Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-1979

Birnbaum is recognized as one of the first video artists to appropriate television images as a strategy for subversion. To create Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, Birnbaum edited together footage pirated from the television series Wonder Woman (1975–79), including snippets of the superhero’s famously instantaneous costume changes, use
of jewelry to deflect bullets, and off-to-save-the-day sprint. The second part of the video introduces the 1978 song “Wonder Woman Disco” by the Wonderland Disco Band, with suggestive lyrics such as “shake thy wonder maker.” Birnbaum explained that her videos “manipulate a medium already known to be highly manipulative.” And, here, she reveals not only the persistent sexualization of women in mass media but also the limited roles they were allowed to occupy, remarking how women are cast as either a secretary or superhero, and “there’s nothing in between.”