Tag Archives: television

The Great Wonder Woman Rewatch

LyndaCarterWWCape Once upon a time I bought Husband the complete TV series Wonder Woman (1975-1979) for his birthday.

In an episode of questionable decision-making, I recently decided to blog my way through all 3 seasons of this glorious show.

OK. Look. Lynda Carter is awesome. Wonder Woman is awesome. This show? Not always awesome. Does it matter? A show can be glorious even when it isn’t always awesome, right? Absolutely!

Moving on…

What can you expect from this epic series of insightful posts? I’m not just recapping the shows for you – you’ll get cultural and historical context! Steve Trevor wardrobe snark! DC Geography lessons! And so much more!

Here’s a brief overview of the three seasons to set the stage, in case you’ve repressed or forgotten this magical moment in our cultural history:

In Season 1, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) rescues Steve Trevor Sr. (Lyle Waggoner), one of the worst spies in the history of American spies, and returns to the U.S.A to help him battle Nazis. We’ll battle a lot of Nazis. A lot of Nazis. You won’t believe how many Nazis we’ll fight. We’ll also meet Wonder Woman’s younger sister, Drusilla/Wonder Girl (Debra Winger) and a host of other earnest Nazi-fighting characters, because Nazis.

In Season Two, we’ll follow The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, as the show was retitled when it hopped from ABC to CBS. Our story skips ahead to the groovy present-day 1970s, where we join the Cold War, already in progress. Diana Prince/Wonder Woman journeys from Paradise Island to assist Steve Trevor, JR, who not only looks exactly like his father, but is also one of the worst spies in American history.

Season Two has it’s finger on the pulse of the alien invasion zietgeist of the late 1970s.

Together, Steve and Diana also fight terrorists, jewel thieves, a Hitler clone, an evil toymaker, and psychic children.

You know, the usual scourges of the 1970s.

Changing the setting to the present day saved CBS buckets of money, but they clearly didn’t pour that money back into the show.

With the assistance of their polite super-computer, IRAC, Steve and Diana keep America safe from pretty much everything except Steve Trevor’s terrible, terrible wardrobe.

In Season Three we’ll groove to a disco-fied theme song while we plod through increasingly nutty plots involving (more) alien invasions, time traveling venture capitalists, skateboarders, trained dolphins, computer dating, teen idol kidnappers, leprechauns, and a villainous brain in a jar. Fortunately, Steve Trevor, Jr, Terrible Spy, is still here to grin his dopey grin while Wonder Woman saves the day over and over and over again.

Steve, Diana, and IRAC don’t have to battle the bad guys alone. They’re joined by Rover the robot dog, a chimpanzee, and a super-annoying kid!

Seriously.

It was the 70s. There were a lot of robot dogs, super-annoying kids, and chimpanzees on network television. It was a deeply confusing time to be a child.

*Related post: In the Future We Will All Have Robot Dogs

You can follow me on twitter (@meanlouise), and/or like my facebook page to get updates when I add new posts.

Nazi War Diggers, part II

Yesterday, I posted about a new NatGeo TV show, Nazi War Diggers. The list of blog posts and open letters criticizing the show continues to grow.

Alison Atkin (Deathsplanation, doctoral researcher at The University of Sheffield Department of Archaeology) “Dear National Geographic Channel UK.” This post also contains a pdf of the letter the National Geographic Channel has sent out in response to the outcry.

Dr. Donna Yates (research fellow on the University of Glasgow’s Trafficking Culture project): “Nazi War Diggers: Looting war graves on TV.”

Paul Mullens (Archaeology and Material Culture, Chair of the Anthropology Department at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis): “The Peep Show of Death: Televising Human Remains.”

Even as the National Geographic Channel scrambles to argue that everything will be fine once we see the context of the clip, they fail to acknowledge a key issue. As Mullens writes:

Shows that tear bottles and bullets out of archaeological context violate archaeological ethics because they make no effort to systematically interpret the material record and they quite often recover things simply for commercial benefit. Reducing human bodies to the same status as bottles to be trafficked online has consequential methodological, ethical, and moral implications alike.

Tom Mashberg’s New York Times article, “TV Series is criticized in handling of deceased,” will hopefully reach an audience beyond the bio/archaeology community. The National Geographic Channel is quoted in the article:

“Part of it is our fault because we released a clip completely out of context that was not representative of the show,” he said. “But I hope people will withhold judgment until the show starts.”

This raised many an eyebrow on twitter. The clip, which shows a group of men cavalierly scraping dirt away from human remains and prying a broken femur out of the ground in a manner that no amount of context will make acceptable. The article concludes:

One of the two metal-detecting specialists on the show, Kris Rodgers, said on Twitter that he agreed the show had been promoted with “a very bad clip.” In response to the outcry, however, he added: “Trust me. It was done properly.”

No. It clearly wasn’t.

Additionally, Archaeosoup has a special episode about the show. Although NatGeo TV has taken down the clip, you can see it in this episode.


Oh! Bodies and Academia is also collecting up links about the show: “Grave Robbing” on TV?”

Nazi War Diggers

That title sounds like the lead-in to a post about craptacular SyFy movies. Or maybe a political post about the rhetoric around the NeoLiberal military-industrial complex. Sadly, it’s about neither of those things. Nazi War Diggers is an upcoming 4-part series on National Geographic International. TV Wise announced it will begin airing on May 13th.


Nazi War Diggers, National Geographic Channel
Photo posted on Nazi War Diggers show site

NatGeoTV, which is owned by FOX and promoted as a partnership with the National Geographic Society, already airs an ethically-challenged show called Diggers. Despite critiques by professional associations such as the Society for American Archaeology, the show continues to air and is now in its third season.

The clip posted yesterday on the Nazi War Diggers website showed these self-professed metal detector enthusiasts digging up human remains from an unmarked Latvian grave. The clip has since been removed but the page remains and the publicity photos were still online as of this afternoon.

I’ve been rounding up blog posts about the show.

Bioarchaeologist Kristina Killgrove (Powered by Osteons blog): “Who needs an osteologist, volume 11.”

John R. Roby (Digs and Docs): “We don’t need a TV show about looting Nazi battlefields.”

Archaeologist Paul Barford (Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues blog): “National Geographic use metal detectors, find new low.”

Conflict Antiquities: “urgent ethical and legal questions for National Geographic, ClearStory and their Nazi War Diggers.”

Alison Atkin of Deathsplanation summed up my feelings with an animated gif: “Nazi War Diggers.”

Archaeologist and TV producer Annelise Baer (Archaeologist for Hire blog): “Let’s talk more about Nazi War Diggers.”

I’ll add posts as I run across them.

Added March 28, 2014: Nazi War Diggers, part II.

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association 2013

Home again after the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, which was a 4 day whirlwind. Think I’m kidding about the whirlwind part? Here’s the pdf of the schedule – it’s 501 pages long.

(The conference is actually going on until 9:45 tonight but we attended 3 panels between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and then our brains melted. Well, I can’t speak for Husband, but I can assure you mine did. While I’m writing this, I’m watching Project Runway and I’m having trouble following the plot. Yikes).

My conference paper on the TV show Supernatural was well-received and everyone else on the panel was fascinating so I was in great company:

horror (text, media, culture): television and New Media horror

“Translating tradition: domesticating seasonal horror through television.”
Derek Johnston (panel chair)

“Beyond salt and fire: the agency of human remains in the Supernatural Universe.”
Rebecca Stone Gordon

“Control is Being taken away from You”, Marble hornets and transmedia horror.
Ralph Beliveau and Amanda Kehrberg

I should probably edit the draft of my first TED DeExtinction post so I can get that online tomorrow. I intended to post about that last week and so it concludes with the delusional statement that I’d blog from the PCAACA conference. We can see how well that worked out.