How Wonder Woman Broke My Heart
Every movie is a crash course in aesthetics. The camera and those who direct it presume to teach us what beauty is. The context of story and the interaction between characters make sure we get the lesson. Inevitably, we carry that aesthetic instruction back into our real lives, where it becomes the criterion by which we judge our fellow humans and our own image in the mirror. If we’re men, the movies do their part to teach us whom to desire.
Going to see director Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, I hoped for and dared to expect at least a small social-perceptual revolution. Amazon society, unmediated by man-pleasing, should present a vision of female beauty unmitigated by artifice. I hoped and expected that a female-directed camera would dare to celebrate the natural beauty of women. If the camera loves a naked face or an imperfect one, well then, we can, too — others’ or our own. I looked forward to a rejiggering of my perceptions.
Even before the first Y chromosome invades the idyll, though — it’s clear that these Amazons have their own gym and spa. Not only are their bodies perfect, they all wear foundation, blush, lipstick and eyeliner even when practicing the arts of war. Not a broken nail, a broken vein or broken nose among them. They don’t sweat. As soon as a short-haired character with a dick appears, the spunky Diana declares, I’m outa here. Sure, we’re supposed to believe it’s the desire to rid the world of war that drives her, but come on. Writers and director all make it clear that hormones override ideals.
In London, Diana’s beauty turns every head. The film makes a comic interlude out of costuming our heroine to be less dazzling, finally dressing her in suffragette’s dark suit and round horn-rim glasses. Other women envy her. Every man wants her. She speaks a bunch of archaic languages even the diplomats don’t know. And oh yeah, this chick can fight. She’s got these almost supernatural moves. Diana and Chris Pine — I think his name is Steve? — have some cute rom-com banter and squeeze before the plot thickens and gets dark.
That’s when we meet evil embodied in — I am not kidding — a disfigured woman scientist who develops killer gasses for the Germans. Note that Steve’s funny-looking male sidekicks are amusing and lovable, but this female character wears a half-face mask and manages to convey perpetual cold disdain just with her eyes.
Physical beauty equals GOOD. Physical deformity equals EVIL.
At this point, Wonder Woman had me in ethical freefall. Sure, war is bad and the Axis powers are evil and this confusing character who is both a British Intelligence poobah and a Greek god somehow loosely related to Diana is a real villainous sort, especially since David Thewlis plays him, but I was feeling bitterly betrayed by a film that pretends to exalt the power of women and instead uses them to re-enforce the bad old hetero-normative aesthetic stereotypes.
The problem, I suspect, is in the authorship — Zach, Allan and Jason bringing William Moulton Marston’s wet dream to the big screen, or maybe the producers, eleven men and two women, or a makeup bench that nearly equals the special effects crew. I went to see Wonder Woman and dragged my feminist husband along, both of us hoping to celebrate the first female superhero movie directed by a female. Instead, a beautiful production left us angry and sad.
