Yet more than once they have shown a bullet as a threat to her life in the comics. Things like that need to stop and respect the material that shows that her healing is good enough to deal with bullets. And her being very durable to everything else
Feminism is and will always be part of Wonder Woman.
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
Has it? Under Marston, it most definitely wasn't. He picked up some core feminist themes (like the way women were largely invisible to men), but his "feminism" was more patriarchy with women at the top rather than anything else. But at least it worked to make women's labour visible, consistently showed women as capable, and touched on workplace issues.
And even a totally watered-down and simplistic take on feminism as "equality for everyone" has seldom been at the forefront of later runs. In a way, Wonder Woman is in a strange place: she is a feminist icon without ever really having engaged with feminism or said anything about it. Which in a way is fine, but it gets a bit empty.
The Hiketeia is instructive here. It is a philosophical take on questions on justice: who justice protects, who is allowed justice, and who is allowed to decide. And it has a murdered sexually abused woman at its core. But the way it was written I read it more as a touching on class (granted, this might be my own biases at work) than on gender and patriarchy, and it didn't say that much about either, except for shining a bright light on some very ugly aspects of the way Batman—especially the modern one—is constructed and raising some very hard questions. This is not a flaw of the story, it poses excellent questions. The issue is that it is so alone in asking those questions and trying to navigate Wonder Woman among them.
«Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])
I do not think it is necessary to have such a "cynical" view of that scene.
For starters, Diana is not a girl who becomes a woman in the movie. Diana was a woman when she meets Steve.
The fact that Diana chooses to be with Steve is her choice, which is still a theme in feminism.
Not to mention that many coming-of-age stories for boys include romance
PS: I suspect Frozen was a hit due to the song "Let it go".
I'm not saying that the romance between Steve and Diana was handled badly in any way; it's probably the best managed love story in any superhero movie to date. The problem with this scene mostly lies outside the movie itself. You have to look at how coming of age stories are presented for men and for women, and then at the pieces that are part of them. And there is a clear difference there: women's coming of age stories are far more likely to have a relation with a man as a core element. Marriage might not be the explicit end goal anymore, but the tendency is there. For men's coming of age stories, the reverse is not true: you can find plenty of them with no or little relation to a woman.
Wonder Woman the movie only partially conforms to that pattern, in that Diana's coming of age story is much more about her relation to humanity as a whole, but it still includes a consummation of Diana's and Steve's relationship, which is a part of the pattern. Removing those two scenes might not have improved the movie as a movie, but it would IMO have made it a more feminist one.
«Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])
Well said!
I would humbly add that Diana's fealty to an ideology would also require her to abandon the pursuit of universal freedom - freedom to think, to love, to express your culture, to learn, to grow strong and to inspire others. I think Wonder Woman, as a self-liberated Amazon - we often forget this - is all about championing and living in freedom. As in the real world, ours, ..TRUTH, and not force or stabbing people, is her most powerful weapon against conquest, tyranny and oppression.
An isolated civilization, who has convinced itself that nothing beyond its borders is relevant or worth learning about is living a fable ..and begging to be brought low by something - people, nature, disease, its own destructive ideological vacuums ..or something outside itself. Like Rome [Check all of the above! ], when it finally falls, however brutally, truth has been met, ..and the folly of self-deception is laid bare for all to see. Truth is very powerful; it is attendant to living in freedom, and I think Diana, with her Golden Lasso, has always been, first and foremost, ..a champion of freedom.
I can't honestly see Wonder Woman being a slave or prisoner to ideology, even feminism, of any kind. I think it would be a betrayal of her Amazonian ideals. Yet, the refusal to indulge ideology...isn't that, in itself, ..an ideology? [Oh no!] Kinda'. She'd figure it out, though.
COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?...on WONDABUNGA!!! Look alive, Kangaliers!
Feminism is a term that first arose in the early part of the 19th century. Women who were described as feminists were socially active in a lot of different reforms. Granting property rights to women, abolition of slavery, suffrage for women and the other disenfranchised, workers' rights, the temperance movement, child health and nutrition, access to medical support for women including abortion. Not every woman who was a feminist was on the same page--some feminists were Quakers, for instance, and believed in temperance and the abolition of slavery, but would have been against abortion.
The Joan Collins character in STAR TREK'S "The City on the Edge of Forever" could be described as feminist. She was a pacifist. A lot of the issues of feminism are described as mother issues. Women are thought to be the more caring sex. They want things for their children like peace and health. That's why William Moulton Marston was so much in favour of female values over male values. He saw women as being better than men, because women wanted what he thought were the best things. That's what he created Wonder Woman to promote.
A lot of men looked down on women for having those values, because they saw them as weak. But Marston saw women as strong.
The current generation forgets all the sacrifices that previous generations endured to gain those rights we take for granted. We forget how many people were imprisoned and died in the fight for civil rights, labour rights and equal rights. Those hard fought for values haven't come without a lot of blood being spilled. It's easy to turn feminists into a meme and malign them through demogoguery, but the rights they won for all of us could go away tomorrow. Those who want to overturn those rights have already won by turning us against the people who fought and died for us.
WW84 needs to first and foremost be a well crafted movie with two female leads with a complicated relationship between them.
If the characters and their story are strong, it will speak for itself. It shouldn't have to get heavy handed with things the way Captain Marvel sort of did.