Wonder Woman Is "A Step Backwards..."

[Jaicee]

Trentonater said:
To sum it up:

- People like mediocre superhero movie

- James Cameron provides valid criticism using a good example but can't resist it being from his own work

- Director of mediocre superhero movie has a counter argument that is essentially just "i am a woman, you are not"

- Fans of mediocre superhero movie praise director of said movie while not paying attention to what either said.

Bringing up multidimensional characters is pretty laughable when Sarah Conner is a multidimensional character and wonder woman isn't. That is what James Cameron is saying. Hasn't feminism been spending all this time trying to get away from idealized women? Feminists still agree that idealized men are a problem after all. Well we are in the era of identity politics where "the woman card" trumps arguments and credibility.

 

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

What James Cameron doesn't understand is ... well ... apparently a lot of things! First of all, putting every female character to the scrutiny of "does this actually advance female representation in movies with deep themes and three dimensional characters?" is kind of ridiculous. Not every movie is supposed to advance an entire demographic through a role, or do it in a nuanced way. Now, I understand why he critiqued the movie for this, because almost all everyone talks about is how awesome it is to have a female lead. But there's a clear difference between the character in a movie, and what that character symbolizes for the market.

Speaking of which, the second thing and the most important, is James Cameron's misunderstanding of how Wonder Woman "progresses" female empowerment. It's not about representing the entire female population as this deep complex multi-threaded narrative(and again...that would be focusing too much on one demographic unnecessarily). It's about merely existing as an alternative in a market mostly led by males.

Now the problem is ... he's not technically wrong. I mean, thematically in the movie, nothing really progresses female representation. It just puts her at parity with male roles. But his rant about how she was "objectified" because of it is insufferable. Progressive icons are always contradicting themselves. They want something equal to men, but still feminine enough, but if it's feminine then the only difference is that she's a woman, then you're objectifying her women-hood! It's all a bunch of random nonsense for the most part.

The thing is, I think gender in Hollywood has mostly become arbitrary. The reason most big movies stare males is because most big movies star males. The reason most superhero movies star male heroes is because the A tier list of heroes belongs almost exclusively to males. In a way, you could see it as tradition continuing, but moreso as an after effect rather than some bigoted notion. Because of this, I don't know how much I could say Wonder Woman is really "progressing" anything. The only way it can be progressing anything is through it's commercialism and not through the art itself. Even films of the past that were seen as progressive by in large because of the reaction they got in public, only got that reaction because of what was in the film, not because of a thought that lived exclusively in the real world. I'd prefer a movie that is "progressive" to make a connection between a film's theme and it's real life equivalent, so that you can justify the praise by the movie's actual content.

That being said ... something that I don't think anyone talks about is the effects of "fake" progressiveness. Even if James Cameron was 100% right and the movie wasn't progressive at all, the amount of praise it got for being progressive has led to so much cultural affiliation with progressive values that the affect is that it actually BECAME progressive. Let me put it this way. If you tell someone that something isn't true and so it shouldn't have an input on the market, but the mere impact of people thinking it was true already had an effect on the market, then whether or not that effect came from the actual characters of the film doesn't matter, because the mere existence of it changed the market. A film's reception can change the market entirely.

This is why I'm glad that Wonder Woman was considered progressive, because even if i'm personally not a feminist, it will lead to a market where the mere existence of Wonder Woman insures Hollywood directors that they can put their vision of a female role into a movie. As true as it is that Hollywood usually favors male stars in big movies, how many directors might have been falsely ... or even rightfully scared ... that they couldn't make a movie with a female protagonist, and ended up changing it? That's the thing. I don't like the fact that so many "female empowerment movies" are simply renditions of similar male roles. It could lead to a cynical situation where Hollywood directors start to cash in on the idea and just make the same but with a female. At the same time though, I'm glad they're being made because it creates a scenario where the false-perception directors or audiences had that movies can't succeed with female roles would be gone. It's like growing up as a kid believing in a ghost in the closest. Even if the fear is irrational, it does have an effect on you. So when you finally grow up and the ghost is gone, it does effect how you manage yourself positively.

Anyways, I think it's funny that James used Ripley as an example of his strong female character. You didn't invent the character, and yet she's the strongest female character you've worked with. Haha.

Well as the self-respecting feminist woman on this message board (just to reassert my distinctive credentials there ;) ), for me a feminist movie isn't simply one that stars a female character in the kind of role we more often see male characters in, like an action-hero role, for instance. That's not really enough to makes something a feminist movie for me. When I think of the term "feminist movie", I think of a movie that thematically revolves around, or at least substantially includes, advocacy for the advancement of women. Is it an advocacy movie to one or another degree, in other words? Let me clarify with some (relatively) big-name examples from recent years:

Mad Max: Fury Road = Feminist movie
The Hunger Games = Female-led normal movie

Wonder Woman = Feminist movie
Star Wars: The Force Awakens = Female-led normal movie

Ghostbusters = Feminist movie
Lucy = Female-led normal movie

Beauty and the Beast = Disputed territory

Starting to see the difference? The feminist movies are the ones that narratively either revolve around or include gender commentary favoring the advancement of women. They often furthermore include elements like women-only spaces (e.g. exclusive communities or organizations) and, contrary to our "PC culture-obsessed" stereotyping, generally are more fun-loving, less politically correct, and less reserved in general than other films that use female leads. Not that ALL feminist films are Girls Trip type of movies; there is the occasional Hidden Figures type of feminist film as well for more family-friendly fare and more serious-natured ones like Carol (my favorite movie) as well. But you get my point: the women's liberation movement is not nearly as uptight as our critics often portray us and feminist movies tend to reflect the aura of the movement to some degree or other.

I categorize Beauty and the Beast as "disputed territory" because clearly it WANTS to be an advocacy movie, what with Belle's "assertive" personality, that scene where she gets rebuked for teaching young girls to read, and the villain Gaston being a cartoonishly misogynistic pick-up artist (which is more amusing today than it was in the cartoon version back in 1991 now that there is an organized social movement of pick-up artists in existence that is every bit as woman-hating as Gaston), but many if not most feminists nonetheless find the film's overarching storyline to be a romantization of Stockholm Syndrome wherein the exploiting party genuinely loves his victim. Not an empowering message!

Not all feminist movies have female leads either. The summer's biggest-hit cartoon, Cars 3, for example, I would characterize as a feminist movie because of a key subplot that winds up being crucial to the outcome.

Anyway, as to the matter of idealization, I firmly believe that movies starring Gal Gadot and ones starring Melissa McCarthy can coexist in the same world without terribly diminishing each other. And as to the quality of Patty Jenkins' movie versus James Cameron's pictures...well I would just point out that the latter are not exactly all masterpieces, frankly, and that Wonder Woman, by any reasonable definition, qualifies as an above-average picture artistically, especially for its genre. And I don't mind Wonder Woman having some minor flaws. It's still too fun for me not to really, really enjoy! :)