Arkansas PBS > Engage > Pressroom > Community Cinema offers free advance screening of ‘Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines’ in Fayetteville March 17

Community Cinema offers free advance screening of ‘Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines’ in Fayetteville March 17

Posted 06 Mar 2013

The Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN), KUAF FM 93.1 and the Fayetteville Public Library invite the public to a free advance screening of “Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines” as part of Community Cinema Sunday, March 17, at 2 p.m.

“Wonder Women” traces the evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the creation of the comic book heroine in the 1940s to today’s blockbusters, this documentary explores how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation. The film goes behind the scenes with television stars Lynda Carter (“Wonder Woman”) and Lindsay Wagner (“The Bionic Woman”), in addition to interviewing comic writers and artists and real-life superheroines – including Gloria Steinem and Kathleen Hanna – who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.

Exploring how a highly visual culture places greater emphasis on girls’ and women’s appearance rather than on their contributions, “Wonder Women” urges women to claim the action genre and media in general as their own in order to change how their gender is represented. Tying the film together is the groundbreaking figure of Wonder Woman, the unlikely brainchild of a Harvard-trained pop psychologist named William Moulton Marston. From Wonder Woman’s original, radical World War II presence, to her uninspiring 1960s incarnation as a fashion boutique owner, to her dramatic resurrection by feminist Steinem and the women of Ms. Magazine, Wonder Woman’s legacy continues today – despite the fact that she has yet to make it to the big screen.

The screening will be held at the Fayetteville Public Library, 401 West Mountain Street. A community discussion will follow the screening. Panelists include: Dr. Sean Connors of the University of Arkansas, whose dissertation studied adolescent readers’ conceptions of graphic novels; Jeremy Dubbs of Northwest Arkansas Community College (NWACC), a professor of communications with a background in gender studies; and Stephanie Lewis of NWACC, professor of art and art history.

Additional information is available by calling AETN at 800-662-2386 or visiting aetn.org/communitycinema.

Community Cinema, a free monthly screening series engaging communities through films produced by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), features monthly screenings followed by panel discussions with leading organizations, local communities and special guest speakers. The program is designed to help people learn about and get involved in the social issues raised in the documentaries.

The Fayetteville Public Library’s mission is to strengthen the community, empower citizens with free and public access to knowledge, inspire imagination, foster learning, be powerfully relevant and be completely accessible. Additional information is available at faylib.org