Wonder Woman achieves something no recent superhero film has managed - a genuine sense of what it is to be superhuman.
This isn't about your origin story or your CGI budget or however much you can blow up in your two hours plus running time.
This is about the presence of The Other.
There's one particular scene in Wonder Woman - the one on that there poster - which demonstrates most of all what I mean. Diana and her party are in the trenches of the WW1 Western Front. She casts off her human disguise and manifests as Wonder Woman - there really is no other word for it. Climbing out into No Mans' Land, she advances towards the German lines, single-handedly deflecting machine gun fire as she goes.
The sequence is a triumph of direction by Patty Jenkins, echoing consciously or no the stories of angels soldiers claimed to see in the skies of the Somme. And while her acting is great throughout the film, Gal Godot's other careers as a soldier and a model also perfectly fit her for this kind of cinema-as-spectacle work.
The effect is exactly as intended: it's as if a Greek god - a living archetype and something decidely not human - has suddenly been unleashed on the world. It's a real moment of power and awe rare in modern action cinema. And it's one of the things that make Wonder Woman much more interesting, more effective and just plain weirder than many of its competitors.
Postscript with self-critique
As Ive been typing this up, I've been thinking that I can't really write about Wonder Woman (with the emphasis on Woman) as The Other without some read-across to the concept of othering. Particularly the feminist version in which women are defined in contrast to a male 'norm.' This kind of othering isn't what I meant by this piece per se, but looking at it from this perspective does give rise to two bonus observations.
The first is that being a superhero and a woman in a sexist society is inherently disruptive in a way which having a bloke flying through the sky (especially a white, middle-class bloke, intersectionality fans) isn't. Supergirl, Jessica Jones and Wonder Woman all go about this in different ways as TV shows and films but the overall effect overlays and enhances the 'woah' factor of a character having powers in the first place.
The second is acknowledging the contradication in me describing society and culture as if I stand outside it. Perhaps it's next-to-impossible for me to talk about Wonder Woman as the superhuman Other without also inadvertently othering her as a man. I dare say this tension has been pretty much inherent in the character since her creation, but I don't think I'd be being honest with myself as a writer if I didn't at least acknowedge the validity of the question.
Anyhow, self-critique over.
A conventional review would end by me remarking that Wonder Woman is an excellent film which even those tired of the DC school of film-making will enjoy, so I'll end on the same note here too.
“Do you fancy writing a review of a Britpop album for the blog? @magpiemoth asked one evening. I pondered and said if I had time I’d write something down but never got round to it. Then we ended up in a local pub for an after work drink that turned into several soundtracked by an ‘Indie DJ’ and conversation turned back to Britpop, indie, alternative music and me writing something.
The conversation we had led me to thinking more widely about music of the Britpop era and where it fell in terms of my life story. I was lucky musically in that my dad was obsessed with music in all forms and the lullabies of my early years were mainly courtesy of the Rolling Stones.
An early start
My first record player was a Christmas present for my 3rd birthday – I couldn’t yet read but could lower a stylus safely so the A sides were marked with a cross to foster independent use. My first gig was Altered Images at the Manchester Apollo when I was four and for the next 10 years I was lucky enough to be taken to see everyone from Squeeze to Madonna to Fleetwood Mac (seminal moment – Stevie Nicks remains a hero of mine).
However I was a fairly introverted child, insecure in my appearance and social skills (like so many teenage girls) and as music became more about boybands, pop and commercial dance music I wasn’t sure where I fitted in. I found other things that started to point me in the right direction - step up The Housemartins and Suzanne Vega.
Talk about the passion
Then I discovered the band who provided my introduction into a lifelong love of indie/alternative tunes. The first time I heard REM suddenly I got ‘it’. I found lyrics that talked about things more meaningful and esoteric than anything I heard in the charts and it opened up a whole new world. I was introduced by a friend to indie and rock clubs that played music I was otherwise unaware of and into a social setting where being shy, not having Kylie as a style icon and being able to dance all night or sit in the corner if I chose to was normal and not weird.
So how does this link to Britpop you ask? Well despite my new social whirl and increasingly large record collection I still felt a little like an outsider in the wider world. This was the mid 90s when wearing stripy tights, cut-off denims and band t-shirts got you some funny looks even in Manchester. Being an increasingly confident, assertive girl with opinions was also still not really socially acceptable.
Affleck's Palace (Manchester's premier provider of stripy tights and band T-shirts, by T R Wolf under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).
From sixth form to the stage
And then Britpop and a wider awareness of alternative music arrived and brought with it a whole host of women whose presence on Top of the Pops and mainstream media empowered me and my friends. Women like PJ Harvey who sang songs we could relate to, who led her own band, who dressed for herself. Elastica and their mini-anthems led by a woman so cool she had caused the likes of Brett and Damon to write songs of (un)requited love. Kenickie, whose wandering onto a stage straight from school made it look possible for any of us to pick up a guitar, front a band and play Reading.
As I look back I’m not sure how conscious we were of this happening but in retrospect I am aware of a new sense of confidence I had in myself as a whole person. Women and girls found a music scene that was moving toward acknowledging we had a voice that was worth listening to.
Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t always work that way, you only need to read Caitlin Moran’s books to see the attitude many areas of the music press still had to women at the time but it was a damn good start.
So, despite my in-built dislike of the term Britpop and the media’s obsession with the role of Oasis in it (don’t get me started – it’s a rage only paralleled by sporks) Britpop did, sort of, change my life. And I will forever be grateful.
