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By, Jacob Krueger
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Wonder Woman: The Structure and The Politics of The Action Blockbuster
Transcript From The Podcast:
If you’ve been following my podcast, you know that I’ve been talking for some time about the desperate need for some smart people to start writing superhero movies. Action movies and superhero movies are the mythologies of our time - millions of people see them, and as much as we might like to dismiss them as pure entertainment, the truth is, they irrevocably shape our view of the world, our children’s view of the world, the stories we tell ourselves about how to be our best selves, how to solve our problems, and what it means to be a hero. In this way, all action movies are political.
Which is why it’s so darn nice to see a movie like Wonder Woman kicking ass at the box office.
Wonder Woman isn’t a perfect movie. And it isn’t a perfect feminist manifesto.
But what it is is an action movie that actually cares about the message its audience takes away from it. It’s a film that tries to use an art form that historically, for the most part, has been exploitative of women, unquestioning of violence, reverential to hero
It’s a film that tries to use an art form that historically, for the most part, has been exploitative of women, unquestioning of violence, reverential to hero worship and a proponent of the simplest answers to the most complex questions-- and look underneath the surface in order to ask us some serious questions about our country, and our belief systems, and our desire for good guys, bad guys and magic bullets that can instantly solve our problems. In fact, to look at the very nature of war through a big silly action movie, which in itself is a pretty radical concept.
What’s interesting is that Wonder Woman does this not by rejecting the problematic elements of superhero movies (that mass audiences love and independent film minded audiences hate)-- wanton violence, cliched characters, death without consequence, stereotypical love stories, female exploitation, revisionist history, perfect good guy Americans and purely evil foreign bad guys, inexplicable plot twists, unlikely action sequences, unmotivated character choices and oversimplified endings.
It does it by embracing those elements, meeting the audience where they are, and then using the elements they love to turn their perceptions of these elements upside down as the story develops: to show the complications underneath. To make us question the things we so easily accept about our action movies, and about the heroes we worship, whether they’re superheroes, political heroes, celebrity heroes or even religious heros.
This begins by simply stepping into the problem of being Wonder Woman as opposed to Superman.
Nobody ever questioned the ability or the reasoning of The Man of Steel-- even when he was doing scientifically questionable things, like spinning the world backwards to turn back time.
But despite her totally bad-ass powers, Wonder Woman simply can’t get anyone to take her seriously. Not her mother, an Amazonian Queen, who for some culturally inexplicable reason among a tribe that spends most of their time preparing for battle, wants her daughter to be the one Amazon Warrior who doesn’t ever learn to fight.
Not her love interest. Not the British Government. Not her team of misfit spies. Not the soldiers at the German Front. Not even the clerks at a department store. They won’t let her dress like she wants, do what she wants, or use her incredible powers to end the war.