Something is Seriously Wrong, And Wonder Woman Shows Us What

A couple weeks ago, I went to see Wonder Woman. Everything I had heard about the movie was that it was a miracle, phenomenal, outstanding.

Everything I had heard was wrong.

It's not a great movie. I'm not even sure it's a good movie. There are so many--SO MANY--gaping plot holes, unfulfilled promises, and outright stupidities that it's hard to list them all. I'm going to list some, and then I'm going to tell you why none of them matter at all. MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW

*The great warrior-general, training the princess (in secret), is caught--by an entire troop of horse-mounted nobles, who ride up to within twenty feet of her before she notices they're there.

*Themyscera is home to a huge troop of warrior-women whose mission is to protect the world from Ares. Which they do by hiding on their island while Ares burns the world to the ground.

*The queen withholds information from Diana and substantially decreases her chances of being successful. Why? To increase her chances of being successful. This, right here, was one of the stupidest things I've seen in a film in a very long time. And I saw Pixels.

*The identity of Ares is supposed to be a secret. Except for that it's painfully, glaringly obvious who it is the first minute he's on screen.

*Soldiers have gas masks. So we need a gas that defeats gas masks. Which we then use...only on people that don't have gas masks.

And so on. I won't get into the several other things that drained the movie of any coherence, like forgetting that Belgium is next to the North Sea, so that one of our heroes has to kill himself instead of dumping the gas into the ocean, or neglecting to tell Diana that deflecting bullets is unnecessary, because she's a goddess and cannot be killed. Things that should have torpedoed this movie have not even touched it, and that is a blinking neon sign that something is terribly wrong. This movie has tapped an explosive set of emotions I don't think Hollywood understood were there.

Wonder Woman exposes a problem in American society that I personally did not appreciate the depth of. I have five sisters. I grew up in a household of strong, capable, intelligent women who were encouraged to do whatever they felt they should. Education, employment, whatever, nothing was beyond them. That's the air I grew up breathing.

Apparently, I'm in a really, really tiny minority.

The people singing the praises of Wonder Woman are women, in the main, and they are powerful, intelligent, capable women that I thought felt powerful, intelligent, and capable. But they don't. This film is resonating with them in visceral ways that astonish me, and which lead them to love and adore it in spite of the fact that a chunk of the script ranges from painful to reprehensible.

I don't mean that they're convinced Wonder Woman is a good movie. I mean they don't care. I mean things like this (from my Facebook and Twitter feeds):

I FINALLY SAW WONDER WOMAN AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY
BODY IS DOING AND MY HEART IS FEELING EVERYTHING AND I CANNOT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.

and

Went with Emma and Kate for their 16th birthday, and the first half of the movie spent on Themyscera with the incredible women riding horses, shooting arrows, and doing awesome tough girl combat almost had my Amazonian tough girls in tears. They begged for us to PLEASE LIVE THERE!!!

and

NO WONDER MEN ARE SO OBSCENELY CONFIDENT ALL THE TIME I JUST SAW WONDER WOMAN AND NOW I'M READY TO FIGHT A THOUSAND MEN BAREHANDED

and so on. This isn't critical analysis. It's worship. Millions of women are worshipping a movie that's not actually very good, because it's saying something to them that I thought they already knew, that they are powerful, incredible people that can do hard things with class even when other people tell them they can't.

Wonder Woman shows me I was wrong. Women are not hearing these things, and they do not know them. That's a tragedy so vast I'm still struggling to process it. I feel a profound sense of shame that I have not raised my voice higher, longer, to more young women, so that they will have heard it. This is, in a way, my fault.

There isn't any doubt any longer that this is a problem, deep and wide and not even close to bridgeable by one movie or a hundred. It's going to take generations of hard work by women--and by men--to erase the painful truth: women don't think they're Wonder Woman already. They're trapped on the island, still, training endlessly (which is great) but never using those skills in the real world, because they're told they can't.

I am so sorry. I had a hand in this. No, I don't remember doing anything to make any woman feel less because of her gender, but I have often failed to help women feel more, and since the gap between men and women in terms of what they're told is so vast, that is the same thing as telling women they are less, that I go along with all the utter tripe they're being fed by the rest of the culture.

Wonder Woman is like flicking on the light in a room I've never seen before (which is also my fault, and for which I apologize and am ashamed). I can't believe what I'm seeing in that room. But I must believe it. It's too obviously true.

For a million reasons, I cannot really love Wonder Woman as a movie. But I will tell my granddaughters about it, and make sure they see it, and all the movies that come after it that tell the same kind of story, until there isn't a woman left that doesn't know the truth: you're already impossibly valuable, and capable, and strong. You do not need anyone to validate that. You don't need anyone to rescue you. You can do all you need to do, because you are all you need to be.

I just hope you let me follow, and applaud. I promise I will.