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Watering Down Wonder Woman

Exploring how a palatable Diana Prince undermines the ideology that sets the iconic heroine apart

By Amal MatanPublished 7 years ago 6 min read
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After seeing the first Wonder Woman film, I can definitely say that it is a palatable one. It’s likeable. Relatable, sure. And that’s exactly the problem.

Hollywood has been going through an epidemic of passable films, but this story should be the furthest from it.

What we get is a Diana whose motivations are told to you but rarely shown. The agency and autonomy of the film isn’t quite there. It has a vague idea of what Wonder Woman stands for and her specific code of conduct. Superman doesn’t kill. Batman doesn’t use guns, etc, but Wonder Woman exists in a zone of complexity the film doesn’t justly to explore.

Moreover, Wonder Woman’s shiny new packaging delivers a toothless, muddled and vague version of a character that should be instantly recognized for what she stands for—ideologically.

When you make Diana palatable to a wide audience, you lose what made her unique in the first place. What made her unique was her radical and progressive stances on gender, race, and sexual equity as well as her willingness to achieve it by any means necessary.

However, the “by any means necessary” approach has changed over the years with different writers taking on a variety of interpretations on the heroine’s Amazonian activism. When it came to the creation of the film, the wealth of source material, different viewpoints and interpretations presented a huge opportunity and a tremendous challenge.

Patty Jenkins, as director, has addressed the difficulty in pulling all the different elements of the series’ mythos together in a press interview with Black Girl Nerds.

To the director and team’s credit, the film does a spectacular job at visually weaving the worlds together. Its visual stylings are dazzling.

The more bitter tasting elements, especially for long time and well-versed fans is the choices in origin story.

This incarnation of Wonder Woman is far less powerful in her ideas, and less inquisitive when it comes to challenging the status quo.

From the original Moulston run to Perez, Simone, and Rucka, there are several better choices, more feminist choices, to make than going for the easiest and most overdone demi-god by Zeus origin in the New52 run.

1. Overpowered Men and Far Too Many Underpowered Women

The Amazons were created by Zeus to inspire love in men’s hearts. Unlike in Perez’s powerful origin where a pantheon of goddesses who reincarnate the Amazons from the souls of women who’d died at the hands of misogyny.

This Amazonian origin is particularly in your face with its feminism. This is a paradise for women. It is a place where women aren’t empowered, they’re in power.

It’s black as hell, involving African Goddesses in the creation story.

Later in Rucka’s run is Queer and in your face about it. There is no question of if Diana is queer, she is. Whereas in the majority of the character’s history it has been implied.

In the film, it’s left as a question mark, as the only relationships that we glimpse are Diana’s relationship with her mother Hippolyta and Aunt General Antiope.

When you tell us that Diana was conceived as Zeus’s last gift to the world it tells us that power is given by men.

When you tell us that the Amazons were created by Zeus to inspire love in the hearts of men, you tie their existence to men and for men.

Not for women by women. Moreover, that power is given by men in service of men.

2. Hippolyta’s Worthy Champion & Emissary to the World of Man

Hippolyta’s traditional diplomatic decision to host a tournament to select a worthy emissary is gone. The Amazons are portrayed as far less assertive than they’ve been in the past.

It also makes for far less time on Paradise Island and far fewer female characters having a powerful role in the story.

The omission of the tournament never gives Diana an opportunity to prove herself, to risk embarrassment or consequences. There’s no sense of peril. There’s no sense of merit, growth or worthiness.

She’s above the Amazonian law. Diana, uncharacteristically, sneaks out at night to leave the island with Steve Trevor.

The removal of the tournament, or even just Hippolyta’s ruling that there must be an emissary, makes way for a larger imperialist narrative that runs through the film.

3. Where’s Philipus? Aka, Diversity @ Face Value on Themyscira

The under powering of characters of colour seem too multiple for each intersection of their identity.

Beloved Philipus, played by Ann Ogbomo, is completely absent from the narrative of the story.

Melanin is visible on and off the Island but as tokens. Black women are visible ornaments. Men of colour have speaking roles. Again, these characters of colour are ultimately again powerless to the narrative of the story showing that in the film diversity is ultimately tokenism.

The series of Diana’s black babysitters seem to be all the direct connection Diana has to Black Women on the Island.

In the World of Men, the film is aware of race and colonization but only as a punchline. Saïd Taghmaoui’s character, Sameer, willingly disguises himself as an incompetent chauffeur to raucous laughter.

4. Understanding Ares: An Imperial War with a Scary Lack of Nuance

Despite being curious and questioning the social customs around women and gender, Diana’s questions around race are not met with the same fervour of passion that her questions around impractical dresses are.

Neither does Diana’s inquisitive nature seem to extend to understanding Ares. The nature of war is black and white. There is no moral grey. There’s a glazing over of the motivations of World War.

It’s an Imperial World War. Both the British and the German are engaging in chemical warfare and the British Empire is the largest colonizing force in the world. The resolution of the conflict doesn’t just end with Ares’s death.

This war is a greater consequence of the violent colonial conquest of territories worldwide. It’s a power struggle between European powers for dominance at the expense of conscripted citizens and colonized individuals.

All her information on the war is largely through Steve Trevor, an American spy for the British, whom she learns through about the world.

When presented with the opportunity to see a different side, from Chief, a Native American smuggler, she doesn’t push further.

When Sameer mentions his aspirations of being an actor, but being inhibited by his colour, he’s met with a blank stare.

This film fails to push. It fails to push an understanding of morality, femininity, race, sexuality, and gender. It doesn’t make you think. It spoon-feeds you girl power on an imperialist platter.

As a film, it pushes nuance aside for a palatable easy conflict. When ultimately no war is, especially one against patriarchy, imperialism, and anti-oppression, is easy.

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About the Creator

Amal Matan

Amal Matan is a Somali-Canadian writer interested in intersectional feminism, film, comic books, comedy & cheesecake. At UWO, she’s studying Media & Politics, which means she’s going to graduate as meme expert. Twitter @amal_matan

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