Author Topic: Wonder Woman  (Read 2246 times)

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Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: Wonder Woman
« on: June 08, 2017, 05:35:43 am »
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o the new Wonder Woman movie has had a spectacularly successful opening weekend, along with amazingly positive reviews.  It has already earned over $100 million in US box office, which is the third best of the year (behind Beauty and the Beast, and Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2.)

This comes as a tremendous relief to me.

Why ?

Do you think that the success of the lady superman means that attitudes towards women have changed, ie that it's a signifier ?

Or does it mean that attitudes towards lady supermen have changed ?

Or does it mean that this will now change attitudes towards regular ladies ?

Or are you concerned about superpeople movies or Hollywood in general ?

You seem to be looking for some meaning behind this and I want to know what it is.

Also since you are talking about 'mass culture' are you making the masses into a kind of 'other'.  Do you consider yourself part of the masses ?  I doubt it.  You seem to be looking for a moral signifer here, which says something about how you look at 'society' (sorry for the use of quotes, I know I don't define my terms very well but that's so boring). 

Lately I have been thinking that in a way all problems are cultural problems and that if we all think about things that way it could help.  Mass media certainly helped America accept the 'gays' by way of Billy Crystal, Ellen, Nathan Lane, Will & Grace just as Bill Cosby made people realize that Blacks could do no harm.  :(

We don't have much in the way of top-down culture anymore so we need to figure out new ways to moralize, which may now involve online or in-person fighting.

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I was not terribly invested in Wonder Woman, the character. I really only know the character from Saturday morning "Super Friends" cartoons, and some reruns of the campy TV show starring Lynda Carter.   I didn't read any of the DC Comics.

In first year university I was 'unwoke' and homophobic but also oblivious.  In the girls' dorm, two ladies shared a room.  One pair used to spend a lot of time together and always watched the Lynda Carter show.  I thought them odd but didn't figure it out until a year or so later.  Two years after I graduated, I ran into another pair of ladies from that dorm who were room-mates, walking down Yonge Street together.  We chatted and caught up, then moved on.  I was as much heart-warmed that they could have found each other randomly like that, their first week away from home, as I was shamefully titillated by the encounter.  In the aspect of how cis males respond to such pairings, I am part of the masses.

One of my BurningMan friends came from Black poverty in the US, and made his way to college where HIS college room-mate made him discover his true sexual self.  They would make a big show of going on dates with ladies from the Black sorority - getting dressed up for their fraternity friends to see.  It was a great cover: a public showing of courting, dancing with the ladies at frat parties... then the two would give them a kiss goodnight and retire to their dorm room for several hours of hot lovemaking.  Those girls must have thought they were too polite, or maybe religious.  Ah well, disappointment is a part of life.

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However, I was quite emotionally invested in the success of the movie.   

This bears examination, see above.

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As for Marvel's upcoming Captain Marvel movie... I just don't think you can tell a proper Captain Marvel movie without Rogue from the X-Men.

I read Captain Marvel comics that were 50s reprints.  Dr. Silvana was the main villain... when did these other tie-ins happen ?

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The thing that will help new points of view get attention, such as women's stories, is utter boredom with middle-class white male stories.  As Jesse Brown from Canadaland says we have seen every combination of these and are saturated.  I am not above watching something because I 'should', ie. eating my cultural vegetables, but I don't have to any more.  I started watching Orange is the new Black out of such motivation and almost turned it off.  But when they wisely started focussing on the back stories of how women of culture get in jail, it got interesting and now I watch every episode with anticipation.