Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman by Dara Birnbaum
"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 super-hero. Entrapped in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum's stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a music-box 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 comic-book 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 under... Wonder Woman') reveal the sexual source of the superwoman's supposed empowerment: 'Shake thy Wonder Maker.' Writing about the 'stutter-step progression of 'extended moments' of transformation from Wonder Woman,' Birnbaum states, 'The abbreviated narrative — running, spinning, saving a man — allows the underlying theme to surface: psychological transformation versus television product. Real becomes Wonder in order to 'do good' (be moral) in an (a) or (im)moral society.'"
(Electronic Arts Intermix)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Space Invaders (1978): the groundbreaking arcade game
"Space Invaders is quite simply the most influential video–game of all time. A single player moves an armed 'base' left or right along the bottom of the screen and shoots the endless waves of aliens marching relentlessly down the screen towards earth. There are four buildings (shields) at the bottom of the screen that the player can hide behind, but these will eventually be destroyed by either enemy missiles or by direct contact with the invaders themselves. The player's shots will also destroy the shields. The aliens' descent quickens as they are eliminated, making them harder to hit. A flying saucer will fly across the top of the screen at regular intervals and can be shot to earn extra points."
(Alexis Bousiges and Kukulcan, Arcade–History)
Fig.2 Youths play on a Space Invaders machine in Newcastle (UK) in December 1980.
Fig.3 Space World, Auckland (Aotearoa New Zealand), 1982.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Way We Were: post-punk performances from the 1970s
"Channel 4 UK programme first broadcast circa 1984 / 1985–ish. Hosted by the late Tony Wilson, it's a compilation of performances by bands taken from his previous TV shows in the late 70's, such as So It Goes. Includes Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop, The Fall, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Penetration, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Tom Robinson, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, XTC and Joy Division–many of them making their TV debuts."
(The Herb Whisperer)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
One Hit Wonders: singers and groups who made a single hit song and were never heard from again
"The history of popular music is haunted by the ghosts of scores of singers and groups who made a single hit song and were never heard from again. Periodically radio stations that specialize in classic rock will devote a weekend to these one–hit wonders"
(David W. Galenson)
Galenson, David W., One Hit Wonders: Why Some of the Most Important Works of Modern Art are Not by Important Artists (November 2004). NBER Working Paper Series, Vol. w10885, pp. –, 2004. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=618522
Fig.1 C. W. McCall (1975). "Convoy"; Fig.2 Promises (1978). "Baby it's You"; Fig.3 The Swingers (1982). "Counting The Beat"; Fig.4 Deee–Lite (1990). "Groove Is In The Heart"; Fig.5 OMC (1995). "How Bizarre"
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Six Million Dollar Man: the evolution of an iconic title sequence
"The Six Million Dollar Man started off as a novel by [Martin Caidin] called Cyborg, but over the course of its development from book to movie to TV show, it not only changed name, it changed tone.
The book is essentially a thriller that tries to ground itself in reality as much as possible to make Steve Austin a super–spy. Sure he has a bionics left arm (yes, bionics in the book, not bionic), bionics legs and bionics eye. But he can't feel anything in his bionics limbs and his bionics eye won't let him see, only take pictures. And sure, he's very strong, but when he kicks a golf ball, that bionics toe of his still gets crushed by the impact.
It was bionics, but still tried to be relatively aware of the laws of physics and what was practical."
(The Medium is Not Enough TV blog, 9 July 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
