Wonder Women! The Movie!

 Ok, so the Wonder Woman film based on the DC comics character is still nowhere to be found. However, I did get to see a little film yesterday called "Wonder Women! the Untold Story of American Superheroines." It's a documentary by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, and I found it delightful in many ways.

It covers the history of Wonder Woman, from her creation, through some of the changes she's undergone over the years. This info is fairly basic, and doesn't include anything people mildly familiar with the DC character wouldn't already know. But, the film also brings up what Wonder Woman, as the sometimes ONLY female superhero people can think of, means to different people. Children, the elderly, artists, writers, women, gay men, straight dudes (in Stormtrooper costumes, perhaps), people from various cultures and backgrounds all had something interesting to say about the symbol of Wonder Woman and other strong female characters that can inspire women.

The film also managed to bring up, albeit in limited form, other issues in comics today, such as the oversexualization in depiction of female characters that many men in comics today still won't admit is different from the overmasculinization of male characters. The specter of "women in refrigerators" appeared too. 

I was especially delighted to see Gail Simone, one of my favorite comics writers, was interviewed in the film. I was reminded that I've never gotten around to reading her treatment of Wonder Woman from 2007-2010. What's my problem? I need to get on it.

There is a pretty funny part (to me) where people are talking about the dearth of "good" female heroes in the '80s. She-Ra and Jem get dissed TO THE MAX.  There were definitely some Jem and She-Ra fans with squiggly anger lines coming off of their heads after the movie. I didn't watch those shows as a kid - I don't think we had those channels or something. Anyway, I had a super hard time relating to what few female characters existed in cartoons because they were generally dumb and/or overly interested in boys. There were no (uh, and there still aren't?) butch girls for me to relate to, big surprise. Maybe Wonder Woman, who in the Justice League cartoon, at least, is a total ice queen, comes closest.

Anyway, great film, I recommend it. Here's the film's homepage.

Would you consider being my mother?

Fun story! So, my friend and my partner and I had tickets to a reading by Alison Bechdel for her new book, Are You My Mother? I was fairly excited because I've loved just about everything she's ever done and I was pretty happy this new book had come out. I even suddenly got up and left my job without even checking what time it was (turns out I left a half hour before my shift should have been over), just yelling some instructions haphazardedly (not a word?) at a confused staff member as I ran out the door. I got to the event an hour before the time printed on the ticket (see - I was being careful because it didn't say if the printed time was when the doors opened or when the event started) and at first was excited because when I arrived, there wasn't a huge long line snaking around the entire block that I would have to wait in. But then stuff started to feel kind of wrong. People were slowly shuffling out of the building, holding books, and squinting at the bright sunlight as if they'd been in a dark theater for an hour or so. I walked into the theater very slowly, looking obviously confused, and no one asked for my ticket or asked what the hell I thought I was doing. I started feeling scared and tried to find a poster for the event that could tell me what was going on. Finally, I walked up to a guy behind the bar inside and showed him my ticket and said, "This is what my ticket says, but obviously I am at an event that just ended. What?" So, after about seven different employees looked at my ticket, it turns out that my ticket, along with five others, was printed with a time that was two hours after the actual event time. They ended up refunding the tickets, letting us keep copies of the book, asking Alison Bechdel if she could stay a little later for the poor fools who just arrived, and handed me a huge pile of free tickets and a free beer. It was way better than if I had been at the reading, because most likely I would not have stayed to talk to Bechdel and ask her to sign my book, since I never do that. I always feel like I'm just bothering the author or celebrity and have nothing to say that would be of interest, so why not just leave them alone? Anyway, this time, I actually waited in line, yammered at Alison Bechdel for quite a while (I should send her a thank you card for enduring my rambling monologue about artist's block and depression and how she was my hero), got my book signed, and even got a photo.