Wonder Woman, Identity, and the Value of Representation
The movie didn’t transform the world, but it changed something
I saw Wonder Woman and liked it quite a bit. Not the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen, but solid, and much better than recent DC offerings. Both lead performances — Gal Gadot as Diana Prince and Chris Pine as Steve Trevor — are good.
But I was surprised how much I was struck by seeing a girl and then woman in hero tropes, from early training to final battle. It occurred to me how many times I reflexively related to superpowered characters as a kid, in a way that girls rarely did.
When watching Wonder Woman, I found myself relating more to Steve Trevor. He’s impressive in his own right, but he gets in danger multiple times, and ultimately succeeds because Diana saves him. Steve’s the love interest; important to the story, but secondary. In other circumstances, critics would call his character “a strong woman.” He’s Trinity, Princess Leia, Lois Lane.
I’ve related to female characters, and characters who weren’t like me in other ways, just as I’m sure women have related to male characters. With the best storytelling, any audience member can project themselves into any character. But at a subconscious level, it happens more naturally, and perhaps more completely, when the character is more closely like you.
A Female Superhero
Wonder Woman doesn’t have an explicitly feminist message. To the extent there’s a message at all, it’s fairly generic: people are both good and bad, and if you can help others, even a little, you should. Viewers aren’t walking out with their opinions about gender transformed.
But Wonder Woman is a feminist movie. And it does this in two ways, one blatant and one more subtle.
The subtle one is the way it’s shot. Though the movie stars Gal Gadot — a former model and beauty queen — and Wonder Woman’s costume is pretty skimpy, the camera doesn’t ogle her. Other characters acknowledge she’s attractive, but there are no gratuitous closeups of her body parts. She’s filmed as a badass; an athlete and warrior, rather than a sex object.
It was noticeably different from, say, Scarlett Johansson in various Marvel movies. Her character Black Widow is also a badass. But the camera often lingers on her as she walks away. It’s not the same for the male characters.
This difference was most apparent when Diana climbs out of a WWI trench to cross No Man’s Land and save a town. As she throws off her cloak and climbs the ladder, the music swells. The movie then cuts between symbols of her power: her sword, gauntlets, lasso, armored boots, and determined expression.
If this were a Michael Bay movie, the camera would have panned slowly up her legs and lingered on her ass. But it’s not. It’s directed by Patty Jenkins, the first woman to direct a superhero movie.
This doesn’t mean alternative styles will go away (or should), just that it’s nice to see Jenkins’ style too.
Given Wonder Woman’s commercial success, studios will hire more female directors for superhero tentpoles. Hollywood is stupid that way, attributing success to shallow factors. Deadpool made money, so we’ll get more irreverent R-rated antiheroes. Audiences liked Guardians of the Galaxy’s retro soundtrack, so the much weaker Suicide Squad got one too. But more women getting a chance to direct big budget films is a plus. It expands the available talent pool, potentially adding new perspectives.
When the soldiers warned Diana not to go into No Man’s Land, I thought we might get an Eowyn in Return of the King-style “I am no man.” But the movie never goes for those sort of applause lines.
And that’s the blatantly feminist part. It’s a normal superhero movie, and it doesn’t draw attention to the uncommonness of a female lead. Diana is the “Chosen One,” born with amazing abilities to fulfill a noble destiny. We’ve seen that many times, but it’s almost always a guy. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Neo.
The only other prominent piece of pop culture I could think of with a female Chosen One is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But a late 90's/early 2000's TV show that aired on the WB, no matter how substantial its cult following, does not have the cultural impact of a blockbuster movie shown around the world.
This doesn’t make or break the movie, but I like the idea of girls seeing a girl portrayed as the Chosen One. Not manipulated by others into a symbol like Katniss Everdeen, not a damsel defined by her relationships to guys like in Twilight, but an honest to goodness hero, like Spiderman, stepping up to do what’s right because it’s right, and because she’s the one who can.
Representation
There’s something valuable about anyone, especially kids, seeing someone like themselves in heroic or powerful positions in both fiction and real life. It shows that it’s possible. That the naysayers are wrong. That it’s okay to dream.
The best example of this is Barack Obama. Before Obama, when a black kid said “I’m going to grow up to be president,” some cynical adult, perhaps an aunt or uncle, would say “it’s nice to dream kid, but only white kids can grow up to be president.”
That’s dead, and it’s never coming back.
Obama’s presidency didn’t solve institutionalized racism, of course. And this has nothing to do with his performance in office. But his electoral victories mean black kids will grow up in a world where it’s normal to imagine they could grow up to be president. There’s value in that. And it’ll be nice when Latinos or another minority can do the same.
I still remember a speech my rabbi gave on Rosh Hashanah about how excited he was about Joe Lieberman’s 2000 Vice Presidential nomination. Lieberman is one of my least favorite politicians (for a bunch of reasons), and Rabbi Lee didn’t say if he liked Lieberman’s politics. He was just excited that a major political party thought Jews were a normal enough part of American society that nominating one for VP wouldn’t doom the ticket.
He was so excited that he woke up his teenage daughter. Her response — “so what?” — made him even happier. She didn’t think it was a big deal at all. It confirmed to Lee that Jews had finally become normal Americans.
The first cultural event that made him think Jews were normal Americans was the success of Seinfeld. TV executives and critics thought it would be a niche show. It was too Jewish. Too New York. Woody Allen’s movies got critical acclaim, but they never sold many tickets outside of New York, Los Angeles, and a few other big cities. But people all over the country loved Seinfeld. It was mainstream. It was American.
My grandfather had to deal with a lot of antisemitism, but I haven’t. America’s moved beyond it. Or at least moved beyond it enough that it’s rarely a big deal. But I’m still skeptical a Jew can become president. I don’t tell Jewish kids they can’t dream, but I’m like that cynical black uncle pre-Obama.
To win a presidential election in the United States, you have to love Jesus. Or at least you have to be officially Christian and pretend you love Jesus, like Donald “Two Corinthians” Trump. I’ll believe otherwise when I see it.
Furthermore, you have to be the right type of Christian. It mattered when John F. Kennedy got elected as the first Catholic. He had to deal with accusations he’d be more loyal to the Pope than to the United States. His election changed something for Catholics, especially groups like the Irish that had faced discrimination.
Similarly, Mitt Romney faced accusations he’s not a real Christian. He’s clearly a religious person, and he says he loves Jesus, but that wasn’t enough for some voters. Romney winning the Republican nomination and talking publicly about his faith surely mattered to Mormons. And if a Mormon gets elected president, it’ll matter more.
Muslims, Hindus, and other non-Christians probably feel this even more acutely than Jews or Mormons. That who they are means many of their fellow citizens don’t think they’re really American. Maybe someone from their religion — or Romney’s or mine, or an open atheist — will never become president. Maybe we’ll never have a president who’s LGBT, or any other characteristic that makes up a prominent part of identity. Even so, when someone from their group becomes the first to achieve any position of national prominence, it makes them feel more like they belong. Even if it’s just a little.
In March 2012, Jay Caspian Kang wrote an article about Jeremy Lin that I still think about five years later. For Kang, racial identity was an odd thing, as he said it was for many Asian Americans. Blacks, Jews, and some other minorities have better defined American identities. There are many positive examples of individuals who are simultaneously black and American or Jewish and American. But while many Asians are also proud of their backgrounds, there aren’t many prominent figures that exemplify an identity that is both distinctly Asian and distinctly American.
East Asians are a so-called “model minority,” praised for blending in. They’re stereotyped as hardworking, meek, good at math, but rarely as cool. As a result, Kang wrote, many Asian American kids who don’t want to or can’t blend in — i.e., act white — try to adopt elements of another minority culture, primarily African American.
It meant something to Kang when Jeremy Lin captured national attention in 2012. Lin came out of nowhere to lead the New York Knicks, stepping up after other players got injured. As the point guard, he ran the team, and he hit a series of ridiculous, buzzer-beating shots. Within a few days, sportswriters were raving about “Linsanity.”
Lin was, as the media often reminded everyone, the “first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA.” Yao Ming was a star, but he was always Chinese, not American.
America often talks about race as black-or-white — and now, more frequently black, white, or brown — but Lin was none of those. He was excelling in a sport primarily associated with black players. He was cool.
Research shows that female college students perform better in math and science classes taught by women. Men perform similarly with male or female professors, but something about seeing a prominent woman in math or science helps some women overcome negative stereotypes.
That’s a measurable effect of real world representation. And it almost certainly has a greater impact than female scientists in movies, just like Obama had a greater impact than the fictional black presidents who came before him, such as Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact and Dennis Haysbert in 24. But maybe those fictional presidents helped lead to the real thing by making it seem more normal.
However, it’s hard to quantify the general effects of representation, especially regarding pop culture. In many cases, it might be nothing more than a positive feeling someone gets when they see “someone like me” in a position of honor.
So no, Wonder Woman isn’t going to make a woman president, or increase the number of female CEOs or engineers, or do much of anything about any gender issues (besides leading to a few more movies starring or directed by women). But the positions of incredibly strong ass-kicker, Chosen One, and person who single-handedly stops a war are usually filled by men. And now more girls will see a woman in those roles.
I think that’s cool.
