I have heard many
people talking about the new Wonder Woman
film, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, as if it’s some sort of
feminist triumph. One review read,
“Gadot proves that women can be fierce and loyal, as well as empathetic.” The same review also noted that there was more
romance in the film than in many of the male-centric superhero films. I have seen many people I know on Facebook
dressing up in Wonder Woman costumes to celebrate feminism, and while it is
always fun to wear a bustier, I doubt people are doing it for the reasons they
think they are.
The premise of the
film is this seemingly feminist idea of Wonder Woman and the film is being marketed as an empowering film
for women, but when I saw it in the movie theatre last weekend I felt rather
disappointed. It seemed like all that talk of feminism was just hype. And maybe
even something more insidious, since it’s teaching us to unite female
empowerment with something mythical, revealing clothes, and a sheltered
childhood. I enjoyed the film, but I don’t think it is nearly as feminist as
it’s being touted, nor is it a sincere contribution to feminism in any way.
Wonder Woman,
Diana, did not grow up with men or boys. She isn’t even exposed to them until
she is an adult. She did not accumulate the lifetime of experiences that
trains, conditions, and to an extent brainwashes women to undervalue themselves,
to think of how they are viewed instead of how they view themselves. She did not go through puberty under the male
gaze. Culturally and socially, Diana is
a foreigner; she’s not part of the system, nor is she trying to be. She’s
separate.
There is a scene
where Diana is the only woman in a room filled with men and they are all
astounded and aghast at her presence. This is sold as a kind of feminist scene,
like “Here she is, breaking some patriarchal rule!” But that is a façade to
make the movie look more feminist without actually being more feminist, because
she does not invite other women into the room with her. She does not consider other women to be equal
to herself or herself to be like other women. And she holds herself above both
sexes. Women and men are less powerful than she is, and she knows it.
When she acts
surprised by the differences between men and women in society - for instance in
dress, this is another pandering device because no one can be as educated as
she claims to be (able to speak over a hundred languages) and ignorant of how the world treats and thinks of women, or of
women’s limited roles in recorded history. Every language reflects these aspects of
gender roles; they pervade society at every level.
There is a scene
in London when Diana sees a baby for the first time and she exclaims, “Oh, a
baby!” in joy and tries to rush over to it, but is stopped by Chris Pine’s
character, Steve Trevor. Now, we know that part of it is funny because
Diana has never seen a baby before, being the only child on an island entirely
populated by adult warrior women. It was
funny, the audience laughed, I laughed. Gal Gadot showed great comedic
timing. That doesn’t mean that I can’t
see it for what it was –a joke about
women, for a male audience. Laughing about a woman’s response to a baby is much
older than Wonder Woman, and in fact has long been used to say that women are
not meant for higher thinking or to tackle complex problems, when they have
such a visceral response to the mere sight of a small child. Personally, I
think it’s sort of sad that a joke like that had to be used in a film about
Wonder Woman in 2017. It lowers the bar for the audience, expectations for
other films, what feminism looks like on screen, and it instantly lowered my
respect for all of the hard work that went into Wonder Woman (2017), even as I laughed. Because it meant that the
creators of this film, with all their skill in directing, acting, and writing,
weren’t confident that they would be able to keep an audience’s attention on
the heroine, so they used put-down humor, and instead of humanizing Wonder Woman,
it just turned her into a joke, an example of the female image women are trying
to get away from.
The Amazons seem,
at least superficially, mildly feminist, or perhaps some people might think
that the Amazons, a society comprised entirely of women, are what feminists admire
and strive to emulate. And so, maybe the movie becomes feminist that way. Both
conclusions are wrong. The Amazons are only in the movie for beginning and
background purposes and Diana doesn’t stay with them or stay in touch, so the sisterhood
aspect is lost anyway. Also, the
Amazons, a somewhat mythic ancient society that we only really have stories and
theories about, have been sort of fetishized by history and used to mock
feminism. The way they are used in the comic industry and in Wonder Woman’s
origin story is proof of that.
Wonder
Woman’s Amazons are an extremely militant race of female warriors and yet
they talk about war as if it’s something men
do. “Be careful of mankind,” Hippolyta warns Diana. Though there is some kind
of prophecy that men will bring war on them, it’s still hypocritical that with
all their warmongering, they are against war and think of it as someone else’s
problem, not to mention the whole, “we’ve had bad experiences, we can’t do this
again” attitude, also at odds with the constant training. It resembles the idea
that women, without men, would choose not to fight and not go to war. As if
women are not real fighters. As if we are not continually fighting against
something that’s physical, dominating and cultural. That’s a disempowering idea, and one of those
archaic notions about women. In another scene of the movie, when Diana is
trying on different outfits with Etta, Trevor’s secretary, she asks, “How do
women fight in this?” and Etta says, “Well, we use our minds,” and mutters
something about suffrage which is sort of lost, then jokingly adds, “But I’m
not opposed to a bit of fisticuffs myself.”
Whatever feminist tones are supposed to be emphasized in this scene are
too subtle and too Amazon-specific to make the connection between women’s
fashion and women’s oppression. The message here is that it’s so ingrained in
the culture that women don’t fight, that it’s simply an unsaid rule. It's notable that the lone female villain also only uses her mind to fight. However, the best way to challenge that rule in the film would have been to force it to be said.
The question Diana should have asked, that
would have actually challenged the conventions of the time and in the movie, is
“How do women move in this?” True, there would have been no joke about
fisticuffs, no mention of suffrage (but that seemed to function more as a period
anchor than feminist plug, anyway) and Etta would not have been able to say,
“We use our minds,” – although I think
that would have been a great response.
This is 2017 and third wave feminism. We are
no longer just using our minds, we have passed that, and are using our bodies,
our voices, and our presence. We should be using our power as an audience and
consumers, too. The idea of women using their minds to fight for their beliefs
is from the beginning of the twentieth century, when women owned nothing and
were the property of their husband or father. Simply including this sort of historical
allusion or detail is not enough for a film to count as feminist, especially
not in 2017, and especially not about a female super-hero. There should be more
and it should be able to connect to the feminists of today, not the feminists
of 1918. Those women had lower expectations and they got what they wanted, the
right to vote, because they believed that once women had the right to vote,
they would be able to use that power to change the world, fighting for women’s
rights over generations, for lifetimes to come. They were not fighting for
themselves, they knew that in their own lifetime they were not going to be able
to have the freedom of choice, or equality they felt women should have. They
were just fighting to get the one position that they would be able to defend
because holding that position gave them an advantage against people who would
want to take it away from them. These women were using the concept of trench
warfare.
And the feminists
of 1918 absolutely did not just use their minds. They physically protested,
they were beat up, they were thrown in prison, they went on hunger strikes. Alice
Paul, Lucy Burns, and Emmeline Pankhurst, along with many others did all this
in England fifteen or more years before World War I and the period Wonder Woman is supposed to take place
in. The Pankhursts, Emmeline and her daughters, were especially militant
feminism activists. They favored arson and were repeatedly thrown into prison,
where they staged hunger strikes. The movie doesn’t mention this but in 1918,
the year Wonder Woman is supposed to
take place, the Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over
the age of 21 and women over the age of 30 in Britain. Feminists had fought for
this and were they satisfied with it? No, they kept fighting to close the
discrepancy between men and women.
What we have today
is because of them, and I think we owe those women a hundred years ago to keep
trying to change our culture and our media into something that reflects
ourselves. If those women had been born with what we have today, they would
still be fighting for more, that was the whole point. They wanted the right to
vote so that more women would be able to participate, women who didn’t have the
ability or independent wealth to fight for their own rights would still be able
to make a difference if they could vote in elections and on laws. Feminism is
all about empowering other women, not just yourself.
That is what is
insidious about this film. It’s so wrong to contribute and reaffirm the
glossed-over versions of history that recite phrases like, “women fight with
their minds,” when that is not at all how women got the vote.
Diana does not
invite other women into the sphere of power she occupies. She stands alone, in
a highly sexualized outfit. She is
exceptional and she is the exception. Feminism is not about being the
exception, or being different from everyone else. It is about basic human
rights.
The most feminist
character is the entire film is Steve Trevor. He has a suffragette secretary,
who he puts in charge of running the mission, he falls in love with Diana as an
equal, not as someone who would ever be dependent on him or share the same
beliefs, and he chooses a horrible death that would save the lives of countless
others by getting rid of the poisonous gas.
He is willing to share his power and use it to empower others. He’s the real hero of the film and he’s not a
woman.
I also want to
point out that Wonder Woman is actually a rather difficult heroine to use for
feminism. Wonder Woman and Feminism don’t actually coincide – despite how badly
people want these two ideas to come together and embody the REAL Wonder Woman,
the one inside everyone’s minds that is less woman and more wonder. Wonder
Woman is a terrible example of feminism because it’s not at all feminist.
Wonder Woman herself – forever sexy, badass, and young, forever from an island
only populated by women, and curious about and protective of men - is a male
idea. The character was created by men,
William Moulton Marston (Charles Moulton) and H. G. Peter in 1942, and even
though Moulton apparently created her with feminist ideals, in the first comics,
she occupied the typical female roles of nurse and secretary. In the early
forties, perhaps even the idea of women working counted as feminist but times
have changed. Regardless of era, there are inherent aspects of Wonder Woman
that disqualify her from being an example of feminism, a relatable symbol that
we as individuals feel a bond with, that does not depend on admiration but
mutual respect, that can empower others and be a gateway to a kind of
sisterhood where everyone is united by the common goal of owning ourselves.
That is not what Wonder Woman is. Wonder Woman and her story give us a false
sense of empowerment because of the fantasy of what it would be like to be her,
to have so much power and independence. That’s not what feminism is about, it’s
not about buying into an unreachable idea of a lone woman with super powers that
someone else has imagined, that is controlled by someone else, and that a
corporation called DC Comics makes millions of dollars off of. Feminism is not about being alone, it’s about
being part of something bigger than yourself that you can draw support from
when you need it, and being your own person at the same time.
Wonder Woman is not a real woman and in the
real world no woman will ever be like her.
She is not her own person, she is a superhero and while everyone
possesses a version of her, she’s trademarked by DC Comics. She does not belong
to herself.
Maybe this movie
passes the Bechdel test. But I think to be a feminist film, a movie has to do
more than just pass the test. It has to actually support its claims with an
honest and easily identifiable, concrete endorsement of feminism, not just
imply feminism. It can’t rely on mentioning historical events to convey support
for feminism. As the motto of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the
leading militant organization campaigning for women’s suffrage in the United
Kingdom until 1917, states, “Deeds Not Words”. Wonder Women (2017) is not a feminist film and in my mind does more
damage than good for feminism by selling itself as a feminist film and
perpetuating an inaccurate idea of historical women. If the people writing and
directing this film had done any amount of research, it would have been
apparent that the image of feminism they painted was so inferior to what we as
women are looking for, not to mention so incredibly uninformed about the
history of feminism, that its almost as if their mistakes and misrepresentations were
made on purpose, which is kind of subversive and kind of like propaganda. It is mindboggling that this film has managed
to convince people that what we see in it is feminism.
