THE WONDER OF IT ALL
It seems a female superhero must fight the world to save it.
What is Wonder Woman’s place in the world? Is she a superhero with natural superiority or is she just a woman who has to prove her worth to the very people she’s trying to save?
Wonder Woman and the actress who plays the part, Gal Gadot, have had to battle their way to the box office, facing obstacles that would have rendered their testosterone-endowed counterparts impotent and sent Spider-Man’s spidey sense into a tailspin, Batman into a moody withdrawal and Superman into a kryptonite coma.
In December, she was dropped from her role as UN ambassador for empowering girls and women within two months of her appointment. Too sexy, culturally insensitive, fictional were some of the reasons for the opposition against her.
In the week leading up to the movie opening this weekend, Wonder Woman audaciously prodded some good, wholesome male fragility.
It makes me impatient that we’re still at a point in time where a film with a female lead needs to be celebrated.
Here we are, though, and it did. So a little joy was in order, thought the own- ers of a theatre in Austin, Texas, as was a business opportunity, which led them to announce an all-women screening. One show. From the far reaches of the Internet emerged howls of protest, most wolverine-like. Oh shush, I know wolverines are not wolves.
“Have you ever hosted a men’s only showing of any film?” one guy asked on Facebook.
“I hope someone sues this is discrimination based on sex,” another commented on Twitter.
One man wrote a seriously uninformed letter to Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, threatening to boycott the city if it didn’t host a show for men. “Name something invented by a woman!” it ranted.
So the mayor obliged with a letter on his website.
“I am writing to alert you that your email account has been hacked by an unfortunate and unusually hostile individual,” it began and proceeded to roast the man listing various inventions by women.
As for the theatre, it obliged by adding another show, and roping its NYC affiliate into the act.
The Internet cheered.
The film took off with rave reviews and a massive opening weekend of $228 million (U.S.) globally. Here we were then, reaching gender equality one film at a time. Not so fast. While the Lebanese grappled with the reality that the Israeli Gadot served in the military of a country they are at war with and eventually banned the film, the actress faced a different fight in the West.
She was criticized for being too thin. She was criticized for having small breasts. She was also criticized for not having armpit hair. Missing was that all-important discussion on what she was wearing. Or rather, what she was not wearing. Quite naturally, Fox News filled that gap. The host of Your World With Neil Cavuto referenced unidentified upset people, saying, “Some are calling it less American . . . because her outfit isn’t red, white and blue and, in order to appeal for foreign audiences, very little reference to America at all.”
“I think the Hollywood aspect, we see this time and time again, it’s cool to hate America these days,” said entertainment journalist Mike Gunzelman.
There we had it. Wonder Woman, rising on the backs of Americans with nary a star-spangled nod. Quashed on the gender front, quashed on the political front. What about on the racial front? Surely a white girl gets a pass there?
No? Was it because a white actress played Wonder Woman, who is supposed to be an Amazonian warrior?
Quite the opposite, it turned out. An article on Comicbook.com said people were missing a chance to celebrate the representation of colour in this film because Gadot is a person of colour.
“Simply put,” it says, “LOOKING white, doesn’t mean you ARE white.”
This opened a new can of worms about whiteness. Who exactly is white? That’s an exploration for another day. For now, on the very specific issue of whether an Ashkenazi Jew is also white, tweeter S.I. Rosenbaum won the day with an explanatory thread.
“Ashkenazim are one type of Jewish ethnicity. That’s what I am, what Gal Gadot is, and what Natalie Portman is,” she said.
“We have many of the privileges of ‘regular’ whites. Probably the best way to think of Ashkenazim in America is ‘white passing.’
“Claiming that Gal Gadot is a ‘person of colour’ is totally specious and an insult to people of colour who need representation in media.”
The real wonder about a Wonder Woman so laden with burdens is that she wants to do anything other than curl up with a book by the fireplace, let alone kill off the bad guys.
Must a girl superhero also have to fight the world she’s trying to save? Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar