I remember watching Wonder Woman on weekday afternoons when I was just a toddler. I would wait in anticipation for it to come on because I loved the repetition of the opening title sequence. It’s interesting that this sort of repetition is among the things that Dara Birnbaum was commenting on when she made her short video piece, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman. Television of the era was highly repetitive, particularly in the sci-fi genre, where special effects sequences were frequently recycled in order to cut costs. In addition, plots were often rehashed ad nauseum across various shows. The superhero genre in particular was guilty at the time of endless copying, constantly serving up the same tropes and themes. Birnbaum is playing with the concept that we seem to keep consuming the same things over and over and over. She does this by repeatedly playing the same clip of Wonder Woman transforming from her secret identity to her superhero guise, followed by repetition of the same clip of her running across the frame, then repetition of the same clip of her standing in front of a mirror. The choice of the mirror is important. In visual media, mirrors symbolize introspection. Birnbaum also cuts together the same explosion multiple times at both the beginning and end of the piece.

Because it’s so unusual and abstract, deconstructing both cultural values and the visual techniques used to create and reflect them in a way that subverts expectations, Technology/Transformation can probably be considered avant-garde in addition to postmodernist. When viewed out-of-context, its meaning may be opaque. By placing the video within its larger cultural framework, we can start to discern the underlying themes.

Birnbaum created the piece in 1978, well before the advent of the internet and the proliferation of fan-created videos. Seen today, it just gets lost in the shuffle of all the other nonsensical content that gets posted online. But back then, it was something novel. Birnbaum approached local business owners who had TVs installed and convinced them to show the video. People who happened to catch it didn’t necessarily know what they were seeing. At a glance, it might have appeared to be just another television program. But they quickly would have realized something was amiss when it became so repetitive. They must have wondered just what it was they were seeing, which was Birnbaum’s intent. Some of them must have been baffled, while others may have gotten the joke. It’s difficult to say how many fell into which camp.

The piece also examines gender issues. It concludes with the the song “Wonder Woman Disco” by the Wonderland Disco Band, which plays against a blue background while the lyrics appear on screen in white text. The intertextuality of using the song coupled with footage from the TV show highlights how pervasive these characters are in popular culture and hence the reach of the messages presented. The lyric “shake thy wonder maker for you” is suggestive of something sexual, reinforcing the idea that this character is simultaneously an icon of both female empowerment and objectification.

In an interview, Birnbaum comments that she wanted to draw attention to the problematic notion of an ordinary meek woman doing a simple spin and in an explosion transforming into this superhero who conveniently happens to conform to a male sex fantasy. What are women to do if they don’t conform to society’s unreasonably high beauty standards? On the one hand, Wonder Woman was conceived as an icon of feminist empowerment. Yet Birnbaum raises a valid point in that the transformation as depicted makes it seem deceptively simple to achieve power, and the character’s skimpy, sexualized outfit undercuts her powerful status. The visuals are at odds with the message.

Of course, none of these things were on my mind when I first saw the TV series. I just liked seeing Wonder Woman stop bad guys with her magic lasso. I was too young to think of the material in more complex terms than that. Watching it now, of course, I have a very different perspective. As such, I am drawn into the post-modernist mindset of occupying multiple positions. I can see it for what it is, yet I can still consume it as the popular entertainment it was intended to be. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t fully regain that childlike innocence. I can’t unknow what I know. In this way, postmodernism can be a double-edged sword. These discussions are important from a sociological perspective, but there is also the unfortunate side-effect that it impacts our ability to just relax and enjoy things.