Wonder Woman – Comic Books Question American Exceptionalism – Who knew?

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.  

 As we were leaving the theater, the true delight of the film was to see the reluctant stepdaughter kicking and karate chopping her way into the night - ready to vanquish evil wherever it might raise its ugly head.

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. 

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