DC Animated Wonder Woman's Surprising Take on Gender Roles

Though I was looking forward to the DC Universe animated Wonder Woman movie coming out this week, I fully expected the story to come with a heavy dosage of feminist subtext. After all, the current series of PG-13 DTV movies from DC isn't aimed at kids (at least not really young ones), and (let's be honest here) if you're going for relevance in Wonder Woman, feminism is the obvious road to take. Plus, the "Sneak Peek" video shown on the Gotham Knight DVD uses scenes of Gloria Steinem and the women's lib movement to place the history of Wonder Woman in its social context. See if you can count up the number of times Rosario Dawson uses the word "warriess!"

So, you can imagine my readiness to strap on the old protective worldview helmet as I unwrapped the DVD's cellophane on Tuesday evening. A guy like me gets plenty of practice trying to enjoy the entertainment parts of a story while picking out the philosophical underpinnings that assail my beliefs. I could all but see the hordes of Amazon women on my blank TV screen barking that all men were evil (a sentiment I can actually get behind, so long as we're talking about mankind). To my surprise, however, this is not the direction the movie went.

Truth be told, the feminist viewpoint does make itself known throughout the course of the film. Hippolyta, seemingly soured on men following her tryst with god of war Ares, and Artemis, the Amazons' fiercest warrior, both tout the virtues of a separatist Themyscira. Their world is one in which a woman's value lies in the degree to which she has been masculinized, where even appreciation for the arts takes a second seat to training for battle. Yet, while the comics had both of these women wear the tiara and bracelets for a time, Diana is the titular wondrous woman here, and it is her viewpoint, if any, that will dictate the perspective of the film.

Of course, having lived her entire life on the island, Diana starts off with a sizable helping of I-don't-need-no-man attitude. But by movie's end she has, through her relationship with Steve Trevor, come to see how a man's love for a woman need not be emblematic of misogynistic oppression. More importantly, Diana begins to understand how her own role as a woman can have a unique and proper place alongside that of a man. Granted, it's no Ephesians 5, but it's not the NOW newsletter either.

The movie's thesis on feminism is probably most clear, though, in the words of Persephone, who betrayed Themyscira to Ares after the Amazons' hard line ways drove her to madness.

Hippolyta: "You were given a life of peace and beauty!"

Persephone: "And denied one of families and children. Yes, Hippolyta, the Amazons are warriors. But we are women too."