Wonder Woman: smashing patriarchy and box office records.
Imagine a world without men. A beautiful island paradise where strong, kind, intelligent women ride horses and practice archery and run a civilization — a place where women can live their damn lives without men leering at their bodies and undermining their ambitions. What kind of women could we become? Queens and generals and superheroes, that’s what kind.
This is the magic of Wonder Woman, the summer blockbuster from Patty Jenkins, who is the first woman to direct a big-budget superhero flick. This glass ceiling-shattering milestone — while long overdue — could not have come at a better time. I don’t know about you, but the yoke of the patriarchy has been feeling pretty heavy these days. I needed an ass-kicking demigoddess in my life.
Yes, Wonder Woman has been around since 1941. But there is something particularly refreshing about this particular iteration of Diana the Amazon princess, especially when juxtaposed with the stereotypical “strong female” roles seen in so many action movies. Too often, women heroes are powerful because they take on masculine traits — the femme fatale must be calculating, detached and unemotional; the female soldier has to prove she can hang with the boys. Their womanhood is at best an afterthought and at worst a liability. Maybe these tired tropes exist because female action movie heroes are still written and directed almost exclusively by men, or maybe it’s because some women adopt masculinity as a way to cope and compete in a male-dominated society. Probably both.
But Wonder Woman, played by the relatively unknown Israeli actress Gal Gadot, gets her strength and her identity because of her femininity — not in spite of it. She’s warm and kind, a protector of the weak. When she leaves the island of the Amazons and arrives in London, she gushes over a baby and freaks out over how good ice cream is. She eschews the patriarchy because she exists outside of it. She can save “the world of men” because she’s immune to their bullshit. When the male characters in the movie — including her love interest, Steve Trevor, one of the good guys, played wonderfully by Chris Pine — tell her “no” (which happens repeatedly), she doesn’t let their negativity stop her. She charges into battle, and the men follow. And she wins.
I usually only get misty-eyed during movies when a character dies (especially if it’s a dog). But, to my surprise, I found myself getting choked up during the battle scenes. Actually, a rogue tear snuck out of my eye during the opening sequence, when a young Diana watches and imitates the fierce female warriors training with General Antiope. It was pretty much waterworks from that point on. Every time Wonder Woman smashed through a wall or defeated an enemy, I felt like I was seeing something I had always needed but never really realized I was missing. No wonder men are so damn confident — I left the theater feeling empowered as hell.
