Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines sounds like the sort of documentary that I’ll force my daughter to watch when she’s a little older. Using the character of Wonder Woman as a lens to examine the popular perception of women in American society, the new film explores how the character has changed over the decades to reflect or refute the current perception of that role.
In his review on Newsarama, Seth Robison describes the film as charting “the history of fictional heroic women in all modern media starting with the creation of Wonder Woman during World War II, the character’s development over the past seventy years, how other fictional female heroes were influenced by Wonder Woman and how society’s view of women in that kind of role played a part in the creation of characters from The Bionic Woman to Xena to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
That’s a tale that needs telling. Not just to remind us of where we’ve been as a country and as a culture, but to help chart where we’re going. Wonder Women! is currently playing in select theaters and will, apparently, premiere on televisions nationwide on PBS this April 15th. Set your DVRs and adjust your tiaras accordingly.
