Dara Birnbaums Technology, Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978 79)

Explosive bursts of fire open Technology, Transformation, an incendiary deconstruction of the ideology embedded in television form and pop cultural iconography. Appropriating imagery from the 1970s TV series Wonder Woman, Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the real woman s symbolic transformation into superhero. Entrapped in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum s stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a musicbox doll. Through radical manipulation of this female Pop icon, she subverts its meaning within the television text. Arresting the flow of images through fragmentation and repetition, Birnbaum condenses the comicbook narrative Wonder Woman deflects bullets off her bracelets, cuts her throat in a hall of mirrors distilling its essence to allow the subtext to emerge. In a further textual deconstruction, she spells out the words to the song Wonder Woman in Discoland on the screen. The lyrics double entendres ( Get us out from Wonder Woman ) reveal the sexual source of