of the values of the original 40s comic-book series still obtain– as the producer, V. L. Baumes, says: ' It was a time when we knew, or at least remember having known, the difference between right and wrong. We all believed in things which we've lost sight of, and which we need to get back. That's why we're trying to make the plots more intelligent, so that we can appeal to adults as well as children. It is a family show, but we take it seriously. We don't play it for camp.'
On the other hand, says Lynda Carter, `we're not on a soapbox. There are definitely messages in the show, but they're reasonably subtle. Otherwise, people would turn off the television in two minutes. I want people to enjoy the show, most of all. It's ex-citing.' It's fun. Seeing the show should make people feel great! It's not preaching – it's a dramatic action comedy about a very special lady.'
And it is clear just how special she is, at least to Lynda Carter: Everything I say as Wonder Woman is part of me. Now, if I could live up to just part of what she is, I'd be happy. She Is a total woman. A person. And I believe that there's some Wonder Woman in every woman.'
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