Wonder Women @ GFF

Despite its title, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines is not an analysis of women in comic books but a broad study of how action women have been marginalised in American media for the past half century. Beginning with a look at Wonder Woman's origins - skating over her creator's serious bondage fixation - it expands its focus to include the resurgence of heroines in popular media in the past twenty years, taking in television, film and, movingly, a youth workshop for young female film-makers.

Intelligent commentary from Kathleen Hanna, Gloria Steinem, Trina Robbins and other cultural critics is interspersed with a history of the heroines. Sadly, the sections on comics are the weakest: rather than address the rise of superheroines in the 1970s (a glance at Valkyrie from Marvel would have seen how clumsy but endearing their attempt to develop a feminist hero was, while Ms Marvel was partially based on Gloria Steinem, if her profession is any guide), it dwells on Wonder Woman in detail and mistakes an interlude of bad reinvention for an anti-feminist coup. Yet the message is loud and clear: strong women are under-represented in fantasy, and there remains a severe shortage of female creators.

Using the superheroine as a trope, Wonder Women is a satisfying primer for the ways in which feminism has engaged with the media. Kathleen Hanna is especially trenchant, reflecting on how the paucity of images has led to any signs of support be grasped hopefully and how her own revolution was quickly co-opted by the mainstream. Xena and Buffy are placed in a social context, and the hopes of second wave feminists are located alongside a media that has preferred objectification of women.

There is a lack of aesthetic analysis  - showing the panels that led to the Women in the Refrigerator controversy without mentioning it, or not picking up on the phallic symbolism of Xena's death Saint Sebastian style seem wasted opportunities - but this is par for a documentary that considers art in a social context. A primer on American feminism that holds up Wonder Woman as an icon rather than the definitive word on any of the topics it touches, Wonder Women provides plenty of material for serious discussion and is brave enough not to flinch at the ideals of feminism.

Monday 18 February 2013
CCA (part of Glasgow Film Festival)