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Wonder Woman
Jul. 20th, 2013 03:45 pmFollowing on my post about Superman, I've given some thought to the problem of Wonder Woman. By "problem" I mean that nobody seems to know what to do with her. Everybody agrees she's an icon, but nobody can get a reboot together. Usually there is some kind of handwaving about problematic elements of her backstory, but there are problematic early issues of Superman and Batman and Spiderman, and those have been easily put to the side.
I think the real issue is that nobody has given Wonder Woman a central myth. At this point, she's an iconic outfit and a collection of powers, but when you try to come up with what she's about, there is some vague sense that "feminism" should be in there but beyond that not much. And of course the absolute worst way to write a strong female character is to write a strong female character instead of a character, so you wind up with a bunch of crap about how women can be strong, how women can like ice cream, and whatever random stuff you want to decide "women" are about (because we're this monolithic group, as you know), and everybody is annoyed, and you kill the project.
With Superman, you write about being an immigrant, or what it means to stand up for justice, or the ethical obligations of powerful people. Not about being an immigrant man or the obligations of powerful men, if you see what I mean. With Batman, you tell stories about being an orphan, or the ethics of being a vigilante, or the way society constructs madness, or the sadness and anger that can lie beneath a seemingly carefree public persona. Spiderman gets stories about being a nerd who can do things that impress everyone but who can never become "cool," or about trying to make one's way as a young adult, or about balancing one's love life and professional life.
Wonder Woman is . . . what, exactly? She's sexy. She's from an island of Amazons. These are a character trait and a not terribly important bit of origin story. They do not a central mythos make.
Here is what I would have Wonder Woman represent, if I was writing Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman is the truth you can't get away from. She's fast; she's strong; she can follow you anywhere you go, whether on foot, in her invisible plane, or through her connections with Naval Intelligence. When she finds you, she restrains you, and she forces you to tell the truth about who you are and what you have done. She's not simply an interrogator - she does not, for instance, torture. She's a detective who brings dark dealings to light - especially the dealings of men in power who thought they'd gamed the system, and the biases they pretend to themselves they've transcended. She is particularly good at exposing inequality and corruption.
This Wonder Woman is somewhere between Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty and Thurgood Marshall. I like the idea that Diana Prince works for JAG instead of NCIS, but either could play. Plotlines involve corporate malfeasance and cover-ups of military atrocities. Public reactions to Wonder Woman revolve around whistleblowing, surveillance, and expectations of privacy.
Anyway, that's what I'd write. I think it's the best fit.
I think the real issue is that nobody has given Wonder Woman a central myth. At this point, she's an iconic outfit and a collection of powers, but when you try to come up with what she's about, there is some vague sense that "feminism" should be in there but beyond that not much. And of course the absolute worst way to write a strong female character is to write a strong female character instead of a character, so you wind up with a bunch of crap about how women can be strong, how women can like ice cream, and whatever random stuff you want to decide "women" are about (because we're this monolithic group, as you know), and everybody is annoyed, and you kill the project.
With Superman, you write about being an immigrant, or what it means to stand up for justice, or the ethical obligations of powerful people. Not about being an immigrant man or the obligations of powerful men, if you see what I mean. With Batman, you tell stories about being an orphan, or the ethics of being a vigilante, or the way society constructs madness, or the sadness and anger that can lie beneath a seemingly carefree public persona. Spiderman gets stories about being a nerd who can do things that impress everyone but who can never become "cool," or about trying to make one's way as a young adult, or about balancing one's love life and professional life.
Wonder Woman is . . . what, exactly? She's sexy. She's from an island of Amazons. These are a character trait and a not terribly important bit of origin story. They do not a central mythos make.
Here is what I would have Wonder Woman represent, if I was writing Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman is the truth you can't get away from. She's fast; she's strong; she can follow you anywhere you go, whether on foot, in her invisible plane, or through her connections with Naval Intelligence. When she finds you, she restrains you, and she forces you to tell the truth about who you are and what you have done. She's not simply an interrogator - she does not, for instance, torture. She's a detective who brings dark dealings to light - especially the dealings of men in power who thought they'd gamed the system, and the biases they pretend to themselves they've transcended. She is particularly good at exposing inequality and corruption.
This Wonder Woman is somewhere between Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty and Thurgood Marshall. I like the idea that Diana Prince works for JAG instead of NCIS, but either could play. Plotlines involve corporate malfeasance and cover-ups of military atrocities. Public reactions to Wonder Woman revolve around whistleblowing, surveillance, and expectations of privacy.
Anyway, that's what I'd write. I think it's the best fit.
