Wonder Women and Storytellers

From the documentary Wonder Women the untold story of super heroines I learned so much about the awesomeness of the effect that wonder women created and how trough the ages it change to serve for different purposes, especially related to the roll of women in the States.  In connection to this interesting documentary the reading portrait something that not only happened centuries ago with old tales, but also with the evolution of wonder women. Both the film and the reading entangle an interesting and redeemable way to tell and keep stories alive.

No long ago my mother went to a storytellers conference because of her job as a librarian.  She works as one of the head of the initiative “bibliometro” (small libraries in subway stations), and also “bibliometro” invite storytellers to gather people and create stories in the subway train stations. The reading helped me to remind the times were I used to go to the readers club in my childhood and would listen the storytellers in the library. It is interesting how relevant for an specific culture a story can change an be re told in different ways, only because of the different social class or upbringing. Comparing this with Wonder Woman and the changes that this her story had, it is incredible how the feminists groups have tried to preserve the original story of the tale. In the reading said that one of the purposes of the appropriation of tales in the twentieth century was the transformation of tales “to amuse and distract audiences and make money.” This means that once the tale served its purpose to the audience as such in the case of the second World War in the comic, later it was purely a continuation to continue profit without any consistency in the story, not like passing a story mouth to mouth, but rewriting the story completely.

Another important thing that pointed the documentary and the reading is the differences between folklore and literature, both were developing a different story from the same tale, one the literature was written and rewritten, more than re-reading, they created a formal text, comic, TV show, and lately other merchandizing that help with the globalization of the female super hero that little by little had disappear from the collective thought of the fandom of super heroes.  On the other hand, and what makes this documentary particular is how the feminist group defend and idealize Wonder Woman as a symbol of feminism, an example the power and self reliant personality that Wonder Woman would show, within the original comic and her superpowers. Later, this female super hero would take part of the discrimination, undermining sexist society that would merely use wonder woman story to represent the “place” that women had to take in history. The evolution of the character and what this created as a phenomenon in television as the first super heroes and one of the first lead females on TV. The story and the changes were told within the community and the fandom of Wonder Women is faithful and well informed about the characteristics of the super hero.

In short,  either the literature and the Folklore behind Wonder Women feed from each other, the stories and the community around this tale is a demonstration of how people can be empowered of stories and the power of story telling may preserve and be used to express values depending on the times and the context society is facing.

Ps:  interesting documentary available on netflix or youtube  about the changes of the roll of women in Television is the documentary,  and other interesting topic about genders.