Beyond Wonder Woman's "Nice Rack"

Wonder Woman

by Lizzie Norris

Few films have the potential to draw comic book fans and feminists together for 75 minutes of adrenaline and laughter-filled adventure. In this way Wonder Woman is a rare find. This animated work explains the birth of Amazon Princess Diana (Keri Russell) and how she comes to be Wonder Woman, the rather undiplomatic ambassador to mankind.

Diana doesn’t mince her words, which are as sharp as her physical assaults and serve as comic relief throughout the grave struggle against Ares (Alfred Molina). Treachery in the Amazon sisterhood facilitates Ares’s resurgent campaign of global pandemonium, spurring Diana to follow him into the outside world and confront him in the United States. Coming from a peaceful island of empowered women, Diana is deeply critical of American gender norms. She makes jabs at new male partner Colonel Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion) and denounces women who reinforce misconceptions of female weakness.

One of the most amusing and stirring scenes occurs when Diana first arrives in the U.S. and finds a desolate young girl sitting alone on a park bench. Diana is shocked to learn that two boys won’t let the girl play with them, especially after she observes their pathetic stick fighting. They would be slaughtered in warfare, she tells the girl without a hint of irony. Diana then teaches the girl a valuable fighting technique and sends her along to join the boys.

Many of the film’s gender jokes are trite—Col. Trevor’s first faux pas is mentioning Diana’s “nice rack”—but Wonder Woman doesn’t claim to be a masterpiece of social commentary. It’s a superhero movie, complete with the requisite features: special powers, odious villains, and as DC Comics puts it, “a battle unlike any humankind has ever faced.”

Yet there is a greater message for those who seek more than Wonder Woman in combat, cunningly using her Lasso of Truth, indestructible bracelets and well trained body. Men’s vulnerability to war and corruption is an underlying theme, but the film doesn’t present a simplistic dichotomy between evil patriarchy and divine sisterhood. Rather, it becomes apparent that both matriarchy and patriarchy are failed systems; women can be lovers as well as warriors; and the battle against violence and destruction demands collaboration of men and women.

*** out of ****

Editor's Note: Wonder Woman is fourth in a line of DC Universe original animated movies, which also include Superman: Doomsday, Justice League: The New Frontier and Batman: Gotham Knight. Wonder Woman is available for purchase beginning today, March 3, on DVD and Blu-ray.