Given the timing of Wonder Woman, which ran from 1975 to 1979, the series served as a celebration of the then-recent strides made by the women’s movement. It also acted as a tribute to the super heroine who, as a creation of the 1940s, helped lay the groundwork for feminism’s contemporary successes. As the series’ executive producer Douglas S. Cramer observed, “Wonder Woman came along at a time in the 1970s that was absolutely right ...
[when] the women’s movement was hitting its stride, where feminism and all that it conveyed ... was ... exploding across the country.”23It was also the era when other strong and sexy superheroines could be found on television shows such as Charlie’s Angels (1976–1981), The Bionic Woman (1976–1978), and The New Avengers (1976–1977).
In the 2005 DVD release of the entire Wonder Woman series, the legacy of the show was examined, as was its portrayal of the character, both as a feminist icon and a sex symbol.
Naturally, much attention was paid to the revealing costume that Carter wore in the title
role. After all, as sexy as Wonder Woman was in the comic book, it was even sexier seeing a flesh-and-blood woman on television wearing such a revealing outfit — especially a woman as beautiful as Carter. In an admittedly self-promoting DVD special feature, “Beauty, Brawn, and Bulletproof Bracelets,” the subjects interviewed agreed that, as sexy as Carter was, and as revealing as the costume was, the television Wonder Woman was remarkably
“sexy” and “not sexy” at the same time. Carter herself remarked that the costume, “felt like a second skin. I really didn’t feel too self-conscious oddly. Maybe I should have but, you know, don’t forget, this was the ‘ban the bra’ time, this was sexual freedom, this was bikinis and midriffs and that was the timing and I really wasn’t thinking of being sexy either.”
Carter added that she was always determined to play Wonder Woman as an inspiration to women, and that is why few women saw her as a threat to their self-esteem.
Painter Alex Ross, whose depictions of Wonder Woman rank with Garcia-Lopez’s and Perez’s as among the most recognizable artistic renderings of the character, also felt that Carter’s look in the costume was striking but not threatening to women. He said: “Here’s this woman — a very gorgeous woman — running around half-naked, essentially wearing ...
a swimming outfit and somehow she comes across as not being ultra sexual and, in fact, she is this symbol to young women — or women of any age — as not being defiled by that expo-sure. Essentially, the character was taken as what [she] ... was meant to be, as an object of energy in motion, not as of corrupted sexuality or something that was just ... for the boys.”
But it is also important to point out here that Steinem felt that Carter’s Wonder Woman was “a little blue of eye and large of breast” for her taste, so it is conceivable that Carter’s stunning looks were off-putting to other women viewers. On the other hand, it is also pos-sible that Carter’s good looks had exactly the effect on the male viewers that Marston wanted his Wonder Woman to have — they were initially attracted by her beauty, and later learned to respect her intelligence, spirit, personality, and good deeds.
The early installments of the series were remarkably faithful to the spirit of the comic book, including all the major elements of the mythos and episodes directly adapted from Marston tales. The Nazis remained Wonder Woman’s main foes, but they were presented in an even more broadly comic fashion on television (closer to Nazis found on Hogan’s Heroes and ’Allo ’Allo than to those in Schindler’s List). Their philosophy was just as empty as before, only now the series could operate with the knowledge that the Nazis were ulti-mately vanquished. In fact, the show had an air of nostalgia about it, hearkening to the
“simpler times” of World War II, when it was easier to be a liberal patriot than it was in the years following Vietnam and Watergate.
In general, Diana was as reluctant to use force in the series as she was in the comic, and virtually always contented herself with rendering her enemies unconscious or tying them up until they were arrested. Also, as with the comic book, she would reason with opponents before fighting them and, in the case of Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman, con-vinced her enemy to defect to America, a land that treated its women better.24
One minor difference from the comic book was the placing of Diana in the position of yeoman, rather than secretary, in her civilian guise. Also, the Holliday girls were notably absent, but Etta Candy was included as another of Trevor’s female staff members. Most sig-nificantly, most of the trappings of Greek mythology were removed from the series, and the secret of the Amazon’s power was revealed to be superior technology fueled by the discovery of Feminum, a rare element unearthed in the mines of Paradise Island. The move made the show less mystical than the comic, but the fact that Wonder Woman now only had her mother to answer to, and not the gods as well, helped make the character more assertive
and more of a free agent.25Indeed, Carter’s Wonder Woman goes to America to fight the Nazis and to be with Steve, but she is not spurred on by a command from Aphrodite.
Therefore, Diana’s dramatic choice is not to obey Aphrodite over her mother, but to defy her mother despite her own misgivings about breaking her mother’s heart.
As Nina Jaffe, author of several children’s books featuring the heroine, including Wonder Woman: The Journey Begins (2004) explains, “To be like her mother, she has to defy her mother. Queen Hippolyta led her own people in a battle for freedom. At a certain point, Wonder Woman realizes that she wants to take on the challenges that someone like her mother would and, in order to do that, she has to rebel. She has to disobey her mother.”26 The television pilot movie emphasizes this domestic, generational element of the conflict above the feelings of love Diana has for Steve, and the shift in emphasis makes for a rewarding and fascinating mother-daughter conflict on screen.
While Hippolyta loves Diana, she grows concerned that her daughter has become too involved with Trevor, too warlike, and too prejudiced against the Nazis. These concerns are dispelled during the two-part adventure “The Feminum Mystique,” in which the Nazis discover Paradise Island and conquer it. The Nazi ringleader ( John Saxon) forces the Ama-zons to mine Feminum for Hitler, and plans to send the women back to Berlin “for study and possible breeding.” While the Amazons are genuinely horrified that war has come to their home and haven, some viewers may suspect that Hippolyta allowed the Nazis to con-quer the island just to see if they were are as bad as Wonder Woman reported they were.
When Hippolyta is convinced that the Nazis are genuinely evil and beyond reasoning with, she decides that they have failed her test and orders Diana to lead a rebellion to liberate the Amazons.27One of the Amazons who helps Diana overthrow the Nazi rule is Drusilla, a younger-sister figure played by Debra Winger, who is clearly inspired by the DC comics character Donna Troy (a.k.a. Wonder Girl).
Of course, while Hippolyta reveals in this story that she suspects her daughter and Major Trevor have a sexual relationship, it is not clear that she is correct in this assumption.
The first season episodes feature several sly remarks that, like the double entendres peppering John Steed and Emma Peel’s dialogue in The Avengers (1961–1969) series, makes viewers wonder whether the lead characters are lovers or just friends joking with one another, since no romantic encounters occur during the actual episodes. Whether or not their relationship is a sexual one, both Diana and Trevor are presented as equally respectable, heroic figures, and they work well together as a team when taking on villains like the Nazi counterfeiter codenamed “Wotan” in “The Last of the Two Dollar Bills.” Episodes such as this present a model friendship/romance that serves as the 1970s “television action series” equivalent of a Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn romance of equals.28
The sometimes arch, sexy dialogue between the leads is also part of the somewhat campy quality to the series. The show is never as campy as, say, the Adam West Batman television series, mostly because Carter plays Wonder Woman with great seriousness and integrity, and does not mock her own character. To that extent, the show fits perfectly Susan Sontag’s definition of successful camp. According to Sontag, camp is “high spirited and unpretentious” (278), is anti-elitist in its sentiments, and features garish costuming, a fas-cination with the androgyne, and a “relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and mannerisms” (279). Carter’s Wonder Woman is certainly “flamboyantly female” thanks to her grand beauty and buxom figure. Also, as far as Sontag is concerned, the best “camp” is played as serious, while “camping,” done deliberately, is less successful. At times, the series features guest actors in the role of villains, such as the Nazis in the premiere television
movie, who are “camping” in a manner that is wince-inducing, while Carter’s performance is more successful because it is serious without being humorless.
The series as a whole also grew less light-hearted during its second season as its setting was brought into (what was then) the present. It was revealed that, following the defeat of the Nazis, Wonder Woman returned to Paradise Island for several decades to live in peace with the Amazons. When word eventually reaches her of the existence of an underground, international terrorist ring armed with nuclear weapons, her fear of nuclear war prompts her to return to America to lead the fight against terrorism. Since the series moves from taking place during a “nostalgic” conflict of the past to a “realistic” conflict of the present, the tone becomes notably more somber. When Diana returns to the U.S., she is a veteran at overcoming culture shock and acclimates more easily the second time assuming an Amer-ican identity. However, she is understandably shocked by the inflation that has raised rents markedly since the 1940s and is disappointed that women haven’t come further in achieving equality with men since the end of the war.29