Wonder Woman's "Secret" Feminist History

[Darius]

I once dropped in on a BDSM seminar and it was all about this hardware store kind of stuff and all the men there were these hardware store dads. I never was into the hardware store scene, but my father would often drag me along with him on weekends when I was a kid and I'd be bored out of my skull as he looked at three penny nails and drill bits and whatever else they sell at hardware stores. Just so boring. But this is what the guys were like at the BDSM seminar--I got the feeling they could talk about crossbeams and load bearing walls for hours and never get bored with the subject. Whereas, I just found it sleep-inducing. So this is the kind of mentality that I think is attracted to those sports--very technical, problem solving, task oriented, worker types.

Maybe the quandary for some people is they see submission and domination as anti-feminist, whereas Wonder Woman is supposed to be pro-feminist. But BDSM is really just role play and the sub is in control of the scene. The dom is working to give the sub the kind of experience that he or she craves. So that power reversal is very interesting as it applies to the traditional roles of men and women. Wonder Woman was challenging the accepted norm--so any corresponding fantasy that challenged the norm was probably attractive to Marston. I think it's much more interesting that the classic Wonder Woman goes against expectations--whereas modern comic book makers can't seem to go outside the lines and they always want to make WW fit into set norms.

I also love that she was really the first female hero who wasn't drawn or depicted as "traditional" ... Under Marston she was akin to a femme fatal but without the negative/shame connotation or inevitable consequences the FF usually faced in fiction (tragic death). She broke the mentality that "good girls" conformed to societal norms. In some ways I think Azzarello accomplished this as well. His version of Diana had her stand up for what she believed in regardless of the potential consequences to herself. She didn't acccept the roles the various societies placed on her (WW, Clay, Princess, GoW) until she made those roles her own. It's why I liked his characterization of Diana so much.

[ed2962]

A lot of Marston's ideas were symbolic, bondage included. Like Trina Robbins wrote to Tim Hanley about an essay on WW I saw online: "she was tied to show she could free herself".

Plus I don't think bondage was so rare in popular culture before WW2: how many pulp covers, movies and comics were featuring half-naked women, tied and in imminent danger?

Like Jim, I am also surprised to see a lot of people embarrassed by the material, sometimes even mocking it, but have no problem with WW ripping a centaur in two with her bare hands; they also watch games of thrones with its never-ending succession of boobs, rapes and slaughters, but somehow golden age WW is considered for pervert only.

I think the fact that it was so prevalent in the general media, it kinda went over the heads of a lot of people in WW.

[Jim Kelly]

There's certainly a lot of bondage in pulps, comics and B movies in the '40s. But the women are usually weak and over-sexed. Wonder Woman challenges the stereotype becauss she's not drawn that way.

[Agent Z]

I think BDSM subtext in comics is always going to raise some eyebrows from people since fanservice is something that has always been pretty blatant in superhero comics. Diana's outfit doesn't help matters and characters pointing it out in universe just serves to make it look as if she's too dumb to realize how degrading it is.

[ed2962]

There's certainly a lot of bondage in pulps, comics and B movies in the '40s. But the women are usually weak and over-sexed. Wonder Woman challenges the stereotype becauss she's not drawn that way.

True. I was just saying I think a lot of people during that era probably missed the subtext.

I'll be honest when I first got into comics and saw images of old comics with WW or anyone tied up I was a kid and didn't give it a second thought. Like, here's Spiderman chained up and thrown off a bridge so it wasn't weird that WW or anyone would be tied up. It wasn't until years later getting into the character and learning more about Marston and Olive and everything, I went "Oh, now I get what people were talking about..."

[ed2962]

I think BDSM subtext in comics is always going to raise some eyebrows from people since fanservice is something that has always been pretty blatant in superhero comics. Diana's outfit doesn't help matters and characters pointing it out in universe just serves to make it look as if she's too dumb to realize how degrading it is.

But her suit isn't degrading. It's only certain artists that occasionally cross the line when depicting it.

[Darius]

True. I was just saying I think a lot of people during that era probably missed the subtext.

I'll be honest when I first got into comics and saw images of old comics with WW or anyone tied up I was a kid and didn't give it a second thought. Like, here's Spiderman chained up and thrown off a bridge so it wasn't weird that WW or anyone would be tied up. It wasn't until years later getting into the character and learning more about Marston and Olive and everything, I went "Oh, now I get what people were talking about..."

Exactly ... WW was a huge hit with the general mainstream audiences. I'm sure most people didn't have a clue what was woven into it until after Marston's death and the early Congrssional Hearings regarding violence and such in kids comics. Suddenly folks started to understand just how sexual she was.

IMO it's probably a factor in why she was so popular during the Marston years ... Kids knew they were looking at something vaguely naughty, so they wanted more, they just didn't know WHY it was naughty and parents had no reason to think twice about something they likely only caught an occasional glimpse at and it's not so overt as to cause a stir.

[Jim Kelly]

I don't know how other people view H.G. Peter's Wonder Woman art, but while it's weird it's not immediatley sexy to me. The usual good girl artists send obvious cues that their art is to be seen as spicy. Peter's WW is cute--and maybe he was drawing what he thought was sexy (he was a pretty old guy by then)--but I can only see it as erotic on an intellectual level. There's something so innocent about Diana and the Holliday girls even when they are posing in situations that would seem sexual if Matt Baker or Al Feldstein had drawn them--I just find them funny not steamy.

Just look at a typical Fiction House cover and put it side by side with the same situation in a Wonder Woman story--and I think the difference is obvious. Fiction House is practically pounding their reader over the head with a 50 ton mallet of sexy hotness. H.G. Peter is using a one ounce feather.

[mathew101281]

I don't know how other people view H.G. Peter's Wonder Woman art, but while it's weird it's not immediatley sexy to me. The usual good girl artists send obvious cues that their art is to be seen as spicy. Peter's WW is cute--and maybe he was drawing what he thought was sexy (he was a pretty old guy by then)--but I can only see it as erotic on an intellectual level. There's something so innocent about Diana and the Holliday girls even when they are posing in situations that would seem sexual if Matt Baker or Al Feldstein had drawn them--I just find them funny not steamy.

Just look at a typical Fiction House cover and put it side by side with the same situation in a Wonder Woman story--and I think the difference is obvious. Fiction House is practically pounding their reader over the head with a 50 ton mallet of sexy hotness. H.G. Peter is using a one ounce feather.

That's because your looking at them through modern eyes. Yes by todays standard the art is tame, but by 1940's standards maybe not.

[Jim Kelly]

That's because you're looking at them through modern eyes. Yes by today's standard the art is tame, but by 1940's standards maybe not.

I think my eyesight's just fine. Reading books like Jules Feiffer's THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES, along with other works like ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME and THE COMIC BOOK BOOK--when I was a kid--I've had a good sense of what boys thought was sexy and what they didn't back in the 1940s. And it's pretty clear that the Fiction House style of art was what boys found sexy. H.G. Peter's art may have appealed to little children and set an example for girls--but from the writers I've read, none of those guys in the '40s thought that Wonder Woman was sexy.

And I have to say, when I first discovered Wonder Woman in the '60s, she wasn't exactly much hotter by then. It's only when Mike Sekowsky started to draw her that she popped out of the page and grabbed my attention.

But H.G. Peter came from an older tradition of illustration. And it seems to me that he just drew comics according to his own instincts. That's why his Wonder Woman is so novel. He's not following the same comic book rules that Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Reed Crandall and Matt Baker are following. So maybe to Harry WW was sexy--but she wasn't sexy in the 1940s way of being sexy that Baker and the others practiced (as in the JUMBO COMICS cover above).

[gwangung]

That's because your looking at them through modern eyes. Yes by todays standard the art is tame, but by 1940's standards maybe not.

No, it was quite tame. I mean, I don't think it goes very far up the Good Girl Art scale, particularly when you compare to acknowledged masters of pulp covers like Norm Saunders, to say nothing about the Matt Bakers, Reed Crandall, et al.