Wonder Woman

I'm not going to lie: I'm excited to see Wonder Woman. I watched the trailer today, and it made me feel something powerful and I'm thinking through what that something is.

First, note that the feminist reaction to this movie is not universally positive. Feminists closed ranks around Ghostbusters more monolithically than for Wonder Woman. First, there was an uproar because Diana doesn't have armpit hair. It's not enough for feminism's lesbian wing that Diana was raised among a group of Amazon warriors, she's got to have pit hair, too.

There is a boycott in Lebanon because Gal Gadot, who was born in Israel, is a Zionist. The little neo-marxists who claim feminism also by and large hate Israel.

The anti-Wonder Woman zeitgeist seems to be coalescing around the viewpoint of Guardian reviewer Steve Rose, who complained that Wonder Woman doesn't break the glass ceiling. She's a "weaponized Smurfette" according to Rose, and the movie is destined only to be a "camp classic."

Yeah, we'll see. I predict that we will see mothers and fathers taking their daughters and sons to see this movie, because there is something universal about it.

That archetype, besides the well-tread female superhero myth embodied by Buffy and Xena, is that of a crusader / nurturer. If you aren't with her, then you are against her, and her ultimate duty is protective and maternal.

There seems to be a great hunger for embodiment of this archetype right now. In spite of what feminists like Steve Rose would have you believe, the children and grown-up children who go to the movies aren't interested in a movie about a woman who works eighty hours a week to become partner.

They want to imagine a woman who will go to war to protect them.

I don't have a problem with a movie about women who break the glass ceiling. It's just that that is a new archetype that is being forced upon us. If you want to make a movie about that, I'm sure it will appeal to some people. It may even become universal some day. Probably not though.