My good friend Bryan alerted me to the existence of this, a 1967 attempt at a Wonder Woman pilot commissioned by the producer of the Batman TV show.
Basically, Diana Prince gets berated by her mother for not having a man, then she runs through a revolving wall, emerging as Wonder Woman who (to paraphrase the voice-over by the regular Batman announcer) “knows she has the strength of Hercules; knows she has the speed of Mercury, and *thinks* she has the beauty of Aphrodite!”
It’s certainly something completely different. And I did laugh a couple of times at the sheer unexpected snideness of it.
Ultimately, though, it’s hard for me to get behind it enthusiastically. Part of what was so much fun about the Batman TV series is that the target of the humor was the establishment; Batman and Robin are basically policemen/boy scouts; in all their humorless do-gooding, they’ve got the law and the powers-that-be on their side. The show was a masterpiece of having your cake and eating it too; you get to sneer at the ridiculous dated morality (refusing to drive through red light; refusing to hit women, etc. etc.) while still rooting for that morality to win. Batman’s the show where even cops could laugh at crime-fighting and even hippies could cheer for the establishment.
This Wonder Woman pilot, though…it tries to make fun of Wonder Woman the way that the Batman TV show made fun of Batman…but it’s just not as easy to get the balance right. The main problem is just that Wonder Woman is a woman…and as such she can’t be assimilated to the establishment the way Batman can. Instead, because she’s a women, she’s automatically marginal in certain ways. As a result, making fun of her doesn’t feel edgy or clever — it feels hackney and tired and dumb…and, yeah, sexist too. Jokes about aging unmarried daughters who are desperate for men; jokes about women’s vanity; jokes about women being incompetent…where have I heard *that* before?
For WW humor, I much prefer Darwyn Cooke’s pissed-off 2nd wave feminist version, which makes fun of WW for being overly sensitive and clueless, but also ridicules men for being venal and predictable and generally getting their asses kicked. Gender roles and wars of the sexes can be funny, and often are. But even when it’s written with some wit, I just don’t find sexism all that humorous.
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And as I’ve been pointing out at the end of each of these, this is the latest in a series of posts on post-Marston takes on WW. The whole series is here.
I’ll take Linda Carter anyday
Typo or freudian slip:
“aging unmarried daughters who are desperate for me;”
Anyway, loving the WW commentary.
I glad you found the pilot interesting enough to write about it, Noah.
Aside from being in bad taste and not very funny, the main premise makes me feel bad for the actress playing Wonder Woman. It must have been tough to get a part because the producers felt you were sufficiently unattractive for the role.
The other thing I find interesting is comparing the Wonder Woman pilot to the Batman TV series in terms of changes. Batman is incredibly faithful to the comic book version and a lot of the humor comes from the fact that the scripts and actors stay true to the comic book elements with such enthusiastic earnestness. On the other hand, there are wholesale changes to Wonder Woman in this pilot and these new elements are the basis for most of the humor. Just more proof of the idiosyncratic nature of the character. As you’ve been writing, it seems very few creators are comfortable remaining true to Wonder Woman, even in jest.
the main premise makes me feel bad for the actress playing Wonder Woman. It must have been tough to get a part because the producers felt you were sufficiently unattractive for the role.Good point. If you haven’t, check out Boy Wonder by Burt Ward sometime. He’s a chipper sort of fellow, but he makes clear that he thought Batman’s producers were cold-hearted bastards who didn’t give a damn about their actors.
Ann; I will not comment on the Freudianness or lack thereof. I did correct it though; thanks.
Bryan; I hadn’t thought of that…but yeah. On the one hand, I suspect character actors are more or less used to that sort of thing. On the other…the role is sort of drifting into Steppin Fetchit territory….
Woops, this is Aaron White using his fiance’s account again, and I was just kidding about the Freudian thing.