What a surprise – Wonder Woman, a summer blockbuster about a
female superhero (something to which I have been dragged in the past with a
less positive outcome – see a post on Lucy) turns out to be the emotionally satisfying
version of another summer release War Machine. Wonder Woman is also a comic strip envisioned
and executed by a psychologist based partly on his psychological theories. It also turns out, in my own little universe,
to be the culmination of a year of learning about American Exceptionalism and
what it is – not so much in a distant, cerebral sense, but more in a lived,
constantly engaged sort of way (There have been multiple posts about that this year including Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Cone, and Nguyen's The Sympathizer). Finally,
it is a movie that evokes positive stereotypes in me, not just about women, but
also about Jews.
I was not a comic book guy growing up. Some of my friends were. They would read them voraciously, save and
trade them; putting them in plastic bags and going to comic conventions where
they would buy tables and set up shop.
On the surface, these guys were geeking out over the comic books the way
that my more sports oriented friends geeked out over baseball trading cards,
but behind that they were trading stories about multiple parallel universes –
where world events and everyday acts of justice were determined not by humans,
but by superhuman characters with superhuman powers. My friends lived in these shadow universes as collectors – but more centrally readers – who took these stories
to heart – were moved by them – and vicariously lived through them. This shadow world has been depicted to some
extent on the television sitcom Big Bang.
It has been lived in the world of blockbuster films – most of them from
the Marvel comics tradition (see a post about The Avengers of Ultron). I naively thought that Wonder Woman would be
akin to that group but, unbeknownst to me, she comes from the DC comic book
tradition – the world of Superman and Batman – not the world of irradiated
heroes. This worried me. Thought Batman can be a bit dark (when not
being sent up by Adam West), Superman seems too much painted on the surface to
be of much interest.
On the other hand, it turns out that Wonder Woman was
written by a psychologist – William Moulton
Marsh. Marsh contributed to the
development of the lie detector, noting that shifts in blood pressure could accompany
emotional arousal. He also developed a personality theory and measure that
is used by many business consultants today – the DISC measure – that was based
on an understanding of the psychological world being divided into being active
or passive – on one dimension – and the determination of the person that they
are operating in a supportive or hostile environment. The active/passive dimension was one that
Marsh mapped onto gender stereotypes with the active being the masculine
dimension and the passive being the feminine dimension. That said, he had very progressive views
about women – he lived in a menage a trois with his wife and another woman,
Olive, who was a former student of his.
His wife apparently contributed to some of his psychological work –
including noting that her own blood pressure went up when she was aroused – and
Olive served as a model for aspects of Wonder Woman – including the bracelets
that Olive wore that became the model for the wrist protectors that Wonder Woman wears to ward
off bullets.
This Wonder Woman – the Wonder Woman of the summer
blockbuster – is played by an Israeli actress, Gal Gado, and the film is
directed by a woman, Patty
Jenkins. It opens on an idyllic
island inhabited by the Amazons and apparently off the grid of the rest of the
world. This place was preserved by Zeus,
after he was defeated by Ares, the God of War, as a place for the Amazons to
train to protect the humans by defeating Ares when the world would desperately need that to be done. The future Wonder Woman
is a girl growing up among women warriors who wants to train as a warrior, but is forbidden to do that by her mother, the queen of the Island. Against her mother’s wishes, her aunt trains
her in the art of war and finally convinces her mother that she should, indeed,
be trained as a warrior. As her training
nears its conclusion, it is apparent that Wonder Woman has powers that the
other Amazons, amazing as they are, don’t have.
The Amazons' idyllic existence is interrupted by the world
calling in the form of a WWI fighter plane that appears in its skies and
crashes to the sea where the pilot is rescued by Wonder Woman – in the ensuing
fight with his pursuers, we discover that the pilot is a spy and that the training in
bows and arrows and horse riding and sword fighting is impressive but no match
for bullets and other modern military weaponry.
When the American spy tells Wonder Woman about the destruction going on
in the war, she wants to immediately go and defeat Ares who, she is certain, is sowing the seeds of discontent that are fueling the war, and, by killing him she expects to
end the war and return the world to the idyllic state it was in before he
corrupted it. Her mother forbids her to
leave, but in an act of compassionate disobedience, presaged by her training
despite her mother’s forbidding her to do so, Wonder Woman chooses to leave the
island with the American, despite knowing that she can never return. Her mother regrets not being able to tell Wonder Woman everything she needs to know to fulfill her role in the world – a role that
includes using the God killer sword that she takes with her, along with the
lasso of truth that makes people tell her what they really think.
So we can already see that the psychologist’s conception of
the world is impacting the world he has created. Wonder Woman is an active person (going
against gender stereotyping) who is in a hostile environment – her mother does
not want her to do a variety of things – but she is determined to do them. She is also a person who has a lie detector –
but one that is better than her creator’s - it forces people to tell the truth.
Like War Machine, this movie is an anti-war film that
provides lots of lust-for-war gratifying violence – actually much more of it
than War Machine. But unlike War
Machine, this movie does not preach about the evils of war – it shows
them. Perhaps it is easier to personify
Germans as the embodiment of Evil – and that seems to be the old, satisfying
version of things that will play out, but this gets nicely twisted to show that
perhaps it is the good guys – both the Allied types, but also the apparent
pacifists, who are really to be feared.
It is also nice that Wonder Woman’s naïve view that the evil is outside
of people – in Ares – turns out to be false.
We are all evil – and we need to be aware of our manifold urges to build
a lasting if tenuous peace.
The multiculturalism of my little universe is personified in
the band of henchmen that the spy recruits to help Wonder Woman and him take on
the Kaiser as a small strike force. This
group, including a sniper who can’t shoot, a guy who’s just in it for the money
who works for free, and the Native American tracker who is able to point out to
Wonder Woman that his people have been eradicated by the Americans who are
represented as the good guys help keep this film from being the two dimensional
good versus evil that I feared DC would deliver us.
The real jewel of this movie, however, is the character of
Wonder Woman and her portrayal by Gado.
Where this naïve woman could have been coy, she is firmly in the
aggressive quadrant of the personality form.
And the eyes of the actress remain open and direct – whether she is
learning that her preconceived notions of good and bad are more complex and
nuanced than she had believed and when she is seeing her first man –
including when he is naked – and later when she is kissing him. Her presence, which evokes for me the
positive stereotype of the Israeli who must confront all of the conflicting and
ironic elements that go into creating an assertive country surrounded by
hostile others – is played with remarkable directness. This is a character who is soaking up the
world – learning about it – and is not at all afraid that her preconceptions
will be wrong – she wants to know what is actually present in the world.
It is refreshing to a see a film that is encouraging us, by
example, to look at who we are – and to honestly examine those around us. Why are we doing what we are doing? Let’s examine that. Let’s acknowledge complexity while holding to
our own perspective. Wonder Woman
develops from a child to a woman not by following her mother’s example of
hiding what the world holds, but by letting her aunt’s straightforward approach
to things lead her into saying what she thinks and hearing what others have to
say. Wonder Woman then, in turn, sets a
nice example for us.
I have written also written about Captain Marvel, The Avengers Endgame, Age of Ultron, and Black Panther.
Of course, I have written about many other things as well - to access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here. For a subject based index, link here.
To subscribe to posts (which occur 2-3 times per month), just enter your email in the subscribe by email box to the right of the text.
No comments:
Post a Comment