This documenaty looks at female superheroes, warrior princesses, and other icons of women's empowerment in pop culture.
Please join us Monday, March 25, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. at the Little Theatre for a free screening of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines followed by a panel discussion. Exploring our nation’s long-term love affair with comic book superheroes, the film raises questions about the possibilities and contradictions of heroines within the genre. Reflecting our culture’s deep-seated ambivalence toward powerful women—even in this so-called post-feminist era —women may be portrayed as good, or brave, or even featured as “action babes,” but rarely are they seen as heroes at the center of their own journey. This film is part of the Little's Women & Power: Women’s History Film Series and a WXXI Community Cinema Series presentation.
Tying the film together is the groundbreaking figure of Wonder Woman, the unlikely brainchild of a Harvard-trained pop psychologist. From Wonder Woman’s original, radical World War II presence, to her uninspiring 1960s incarnation as a fashion boutique owner, to her dramatic resurrection by feminist Gloria Steinem and the women of Ms. Magazine, Wonder Woman’s legacy continues today—despite the fact that she has yet to make it to the big screen.
The hero is a key archetype in Western culture, yet heroes have almost invariably been male and white. Twenty-eight centuries since Achilles—arguably the first superhero—the classic heroic archetype remains unaltered: displaying the so-called “masculine” virtues of strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality, and sometimes violence.
Why are these characteristics considered “heroic”? What happens when women engage in ways of thought and behavior traditionally confined to “masculinity”? Why do most superheroes show little or no talent for communication, family, or empathetic caring? Why aren’t these values considered heroic, and how do our ideas about heroism reflect our culture’s values?
In our era of increased plastic surgeries and emphasis on “looking good,” rather than acting powerfully, many psychologists, media and social critics have long decried the fact that women are bombarded with images of physical perfection and portrayals of their gender purely in terms of sexual attractiveness. It is time to counter this with some reflection on why our culture struggles with images of women triumphant beyond the domestic arena of relationships and family.
This film invites women and girls, men and boys, to consider how stereotypes in the comic art genre serve to limit our vision of women, while reinforcing some of society’s deepest prejudices against them. Exploring how our highly visual culture places more emphasis on girls’ and women’s looks rather than on their deeds, Wonder Women! urges women to claim the action genre—and media in general—as their own, if they want to change how they are represented.
This film will be followed by a talkback. Panelists include:
Barbara LeSavoy, PhD, is Director and faculty of Women and Gender Studies (WMS) at The College at Brockport in Brockport, NY. Dr. LeSavoy teaches Feminist Theory, Sex and Culture, and Senior Seminar in Women and Gender Studies, and she maintains a dynamic scholarship agenda. Her research and publication areas include women’s global human rights, gender and popular culture, intersectionality and educational equity/success, and women’s stories as feminist standpoint. Dr. LeSavoy chairs Rochester/Novgorod sister city Linkages Women's Partnership Committee and is currently leading a three faculty team working on a SUNY National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project that will support a global classroom linking students at the College at Brockport with students at Novgorod State University. Dr. LeSavoy also chairs the Greater Rochester American Association of University Women (AAUW) College/University Partnership committee and the Biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues College Alliance, and she is a founding member of the Greater Rochester Consortium of Women and Gender Studies Faculty.
Fredericka (Freddi) Macek currently works for the Rochester Labor Council, AFL/CIO as the Retiree Committee Coordinator. She taught elementary grades in the Rochester City School District for 33 years. She served on various educational committees especially through the Rochester Teachers Association. She also served on numerous union committees and held several elected positions, including primary chair and 2nd vice president.
Shortly after retiring from teaching, Freddi became the labor liaison for New York State United Teachers Retiree Council 5, and was hired in a part-time position with the RLC as the Rochester Labor Council, AFL/CIO Retiree Committee Chair (Coordinator). She has been in this position for 12 years. As the Committee Chair, she works with retiree representatives of the union retiree groups in the Rochester area and reestablishing the Rochester Labor Council Retiree Group. The reps keep each other informed on retiree issues such as Medicare, Social Security, pensions and also labor issues such as the Employees Free Choice Act, Right to Work legislation, etc. Their main goal is to help Rochester Labor Council in their efforts to keep working families working and to maintain/create jobs that pay a living wage.
Freddi also represent the Rochester Labor Council on the Investment Cabinet of the United Way and is a member of the UW Women’s Leadership Council and the Labor Leadership Group. She holds an elected positions in her own union retiree groups and is a member of Beta Eta of Delta Kappa Gamma.
Carter Soles is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the English Department at The College at Brockport (SUNY). His research interests include geek studies, gender and identity studies, film authorship, and the comedy and horror genres. He has published articles on the queerness of the independent film Chuck & Buck (2000) for Jump Cut and on the figure of the hillbilly in 1970's horror cinema for The Eco-Cinema Reader (Routledge, 2012). He is the co-author, with Kom Kunyosying, of "Postmodern Geekdom as Simulated Ethnicity," appearing in Jump Cut 54 (Summer 2012).
Dr. Alisia Grace Chase is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and teaches classes on both Women in Art and comics and Graphic Novels. Her research examines the representation of women in many facets of American popular culture including cinema and comics/graphic novels.
One of Dr. Chase’s academic articles, “Draws Like a Girl: The Necessity of Old School Feminist Interventions in the World of Comics and Graphic Novels” (published in Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference) addresses the very same issues brought up in the film.
The Little Theatre, WXXI, and The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies present ten films in honor of Women’s History Month. The Women & Power: Women’s History Film Series is supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.
Watch the trailer here:
WONDER WOMEN! The Untold Story of American Superheroines from Vaquera Films on Vimeo.
