“Wonder Women!” Airs on PBS Tonight
Tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, the Independent Lens program on PBS marks the television premiere of “Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines”, a great documentary by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan.
I had the chance to watch an earlier version of film at GeekGirlCon in 2011 and was really impressed with Kristy’s work. I proudly supported the Kickstarter last year to make sure the documentary got finished, and was delighted to see it earned a world premiere at SXSW.
Now, the documentary has made the leap to our television screens! With sites like MTV Geek providing coverage, hopefully many fans of Wonder Woman and other superheroines will get to see it. Don’t worry if you miss it tonight; as is usual for PBS, the program repeats a number of times over the next two weeks, so check your local listings for the channels in your area.
For more about the documentary, you can visit its website, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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I remember this well from GeekGirlCon last year. It is definitely worth a look for all Fangirls whether they geek out over Wonder Woman or any other franchise, character, or genre. A great recounting of women in geekdom decades ago.
I saw the documentary in its entirety Monday night. I did enjoy it, but I don’t understand why they omitted any mention of Leia in the film. If you are going to discuss strong female characters in sci-fi and comics from the 1980s, then you have to include Leia in the discussion. She would have more of impact on young girls who grew up during that decade than Ripely, since Leia was in three PG films and Ripely was in two R films.
Well, in some feminist circles Leia isn’t thought of as an example of an empowered woman. That’s not my opinion, but I’ve seen it quite a bit. I have thoughts on why Wonder Woman can wear not much more than Leia (and that’s only in one short section of the trilogy) yet she is regarded differently.
It’s not a perspective that I readily understand, even though I have heard it before. In A New Hope, Leia grabs the blaster right out of Luke’s hands and starts firing- she obviously knows how to defend herself. In Empire, she’s giving battle instructions to troops-shows her as an authority figure and as a warrior. Yeah in Jedi she’s forced to wear the slave girl outfit, but she kills the creature that makes her wear it and then spends most of the rest of the film in battle fatigues. I can partially see how some might not see Leia as a feminist figure because she’s involved in warfare, but other than that I don’t see it. Pardon the rant :)