For Britton, Wonder Woman possesses power to enlighten
If Connie Britton had Wonder Woman’s golden Lasso of Truth, she knows exactly where she’d take it.
“We have a big truth problem in the U.S. right now, and I think if we could go up to Washington with that lasso, it would get a lot of play,” said Boston-born Britton.
In November the actor, known for her longrunning roles on the TV shows “Friday Night Lights” and “Nashville,” will star in “SMILF,” a new Southie-set comedy on Showtime. But first she’s on the big screen in “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.”
Opening tomorrow, the film is about the curious relationship between William Moulton Marston, a Saugus-born professor at Tufts University who created Wonder Woman in 1941, and the women who inspired his feminist icon.
Britton plays Josette Frank, a famed children’s literature expert who interrogates Marston (Luke Evans) about the morality of his creation. Marston tells Frank that he hopes Wonder Woman will teach young girls that “they have the power to create their own destiny.”
“They can be president of the United States if they want.”
That’s a great message. But unfortunately, the truth is much more complicated.
“Regardless of the results of the election, we are still asking the same questions about how we can empower women,” said Britton, who took part in a Women’s March in January. “We’re still investigating the obstacles for women, in terms of having true equality in the world and this country.”
Not everything has changed since 1941. And in fact, maybe 2017 just proves how much we really want a Wonder Woman right now.
It’s been a big year for the DC Comics character. June’s blockbuster “Wonder Woman” movie, starring Gal Gadot as the Amazonian princess turned bullet-dodging superhero, shattered box office records. It’s now the highestgrossing American film directed by a woman and among the top five highest-grossing superhero films domestically. A sequel arrives in 2019, and Gadot brings Wonder Woman back to the big screen next month in “Justice League,” where she’ll be the only woman in the assembled all-star superhero team.
It’s hard to not notice that this year’s uptick of interest in the starspangled American savior comes amid a barrage of headlines about the inequities women experience.
Of course, it’s already been a disappointing year for those who wanted to be celebrating the arrival of a historic first female president. Instead, despite 3 million more votes, the Midwest-born heiress presumptive was defeated by her inverse image, a bombastic metropolis tycoon.
Meanwhile, from Elizabeth Warren to Kamala Harris, powerful women in politics still get shushed down by men. The Bill Cosby trial and still-exploding Harvey Weinstein scandal have become high-profile case studies about sexual assault in the workplace. A sports reporter can’t even ask Cam Newton a question without being scoffed at for using the correct jargon.
Wonder Woman was consciously conceived as a feminist hero. As Harvard historian Jill Lepore outlines exhaustively in her illuminating 2014 origin story, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” Marston borrowed liberally from the ideals and iconography of the early feminist, suffrage and birth control movements. He was also informed by his polyamorous arrangement with the women who most inspired Wonder Woman’s creation, Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne, William Marston’s wife and domestic partner, who continued to live together long after he died.
Britton hopes the revival of interest in Wonder Woman, including June’s film, will encourage audiences to find out more about her origin in “Professor Marston.”
“I hope people will watch this movie to really have the context for where these ideas came from,” Britton said. “It may just broaden some minds.”