Rachel D, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Ryan Sheely, and Matt Wrather gather to overthink Wonder Woman‘s feminism, its humor, the comic team of Gal Gadot and Chris Pine, the philosophical message of Ares, and the difference between DC and Marvel superheroes.
Spoiler alert for all of the new Wonder Woman, and for Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War.
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Further Reading
- Wonder Woman’s crossed arms pose through the years (cf. the Goku Block)
- Fridging: TV Tropes
- Fridging: “Does Christopher Nolan Have a Woman Problem” from Overthinking It
- Thucydides and Herodotus
Well, actually the trope of being Stuffed into the Fridge, as I understand it, is a dysphemism for a character death that serves solely to motivate another character to seek revenge, criticized as lazy writing, rather than being related to the dying character’s own story. There were kind of two plots running parallel in this movie: one about Diana and Ares, and one about Trevor and the Chemical Weapon. Since Steve’s death is the end to the story of the chemical weapons, I would not consider it an example of being “Stuffed into the Fridge”.
Yeah, that’s a good point. He was fulfilling something that he set out to do at the outset, and would have done even without Diana there.
I am catching up on this podcast now. Did I just hear Mark say he has never seen the 1970s series? Get out of my iPhone and go watch it right now! :-) I was 9 years old when Lynda Carter first appeared on my TV, and I am so glad I had the pop culture experience the show provided. These days you can watch it on MeTV every Saturday night, except for the season 1 and 2 premieres which were apparently too long (at 90 minutes) to fit into their time slot. All episodes are available for purchase on Amazon.
As the movie approached I was interested to learn more about the character, since I knew that the TV show version did not reflect the comics very much. It did inspire a new method for her to change into her costume, which as an adult has me overthinking where those outfits come from. Is it a pocket dimension? And how does she make the distinction (on TV) between the various outfits? Do they even have motorcycles on Paradise Island that she would need a specific outfit for that?
Anyway, I got started reading the Wonder Woman comics with the compilation “75 Years Of Wonder Woman,” in which we see her World War II origins (which made me really confused watching the movie until I realized it was set in World War I). I got to see a really confusing form of feminism, not quite what you’re discussing in the podcast, with a “fish out of water” angle, but also very set in its time period. Etta Candy is her sidekick pretty early on, and she’s another strange mix of girl power and fat jokes. Overall though there is a respect for her as a superhero, with her identity known to a lot of people, so that she has an expanded role depending on the series (there have been several reboots as with most of DC).
I hope this trend continues with DC movies. I was not a fan of the darker tone, and I think they can find a middle ground.