Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

Deep Thoughts on Wonder Woman

• Tracie Guy-Decker & Emily Guy Birken • Episode 7

Share episode

Send us a text

Suffering Sappho! Wonder Woman’s role in our culture is far more complex than Tracie’s childhood love for Lynda Carter (and Wonder Woman underoos) prepared her for.

In this more-meta-than-usual episode, Tracie dives into the history of the world’s most famous Amazonian Nazi-fighter. From Wonder Woman’s comic book origins–she sprang fully formed from the mind of William Moulton Marston (a 1940s-era feminist, lie-detector inventor, and bondage enthusiast)--to the ways Diana’s characterization both empowers and disenfranchises women, Tracie and Emily discuss the complicated legacy of our favorite feminist superhero.

Join us as we talk about beauty, grace, and power–and what they all mean in a society that insists on hierarchies.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon. 


Speaker 1:

I'm Tracy Guy-Dekker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about Wonder Woman with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture but others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. Come over and think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

Speaker 1:

All right, I feel like I need to start this, even before I ask you what you know about Wonder Woman, with saying, like offline, when you and I talk about what we're going to talk about, I'm the one who's always like no, don't go meta, we need to stay focused on a specific piece of pop culture, like I'm always. You're like let's talk about this kind of story beat, and I'm like no, not meta. And then for today, I was like I don't want to talk about a specific piece of pop culture. I want to talk about Wonder Woman, like as a character. So I feel like I owe you an apology for that.

Speaker 2:

Well, can you do the little apology dance?

Speaker 1:

I have to practice it, but you'll get it offline, I promise. I do have a reason for that, which I will get into, and I'll start by saying obviously you know about Wonder Woman, like she's out there in the zeitgeist, as like a thing. So tell me, like, what do you know? What do you remember? Like, what do you think of? What was the first things you think of when I, when I say Wonder Woman?

Speaker 2:

Linda Carter.

Speaker 2:

So, now part of that is growing up. You loved Wonder Woman. I did. I feel like I was a little too young to appreciate the TV show because it was I don't know the exact dates of when it was out, but I feel like it was out when you were old enough to be watching TV, but I was not quite yet. But I remembered that you really loved Wonder Woman I, because I was a little bit at the wrong age for the TV show.

Speaker 2:

I never really interacted with Wonder Woman as a character much growing up because we didn't read comics and then they had started making superhero movies. But you know, it took until what? Was it 2017? Before we got a Wonder Woman movie. So you know, we had Superman, we had Batman in the 70s and 80s, but that was it. I know that I always really liked that she was Wonder Woman rather than Wonder Girl, because it seemed like all the other female characters you had Batgirl, it's Supergirl and it really kind of undercuts their power, which I don't know if I could have articulated that as a kid, but I remember liking that and feeling like that. That put her separate from me in a positive way. Like you know, I'm a girl. That's Wonder Woman, right. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's also like for you in particular, who are such a language nerd and also such a like you want patterns, and so Batman's equal is not Wonder Girl, right, like Batman, wonder Woman, yes. So I think that I suspect you could have articulated that, even as a child.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because you had the She-Man-Hera thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

She-Man-Hera, she-ra and He-Man thing. Yeah, yeah, I loved He-Man. She-ra came second. I hated that her name was She-Ra instead of She-Woman. Yeah, I mean, this doesn't make sense. Like this is a pattern, interrupt, right, right. So I did wish that her powers were kind of cooler before the 2017 movie came out, because before that I was just like okay, so she's got the lasso of truth, and then she's got the bracelets that I don't remember exactly what they do, but like they could do bullets, like they could, and I'm like, and then she could spin around and that might have just been a little in the Carter version, but she could spin around and just change from Diana Prince into Wonder Woman and I didn't really like her costume and that was mostly because I was just like that doesn't look comfortable, although I liked the boots the boots I was, I was, I really appreciated the boots. And then the invisible plane, which always was just like I don't. How would that work? How do you not lose it? Like I have trouble remembering where I park and I can see my car. Like how do you know where the controls are? So that was. That was me overthinking it even as like a kid.

Speaker 2:

The other aspect of Wonder Woman that I feel like I should bring up is when the 2017 film came out. I loved it. I mean loved it Because it was made for me. I mean it was it was specifically made to be my movie, because I am a middle-aged white woman who grew up with Linda Carter a little bit, and I saw some conversations online where particularly people of color were saying that there were there were some weird problematic aspects of race, particularly in the Amazonian society, and the fact that Robin Wright, who was my childhood princess buttercup, had grown up to be an Amazonian warrior. I was just like no, the Amazons are perfect and I didn't want to hear that. And so I posted on Facebook and I'm not proud of this and tagged two of my friends who are black women, who I know are both very into like pop culture, superhero movies, things like that, to be like.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't that bad, was it? One of them hadn't seen it and the other one, very gently and kindly, called me out and said look at how you're phrasing this question, what is it that you want me to say? And I don't remember exactly what she said, but she made it very clear that I was centering myself and something that is not about me and that was revelatory for me in my my anti-racism work and also in my understanding of what I still need to, the work I still need to do when something is geared towards me and understanding, like the immediate defensiveness that you see from people who are privileged in ways that I am not. I also like, I consider that such an act of trust and friendship from my friend, who actually I'm inviting to come on the show later. She's very much into anime. We'd love to discuss anime with her Just recognizing the vulnerability that she showed in calling me out when I was clearly in this defensive crouch. So those are my that's, that's what I'm coming into with Wonder Woman.

Speaker 1:

So well, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to talk about Wonder Woman because, as you pointed out, I loved Wonder Woman as a child and that love of Wonder Woman has remained a thing for me for over four years. You know like it's been a thing, like when I was five or six, I sent a fan letter to Linda Carter and she sent back two signed photographs, autographed photographs, one of her like as Wonder Woman, like in the, you know, fists on hips.

Speaker 2:

I had forgotten that, but I now I remember yeah.

Speaker 1:

And one of her like as Linda, like with a pink flower in her hair, and she said it, said they she had written like to Tracy, love Linda, and she spelled Tracy correctly. You know which I didn't always get yeah. But since she's L Y N D A, I think she's really careful of that sort of thing. Anyway, those pictures got lost in a move at some point. If I still had them they would be proudly framed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Where you can see them behind me in my video conferencing, anyway. So she's been very important to me and like sort of used her as like a you know, empowerment symbol for myself and things, and the reason I wanted to talk about her in a more meta, although clearly centering Linda Carter's portrayal, is because, as you say, that TV show was airing a long time ago. In fact, it aired from 75 to 79. So even I was watching it in reruns and I actually don't remember a single plotline from then. And yet she is so important, and so I followed some of the problematic around race issues that you brought up in 2017 with Gal Gadot. I was very disappointed with woman 84. Maybe we'll do another episode about that. Yeah, although now that I'm learning, I've spent some time researching in preparation for today, so that changes the way I think about when a woman 84 a little bit, but I really wanted to take some time to investigate who this character is, how she's been used, what her origins were, or exactly because of our tagline, I want to know what's in my head, so that's why I wanted to talk about it with you, so I will. This is there's a lot more. We've only been prepping for this. You know, like we decided like two weeks ago. So there's a lot more research actually there. So maybe in a year or two we'll revisit this or something, when I've had, when you know we've had more time, or maybe listeners will share additional resources with us. But for a quick podcast I think I have enough to keep us talking.

Speaker 1:

So Wonder Woman was created in the early 40s by a guy, a psychologist actually. William Molten Marston was his name. He was a professor who was a psychology professor and he, it was an early proponent of the lie detector test. It seems he didn't in fact invent it, but was an early, like advocate of it and did investigate the physiological signs of deception independently. Anyway, that's really interesting with the lasso of truth. Yeah, not a coincidence, not a coincidence.

Speaker 1:

And Marston was what I can only describe as a feminist for the 40s. It wasn't a nuanced feminism. There was still a sense. There was still a sense of like hierarchy. He just thought the wrong sex was on top because he had this. There was still a very as far as I can understand it, it was still a very essentialist understanding of gender and the psychology of gender, in so far as he believed that like society would be better if the more empathetic and more nurturing sex was in charge, and so he wanted to empower women to bring about this like social change.

Speaker 1:

But it really was about sort of reversing the hierarchy and having rather than some sort of equality. He also was an early like a researcher on sexual bondage, dominance and submission and actually believed, like the way he talked about his psychological theories, he believed that sort of dominance and submission. And there were two other, there were two other postures, that attunement, which I don't understand what he meant by that and something else that he believed were the building blocks of all emotions which, like I was having a really hard time following what and I wasn't reading his writing, I was reading like I want to be writing about him, but anyway, that also shows up a lot in the Wonder Woman, the early Wonder Woman comics. In fact, he said that like the greatest happiness we can achieve is when we submit to a benevolent Dominator.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It was weird and he said things like I read things that he would say in defense of Wonder Woman that were contradictory to other things that he was saying about his theories, so I'm not going to go too much further on that, but that was a thing. He also, for the forties, was a sexual radical insofar as he was married to a woman and also they were. The three of them were involved in a polyamorous relationship with another woman, olive, something or other, I can't remember. Her last Burn, olive Burn, and it's unclear as to whether or not the two women had a relationship, a sexual relationship between them.

Speaker 2:

Though.

Speaker 1:

I suspect they did, and there was a bio pic about him that actually came out in 2017 called Professor Marsyn and the Wonder Women, which I haven't seen yet.

Speaker 2:

I remember. I remember when that came out. Yeah, I haven't seen it either.

Speaker 1:

That definitely implied just based on the trailer that the two women also had a sexual relationship, but they all three lived together in the same house. Both women had children by Professor Marsyn that they all three raised together and in fact William and Elizabeth adopted Olive's kids at a certain point to make sure that they could have full inheritance and things. So this guy was like for the forties, like pretty pretty darn progressive progressive and out there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, and he wanted and he actually had taken this really deep interest in the comic books as a method to influence society. So his mission with Wonder Woman was to empower women to sort of take on this more dominant role and to kind of inculturate boys to accept it, which is really fascinating, and I think some of that, you see, I did. I went back and watched the pilot of the Linda Carter TV show and you see that a little bit at least in the pilot whereby Steve Trevor is the damsel in distress, right, and Wonder Woman is saving him repeatedly, right, and in fact he's in that one, like at one point he's bound up because he's been taken prisoner and she like has to get him out of the trappings. And so there was, there was definitely that sort of switcheroo that I mentioned before.

Speaker 1:

The bondage shows up in that pilot where Wonder Woman herself is not bound, she does. She either does the binding at one point she uses the lasso to bind the Nazi double agent, who is also a woman, or she's getting Steve out of bindings. But in the 40s in the comic book the binding happened every which way, right, like in fact part of the mythos, the bracelets in the comic book allow her to control her power. So she has. The things you listed are, in fact, her superpowers, which are things, but she also does have superpowers.

Speaker 1:

The Amazonians have superhuman strength. They're much stronger than the average, even than men in the rest of the world, and part of that is the bracelets help them control that. When you take the bracelets away, they go berserk, and if you bind the two bracelets together this is in the comic book then she loses her strength. So there's her enemies find this out. So there's a lot of plots. You know story arcs that the danger is that she's had her wrists bound together and the lasso and there's just bondage shows up over and over and over again in the comics.

Speaker 2:

So I can remember I bought through these stationery that it was like a stationery that had that like folded up into an envelope.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that had to. Did you buy it?

Speaker 2:

for me. I might have bought it for you, or I might have bought one for you and one for myself. Okay, because I had that too. Yeah, and it was old panels of Wonder Woman comics and I remember like several because and it was like the same four repeated, right, you know five times, something like that. But there there were like a couple where I was just like that's not the Wonder Woman, I know, because it was like bondage. And there was one where she was like brainwashed into marrying a monster and stuff like that. It was just like what.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so at the time, like when sensors were like uh, professor Morstan, according to the secondary source that I was reading, like, his response was kind of like so bondage is not a problem, sadomasochism is a problem, but these, like the Amazons, like want to be bound and the reader knows that Wonder Woman will be safe, so they're not suffering and she doesn't suffer, so really it's okay, because it's not about sadism, it's about just control and like that was his argument. And he had this whole thing about how, like there was this very essentialist like women want to be controlled thing that he felt totally counter to the like sort of 40s version of feminism that he said was the reason he started.

Speaker 2:

It was so weird, like my brain was exploding so I was reading this so one thing I do want to say is like I understand what you're saying. It's like we're an encounter to that, but I've mentioned before that you know my my biggest writing influences Barbara Michaels, slash Elizabeth Peters, slash Barbara Mertz, who she died in 2013 at age like 88 or 89. So that would have been. She would have been born in the 20s and you look at her older books, like she started writing in the 60s and she's always been very explicit like that she is a feminist. But then she would have things in there about how, like, yeah, her female characters do want to be dominated and this was generally in like her historical fiction is where she would.

Speaker 2:

She would like to kind of express that, but there was still like little sprinklings of it in the current contemporary fiction and I know that she proudly and explicitly described herself as a feminist her entire life. So I think, like some of this may be the this, like there was this essentialist idea of like women soft men hard. Like women nurturing men dominating. That was so embedded and ingrained in our culture that even people who are being subversive and being progressive and like pushing against the strictures of society, the subjection and past that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So okay, I'm coming back to the comics now. So he defends himself with the comics. Now, one of the things that, one of the reasons that I think the comic book industry kind of welcomed him and allowed Wonder Woman to happen, was that in the country in the 40s, women were taking on roles that had traditionally been male, because they had to because of the war effort.

Speaker 2:

Right the Riveter.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and that's the point to which this kind of women's empowerment was a part of the war effort and I think that's part of the way that some of the industry justified this subversive character and you know, I mean the sexual stuff too, right, because like there were fan letters coming to Charles Moulton, which was the pen name for William, and somebody, charles, something like his co-author you know about, like how much they like this Sergeant or something in an Army base was how turned on he was by seeing women tied up and selling magazines at. 95% of the readers of Wonder Woman in the 40s were men right.

Speaker 1:

So today we sort of think of it at like this is what all this was for us, us women. But actually at the time, you know, that wasn't the readership, so you were gonna say something.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm just thinking, and again, I'm not. I'm no expert when it comes to classic comics, but just knowing the ways in which women are drawn in the comic book industry, that's only really just now starting to change. It feels like there's a long history of like, yeah, we'll allow women to be superheroes, but you know they're gonna be wearing thongs or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Well, right. So that's actually an interesting point, because I think with a different artist, wonder Woman would not have made it past the censors, like the artist that they had whose name is escaping me right now, oh Peters had this sort of old timey kind of a look and he was the artist for in the you know, first several years until Marston, after Marston died, this guy was drawing Wonder Woman and it was this. Yeah, she had almost this like Victorian sort of sensibility, not in her costume but in the way she was rendered, and there were artists drawing in the 40s much more explicitly sexy, you know, with like visible nipples and things that you never saw on Wonder Woman. Now she was wearing a strapless bathing suit, but it wasn't. She wasn't drawn in that sort of explicit, provocative way.

Speaker 1:

And I think that that actually also contributed to your point about what was allowed, contributed to her being like kind of speaking to the censors, even with the bondage and stuff. So I found that all that fascinating, one of the things too, like during the 40s, thinking about the war effort. Like the other superheroes at the time, they fought Nazis too. For sure, you know, superman fought for truth, justice in the American way and all that. But according to the author of one of the secondary sources I was reading, like the actual, like real estate devoted to fighting Nazis in the books was much higher in Wonder Woman than any of the other superheroes, which was also kind of an interesting fact that I don't quite know what to do with. But I was interested to see that that carried over into the initial, the first two years of the Linda Carter show in the mid-70s, where in the pilot it's set during World War II and Steve Trevor is a pilot and he's taking down a Nazi. He's actually taking down a Nazi plane. That's how he ends up on Paradise Island in the pilot. So that factor that, like she, was a part of the war effort in multiple ways in that way, you know, which I thought was looking back is really interesting. Now in the 70s the show got canceled by one network and then picked up by a second, and when they brought her back on the second network they made it contemporary. So they moved it from the 40s to the 70s and now she's working with, instead of Steve, steve's son, a different actor. So that all is an interesting like how do we make this more relatable for viewers?

Speaker 1:

And I'm trying to decide what I wanna talk about next. Looking back at the history of her, so I pointed out the fact that the broader industry maybe allowed her to be who she was, to help encourage the women to become Rosie the Riveter and not just be housewives anymore while their men were off to war. And then when the war was over, that sort of showing the way for women continued. So she got married to Steve and the jobs she then took were much more traditionally female jobs. She had been working as a spy and she'd been doing frontline stuff fighting Nazis, and then, after the war was over, in the comics she was a relationship advice columnist and a singer or a fashion model or something, and fighting crime was what she did in her spare time, when she wasn't doing her job or being a wife, and that was also like to help encourage women like, okay, you're gonna break society if you keep working, go back, go back into the-.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting, considering you're saying that Marston specifically wanted, like men and boys, to be kind of acculturated to the idea of women working and being higher in the hierarchy. Let's put it that way. It seems like during the war it was like giving men a way to like, feel comfortable and even encourage their wives and girlfriends to take the riveting job and do those jobs that needed to be done while the men were away. And then, once the war was over, it kind of gave another path for men to be okay with, like okay, so you come home and your wife, your girlfriend, is a little different than she was because she got used to some independence and making her own money and she can still do that on the side, as long as she puts you front and center.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, maybe Now Marston was dead by this point, like he died, and so he was not in creative control anymore and speaking of sort of her loss of prominence, this I found fascinating when I was doing the research. Gloria Steinem grew up reading the comics and loved them and so in the comics at a certain point, I think in the 60s, they did this whole story arc where she actually gave up her powers so that she could become just a normal mortal woman and just like live her life. And Steinem was like oh hell, no. And she created this huge like lobbying campaign to DC Comics to give Wonder Woman her powers back and put Wonder Woman on the cover of the first issue of Ms Magazine.

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

She's like, sometimes called like the woman who saved Wonder Woman.

Speaker 2:

I did not know that.

Speaker 1:

I didn't either, and I take some like comfort and pleasure in the fact that Steinem still glommed on to Wonder Woman also although it makes a certain amount of sense, for some of the same reasons that you pointed out, that as a child you liked her because she was Wonder Woman. So both in the comics and in the 70s, she was not the only like, kick-ass woman on TV in the 70s, right, you also had the Bionic Woman and Charlie's Angels. Charlie's Angels yeah.

Speaker 1:

But what was different about her? The Bionic Woman was a sidekick. She was the $6 million man's girlfriend.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then got her own spin-off show, but she was very much his girlfriend, and Charlie's Angels had no superpowers, they were sexy. And they used their sexiness to achieve the outcomes that they wanted in sort of the crime fighting or whatever. And Charlie was in charge.

Speaker 2:

I don't have any memory of watching Charlie's Angels the TV show, but when they made the movie that came out in like late 90s 2000, somewhere around then. I remember being horrified because the end of the film has Charlie talking to Bosley saying like oh, I'm keeping an eye on my girls, or something like that. I'm like undercutting everything that had come before about how kick-ass these three women were and I was just like ew, like yeah, charlie, you're just a voice Like fuck off.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, and that was not the case for Linda Carter's Wonder Woman. She stood on her own two feet, and even more so Now. In the comics and in other iterations there's clearly a romantic relationship between Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman and there's like hints of a flirtation, at least in the couple of episodes of the first season that I was able to watch before we started to record, but they didn't actually have. It wasn't a primary thing. And in fact, in the second iteration, when she moved to networks, there was zero romantic relationship between Wonder Woman and Trevor Junior like Steve Trevor's son, none. Now there was still objectification. Everybody remarks on how gorgeous she is and lots of people want to be with her, including like aliens who show up, but she's not into it, and that was another thing that was like deeply subversive and powerful about Linda Carter's version that we didn't and about, actually in some ways, the Wonder Woman comic. Now there was some romance, but that wasn't the primary story arc for Wonder Woman, which was not the case for women in comics.

Speaker 2:

I find that really interesting, that that particular point about people commenting on how attractive she is and her being like yeah, yeah, whatever In part because we've talked before a little bit about how I think in Ghostbusters the Ghostbusters episode, about how there was this sense and I think there still is in a lot of media that being considered attractive is kind of like an accomplishment, it's treated as an accomplishment for women.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's merit in it.

Speaker 2:

And so the fact that this accomplishment doesn't mean anything to Linda Carter's version of Wonder Woman is subversive, and it does give a path for and not just women who are conventionally attractive, but for any woman or marginalized person who is complimented, because there is this sense that if you are bestowed a compliment by someone in power, you then owe them your interest or sexual attraction or love, smile, yes, and so I think that in some ways it's easy for women who are conventionally attractive, because it happens all the time. They learn very quickly. This is meaningless. I don't need to do anything about that. But even for people who are not recognizing that being given the accomplishment of attracting a man is not anything that you have any requirement to respond to is such an important lesson that we don't get. I don't know. It's just that's a lovely thing that I am very glad to see.

Speaker 2:

I went down a rabbit hole a couple of years ago and ended up binging all of Veronica Mars, which I missed when it first came out in 2004. And so 2004 doesn't feel like that long ago. It's 19 years ago, but still it's a lot more recent than Linda Carter's Wonder Woman. And there is a character who ends up becoming Kristen Bell's character's boyfriend for a short period, who, when we first meet him, says unironically and without it, it being like an immediate disqualification of him being a good person of like give us a smile, love. He says that to her, that's how he introduces himself and like he's let's see, 30 years after Linda Carter's Wonder Woman coming out, we have a character who thinks that it's perfectly okay to tell another, tell a girl to smile, and we as the audience are expected to consider him as a viable romantic option.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, I don't think that Wonder Woman Linda Carter's Wonder Woman was as powerful as you're, as you're making her Even in the. So in the pilot, steve is clearly having a romantic relationship with the woman who is his secretary, who turns out to be a Nazi secret agent, marsha. So the lesson he takes away from that is that he's not going to hire pretty girls to be his secretary anymore. So, general blankenship. His boss says I got you covered.

Speaker 1:

I've already interviewed a few girls and I found one who scored high on all of the aptitude tests, whatever, but she's not a looker that's not the word he uses, but it's something along those lines and it's frigging Linda Carter wearing glasses and her hair in a bun, right. So like, I don't think it was quite as big, powerful as you're hoping it was. Now, what's interesting is that within a moment, like within like two minutes of him meeting her nice to meet you, diana, and she says nice to meet you, major. He says we don't need rank around here, we're just Steven, diana, like partners, right. So, like you know, like the show runners, like would give with one hand and take with the other, you know, but I just like it's complicated, let's not overstate.

Speaker 1:

Let's not give it too much credit, you know. So, while while we're on this, I've shared a number of the things that are like good, like things that I'm glad are in my head about Wonder Woman. So I think we should actually like let's talk about some of the things that maybe are less good. So you already pointed out the lack of racial diversity in the 2017 version.

Speaker 2:

Specifically, it was pointed out that all of the black and brown Amazons were shown to have kind of marginalized jobs like child-minder, yeah, like they were the ones who were looking after Diana as a little girl. They were servants basically, yeah, and it was the white Amazons who got to be generals and it's obvious I mean it's an obvious reiteration of a hierarchy that it should not exist.

Speaker 1:

So in the 40s they dealt with race just by not dealing with it. I mean even the war effort. Wonder Woman fought Nazis. The Japanese were not as enemies of the country, they just didn't show up. They're just complete absence of any kind of racial diversity in the comic book and similarly, I believe, in the Linda Carter TV show was similarly pretty white.

Speaker 1:

Now later in the comic book, like Afro-Glorious Sinem's pressure campaign, the head of DC comics was like okay, I gave her her lasso back, I gave her her bracelets back, I gave her her invisible plan, I gave her a sister, a black Amazonian sister named Nubia. Will you leave me alone? Now I have not read the stories with Nubia, so I don't know how she's treated. The name makes me think maybe not so great. Yeah, yeah, so. So there's that.

Speaker 1:

But also in the 40s, like one of the recurring characters was this frenemy Eda who, like worked at a women's college. She was like a sorority sister or the head of a sorority at a women's college. She there was a lot of fat phobia in the way she's depicted. She's chubby, she's always has candy in her hands and she's like always like sort of torturing the soror they have like baby week, which is something Marston had actually seen at the college where he taught, where the girls had to dress up like as babies and diapers, with bonnets and stuff, and have their and get paddled on their tushes and like that shows up in the comic Greek life is so weird. Yeah, I don't know Like he wrote this whole, like it was a whole case study that he did like psychology, about the dominance and attunement and whatever.

Speaker 1:

Oh my goodness Anyway. So so Eda shows she's a running character. She's always drawn. Again, these characters were not drawn the way we think about superheroes with like the bulging muscles, but she was always chunky, you know. She was drawn as very rotund, always had candy either in her hand or like being put into her mouth, like she was intentionally made sort of grotesque and it's just like look up that phobia in the dictionary.

Speaker 2:

You know it was pretty bad.

Speaker 1:

So that was something that that you know to note. And then one of the other things that I think I really want to like say out loud is one of the reasons I did not like Wonder Woman 84 was Cheetah. I found the whole story about her jealousy of Diana like just so anti feminist, right, because especially in the Wonder Woman 84 movie, like that she's like a professor and she's like she's like very accomplished woman and she's jealous of Gal Gadot's, diana Prince's you know, grace and beauty and that's what makes her evil or make that choices, I guess. And I was like yucky Cheetah was a comic book, bill and S, and she was jealous of Wonder Woman. That was lifted from the comic book. And I think that's really important for me to know that the movie makers were looking back at source material and I can't but ask well, why did you choose that one?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Now like so obviously there's something in that that somebody found like relatable and authentic.

Speaker 2:

I have not seen Wonder Woman 84, in part because you were like, but I read about it when it came out and I read about like that very aspect of it and one thing I have wondered is if what the filmmakers were going for is that lack of solidarity between women and like looking at women as fellow women, as the as competition is what leads to negative, like behavior that could cause people, yeah, and which I think could be really interesting but would require a great deal of nuance to get to somewhere where it feels like a reasonable yeah, yeah, origin story.

Speaker 1:

For sure that actually is a part of all of the source material right In the pilot of Linda Carter's Wonder Woman, the Marsha, the double Asian Nazi, which also is sourced from the comic books.

Speaker 1:

Carter gives this little sermon to Marsha, once she has it tied up, about how important sisterhood is and like that women are the wave of the future and you know you shouldn't be fighting with other. I mean like it's yeah, she sermonizes on exactly that and in the comic book at least like that that character is. It goes to in the comic book the Amazonians like have like another little island that they turn into transformation island which is like a penitentiary, but I guess it's meant to be like transformational justice where they teach women about the importance of sisterhood and whatever, and so this. So that character actually goes there and is transformed. But she's the only one. Everybody else escapes apparently from the island and then comes and you know recidivism is really high for escapees. But that that actually was another thing that was different about Wonder Woman, like she subdued her enemies, she didn't kill them, and that was different in the Wonder Woman books from other comic books at the time.

Speaker 2:

You know this. Also. This brings up an issue from the 2017 Wonder Woman that a friend of mine who also I would have thought would have loved the movie but she really had a problem with and I like I saw the scene differently, but I think she was probably correct in the way that the filmmaker intended it. So, if you'll recall, there's that, that party that Steve Trevor goes to and is like trying to charm his way through to the I cannot remember her name, but the Nazi woman who had come up with the poison gas and so he's talking to her. And the way that my friend saw that was like the evil Nazi woman was like oh, he's pretty, I'm gonna listen to what he has to say. And she's like kind of under his spell.

Speaker 2:

And now, to be fair, chris Pine could say anything to me. He could read me the phone book, frankly, yeah, and there's there's a fantastic moment from when they the Chris Pine and Gal Gadot were on the tour for the movie. They're on the media tour where he's talking and she does this like bites her bottom lip, like looking at him, and she's married and it just had her like second or third child and like clearly like not with him, but like it's just like that is the most relatable thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, anyway, the way that I saw that, because this Nazi woman who, like it's the kind of villain I love, because she was like brilliant and a zealot and basically if the movie had been like she could have been a hero in if she weren't doing evil stuff, like just because she had all of the things that I find admirable and she was, I think she was scarred so and I saw that as her, like she, she kind of stops and is like looking at him and like my friend saw that as her being like this handsome man's interested in me and I was just like her going like does he really think this is gonna work on me?

Speaker 2:

And that Wonder Woman had to come and like rescue him from this foolish plan because all he's doing is like I'm pretty, I can walk, I can talk my way into any woman's pants and right. So I'm thinking about that in terms of what you're talking about with the, with the cheetah character and and all of that is like it comes from this sense of perspective and like you need to have a context and nuance to just determine what's really going on here, because we don't have the, the, like the narrator or like panel telling you what's going on in the Nazi woman's head. And you know, wonder Woman 84 clearly didn't do a good job of making it clear that, like it's not cheetah who's the problem, it's the society and system that makes women think that they, you know there can be only one.

Speaker 1:

Well, and specifically, that grace and beauty are more important More important, yeah, and worth sacrificing everything for, yeah. So we've been talking for a while, but there was one aspect of the Wonder Woman kind of mythos that I actually really wanted to talk to you about, because you know Greek myth much better than I do, right? So one of the things that I was reading about so these are meant to be the Amazonians. They even from the comics. They were dressed in like Greek garb, right.

Speaker 1:

So they're meant to be the Amazonians from Greek myth, who the ones who like cut off their one breast to have a better right breast, so they could, they could pull the they could blow a bow more easily.

Speaker 1:

And the secondary source that I was reading that was talking about this pointed out that in the Greek myth you know, in all the Greek literature they were denigrated, right that they were. That was used to sort of demean them because they were taking on like male roles and they were would. Rape was regularly used as a weapon against the Amazonians and in particular like Hippolyta that is the name of Diana's mother on Paradise Island, and Hippolyta was raped by Theseus Do you remember Personally that that I don't remember very well.

Speaker 2:

I do know Theseus was a bit of an asshole. I would not be surprised if he raped Hippolyta, because there's plenty of that as well. Throughout all of the stories the Amazon's as women warriors was like look at these ridiculous creatures. Yeah, Rather than it being like the badass thing that you and I think of Right.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly. With that backdrop too, I think is kind of an interesting thing for the way that then Wonder Woman, diana, interacts with our world with this level of naivete, but also, like like in the pilot of Linda Carter's episode, like she's wearing that bathing suit in 1941. And this woman like invites her into a women's dress shop and it's like you know this would flatter your figure, what you're wearing is fine for summer, of course. And Wonder Woman was like you use so much fabric for your clothes. And then she's like thanks for the dress. And the woman's like you got to pay for that and like she's never heard of money.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And she's like you know why you do like all the things she's like why are you doing it that way, you know, which makes for really interesting like social commentary, but then she still knows to like put her hair in a bun and put glasses on to be acceptable as the secretary. So I don't know. It's a really interesting like push pull dynamic and knowing that background to you makes a lot more sense of the scenes on Paradise Island when Hippolyta is like no, we got to get this man out of here, I do not want him here. And like Wonder Woman is like I don't know. When I look at him I feel things I've never felt. She's like stop feeling those things, get him out of here, you know, and like knowing that she was she's a rape survivor and that rape was a weapon of war used against her people.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that's. I think in some ways that's part of what is within the like, the Greek mythology aspect of it, with there's this expectation that women are not fully human. And so, you know, look at these idiots. They like, they think they need to cut off their breasts so that they can draw a bow and when fight like men, why do they feel the need to protect themselves from us? Yeah, and it reminds me of some of the not all men you get. You know, like I hate it when women cross the street, when they see me, when walking at night, like don't they know it's not all men like, well, yeah, yeah, if y'all were signs, it would make it a little bit easier for us. That's definitely part of it. And then the the level of just rape and objectification of women throughout Greek mythology makes it more empowering that Diana Prince is an Amazonian woman, just because it kind of takes that back.

Speaker 2:

But even like my most beloved myths like you know this about me, but Orpheus and Eurydice, because I was I was a teeny, tiny little romantic as a little girl. I loved that story because it was so romantic. But Eurydice has no agency whatsoever and could be replaced with a really pretty vase that Orpheus is pissed about breaking, and the story wouldn't change at all. Yeah, and that's, I think, really interesting about a kind of reclaiming of this part of the myth, because I think of Amazon's as like that's actually the way that I describe it Like the most, most like an Amazon warrior I ever felt was after giving birth, on medicated, because I'm just like hear me roar and that's that is exactly how I described it, like I felt like an Amazon, whereas they would have been just weirdos at best in Greek mythology.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting that you say that giving birth was when you felt that way, because no men, they're immortal as long as they stay on Paradise Island. But in fact, though, diana is the daughter of Hippolyta, at least in one version of this daughter, but not by having given birth to her, she was a statue. Hippolyta made a statue, which Aphrodite granted life. So there's something that I mean it's just really interesting, that like, yeah, it's also really I don't know where I'm going with this and we're like over time, so I'll have to over this, think this on my own time. But it's really interesting to me that these, these Amazonian women, who are like symbols of feminine power, mm-hmm. Do not give birth, mm-hmm, they do not reproduce, which is for men, human beings, like Exclusively feminine power, mm-hmm. I Don't know, I'm going with this.

Speaker 2:

Well, I know that's really interesting because there's a tension in that.

Speaker 1:

I feel like there's a strong tension in that. Well like I wonder if a woman had written it originally, if, in if, instead, a woman might have been that imagined that these Amazonians had figured out how to reproduce without men. Rather than that, they're immortal and have to have effort. Id grant Mm-hmm. Grant life to a statue.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that I mean. In some ways, that gets back to what you're talking about, about how how the Amazonians were treated in the Greek myths. In that, like you know, you are giving up the only actual power, that women have in order to take on so-called men's power.

Speaker 1:

Men's power.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and that's that's interesting. It's an interesting tension there, yeah, and yeah it is, it is interesting. That's that's when I've been like, yeah, except they don't give birth.

Speaker 1:

but yeah, all right. Well, we have been Talking for a while, so let me see, I'm gonna try and synthesize what we shared and then you fill in for me, right? Okay? So Wonder Woman she resonates with so many of us, even across actually even across race and and Ability, and, like I feel, like a lot of people, despite her lack of diversity, a lot of women really feel resonance with Wonder Woman, in part because she's woman, she's not girl, she is not the counterpart to another superhero on like all of the other female superheroes that were given until fairly recently. And there's something weird about bondage and dominance in her origin or Maybe I shouldn't say weird, maybe I should say there are seeds of Bondage and dominance in her origin. She Was progressive, but also of her time, in the 40s and in the 70s and I guess maybe in the 20s. Mm-hmm, some of the the sort of Greek influence that Marston pulled from gives us some really interesting roots, but also some serious tension. Mm-hmm, what am I forgetting? I feel like I'm forgetting some, some of my negatives.

Speaker 2:

Well, the characters of, I think, eda and Cheetah are Problematic, problematic and there are ways to make Cheetah at least it seems like there. There are arguments to be made that it is pointing out that the structure of our society is to blame. But that was not made clear in Wonder Woman 84 and then with Eda, it sounds like that. That's really and truly just like straight-up fat phobia which is so rampant. You know, I'm not surprised. It was so deeply embedded in the comics and there is some benefit to the fact that, like romance was not the driving force of Wonder Woman's story arc. But there is still a very weird push-pull with Wonder Woman's beauty.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and Glorious dynams and glorious dynams, glorious dynam. The woman who saved Wonder Woman and forced DC Comics, through a lobbying campaign, to give her her powers back.

Speaker 2:

There's, there's a, there's a metaphor in there.

Speaker 1:

I know there is All right. Well, that was fun. Thank you for letting me go meta, even though I always push, push back on you about going meta. So what are we gonna talk about next time?

Speaker 2:

So next time I'm very excited to do a deep dive into the movie Clue with Tim Curry. So so quotable, such a quotable movie, and I had such a crush on Tim Curry, didn't we all?

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, I can't wait to hear about it. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin Macleod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Deep Thoughts is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. You can help keep us overthinking. Support us through our patreon with a link in the show notes. Leave a positive review so others can find us and share the show with your people. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?