Output details

Cold War Fantasies: Testing the Limits of the Familial Body

This is part of a larger project based on an analysis of somatic discourses at significant moments of historic and social change in Wonder Woman comics published continuously since 1941. Wonder Woman is regarded as the most readily identified female action hero, yet to date there has been no substantial research into her representation and popularity as a female icon. This discursive analysis of different eras of Wonder Woman comics maps the cultural constraints upon gendered bodies in America. In this chapter representations of the body in the comics are contextualised in processes of production, institution and readership. The full range of Wonder Woman comics 1958-63 are analysed to show how American culture regarded the responsibilities of women. The approach concentrates upon place and fantasy to answer this question. It examines the use of fantasy as a means of producing an alternative domestic sphere in which women ruled and Wonder Woman was part of a virtual family. It explores the significance of the fact that, rather than confront ‘real life’ monsters and threats posed by the Cold War, the Wonder Family confronted the recurring menace of nuclear power through metaphor. Further, my research suggests that Cold War rhetoric induces a schizophrenia, where distinctions between fantasy and reality are blurred (Baurillard). Consequently, continuous testing of the body in the fantasy domestic setting reflects similar testing in America of the 1950s. Within this cultural space a woman paradoxically must be constrained but empowered to suppress deviant and mutating bodies.

Parts of this research were given in an invited paper at the British Psychological Society in March 2012.