美国国家公共电台 NPR Wonder Woman Shows Girls That Men Aren't The Only Superheros Who Rescue People

 

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Let's head to Hollywood now, where the film of the moment also stars a woman. It is - you guessed it - "Wonder Woman." It opened last night to strong reviews. But what you might not know is that the princess of the Amazons has faced quite a battle for decades for respect. Let's start with the fact that although Wonder Woman is one of the most enduring comic book superheroes of all time, she still had to wait for nine Superman films and 12 Batman movies - not to mention Ant-Man, Meteor Man, Swamp Thing and Dr. Strange - before getting the big screen treatment herself. That's not all.

Jill Lepore has much more to say about this. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker, a professor at Harvard and the author of "The Secret History Of Wonder Woman." We spoke¹ with her from member station WGBH in Boston. And she started by telling us why Wonder Woman was created in the first place.

JILL LEPORE: Wonder Woman started in 1941. And she was really kind of a publicity² stunt³. Superhero comics had just - were flying off the shelves. They cost a dime⁴. Kids were reading them. But parents have gotten really concerned. And comic books were being banned. They were being burned in town commons. And so the publisher of the Justice League stories hired the world's most famous consulting psychologist, this guy who was something of a rascal⁵ named William Moulton Marston. Bring him to give advice. What should we do about this controversy⁶? And Marston came up with this idea. He said, what you need is a female superhero.

MARTIN: Well, why were they so controversial? What is it that people were so upset about? And what was Wonder Woman supposed to be the antidote⁷ to?

LEPORE: The blood-curdling masculinity is how Marston described it of the comics. It was mostly their violence, but there were also specific complaints. Superman looked to a lot of grownups like a Nietzschean Ubermensch. He was a man from a master race. People thought that he was kind of a secret propagandist for fascism. And people forget this, but when Batman started out, Batman had a gun. And the United States had a very strong aversion to the glorification⁸ of gun violence. And Batman had to lose his gun.

That's where he got his origin story. He ended up having to - he had this whole origin story about how he's traumatized by seeing his parents shot. That's one solution to the problem. But Marston said what you really need is a female superhero who's opposed to violence, whose strengths are love and truth and beauty.

MARTIN: One of the things that's been striking now is that - I just have to ask you about all the hubbub⁹ around this film. I mean, obviously there are a lot of things just from a commercial standpoint that people are interested in and want to talk about - the fact that, you know, the star is an Israeli actress and she's a former member of the IDF and a former Miss Israel, the fact that it's directed by Patty Jenkins, who's, you know, a woman directing a big-budget, you know, action film is exciting to some people.

But there's been all this stuff about, you know, is this a feminist¹⁰ film or not? The fact that, say, a couple of movie theaters decided¹¹ to have all-female screenings. Why do you think it is that it's evoking¹² such strong feelings and it's just coming out?

LEPORE: So I think there are two sides of those feelings. Well, there are probably many sides. But one side is that that malice¹³, right? There's a lot of kind of pent-up hostility¹⁴. But the other side of it is that emotionalism and attachment¹⁵ to this character, which I have to just confess, like, as a girl I did not read "Wonder Woman." I didn't even watch the "Wonder Woman" TV show. I'm not like a comic books person. I'm a political historian. So I always kind of have an intellectual distance from that. I don't quite have that. But I've seen it close up, and I find it really moving. And how I've come to understand it is it's a consequence of the singularity of this character.

And I'll tell you a little story. When I was working on this book, I was one day taking care of a little girl, an 8-year-old girl who was in foster care. And I have a box of DC Comics, postcards from the Golden Age of DC Comics that are just covers of the magazines. She loved looking at them. And she quietly sorted them out into two piles. In one pile were all the covers with all the male superheroes, and the other pile were all "Wonder Woman" covers. And she said, who is this? And I said, that's Wonder Woman. And she said, what does she do? And I said, well, she's a superhero. And she was looking at them and asking me to tell her a story about each cover.

And I said, why are you so interested in Wonder Woman to this little girl who had been taken away from her mother and her father and her siblings¹⁶. And she looked at me like I was - how could I even ask this question? She looked at me and she said, because she rescues people. And I just thought, that's it. You know, that is it, to be a little girl and see a woman who can rescue people who are in trouble. I nearly fell off my chair. Like, I got it in that moment.

MARTIN: That's Jill Lepore. She's the author of "The Secret History Of Wonder Woman." She was kind enough to speak to us from member station WGBH. I do want to mention that she's written a piece for The New Yorker about Wonder Woman. It's called "Wonder Woman's Unwinnable War." It posted on June 2. Jill Lepore, thanks so much for speaking with us.

LEPORE: Thank you.

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

3 stunt   

n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长

参考例句：

• Lack of the right food may stunt growth.缺乏适当的食物会阻碍发育。
• Right up there is where the big stunt is taking place.那边将会有惊人的表演。

4 dime   

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角

参考例句：

• A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
• The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

5 rascal   

n.流氓；不诚实的人

参考例句：

• If he had done otherwise,I should have thought him a rascal.如果他不这样做，我就认为他是个恶棍。
• The rascal was frightened into holding his tongue.这坏蛋吓得不敢往下说了。

6 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

7 antidote   

n.解毒药，解毒剂

参考例句：

• There is no known antidote for this poison.这种毒药没有解药。
• Chinese physicians used it as an antidote for snake poison.中医师用它来解蛇毒。

8 glorification   

n.赞颂

参考例句：

• Militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism. 对国家的军事效忠以及美化；狂热的爱国主义。
• Glorification-A change of place, a new condition with God. 得荣─在神面前新处境，改变了我们的结局。

9 hubbub   

n.嘈杂；骚乱

参考例句：

• The hubbub of voices drowned out the host's voice.嘈杂的声音淹没了主人的声音。
• He concentrated on the work in hand,and the hubbub outside the room simply flowed over him.他埋头于手头的工作，室外的吵闹声他简直象没有听见一般。

10 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

11 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

12 evoking   

产生，引起，唤起( evoke的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Some occur in organisms without evoking symptoms. 一些存在于生物体中，但不发生症状。
• Nowadays, the protection of traditional knowledge is evoking heat discussion worldwide. 目前，全球都掀起了保护传统知识的热潮。

13 malice   

n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋

参考例句：

• I detected a suggestion of malice in his remarks.我觉察出他说的话略带恶意。
• There was a strong current of malice in many of his portraits.他的许多肖像画中都透着一股强烈的怨恨。

14 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

15 attachment   

n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附

参考例句：

• She has a great attachment to her sister.她十分依恋她的姐姐。
• She's on attachment to the Ministry of Defense.她现在隶属于国防部。

16 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分