I’m about to do something ill-advised: I’m going to comment on why I think Wonder Woman represents the wrong kind of feminism. Let me get out there that as a middle aged male I have no business commenting on feminism. But here we go.
Many critics celebrated the fact that Wonder Woman featured a strong female lead in a compelling action film under a female director. The showing I attended was filled with the usual suspects for a superhero movie — teenage boys — but also included a healthy portion of young girls, many with their moms, looking for a female hero.
Of course, in the abstract, these are facts worth celebrating. But I wonder about what the “action” element says about Wonder Woman’s feminism. The movie sees Wonder Woman fighting with the Allies in World War I. The German army is under the control of the Greek god Ares, who — spoiler alert, though you’ll see it coming a mile away — is actually a British intelligence officer. To end the war, Wonder Woman must kill Ares. To get to Ares, Wonder Woman must waste bushels of German soldiers. A big part of Wonder Woman’s feminist strength is her ability to amp up the German body count without any emotion, aside from righteous anger.
The problem is that the average German soldier, like most average soldiers, is just a regular guy thrust into the hell of battle and trying to stay alive. Why is it so empowering that Wonder Woman can dehumanize the enemy just as well as the boys who usually run wars? The feminist message here seems to be that women can be just as self-righteously violent as men. I guess if “empowerment” is just about the power of violence, this is a win, but it hardly seems a game worth playing.
There is a bit of classic superhero movie banter/monologuing during Wonder Woman’s boss-battle with Ares in which Ares sort of raises some of these points. Don’t you see, Ares says, you and me are really the same, the Germans and the Americans area really the same, and it’s all about power and domination? No, Wonder Woman replies, I’m better than that, and so are these humans (at least the ones who aren’t Germans)– then she summons the inner strength to squash him. Subtle moral dilemma avoided. Does this kind of feminism just offer equal-opportunity nihilism?
Well, maybe I’m getting too old-guy-grouchy about a summer popcorn superhero movie. But I would point out the trailer for another presumably empowering movie about to slink into the multiplex, Atomic Blonde. This film apparently features a sex-crazed mega-hot lesbian assassin. In the trailer we see quick cuts of Charlize Theron alternatively blowing peoples’ heads off, french kissing a sexy female spy like a thirsty snake (literally with the tongue flicking around), and writhing passionately on a bed with the same target in what can only be described as a scene from girl-on-girl supermodel soft porn. (They are, of course, supermodel hot, skinny, big-breasted, instantaneously and incandescently orgasmic babes — that is, this isn’t Mary and Sally who live down the block, but the kind of action a horny hetero cisgendered teenage boy dreams about). Now we get the kinky violence and the kinky sex together in one empowering package. And this teasing trailer plays to the theater full of young girls and moms who came to see Wonder Woman. Truly, I’m astonished that they allowed this trailer to play before a film that everyone knows will be attended largely by adolescents. If this is the revolution, show me to the early bird dinner somewhere in the old folks home and count me out.