THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS TOLD BY WONDER WOMAN is an independent documentary feature that looks at female superheroes, warrior princesses and other icons of women’s empowerment in pop culture. Examining the history of fiction’s longest running superheroine, the film raises questions about the possibilities and contradictions of women as popular action heroes.
Can female superheroes, with their sexy postures and skimpy outfits suffice as models of strong female leadership? Why does a live action Wonder Woman blockbuster have yet to be made? Where do young girls turn today when there remains a dearth of popular superheroines?
Exploring contemporary culture for women and girls, with its emphasis on how girls and women look, rather than on what they do, the film probes why Wonder Woman has been reduced to a commodity—an icon on a bag, t shirt or mug etc. How can women claim the action genre as their own, and create more liberating narratives than that of the dominant all-powerful masculine superhero? THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS TOLD BY WONDER WOMAN is a visually kinetic, highly constructed yet also warmly witty film, harnessing the voices of literary critics, women writers, classicists, philosophers, impersonators, collectors, feminists and fanatics to explore our very gendered notions of “heroism” and “power.”
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