Wonder Woman: Icon of a Pagan Anti-Feminism

It's not a coincidence she looks like an Elf princess...

Considering the dirth of negative press, critical reviews, and general shade thrown at the DC Cinematic Universe since Henry Cavill groaned and yelled his way through Zack Snyder's overcooked Man of Steel in 2013, I was greatly pleased to see much in the way of positive feedback surrounding the franchise's latest offering, Wonder Woman. Since origins stories are necessarily difficult endeavors with regards to the source materials, fanbase of comic readers, and general public, I am always willing to cut slack to films that stick to the basics of all good filmmaking: character and narrative. While the superhero genre has saturated the screens for over a decade, I was reminded by a friend that before Robert Downey Jr. launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe into its current reign as a box-office juggernaut with Iron Man in 2008, the vast majority of regular joes/janes (myself included) were more familiar with the DC lineup than Marvel. Sure, Spider-Man and X-Men had credible traction from the likes of Sam Raimi's Tobey Maguire-led films and, of course, the Hugh Jackman dynasty has lasted longer than anyone could have predicted, but as a kid all I wanted to do was wrestle with my brother over Batman toys.

From 2005-2012, Christopher Nolan wrought Batman into a Bush-era morality parable complete with psychological warfare and a neurosis over technology/information that was disturbingly relevant and remains among the better films of any genre, superheroes notwithstanding. The temptation to cast DC characters in the brooding, tortured shades of gray that Nolan used to paint with was unavoidable for Snyder and his successors, and honestly I don't blame them. The problem persisted when Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) sacrificed characterization for caricatures, and piled on the body count for little reason in the context of the overall (confusing) story. But we were introduced to Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, who conceivably could bring a shred of humanity to the fore of this cosmic battleground where messianic superhumans, Batman included, fought it out at the expense of thousands of poor CGI putties (may they rest in digital peace). Thus I sat down hoping that not only the rumors of a true hero were, uh...true, but also that the story wouldn't bog down in the same ways that previous films in the franchise did.

Spoilers ahead.

Enter tiny Wonder Woman, the Amazonian Princess Diana (no, that is not a dumb pun...sigh), searching for a reason to train as an Amazon warrior on the Mediterranean paradise of Themyscira. The wholly female society is supervised by the first brooding face we see, the anemic Queen Hippolyta, who lectures to Diana and gives us some obligatory exposition on Greek Mythology For Dummies. Ok, ok...this point can be reasonably forgiven since we are, after all, dealing with a big box-office feature, and don't want to offend the contemporary sensibilities by reminding everyone how Zeus came to have so many children...so after a dumb scene trying to show how Diana is rebellious and independent we see Hippolyta relent and she allows her sister, the fearful General Antiope (a capable Robin Wright, unfortunately forced to deliver lines in a terrible fake accent) just in time for a training montage. Sure, it's predictable. But it allows us to see the first of Diana's physical capabilities as she twirls and whirls circles around the other Amazonians (in a bodice designed to highlight Gadot's god-like curves) until this idyllic scene is interrupted by downed pilot Steve Trevor, played by James Tiberias Kirk, I mean Chris Pine. Off they go to save the world from self-destruction, as he is a spy with top secret information that will torpedo the most ridiculous mustache-twirling villains I've ever seen in recent times, a Spanish chemist and the (real figure) German General Ludendorff, complete with fake accent delivered ponderously from a stellar actor (Danny Huston) now reduced to a cartoon character. They head to London and we get the cross-cultural encounter that is understandable whenever an alien/goddess visits the humans. Her comments on lady dresses? "How can people fight in this?"

It's only when they cross the pond that we get some shots of a war-ravaged Europe, and I actually feel a measure of the obvious concern written onto Gadot's face as wounded soldiers, despairing peasants, and others stumble around the ruins of Belgium in 1918. She links up with 4 throwaway characters who all represent one dumb stereotype after another, but give her an excuse to do some fighting. It is impressive, well filmed, and paced better than much of the rest of the film. Sure, there is a gratuitous implied love scene, but it is left off camera (thank God), and we resume the task at hand. Ludendorff must be disarmed, or else his chemical weapons will obliterate the Western Front. Clinging to the emerging tendency to nest villains behind more subtle and sinister cloaks, we find that Ludendorff isn't the dreaded god Ares, because if he was, the war would've stopped the second Diana plunged her shiny sword of murder I MEAN JUSTICE into his old bad guy heart. We learn that the crafty Minister of the British War Cabinet, who initially strikes us as a nice dude, is in fact the cosmically evil architect of all human warfare, and also the half-brother of Diana (since they both have Zeus as their daddy). So naturally, as is the case for nearly every superhero movie, we get another giant epic explosion-ridden light up battle, with Ares finally defeated as Captain Kirk sacrifices himself for the sake of all of humanity, and then Diana uses that shiny death sword to blow the bad guy to smithereens.

If I am to provide a balanced analysis of this film, and get to the (admittedly clickbait) title of this article, I must give credit where credit is due. I truly enjoyed the experience of watching this film. I felt the exhilaration of the action sequences, enjoyed Gadot and Pine as performers, and give creative credit for the story team in tackling one of history's under-treated time periods (World War I). For a DC Film, this is a step in the right direction, with character taking center stage, even if there are issues with the story.

So why am I plussed over Wonder Woman?

Actually, I'm not. She's a comic book character. It would be silly for me to be mad at a comic book character.

I write this article to provide a reasoned (and well considered) response to the overwhelming amount of praise heaped upon Wonder Woman as the champion for female representation in film, and a disturbing lack of reflection on the part of my own Christian community in addressing the serious moral challenges that her story presents in the face of our convictions, especially when we look at the burning center of our faith...Jesus Christ himself.

I am, formally, referring to responses centered around this article by Marilette Sanchez. Members of my own church produced a response as well. I encourage you to hear their thoughts and engage with them, and perhaps you've been content with the rhetoric that Diana represents "beautifully the experience of being the only woman at the table" and "God says that women are warriors" per Sanchez and her defenders. But as a student of the Bible and one who strives with every breath to take the Gospel of Jesus seriously, I urge you to reconsider, and yes, I am well aware that I am not a woman, so please consider my words imperfect and reflecting only my sincerest hopes for my sisters and all who take feminism seriously.

The first issue is obvious, and I won't put too fine a point on it. Friends have urged me to keep my particular ethical convictions in check when it comes to dialogue with the broader Christian community, especially when it comes to this issue: violence and the role it plays in redemption. Yet the ethical treatment of violence is simply too glaring of an issue for me to ignore, especially in this film. Diana is completely immersed in a world of violence where war is part-and-parcel of the purpose of her existence. Amidst the backdrop of Hippolyta's tale of the backstory and mythos is a cosmic war with gods and humans alike. Biblical scholars would be reminded that most of the pagan nations surrounding Israel (yes Greece, but especially Babylon) included creation-out-of violence as their primary motif. The narrative of scripture in Genesis is a rebellious and seditious counter to the Enuma Elish of Babylon, since God breathes life into the dust and forms humanity in His very Image and Likeness; very good. Diana, writing in the cool glass and stone of contemporary Paris, reminds Bruce Wayne that "every person is a mix of dark and light, good and bad..." but we get the impression that most people are lumped generally in one category or the other if we pay attention to the story. If the opposite were the case, we would get more images like the one were the Spanish chemist has her moment of vulnerability (another of the film's excellent moments) and less of the "bad guy" German and Turkish soldiers slaughtered left and right as we cheer. Walter Wink wrote extensively on the "myth of redemptive violence" that is encoded in the pagan narrative of creation, but also wrought in the logic of hero fables, including Wonder Woman. Here, the means justify the ends, and we should feel no remorse when the evil are dealt with in kind. Part of the scandal/brilliance of George Lucas' Return of the Jedi was the end of Darth Vader's character arc, where the epitome of Freudian evil was allowed to receive our pity and even compassion along with Luke when the young Jedi refuses the Emperor's temptation to destroy Vader. To bring it into a more relevant contemporary setting, retributive violence is the explicit narrative upholding the police brutality that terrorizes Black America, and suppresses the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples the world over. I was legitimately offended when the lines "Love is stronger than hate" immediately preceded Diana plunging her sword into Ares and destroying him in a ball of fire, supposedly the film's dramatic catharsis. This kind of violence is an icon of love? The bastard son of Galilee told his followers "you have heard it said, an eye for an eye, but I say to you...(Mt 5:39)"

My second major tension is a bit more erudite, but has serious implications, if you'll follow me. As I said, World War I is seldom depicted on screen, and has never seen the big-budget Hollywood treatment. There are groundbreaking and moving films like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and one of my favorite war films, Gallipoli (1981) with a young Mel Gibson. Thus we have to give Wonder Woman credit. Aesthetically, the war is depicted well, with the aforementioned civilian casualties pushed front and center (and included in a grim chemical attack) along with the familiar trenches, machine guns, and barbed wire of No-Man's Land. But any casual student of history will tell you that the trauma of the Great War was its utter, insane, and completely unnecessary waste of human life. Europe burned as dying nation-states threw millions of young men into mechanized combat with the latest technology and Napoleonic battle tactics. To cast the struggle in the trenches in moralistic terms of good and evil is to miss the point of the deepest pain - its utter lack of meaning. The "truce of Christmas" when soldiers from both sides stopped fighting to play soccer is a prime example of the situation on the ground: death was a command from an invisible hand, not a desire born in the hearts of those fighting. Moralizing the war does no honor to the dead, and is even more troubling when we consider the direct consequences of the war on Europe as a whole. The Victory in Europe depicted at the end of the movie was actually an Armistice, a formal treaty designed to disarm both sides fighting (quite unlike the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in 1945). The nations still had to negotiate the terms of the peace after the war, and produced the Treaty of Versailles the next year, with disastrous consequences for Germany. Stumbling through democracy did not take in the economic ruin of the 1920s, and a nation supported the rise of the most sinister figure of the 20th century, none other than Adolf Hitler. We see Diana writing letters to Bruce Wayne in a conceivably contemporary context, her office sheathed beneath the glass pyramid of I.M. Pei at the Louvre in Paris, itself a notable example of controversy in Modernist architecture (remember what the Egyptians used pyramids for?). If Ares was indeed defeated in 1918, how are we supposed to understand the following decades of unspeakable horror (for Jews, Poles, Chinese, Filipinos, and Latin Americans in particular) in addition to the spectre of nuclear annihilation? Such questions are left untreated, and perhaps rest upon the audience's ability to suspend its sense of historical awareness.

Overall, I cannot accept Sanchez' claim that Wonder Woman embodies a biblical concept of womanhood not because I disagree with her understanding of what constitutes biblical womanhood, but because of the very nature of Diana's character as portrayed onscreen. Diana achieves victory by assuming the narrative's identity as the "God-killer" designed by Zeus to protect the world and serve justice-through-violence, not by her craftiness, intellect, or boldness (as in the biblical examples of Tamar, Rahab, Jael, and Judith). Her sensitivity is apparent and instrumental as a motivation for her to continue in her struggle, but is centered around her unambiguously romantic relationship with Steve Trevor. Sure enough, she sacrifices this relationship for the good of humankind, but it is her superhuman abilities to hold Ares at bay that allow Steve to escape and detonate the store of chemical weapons away from harm. There is none of the cosmically important joy-in-powerlessness that illuminates the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel, or that is recapitulated on the lips of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Luke 1. The Bible shows us that it is not our physical or mental competence that grants us the favor of the divine, but precisely our ability to trust in the place of weakness and lack that makes room for the salvation of all people. To understand the character of Diana in Wonder Woman, we must simply acknowledge her nature: a pagan goddess on a mission to do what the gods are supposed to do - intervene on behalf of humanity. DC is full of such characters. Apart from Batman, the Justice League is entirely populated with aliens, gods, goddesses, and demigods with supernatural powers. The Bible shows us the scandalous truth that humanity can find within itself the divine spark and truth of cosmic unity; in our Christian tradition we call this The Incarnation of Christ. Paganism categorically rejects humanity's capability to find meaning in its own suffering, and the Babylonians surely laughed along with the Macedonians at the parable of Job circulating in the Jewish ghettos in exile. They expected people who suffered to throw their cows, sheep, doves, and even children onto the bloody altars to stop the famine, bring the rains, and bring favor in war. Does Diana exhibit human tenderness and affection? Surely, especially in scenes like her first encounter with the Great War's scope. But don't tell me her reaction to ice cream makes her more human (and more of a woman). You're embarrassing yourself. The gods always display our projections of humanity's ideals.

Feminism invites us into the breathtaking scope of female humanity: not only do women deserve to be treated as fully human, but they by nature bring particular truth and insight into the human condition that men never could. Wonder Woman succeeds in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, and yet the only other female characters (one villain, one comic relief) never get the chance to resolve their own struggles. Diana is not a real human, or even a real woman. Gal Gadot is a capable performer, as I will be the first to tell you, but she was both a supermodel and trained IDF soldier. Watching her leaps and twirl in battle is more like watching Keanu Reeves in the Matrix or an Olympic gymnast than any relatable person. Also, she is supernaturally beautiful, a point emphasized by the male reaction whenever she enters the room/battlefield. There is never a shred of doubt in our minds that Diana couldn't rip every man to shreds that she ever encounters. Do the majority of my sisters have this experience? The fact that Wonder Woman's costume has been at the center of one of the longest running arguments over sexism in comic history only underscores the problem: for this film to make it in Hollywood, Diana has to be a sex symbol. The Bible tells us of women who are subjected to sexual assault, violence, and the greatest shame in antiquity, barrenness. All of them are included in the lineage of Jesus himself (Matthew 1), and some serve as the first leaders of the Church. Diana's actions do not provide a valuable analogue for Christian sacrifice according to the witness of scripture. Instead, her behavior serves as a pagan parody of Calvinism: her actions only inhabit meaning when they satiate the needs of an angry god's wrath (either Zeus or Ares, if you think about it). There is little in the way of solidarity, and thus true Christian existential hope because she never feels the despair or fear of death that is universal to humans. Diana will continue her immortal existence untouched by anything other than the guilt that she and Superman share: the misunderstanding of the poor, mortal masses. What do I want to see instead? I want to see my sisters display the full breadth of their talent, creativity, ingenuity, and courage as they resist and transcend the strictures of misogynistic society. To provide an example, the Mujerista Theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz recognizes the domestic space of the hogar as a fertile space for "the mutuality and reciprocity" of familia, no longer defined by a patriarchy but free to inhabit any interdependent space, whether led by a single mother, gay couple, or the joyful collection of tíos y tías that mark many people in her Latin American context. She even astutely points out that Jesus himself did not include "fathers" in his own description of his "true family" per Mark 10, thus subverting his own patriarchal expectations. Imagination is a fertile ground for real stories born out of the real contexts of the world's majority gender.

I've talked long enough. There are many of my sisters who need to speak, to write, to create, and show us a hero worth following. There are certainly many, many testimonies written through the pages of scripture and history that speak to this potential. I look forward to watching what comes next. Just don't make me sit through more Justice League. You can find me queuing up more episodes of Jessica Jones, in case you want to join me.