Wondrous woman

Press, 13 August 1980, Page 14

Wondrous woman

AFTERNOON JL

Mollie Mackensie

She is not a flyer; more of a steeplechaser, jumping, running and leaping. She is nearly as much fun as a day at the races. Wonder Woman, alias Diana Prince, provides a regular meeting for myself and two very young companions every Thursday on One. Could anyone be so breathtakingly beautiful and be real? She’s got to be about eight feet tall, her legs alone making up the greater part, length-, wise that is, accounting * for the impressive distance between take-off and touchdown. Her gold tiara acts as a boomerang to knock opponents out cold, her bracelets deflect bullets, and her lasso compels even strong men to blabber out the truth like babies. There’s more to her than meets the eye, and that is saying a great deal. Look at her apartment. A Greek shipowner could not do better. It is enormous, with huge hunks of velvet couches, deep creamy rugs, walls of plate glass or designercrafted Riya wool hangings. How does she do it on a modest Government salary? Not that she is at home much. Neither home

nor office hold that lady. She is more often to be found out and about putting the world to rights, recently returning a clutch of androids back to outer space where they belong. They threaten the X.Y.Z. assignment. Steve doesn’t like it. One look from W.W. and they melt to wax, emitting odd gaseous bubbles and squeaks. “What’s happening? How do they do it?” says my eight-year-old chum. “It’s all in splicing the film,” I explain, “the real person is replaced by a wax dummy, then the film is rejoined.” “So they cheat?” She finds it harder to accept the technical deceptions than the brain-baffl-ing convolutions of the plot. The story is all plain as day to her, no problems. . If little brother doesn’t understand, at least he is mesmerised into silence. Between the humanoids,

the steroids, and the androids, not forgetting a roomful of computers that gargle out information in a coloured son-et-lumiere display, one needs to be young to be on the right wave-length for this scientific fairy tale. I’m completely flim= flammed. So is Wonder Woman’s boss, Steve. He remains in a perpetual daze, never catching on that Diana Prince and Wonder Woman are one and the same. What do the children think? “Wouldn’t you think he’d have guessed by now?” I ask innocently. “Steve is stupid,” says the boy of four. T So there is someone to stand up for men’s rights. Otherwise, without the excuse of mental deficiency on Steve’s part, this series is the perfect showpiece for women’s rights zooming up into the stratosphere. Great compensation stuff for all those kiddies’ books and television commercials showing women fit for no more than cooking, doing dishes, and sewing while the lucky men hammer nails, pu*h mowers, or fly off on business trips carrying briefcases.