WONDER WOMEN: A Sermon For Magdalene Day 2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/wonder-women-a-sermon-for-magdalene-day

The church created this the 22^nd July, but although I’m writing this on that day, I’m delivering it on the following Sunday. I had hoped that this would be the first time that Between The Stools would meet personally – we will soon, when the time is right.

Four years ago, I made this day a launch of a different kind – of my first novel, Parallel Spirals, which I deliberately chose because of it being Magdalene’s day. Several people kindly ask when the sequel is coming – again, soon, when the time is right.

Mary Magdalene has been important to me for much of my life. As a nonconformist, we didn’t do saints and so the other Mary – she who bore the Lord – was downplayed to avoid sounding Catholic. In recent years, I’ve been open to learning what I may have missed out on.

Mary the Mother has always seemed less interesting to me than the other Mary. The BVM is good and obedient, but Magdalene is naughty: for those familiar with British cult children’s television show Rainbow, one Mary was George, but the other Zippy. And Zippy was always the more appealing.

By my 30s, Mary Magdalene was sufficiently appealing to undertake a research degree about her. My original thesis was that she had something in common with Queen Anne Boleyn, who I had also come to admire. These women, 1500 years apart, in different countries, were vilified bringers of a new religious age, and right hand women of a powerful male leader who usually got all the attention – although her own contribution was considerable. The fact that we were undoing their vilification and rediscovering their own contribution showed that we too are in a new age.

For my studies, I read Margaret Starbird’s The Woman With The Alabaster Jar. She went from devoted Catholic to pretty much swirling her saffron scarf whilst singing “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” And, I by the end of my essay, I wanted to join her.

Now, I literally have the scarf, learned the words to the song, and am proclaiming a New Age. I slipped from alternative Christian into a Christian and Woo Woo hybrid. It’s through Mary M that I discovered and joined some priestess communities, who additionally celebrate Mary in late March. She led me to begin the path of priestess.

I recently read the book of one of these priestess community leaders, Lauri Ann Lumby – a novelised Gospel of Mary called Song of the Beloved. Alongside, I read the huge tome that is Margaret’s George’s Mary called Magdalene. Both of these will inform some of my comments that I will make.

My thesis included many more books – these two weren’t then published – and depictions in film, two favourites starring Juliette Binoche (2005) and Rooney Mara (2018). I was interested in how Mary was portrayed in popular contemporary culture.

I get very cross to see Mary shown as a prostitute. Us Baptists knew that the Bible never names her as such – only as a delivered demoniac. Margaret George literally has Mary infested by seven very scary demons. Her comments at the end make a distinction between possession and modern understandings of illness, by which I assumes she means mental health. I promised in an earlier sermon that I’d touch on this. It’s a huge and sensitive subject, and not fully under what I want to talk about today, but I do want to say:

note the two top ways to discredit and shun women are both connected with Mary.

You’re either a whore, and so unclean and not to be trusted. And you’re dangerous.

Or you’re filled with evil – you are a vessel for the Devil, just as church fathers taught.

You’re also unclean, not to be trusted, and dangerous.

Today, the liberal Christian tries to put modern Western science and medical models onto the Biblical text. We’re quick to find new explanations for frothing and writhing which perhaps sound more comfortable and palatable, and which do not involve any supernatural elements. I note that whereas the terrifying thought of demon possession may be something we’d like to explain away, that this attitude is also taken to miracles.

I also point out that even by transmuting devils to chemical imbalance, that Mary is therefore potentially mad. Demon possessed people and those with afflictions that we demonise are also outcasts, confined away from decent society and sometimes literally fettered in some form. I noted the uselessness of the Jewish priests’ response in Margaret George’s book, as inept and ignorant as mental health services can be.

Madness of course is a great way to discard and discredit people who might not fit in and whose truth might actually seem unsettling.

Mary Magdalene is such a person.

I want to state very clearly that our God has power over all, including any spirits; and that mental illness – which I am not linking with possession, if that state really exists – or sexuality is not about uncleanness, peril or unreliability. This is simply spin.

Mary pulls the veil off all that. A good metaphor, considering new rules over here…

I am among those who believe that Mary’s prostitute backstory was a deliberate invention to vilify her by the church, and which allows Peter, another disciple, on whom the established churches are founded, to take centre stage. His being so is necessary for the keys being passed between generations of bishops and priests, who are most commonly ordained at Petertide – a late June feast in honour of the fisherman bishop to whom Jesus allegedly gave all earthly authority.

Lauri Ann Lumby portrays Peter so differently in her novel that I didn’t recognise him. She always calls him Simon, and the new name that Jesus gives him isn’t an honour, it’s a sad nickname. The Rock (which translates as Peter) is a hard, impenetrable heart who is always the fiery critic and downer, who just doesn’t seem to get Jesus’ message. For Lauri, Simon/Peter and James, Jesus’ brother, distort the message of Jesus and misrepresent it. They focus on laws and communion and building a church chain – but that wasn’t what Jesus taught at all. Yet it’s them who have held sway – til now.

I asked Lauri where she gained her inspiration. There is a non canonical Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and other contemporary Gnostic texts suggest that Mary’s role was somewhat different to the small part she’s allowed to play in the four Biblical gospels. Even then, she has managed to come out of the thick mesh laid on her and fascinate people, even when her followers were driven underground.

The rediscovered Magdalene brings a different message, and Lauri conveys this as well as any. It’s suggested that Mary’s surname is a title – like Mahatma Gandhi (I think) – and it may refer to her enlightenment, not her geography. I wonder if this name, meaning ‘tower’, is like the perspective you get when you climb one: it’s over a wide area, seeing people from above. It’s what I call the authorial eye view, or the Higher Self.

Mary’s not the Woman At Well, With the Jar, Sister of Lazarus and Martha, I don’t think, but I can see how these Gospel characters embody the facets that we like to attribute to this Mary: she’s unconventional, an outcast who’s given a ringside seat by the master; she loves Jesus and she shows it; she’s not interested in rules, but she does have novel theological understanding. She’s more interested in discussion than dishes (amen, sister!). I think that if Magdalene were all these women, it would mean that Jesus touched the lives of far fewer people and that insight and incident came to just one, rather than to three.

In both Magdalene novels, I noted the critique of the Law. I also read God by Deepak Chopra, and his first chapter is a take on the book of Job which exemplified the same idea. For a Jew – in the ancient time of Job, as in Jesus’ day – to please God was to keep these 613 laws. And for this, you were credited with righteousness – interesting that phrase comes from the epistle of law-loving James (2:23). Note the ‘credit’ – a banking transaction. And so the world could see, like wealthy Job, that God had blessed you in return for what you had obeyed. You kept your boon whilst God was pleased with you. If you stopped obeying, then disasters struck. Job starts to turn this argument, as I’ll take up another time. But Deepak’s understanding facilitated mine: this was what the Jewish world believed, for centuries. And this is the world that Jesus entered and began turning.

In Margaret George, young Mary sees Jesus’ dad break the Sabbath by unscrewing a medicine bottle for his daughter in pain. Her own father put law and tradition before his own daughter’s wellbeing. In chapter 35, p415 of the paperback, Jesus answers the ‘shall we pay taxes to our oppressor’ trick question with an answer that goes farther than the Bible: “All these laws are passing away. The coming Kingdom will render them all meaningless. To make more of them than they deserve is a mistake.”

I bookmarked that and re-read it several times. Alas, Jesus charges into his next encounter before that point could be elucidated, but it made me wonder. How could Jesus state that not a jot or tittle of the Law would pass away, but yet he would fulfil it, and imply that its observance was both necessary and obsolete? (Matthew 5:15-20; Luke 16:16-17). In what way was he fulfilling it?

Does he mean that this new teaching would crunch the law into a dense space, where all of it was there, but now existed as something else, and the individual laws no longer mattered? Principles rather than particulars? Distilling to just a double decree?

It isn’t just the Torah that needs fulfilling in that way, but our own statutes. It wasn’t just the time of Magdalene or – my other woman, Anne Boleyn – the bringer of the English Reformation out from the distortion of the Catholic church. We have again slipped, as much as their times. Our own world, secular or religious, is filled with laws, some of them arbitrary. I note the repeat of that word in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: no-one shall arbitrarily be [deprived of a right]. I’ve noted how law based the church of England is – which has a set of laws all of its own. I’ve seen churches elsewhere – such as the LGBT focussed Metropolitan Community Church – create hefty legal and policy documents. And yet their byline is ‘Love Liberates’.

As I said in February, I believe it’s time for another reformation, for church, and society: new wine into new wine skins.

My priestess sisters speak of the divine feminine which Mary embodies and brings to us which we and our world so need – this year more than ever. For centuries, we’ve lived away from or matriarchal roots in the distorted masculine, for men and women. It’s created inequality, injustice, division, exploitation.

It values money and power and productivity over being and making for its own sake.

It values what we can get over what we respect.

It values what we can count over what we feel.

It values obedience over co-creation and debate.

It rules by coercion over respectful free will.

It is governed by what can be monetised, owned and contracted.

It’s rule-based rather than principle based; thinking comes before intuition.

Love and spirituality come an embarrassed second to empirically evidenced ‘facts’ – even though we know that facts are malleable and fakeable.

And it’s that which allows me to link this Biblical Goddess to a very different myth…

WONDER WOMAN

Yes, I know. If Magdalene to Boleyn was a jump for you (it was to my PhD supervisors) then to a 20^th C American comic superhero is a leap that even Princess Diana – of that unspellable Greek island [Themyscira] – couldn’t make. Well, have more faith in Wonder Woman and your own imagination, because the link to me is clear.

Wonder Woman has also become significant to me: she was one of the first entries on this blog, 9 years ago. In a way, she too has been downplayed behind her male counterparts, and early Wonder Woman and her polyamorous controversial creator were dragged across decency boards, pushed out of jobs and neighbourhoods. Yes, Wonder Woman was involved in sex scandals, and if you follow the early cartoons, and even the 1970s TV show (happy 69^th for Friday, Lynda Carter), she’s often as bound as those first century demoniacs. She also binds with a lasso, and there are even spanking scenes in the 40s comics. The link to kink is not an accident or an oversight.

The week before, I finally felt constrained to watch the DVD I’d had sitting about from the library all lockdown – Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. I saw it at the cinema in 2018 – the story of Wonder Woman’s professorial creator, who saw his wench in a bathing suit as a psychological tool to influence his young readers. Writing in the Second World War, William Marston (pen name Charles Moulton) believed that women were the future and that it is their leadership which the world needs.

He saw women as men’s equal, and when not held back by them, that women could be even as physically strong, as we see in Princes Diana of the legendary Amazons, whose raising in an extended all girl school island makes her more powerful than the male citizens of even mighty America. The key to women’s great leadership was their tenderness. Her real, essential weapon is love. For the first time… not even just truth and justice, like her older ‘cousin’… but love.

It’s how Wonder Woman stops wars – Make A Hawk A Dove…

Marston also proposed a psychological theory called DISC:

Dominance

Inducement

Submission

Compliance

(Note that I, S and C can stand for other things: I’m going by what was in Angela Robinson’s film)

I’d look at that and assume that the top was the worst and that it improved – not very greatly – as the list descended. But Marston saw it as the other way around. The worst for him was compliance – the begrudging going along with orders. Inducement is about persuasion, but it’s still another finding a way to put their will over yours. But, said Marston, dominance is about the voluntary submission to a loving authority. (Hence the spank parties and lasso in his comics).

But why impose your will on others at all?

Isn’t that broken patriarchy still?

Sounds more like a sexual preference than a way to run a country… although perhaps these subjects are not so far apart. I’m often hearing about the essential need to reclaim sacred sexuality via my priestess sisters, and how this benefits the collective.

DISC feels relevant as much of the world have ceded their authority to WHO and we, as individual citizens, runners of businesses, communities, are asked to cede ours to our country or state. We are told to put others first – but the double commandment says ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ Note the AS. We have mostly kept to lockdown, but there are differing views as to whether this and other measures are necessary or helpful. In England, we’ve a new face covering law (see last and forthcoming post), and I’m wondering: how many are doing this because we think it’s right, and how many are doing it because noncompliance involves punishment? We also have rules imposed on businesses and – worse – places of worship. You are invited to attend a socially distant masked ball mass, no singing, try not to use the toilet. Prebook or come early to avoid disappointment. I wonder how many are in C of DISC because they need to reopen, not because they agree. And so we’re in a state of resentment and vigilance because we’re doing unfair things and perhaps having to pass our pressure onto others because if we don’t make them do what we’re told to, we’re in trouble. Or do some really believe the ‘necessary for your safety’ rhetoric?

The Nanny State, or as Indian investigative journalist Ramola D said last week, Nanny World, is not a D kind of nanny. It may hope for it, but mostly it’s getting a C from us.

I’ve said our world leadership is becoming a Duckula sized nanny – that’s another British kid’s TV reference. The vegetarian vampire is towered over by a large chicken parental figure. But the young Count’s carer is ditzy but endearing. She means well, and her affection is genuine. She calls her charge ‘the master’, for she sees that it’s her job to serve him – not the other way round. She is not tracking him and taking his temperature and swabs from his orifices. She is not asking him to open his bags and his electronic mail. Nanny has no sinister design on the Transylvanian teal teenager. (Can this be said of Igor?) They guide, advise – but he chooses and learns for himself.

In short, Duckula has freewill, as God gives us. So why not our government?

We’re getting a Nurse Ratched kind of nanny (ie that awful psychiatric matron from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest). And we know that mental health is not always about our own health and best interests, as that novel and film attests. We are seeing that now physical health is a reason to incarcerate. We need to be vigilant against this, for this is becoming the worst kind of C… and Marston didn’t put down downright tyranny on his model. This is dominance in the way that most of us would view it.

However, I don’t think that D is what Magdalene brings forth. D of Marston’s DISC theory does not stand for ‘divine’ or ‘desirable’. This is not the Goddess energy that Magdalene brings forth.

The Christian God is often asking us to trust, but it’s different to human authority; and I query that kind of God too.

Submission and voluntary surrender to someone that you’ve learned to trust is quite different. Such surrender can only be divine, and interpersonal. Freewill remains.

I will cede that the Magdalene I’ve heard proclaimed many times via my priestess sisters (and brothers – she’s for men too) is hard to see in Gospels, just as the Wonder Woman of early comics is not a heroine I’m always impressed by… but something transcends their male scribed stories. I know that their essence stands for a larger truth. It’s time to unveil that truth.

Lauri Ann Lumby sees the seven demons of Mary as a full initiation into Christ consciousness. This made me think of the dance of the seven veils, stripping away the layers and coverings of untruth that mask the true nature of God, Mary, and us.

It’s time to take off the veils that separate us, the veils based in hierarchy and law, not in love and mutuality; to rebuild using new values, not resurrect the old paradigm; to love ourselves as much as those around us; and to not need a commandment to love our divine maker, but to enter into that relationship freely and joyfully, knowing that Spirit is love beyond measure, wisdom unsearchable; who has beaten all invisible enemies and is our invisible, but palpable, Friend.

The next planned sermon is for 13^th September: truth telling day

LISTEN AT  https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/wonder-women-a-sermon-for-magdalene-day

Why I’m selling my Borgen DVDs

I was excited to finally catch up with this TV drama on Danish politics, because I’d enjoyed its lead Sidse Babett Knudsen previously and am interested in how countries run.

Unlike comparable shows, I looked forward to seeing a person of principle in leadership. Sidse’s character’s surname Nyborg means ‘new castle’. And Castle is the nickname of Danish government, from where the show gets its title. So is it saying that the fictional first woman prime minster (what took you so long!) is a new kind of leader and government?

But it didn’t take many of the 30 episodes to make me angry enough to start calculating my DVDs’ second hand worth. In one tenth of the show, Birgitte Nyborg has abandoned what made her endearing, and is very much of the old stronghold. Most of her acts are against the principles I’d expect of her. Yes, she’s meant to be roundedly human with mistakes and struggles. It made the show more appealing than those which just focus on political drama. I liked the early, sometimes naïve and unsure Birgitte. I rallied for her. But she got eaten by the end of episode 3 and from thereon, we only see flashes of her.

I realise the kindredness of Birgitte Nyborg to Wonder Woman – who I often write about on here. Perhaps the looks of Lynda Carter and Sidse are similar. They are women doing unusual jobs for their gender and fighting for democracy and high principles. But the charm faded through their trio of seasons as the lead got harder and tougher, focussing on being slinky, steely and bossy.

And worryingly, according to some comments I’ve heard, slinky and steely does it for the audience. Not for nothing does Borgen often open with a quote from Machiavelli. I thought these were ironic, but Sidse the Statsminister comes uncomfortably close to him. And yet she’s seen as still the heroine.

“You’re the best prime minister that Denmark’s ever had,” she’s told. Well, if true, the Danes have had a bad run and should aim higher.

Here’s just some of the things which made me angry about Birgitte in Borgen:

– she gives another small, kindred party a made up ministry to fob them off

– she sacks two friends in the 1^st season, another in series 3, and many others – without notice

– she orders and rarely thanks. “I need you to come over. I know it’s late,” she says to her staff at 3am! “I need you to… This is not up for discussion,” she tells her husband, who ‘misses his wife’! – And not just because she’s not at home much. We do too, Phillip!

– she leads in the hard headmistress manner, as if it’s weak to ask and consult

I see a lot of Sidse’s role as dominatrix Cynthia in The Duke of Burgundy in Birgitte

– After Amir leaves, she seeks him out at home for a job she needs, but doesn’t apologise

– she lets serious gay persecution pass for the sake a precarious peace deal

– she thinks in terms of strategy and victory

– she’s prepared to use an old misdemeanour to discredit a rival. It’s not her who stops it

– she tells long suffering Phillip he’s weak for leaving her too soon. I’d have gone already!

– she gives in to the medical system twice without questioning (interesting role reversal)

– she medical queue jumps thrice – for her daughter, and twice for herself

– In series 3, she says: this is a room of dreams, but now we need to consolidate. Ie, which of you are with my dream? Or else, you’re leaving

– she never consults or mingles with the public she claims to support and who chose her

– she publicly provokes her old colleague deliberately and pulls holes in his arguments

– she says no to Jorgen the Viking’s financial support because of his strings, but then is back asking for it later

– she is obsessed with the cult of her, her leadership, her ideas, her party. When Unpop Culture blogger calls the New Democrats the Birgitte Party, he’s right.

– she and the show quickly drop the hot potatoes of war, spies, and prisoner cruelty

– she and the show suggest that leaders must be ruthless and put feelings second, and often their principles too. Professionalism means: even my bereavement won’t stop this election

 

Borgen sometimes is able to bring in many voices to a complex situation; sometimes it clearly comes down with a view, and feels like public information broadcasting rather than drama. Most real media challenges come from the muckraking gutter press; otherwise, the news says what its told it’s allowed to.

Borgen appears to be self reflexive. The show seems to say: news is hot, politics are hot, make sure you tune in and vote and appreciate your official quality broadcasting company (probably by paying hefty taxes to it). Compromise is necessary, idealism not possible. Work before play and personal relationships – be grateful for the sacrifices our leaders make for you, and if you are one or work with one, be prepared to make the same. Note that it’s made by Radio Denmark and over here, it was shown by the BBC. I am avoiding the BBC due to the reasons in my last post.

The fast fire news format is no better than Alex’s gameshows ultimately, for no-one gets to talk properly – it’s all about provocation and spectacle.

Here’s some hard news:

Many of us don’t follow parliamentary politics. Katrine’s angry at a friend for not watching her on the news, but he’s resisting the package they present as what’s happening. Borgen suggests that media and media advisors run the country, but actually that parliamentary politics is far removed from most of our lives and what matters.

We need something and someone much more different than Birgitte and her party, and a show which goes further in its courage to portray life as it really is, and as it could and should be, and to not assume that the latter is impossible.

For much of this show, Birgitte’s got her bra and knickers on the wrong way round: her priorities and values are all askew. She’s not ultimately a Wonder Woman, more a Twisted Sister.

But I’m not taking offers on my DVD set just yet.

 

 

Wonder Woman and Little Women

Not natural bedfellows, you might think. When I switched from viewing the first to reading the latter, it was a very different gear.

And then I did some research and thinking…

They (are) both:

 

Continuously printed American classics and well known exports

Set during a war (the American Civil and WWII)

Concerning ahead of their time women doing ‘man’s roles’

A community of women led by a matriarch (Marmee March/Queen Hippolyte)

Lived in a discrete ideal community (Paradise Island/Alcotts in Fruitlands)

Believed that women thrive intellectually and in the arts in this environment

Writers wanted social change where where women’s roles are augmented

Talk of slavery (Alcott was an abolitionist; Diana’s bracelets)

Have strong morals

Were written for children, although enjoyed by all ages

Have gay appeal

Their authors are interesting stories in themselves

What would Wonder Woman do?

About the terror attacks this week and what happened next

 

I’d like to emphasise that’s Kabul, Baghdad and Coptic Christians as well as Manchester.

I predicted and worried about this – that more attacks bred more attacks and more armed police and less freedom; that the death penalty has got in though a side door and that the trial by jury at the heart of democracy is being eroded. It’s not just Canterbury and London now – they’re in all the county towns, at stations, zoos, outside libraries.

I don’t feel safer – I feel more wary. It puts me off doing things. I feel relieved if I’ve not seen armed police or been somewhere that expects me to be searched – a world sadly familiar to those in the Middle East and to Black and Asian men respectively.

Fighting suicide bombers with guns doesn’t make sense – they are planning to die and will detonate rather than let you kill them. Shooting them in the torso is just where their bomb is. So what are the guns really for?

Guns are bullying, cowardly weapons that give you power over others, often from a distance. They easily get misfired and when we live in a panicked environment, we can make paranoid mistakes.

Officers in Britain – who’ve been largely unarmed till now, like the population – were wary of stepping up to the arming call, afraid of investigations if they misuse the gun.

Good – but why only just investigations? If I carry a gun on the street, let alone use it, let alone kill someone, I’ll be in prison both sides of the trial; I may stay there.

So why should police expect to be above the law that they are (ugly word coming up) enforcing?

Now that children have been targeted, police are more willing it seems. “It’s the best way I can protect myself and the public,” one policewoman said. Note the order of that.

Many words have been poured out in sympathy already, and take mine as a given, but I will focus this post on something less said, which needs to be.

Before I say it, I’d like to return to an old friend of mine, one who featured early in this blog 6 years ago, and who’s getting her first big screen outing released today – yes I’m going! (‘Twas brilliant).

Yes I am wearing long boots with a heel in her honour, and guess which 3 colours?

Let us contrast her way of dealing with problems with the police:

(Note these are general WW principles and change between comic/screenwriters)

 

1) Wonder Woman doesn’t fire bullets, she deflects them

-significant morally as well as operationally

Wonder Woman is only armed with her truth lasso

(Ms Gadot has a sword but she thought guns dishonourable)

Her plane is purely for transport – it doesn’t drop bombs

She befriends animals, she doesn’t use them as weapons

 

2) Wonder Woman works with the authorities and is respected by them, but she is independent and she is not part of a huge force

Unless you count the Justice League, but they tend to be outnumbered by rather than outnumber their opponents. Unlike police who overkill, literally; a whole squad after one person (even not dangerous ones) which wastes resources – and police claim they don’t have enough

(Don’t start me on police using foodbanks on ‘only’ £20k… try living off £30 a week!)

 

3) Wonder Woman is approachable Unlike po faced armed officers who we’re afraid to say even good morning. Wonder Woman retains her humour. She doesn’t yell, especially not at the general public

 

4) Wonder Woman is compassionate A quality not in the police and army much; it’s why their personalities and training mean that they’re not the right people to handle many situations entrusted to them. Wonder Woman’s someone you’d cry on. Not most PCs

And she knows the difference between being tough and strong

 

5) Wonder Woman is not dressed to kill or intimidate

Her face isn’t covered; no mirror glasses, no bully boy armour

 

6) Wonder Woman has a global view, inside (since she’s living among us) but outside (since she’s alien). She can point out our follies and since she’s so old, she has great wisdom, watching nations repeat mistakes for millennia

She’d also see what’s really happening, the even more despicable terror

 

7) Wonder Woman doesn’t kill or use unnecessary force

She does her own undercover work; she doesn’t use assets

 

8) Wonder Woman knows when to talk instead of fight and can transform would-be crime doers. Wonder Woman believes in redemption and forgiveness

 

9) Wonder Woman thinks for herself. Hannah Arendt would approve – for she knows the peril of taking and giving orders without question

 

10) Wonder Woman

makes a hawk a dove

stops the war with love

changes minds (and hearts)

and changes the world.

 

It’s the far more effective way – not retribution, not meeting violence and fear with more.

Not weak, fluffy, unreal.

 

No wonder Ms magazine cover emblazoned: “Wonder Woman for president”.

I’d like to her preside over a lot more.

 

Finally….

I was reminded this week of James Alison’s book On Being Liked and his first essay in it Contemplation of a World of Violence, written in autumn 2001. He points out that such acts are given sacred meaning and that we are sucked in collectively, policed as to what we can say (a new heresy) and given specific behaviours in response.

He encourages us to not be drawn into that, but to One who can show us a new way to see, one who subverted violence by seemingly giving into it and then overcoming it to say I’m nothing to do with this system; there is another way to live.

The One is not Wonder Woman this time.

 

 

US Things To Give Thanks For

I’m not American, but I wanted to use today as an excuse to reflect on all the things I do like about America. So here’s my favourite exports:

Wonder Woman

Clearly a much delayed role model, I talk about her on here. My favourite superhero, making hawks doves, though a little underdressed for this time of year

Sesame Street

The subversive kid’s show I didn’t appreciate till I had come of age. Witty, surreal, clever and hilarious. Milllllk!

Neale Donald Walsch

I have to acknowledge his place on my spiritual journey, turning the boat from the Mayflower to…this is where my boat knowledge lets down the metaphor… Magical Mystery Tour? Rainbow Warrior?… not quite either of those… but a ship willing to include a new path and wider crew, and some radical thoughts about the captain

Jo Dunning

My favourite spiritual speaker and healer right now. I love to tune into her monthly Quick Pulse seminar, even though it involves staying up til 2am due to time differences. Jo’s voice is calm and truthful and I’ve been very impressed with her – I’d not normally believe some of the things she offers, but something in my gut says I can trust her

Elaine Aron

Elaine represents a whole load of things that would only come out of America, but the rest of the world needs. Normally I would resist such a statement, but I’m only doing grateful today. I’m glad that America has identified things that some other cultures would never name or explore and champion. Elaine has a trait she has called Highly Sensitive Person, which she sees as neutral-positive that explains why some people can be overwhelmed. There are many things implicit in this about growth and acceptance that I think some of American culture can be good at encouraging and addressing.

The Constitution

Sadly not what it’s living by, but a beautiful and inspiring piece to nations everywhere – and I like being built, like Camelot (as per recent post) on an idea

Sasha Cagen

She who founded the Quirkyalone movement whose blog posts are wise and inspiring, celebratory of full personhood, of sensuality, of singleness, and seeking the very best of relationships

My US friends

My life has been touched by various Americans, I have some in particular in mind at present. They’ll get personal messages.

 

I shall eat sweet potatoes tonight in your honor with and without a U!

Princess Dianas

When I changed my viewing and research from the British Royals to Wonder Woman, I was expecting a complete change. But Wonder Woman is also a Princess Diana, and politics as well as changing roles for women are key to both subjects.

Although one is blonde, one is dark; one is real, one is fiction; one is immortal, one died young, these women do have certain qualities in common:

Compassion

empathy

immediate and genuine rapport

beauty – from within as much as pleasantly aligned features –  but not an object

respect

tall – about 6ft (though Lynda Carter needed 3 inch heels to be that height)

national representative

an outsider

One was an English born aristocrat who became the wife and mother of heirs to the throne of the same country, and one was born on a secret island and took on America as her adopted country. But both had to get to learn the ways of a new world.

But Diana, Princess of Wales was more complicated and with conflicting qualities. Even those who were fond of her don’t deny a darker side. She said that her own suffering enabled and fuelled her to reach out to others.

In the TV series, Diana Prince has no emotional breakdowns and her problems do not seem very menacing or last long; but contractions have existed in all manifestations of Wonder Woman since her invention 70 years ago, and these are used more in comic story lines. But Lynda Carter said that she played Wonder Woman with a vulnerability, and that’s what made her  – and the other Diana – so appealing.

Justice is restored but the chickens are gone

I have been researching for my next post and I wanted to get it right. I have views on Poppy Day which passed before I had consolidated them. I had read various stories relating to war and the secret service, but also felt frankly afraid to voice them.

You will notice by now that I write against harmful systems and for justice and liberty. I am against control and propaganda. What I have to say this time particularly concerns those, linked by my unlikely sounding title.

‘Justice is restored’ refers to a missing statue. In that same town, something else that’s a known local feature has disappeared – the wild chickens who refused to move when their home became a roundabout on a busy bypass.

I saw a local news headline that ‘justice has been restored’, but then I wondered about that in larger terms. Each time I pick up a newspaper, I read something else which makes me angry because justice is being evaded or distorted. The people meant to protect justice curtail or suspend it for the citizens they are mean to be servants of. Policing of riots and protests; secret courts; laws coming in by a government we didn’t choose to make it ever harder for the public because of actions by rich people who are still rich. I suspect whatever country my readers are from, you can relate to this in some way.

I read Robert Harris’ wartime code breaking novel Enigma and again felt anger at the secret service. It may be fiction, but it is based on some truth. The public are recruited by a crossword competition; in the book Hester is told to sign the Official Secrets Act and stick to it or the gun on the desk beside the form will be used on her. She has not yet volunteered nor understands how her cryptic puzzle solving skills will be used or what threat she may be under. Tom is also recruited in an underhand way that leaves him little choice. He is threatened by security service officers who appear in his home to scare him off something he accidentally discovers.

It struck me that in the name of protecting democracy, secret services go against the very values that the countries they serve are built on: openness, honesty, trust; protecting the public so that we can go about our lives freely, without fear. I am always appalled when I read of how much control the military and government exerted in the war. What system can be worth fighting for when refusing means that your own side turns on you? Why does an army find the resources to harm conscientious objectors from its own people? In the 1970s TV series, Wonder Woman turns a Nazi through demonstrating that the German army did not care for its own and were happy to kill them. Wonder Woman implies that hers is the better side for its contrasting ethics and treatment. I did some wondering of my own.

After being shocked again at the Katyn forest massacre of Polish prisoners of war and how that the British knew but pretended not to, I decided to watch the Polish 2010 film Katyn to see what they had to say on it. I was horrified at how anyone could shoot thousands of men and dump them in a mass grave, as I was to see a country’s own police demand entry and haul its own people out of their homes to concentration camps in Sarah’s Key. Note none of this was Nazi doing.

Nationalism frightens me when it threatens to make us hate other people and to incite acts of cruelty against them. It is one thing to be proud and loyal of one’s country, another to use that to create otherness instead of brotherness (girls included). The world is our neighbour, not just those with the same passport.

I am struck by the propaganda about war in my own country and am wary of how public statements may be used to influence peer pressure and curtail dissent.

The head of Britain’s MI6 gave a speech about how secrecy is necessary for our country and the rest of the world to go about safely. Yet I don’t feel safe – not because I especially fear terrorism, but the shadowy world of government endorsed crime fighters. I am appalled that the tax office can use spying and that financial safety is a reason to for secret intelligence  – along with that much used slippery phrase ‘threat to national security’.

To complete my trilogy, I watched Fair Game, from the memoir of Valerie Plame Wilson, the former CIA agent (starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn). She was deliberately outed after her ex-diplomat husband Joe spoke out that he found no weapons of mass destruction and therefore the basis of the 2004 Iraq war was spurious. They fought a long battle against the CIA and the US government. I am unsure exactly where she stands on some issues – in her DVD commentary she does not comment on the question: ‘have you killed people’ or that the CIA bound and beat recruits as part of a training exercise to find their breaking point. Or that she recruited people by manipulation and stealth and that they were not protected by the agency but killed.

I did like her line: security should not stop freedom.

If people fear police and military and security agencies more than terrorism; if liberty is curtailed in the name of keeping us safe, then security ‘services’ are no longer morally or operationally justified as it is acting against their very raison d’être. I read that there have been calls to abolish some secret services. I wonder if any such an agency is really necessary or the best way to combat these problems.

A service built on secrecy and deception is not sound and clashes with the morals and codes of many faiths and ideologies. It involves falsely presenting oneself not only to the adversaries but to one’s own loved ones, meaning isolation for employees as well as anyone who is recruited or who accidentally has a brush with one.

Just as a faith and its true believers are more than and separate to the official church, a nation is not its government, its laws or its leaders and figureheads. These organisations do not get to say what it is we are defending or believing in.

A national interest is not something than an agency or minister defines.

You can’t have equal opps laws and boast of your diversity on one hand whilst enforcing conformity on another.

I am glad of the attempts by the intelligence agencies to be accountable in my country and of the laws which govern them. But then we don’t chose or scrutinise the ministers that call into account or make the laws. Democracy means ‘rule by the people’ but many of us in those kinds of societies don’t feel we get to do the choosing and have the input that so titled society ought.

The  ‘C’ of MI6 speech speaks of enjoying public confidence – which it needs. But stories about Guantanamo Bay, like those on the Canadian Homes Not Bombs site, and Britain’s foreign secretary’s ideas undermine that. I believe that is just part of what many of us are speaking out against. (I have also seen Friday’s news about US police and Occupy protestors).

If secret services fight threats to economic stability that harm the public, I consider they ought to be busy – at all those who caused the recession and its effects. There’s more damage done there by our own  supposed legit institutions than terrorists.

And lastly to those chickens. What do they represent? Freedom despite control. Not being part of the regime. A reminder of nature and how we try to dominate it. A Unitarian hymn at first shocked me by its triteness – but there’s something affirming about ‘the grass that breaks through the concrete’ and the chickens that roost despite the tarmac and concrete built round them. I see those chickens as a symbol of a simpler, more natural life, a refusal to let human bureaucratic control spoil their lives. Their absence therefore concerns me.

After calls to remove them, they were poisoned and attacked and then were rehoused reluctantly by the man who had been feeding them. I know what I infer from that.

And my final word for today on security:

To paraphrase what the Governor of Oregon said today regarding execution:

“I do not believe that these made us safer and certainly they did not make us nobler as a society.”

http://www.chickenroundabout.co.uk/

You can even buy a board game of it!

Change our minds, change the world

Season 3 of the 1970s TV show starring Lynda Carter – part 3 of my Wonder Woman musings

By mid season two, watching had become a chore for research. I wasn’t too excited to begin season 3. The first episode set up the expectation of further struggle to continue as well as disappointment. As pointed out by an internet site, it seemed to be targeting teenage and child audiences with its characters and themes – juveniles into skateboarding, amusement arcades, teenage music idols. There’s nothing to refer to who Wonder Woman is or where she’s from, no more poetic philosophical speeches, but just regurgitated plots about mind control and identity stealing – and even the guest actors are recycled.

It seems that Wonder Woman wanted in on everyone else’s show. Female agents were doing well: Diana Prince becomes one. Humanised robots and computers were popular: a Metal Mickey and K9 (with Roadrunner noises) are introduced. Space features regularly to be a Star Wars/Trek/Buck Rogers rival. In the penultimate episode, it seemed they were trying to copy Arnold from Different Strokes, Cheetah from Tarzan and decided that LA had more appeal than Washington.

Lynda’s long ponytail and the over zealous blusher gradually return. They rarely bother with glasses now for Diana – which are still huge – but it’s assumed no-one will make the connection between her and Wonder Woman, so there’s no need to disguise her. But that takes half the fun away!

There’s an attempt to have others in the IADC office – a short-lived woman named Bobby – but IRAC and Rover return and have more character. I was cross that like in life, computers take the jobs of people, but I became quite fond of IRAC and even found his bruised electronic ego, his raspberries and competitive board games amusing. Steve’s often kept in the office – though he’s eventually allowed out a bit more than last season – and Diana is marooned in the concrete tower of a Washington government office, without even shots of her apartment, let alone her real home.

But then I found myself enjoying it again. That is partly about Diana. If she is appealing to me, the show works. By that, I don’t mean whether she is personally attractive to me, but whether she’s attractive as a character. The warmth and naiveté of season 1 disappeared. I liken her to Evie in The House of Eliot, the BBC drama about two sisters setting up a fashion house. Evie, played by Louise Lombard, was an utterly charming 18 yr old at the start. Naturally, the character grew up and the actress did too. But what we got was not a mature version of lovably Evie, but a hard person reflected in her image change. By the end, I’d gone off Evie and that alienated me from the show. At least there were two sisters and I felt warmth toward the other. In Wonder Woman, she is the only main character and so losing connection to her meant alienation from the whole show.

The paling foundation and harsh blusher seems to change for the better, as did the shaping of Lynda’s eyebrows. The lipgloss I so wanted to blot – was. She’s naturally tanned again.  But what of her character? She’s become patronising and even predatory to kids and other young women. She’s become hard spy lady that everyone drools over but no-one was going to get.

The feminists on the DVD features said she’s sexy but not threatening to other women. But she’s too thin – and Lynda lamented on the commentary to episode one that her bones no longer shew as they did 30 years ago. She ought to be glad about that. Comic books and the actress who played her says ‘no stomachs’ to women; no cellulite, no large limbs. It’s cool to see your bones, it’s cool to be sticky.

There were flashes of warmth – such as to her friends in the skateboard episode. But the way Diana treats a child in the leprechaun episode was not her usual charm. As a child, I’d have run from this strange woman who was irresponsible in her advances towards young Lisa, not thinking how a child might be frightened. Lynda says she played the child relations as a yearning in Diana for children she doesn’t have. I didn’t see anything maternal about the way she spoke to the girl then – she was snaky and pushy, not explaining who she was, but rather sounding threatening: ‘if you want to help your friend, you’d better talk to me’.

So I changed my mind twice: from liking it more than I expected, to disappointment, back to liking it and then a ultimately a bit disappointed, perhaps in the way the show closed.

—

There was a little sadness when the last episode ended and there was no more TV Wonder Woman to see.

As the show was cancelled, there is no ending, as Lynda Carter laments on the commentary. She wishes there was chance to say goodbye to the character she’d played for 60 episodes and I have watched for two months.

A weakness of Wonder Woman was its lack of continuing plot and its lack of excitement. Other series drawing to a close would make us all tune in, impatient to see how it’ll all tie up.

I could think of a scenario that would make that last episode exciting. We know Wonder Woman will round off her time on earth as we’ve known her – but how? Will she marry Steve? Will she take up Andros’ offer? Will there be a pull back to her island? I would present the possibility of all three. If Wonder Woman is heterosexual, might she have to chose between her man and her people on all female paradise island? Or could this be an opportunity to change that ancient race? That would be interesting in itself.

Lynda’s suggestions of why her character could end the show were all about  love and families. I am now convinced she does mean what I feared as she has talked about this so much – the idea that Wonder Woman is lacking without husband and family (and by extension, I read, so are we). I think in that sense, Lynda doesn’t fully get her character. Wonder Woman is a goddess. There’s an issue straight away with reproducing with humans, and perhaps even questions about goddesses and physical intimacy. Like Queen Elizabeth I of England, it seems Diana has chosen a mission and her people over what we term as personal happiness.

However, often people with families say the reverse of what Lynda implies – that it takes away their identity as it subsumes them, not that they become more fulfilled and complete. How can Wonder Woman be a feminist if she retires to be a mother and wife? On the extras, various American women writers assemble to say what they love about her. They state that Wonder Woman has been an example of the dual role of women. But Lynda’s Wonder Woman would give up being Wonder Woman. To lead by example, Diana would need to continue being Wonder Woman and do her family role.

I couldn’t see in Wonder Woman what these women in the documentary could. I wonder if Wonder Woman is too American to be an icon for outsiders: it has created a sense of other in me, when at first I was inclined to the reverse. Perhaps it’s because Diana becomes naturalised to America that I stop being able to identify with her. She stops any critique of America; now it’s expected that her loyalty to her ‘new friends’ – i.e. a government intelligence service – comes before her own people. Her Mother, Queen Hippolyte, vanishes into the mirror of episode 3, season 2 and forever out of the series – never again is the island mentioned, or that Wonder Woman comes from somewhere else.

Reading an introduction by Mercedes Lackey to a 2008 comic ‘Circle’, I am reminded that in the comic book world, Diana is definitely other. Her stories feature ancient gods. She is divine, not human. She is begotten not created – yes I did borrow that line from O Come All Ye Faithful. Like Superman, she is sent to our world from elsewhere, to live as one of us. But although the 1978 Superman movie made a very clear link between the Christmas story and the film being released at that time, the Messianic parallel works better with Diana than Kal-el. It is she who is divinely progenitored from earthly materials. Diana chose her mission at a time of need – she wasn’t sent into the world as an unconsenting baby. Her mother yet lives, not as a prerecorded hologram of deceased mortal commoners, like Superman’s parents, but as an eternal wise Queen.

The DVD extras of season 3 comment on how that Wonder Woman is a change from the usual father/son relationship of hero stories, sent by and communing with her mother and sister. As the pilot bravely said: “Sisterhood is stronger than anything…” There is little of that kind of statement now. Feminism is assumed and demonstrated through ass kicking, literally. Wonder Woman now hits out before she is hit – she even headbuts in one episode (23). That goes against the peace loving message that Wonder Woman is all about. That the thoughtfulness of the start was never returned to made this a harder blow, and a missed opportunity to have used entertainment for positive world changing, as Wonder Woman was conceived to do.

 

 

 

 

 

Woman of the Hour?

No, about 46 minutes per episode – 36 of them so far…

I have already shared my thoughts from the first series of the 1970s TV show and a little research into the comics – my first and very pleasing forray into the world of  Wonder Woman. Now I have completed watching season 2 and my feelings are different.

Wonder Woman has changed TV network and also time period. The season premiere begins by being incredibly similar to the original pilot – the crashed plane, the women on Paradise Island, the bullets and bracelets competition to win the mission of returning with the craft to America. Steve junior’s in a suit, no longer a uniform, and has grown up to look just like his Dad from the first season. Etta Candy and Colonel Blankenship are gone, and in their place at the office are a talking computer and robot, a short lived boss called Joe, an unseen voice, and later, Eve, one of the series’ several black characters (there were none in Season 1). Steve spends more time on the end of a phone and less joining Diana on escapades. Paradise Island soon ceases to feature.

Diana is now a star in her own right; she becomes a famous agent of the Inter-Agency Defense Command. In the first season, Diana wasn’t considered pretty enough to enter a beauty competition and she is picked as Yeoman due to her lack of glamour. Early in the second season, Joe isn’t sure she’s got the right wardrobe to go undercover as a ‘swinger’. Now, in every episode, her looks are commented on admiringly. Like the series itself, Diana undergoes a change halfway through. Diana’s style becomes what she’d call ‘slinky’ in the first season. Her hair and make up change and she doesn’t seem as beautiful and appealing. Comic book artist Phil Jimenez states he admires Lynda Carter’s portrayal for its grace, regality, femininity, dignity and style. Diana was naive, but never dippy. Some of that has gone by the close of this season and that has a huge bearing on my appreciation of the show.

The Wonder Woman costume has a subtle make over, making the PE pants highlegged, and the cleavage more prominent. The stunts are bigger and it seems a little more violent. There’s also greater sexism. Wonder Woman’s first girl fight left her and the other woman with ripped clothing. Later, Diana happens to rip her pants (in the US sense) in a parachute jump, at the knee; so she cuts her trousers off at the groin to make them hotpants. (Steve also falls with her but doesn’t suffer any rents to his clothes). Yet, even in a swimming costume, Ms Carter never shows her actual legs – the satin tights remain.

That line in the lyrics does, but much of the theme tune’s other words are changed and an irritating sound that like a kid who can’t play the recorder is added. The Nazis are phased out, and now Wonder Woman fights ‘on the side of right’ rather than for hers. No more stopping wars with love, no more metamorphosing doves… she’s woman of the hour and her chance to fight evil is not denied… almost as if she wants to kick ass. One comic artist on the DVD extra said that Wonder Woman wants to spread her message of love – she’s not looking for fights. Yet these lyrics suggest the reverse.

Early on in the season, there were links with the first series and the opportunity for some thoughtful questions posed. But by the end of the first disc, there’s no more just war discussion, no critiquing or even assertion of what makes America good. The side of right and America’s government are unquestionably synonymous – and Wonder Woman fights for us  – even against her own people on Paradise Island. That episode, “Trouble in the Bermuda Triangle”, speaks of aiding the American arms supremacy. The writer has misunderstood all that Wonder Woman stands for – she is for peace and justice, and would hate nuclear weaponry. I wonder if Wonder Woman had stayed in the US till the end of the war, whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have happened.

Episode 3 attempts to deal with how Japanese people were treated by America during the war, although the above atrocities are not talked about. Was this episode on relocation camps to abate bad feeling from Japan or to encourage fellow Americans to lose their old prejudices? It ends with the shocking line: ‘That’s why pencils have erasers’ regarding the mistakes made by America to Japan. I would be interested to know how that episode was received by Japanese viewers, as it can come across as clumsy and even propagandist; but the storyline seems at least like an attempt to deal with issues. These essays peter out shortly after.

The Nazis were appropriate adversaries with far more potential than those of the seasons set in the 1970s. Sometimes these new villains have special powers – the Japanese psychokinetic, the boy with psychic gifts – but these are appropriated by military intelligence. Villains rarely have much of a reason for being evil now. The overlooked country’s royalty trying to use the olympics to win recognition was an interesting idea – but it got lost in camp evil laughs and silent massaging twins. The writer of the Outer Space episodes with Andros returns – but this feature length episode was far poorer than the one in the first season. The aliens are now after minds, not moral judgments; and apart from a swipe at all bureaucracy, there’s little food for thought this time.

The laughs are less; since the comic books titles go, there’s no more invisible planes or voice mimicry; and only the yogic travel into outer space amused me.

It felt by the end that I was watching a different show, far different from the one I had found so inspiring and surprisingly thoughtful as well as entertaining.

Get us out from under, Wonder Woman

When I switched my viewing and research from the British Royals to Wonder Woman, I was expecting a complete change. But Wonder Woman is also a Princess Diana, and I’ve found quite a few parallels, as I’ll explain in a future post…

The Wonder Woman Lynda Carter TV show might have cult status, but it isn’t something most people would expect to quote from literature and philosophy, or discourse on ethics and society, or teach us how to live.

Yet it does all those.

In season 1 (on which this is based), there are quotes from Socrates in ancient Greek; the behavioural psychologist, Pavlov; Dr Johnson on patriotism; economics, and scientific equations. It makes witty social critiques of bureaucracy whilst trying to address international relations. But most of all, it is a vehicle for feminism.

Wonder Woman was a war baby, created in 1941 by a controversial psychologist. William Moulton Marston (pen named Charles Moulton) wanted to right the gender balance amongst superheroes. He believed that women are the future and are natural leaders. He believed – like proponents of single sex schooling – that women thrive when away from the influence of men, and are capable of equal or better physical and mental feats. He set his heroine as being part of a Greco-Roman myth, the mighty all female race, the Amazons, living in highly civilised peace. As he wrote, women’s roles and perceptions were altering, paving the way for feminism.

By 1975 when the TV pilot was aired, feminism was on its second wave. Theologian Mary Daly had publicly left the Catholic church because of its oppressive patriarchy to live on an all women island, and allegedly communicated with men only through an interpreter. The TV show seeks to sympathise with the sentiment but to step back from that extreme and show both men and women as good and bad, capable of living together harmoniously.

The slave-like bullet proof bracelets that Wonder Woman wears were created by Moulton to remind that if women let them, they are in servitude to men. The bracelets’ secret substance gave rise to the episode title The Feminum Mystique, refracting the famous Betty Friedan text. Hindus too have seen a feminine mystique, a force called Shakti. For Moulton, this is symbolised in Wonder Woman’s lasso which compels its captive to tell the truth. Much is made of the connection between this device and that Moulton partly invented the lie detector test, but this immoral and inaccurate contraption actually does an inverse task: it spots lies, not finds out truth. Moulton claims that all women have this power to disarm and bring out honesty through charm.

It seems, like Indian women, that there is a dichotomy and contradiction between the venerable female ultimate force and a sexualised submissive domesticity. Moulton said that women’s qualities are wrongly seen as weak, but he sees their attributes as including meekness and submission. In the 1970s TV series, women’s qualities are cited as strength and compassion. Wonder Woman is the first superhero to fight with love, not for just truth and justice. The theme tune lyrics reflect this, but also the ambivalence of the show: Wonder Woman fights for democracy, love and honesty; the world is ready for her peace and women’s lib message. But she does it in satin tights. She’s conventionally attractive and slim – beauty queen Lynda Carter dieted for the role. She wears very little, despite the dress conventions and climate of her adopted home. Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, managed to scale a ladder in heels and a floaty dress in Rear Window, but Princess Diana of the Amazons must swap her native diaphanous groin skimming dress for a cross between a circus costume and a gym suit to assume her role in the ultimate example of democracy.

But as both lead actress and male commentators in the Season 1 DVD extras say, actually Wonder Woman in the TV show doesn’t feel titillating or objectified. All superheroes have outlandish, skin tight and sometimes revealing costumes – the Hulk, Hawkman and He Man all basically just wear underpants. Lynda Carter’s tights are a step up from having the bare legs of the comic book. Her outfit becomes simply a uniform; and although beautiful, she is never ogled over by the men around her, but accepted as their equal, if not superior. There’s a purity around her that commands awe and adulation, but not objectification.

Lynda Carter often says that it’s sad that Wonder Woman never, like her, has love or children; and that therefore most of us have more than the Amazonian Ambassador. But but I like that an ultimate heroine is complete without these. It makes Wonder Woman an even better feminist icon because it says that reproduction and marriage are not defining aspects of womanhood – indeed, personhood. It is undermining for single non parents to believe they are lesser and missing something; but it is also unhealthy for anyone to think that we need these others to be whole, or that we are defined by our relationships. And Wonder Woman does find love, on many levels: each episode, she finds a new friend, animal and human, of all ages – and is clearly close to her mother and sister. (You’ll never see Shadowlands in the same light after seeing Debra Winger’s debut here!) Carter’s insistence on repeating this idea regarding motherhood and romance is disappointing, and if it is meant how it is taken here, undermines what she brings to the role.

I at first felt the weekly girl fights were also part of degrading Wonder Woman to arousing entertainment. That might be a by-product, but as the first season’s extras imply, it’s more about giving other women key active parts that show their importance in the story. It helps the gender portrayal balance of having female villains as well as a protagonist; and a show down fight between these is normal in the action genre. Often, Wonder Woman is able to reach out to wayward sisters, particularly in Episode 3 of season 1. An unappreciated, endangered Nazi leader is recruited for the Allied forces, ending in a touching moment of bonding.

Wonder Woman also ribs beauty contests (ironically played by a Miss America) and the shallowness that makes Major Steve Trevor unable to see beyond another kind of uniform past the disguise of his bespectacled efficient secretary, Yeoman Diana Prince. Unlike Clark Kent, Diana does not act particularly different to her vigilante counterpart, so the ruse of her secret identity is more about playing to expectations and prejudices.

There’s explicit statements on gender, just war causes, and animal rights. As outsider, Wonder Woman can comment as so many sci-fis do on the fallacies of Earth people. Passionately pro-American, she still opens her adopted country to critique. She delivers a Nazi war criminal alive for a fair trial, unlike recent events in the Middle East.

The show’s makers claim their groundbreaking series opened the way for other strong women roles in television, and that fans wrote in to tell how Wonder Woman had inspired them to try new careers that they thought impossible (though admittedly these were often government and military related).

The Wonder Woman television series  remains brilliantly entertaining, and its old special effects make it all the funnier – I especially love that invisible plane. It – and she – have rightly become an icon for many, regardless of sexuality, gender or country. My hope is that in all the fun, the serious messages and discourses are not lost on viewers, and like the lyrics, it will change our minds and change the world.