Dara Birnbaum Wonder Woman
where she comes from, how her work relates to where she comes from
how I relate to her work. what do I think of my work. compare with hers. and what she’s about. What’s she about?
What I admire about Dara Birnbaum’s Technology Transformation, is how she takes television’s own devices of manipulation to use it against television itself. She uses the real Wonder Woman television series footage to expose the questionable way that television represents women. It is harder to see the embedded messages when watching the television series itself. I found that the television series directly supports the ultimate power and importance of the untainted woman, while the subconscious is presented with various other messages of what is ideal. The television show is meant to entertain, especially when it is based on a popular comic book. Producers don’t produce television shows for the audience to dissect how it problematically creates and reinforces ideals for society. When Birnbaum presents Wonder Woman in video form, she allows us to digest her findings on the representation of women in a new way. It is no longer entertainment that we just swallow and accept. Certain footage is now repeated several times, forcing the audience to think actively: Why is Wonder Woman presented to us in this way?
As far as I understand my own work, I strive to get my message across in a similar fashion at the same time, to be reasonably accessible in the way where the issue at hand is immediately recognizable. I’d like to uncover important issues to audiences beyond those with post-secondary arts education (lower status) which I believe is especially important in terms of disassembling power structures. Dara Birnbaum shows how art can be used to question power (by taking its weapons and using it against itself), which I see as the first step to immobilizing it.
Thinking about accessibility, I wonder if I grew up in China instead of Canada: Would I have the same reaction to her video? What if I was my grandfather watching this video? Perhaps Birnbaum’s work is meant to apply to the generation that experienced the television series first-hand, or had a closer link to the culture of that American generation. Technology Transformation was made before I was born and the footage that Dara Birnbaum used is also older than me. She made the video not too long after Wonder Woman aired on television. This makes her video relevant in her time. However Birnbaum’s video is still relevant in my perspective. I am easily drawn by the dramatic pop footage. Without ever watching the television show, I am presented with a clear look at the representation of women in popular culture. Below, I interpret her video to show how her techniques and style are successful in getting her point across to her audience.
Technology/ Transformation suggests symptomatic meanings that together, as a whole video becomes a feminist critique on the representation of women on the television series: Wonder Woman. Dara Birnbaum re-edits Wonder Woman, taking its footage, manipulating it to unveil and critique a social ideology. The implicit meaning that comes out of this video is that the supposed empowerment that Wonder Woman gives to her audience is not revolutionary and is, instead, degrading as a lesser sex, and only powerful when she is a sexual object.
Technology/ Transformation: Wonder Woman starts off with a series of repeated fiery explosions. These explosions excite us before introducing us to a well-dressed, attractive woman who is by herself, outside a large building. She is spinning: arms outstretched as if she were in a middle of a dance. The repeated spinning: marked by white explosions. This spinning is repeated 11 times. During this repetition, we see that she is coming out of some type of intellectual or status-important work, because her hair is neat and tightly pulled up into a ponytail. She is also dressed in a full-sleeve blouse, and smart, black pants, with some type of ID or special key card attached at the belt. This woman then miraculously transforms into a recognizable superhero: She is Wonder Woman. We know who she is because she is now baring legs, chest and arms – in her iconic American-flag-inspired bustier, hot shorts and red-heeled boots and flowing, undone hair.
We admire her as she runs, weaving through trees in a forest, towards us. Then she is spinning into her superhero costume once again, but in the forest. This sends her into a mirrored room now. She’s spinning into her costume repeatedly, as usual, eventually transforming back into a regular woman. This introduces an evening-wear wardrobe change: black, low-cut, but still reasonably modest, sparkly cape. We see her in this mirrored dressing room, this time, transforming back and forth between costume and evening wear. It makes us understand that the two women who replace each other after explosions, is no coincidence. Rather, they are one and the same woman, only the outfit and the power that comes with it, changes. She is in effect, becoming a superhero, as she undresses herself. She spins, dance-like, instead of a perhaps, masculine punch to the air. It seems that Birnbaum is suggesting that Wonder Woman is only powerful when she is feminine, and undresses herself.
She is in the mirror, she is cutting into her reflection in her mirror, the cut separates her body from her head. Through this new hole in the mirror she creates with her knife, her body does an incredible feat: it jumps through the mirror back into a social space: a hallway. But her head comes out last, as it bumps off the mirror with a thud. Travel into intended spaces is another amazing superhero accomplishment, but comically executed to be witnessed right away by an innocent, unsuspecting man. Her clumsy head bump is emphasized with an audible thump. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she says to her friend Dell.
The next scene feature the two in the parking lot, attacked by flying sparks. Dell is hiding behind a pillar and Wonder Woman, as she fends off the sparks with her metal wrist-cuffs. This further shows the importance and power of her costume. She could not possibly defend them wearing her flow-y blouse without wrist-cuffs.
Now she is running again, towards us repeatedly, in her costume, in sandy and grassy lands. As she runs closer, her head and bare chest conveniently take up the whole frame of the picture, and it is the longest and more often shown composition of this particular running sequence. Her face is serious and stays still, while her curly hair bounces freely with her chest. It does not stray far from the famously seductive, running scenes of the scantily-clad Baywatch heroines. She continues running, now reaching repeated forest sequence we saw at the beginning of the video. We can ask: Why is she running, where is she running to, and who is she saving? She spins in the forest repeatedly again, followed by the concluding, repeated explosions that introduce the last part of the video.
Into the middle of the explosions, our questions are answered. A disco version of the Wonder Woman theme song by the Wonderland Band cross-fades and accompanying lyrics in text form on a plain blue screen appear. The text, clear on the blue screen emphasizes the lyrics and their meanings. The start of a phrase: “I am…” is stating something strong. It is stating your identity. The way the singer phrases “I am wonder”, leaving more than a full beat before she completes her sentence: “wonder woman”, shows us the uncertain identity of the woman. She is not Wonder Woman right away. The word, wonder is ambiguous, uncertain and unreliable. The text and phrasing in this song shows that the woman is “wonder”, before she is the superhero, Wonder Woman.
I-I-III
I-I-I-AHH
I-I-III
I AM WONDER
WONDER WOMAN
I AM WONDER
WONDER WOMAN
YEAH
OUHH
I AM WONDER
WONDER WOMAN
I AM WONDER
WONDER WOMAN
GET US OUT FROM UNDER
WONDER WOMAN
GET US OUT FROM UNDER
WONDER WOMAN
GET US OUT FROM UNDER
WONDER WOMAN
THIS IS YOUR WONDER WOMAN
TALKING TO YOU
SAID I WANT TO TAKE YOU DOWN
SHOW YOU ALL THE POWERS THAT I POSSESS
AND OO-OU-U-UU-UUU-UUUU
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
MAKE SWEET MUSIC TO YOU BABY
OU-U-UU-UUU
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
AH-H-I JUST WANNA
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER FOR YOU
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
(YES INDEED)
OH-U-UUU-MMM
MAKE IT FEEL REAL GOOD FOR YOU
SHAKE THY WONDERMAKER
OH-H-H-AH-H-HHH
GOT TO DO IT
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
AH-H-H-UH-H-HMMM
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
I’VE GOT TO
SHAKE THY WONDER MAKER
OH-H-H H-H-H-H-H
SHOW YOU ALL THE POWERS I POSSESS BABY
Technology/ Transformation is as catchy as the pop culture that it comes from: The editing is as sharp as the structure of a comic book, and as flashy as Wonder Woman’s costume. Growing up in a world of advertisements where each ad has about two to thirty seconds of your attention, Technology/ Transformation peaks my interest with its quick cuts and explosions. The only negative critique I would say about this video, is the impatient feeling I got when I watched the repeated scenes over and over for the first time. However, this impatience is the result of the difference that Birnbaum has made between her presentation of the footage versus the original television show. Instead of the easy television ride through the world of Wonder Woman, the repeated scenes jar us, and give us time to wonder why television made Wonder Woman spin the way she does, and live the way she does. I figure that as long as there is a purpose and a good reason for every major decision or occurrence in the artwork, those decisions will lead to a successful art piece. I do not know what the next generation will be intrigued by, or looking for in art pieces, but I aspire to create work (not dissimilar to Birnbaum’s) that transcends my generation, gender, race and whatever other categories that I may be reduced to.
