Black Feminists Want You To Know That ‘Wonder Woman’ Is Dangerous To… Black Feminism

I saw Wonder Woman over the weekend and I can without reservation or hesitation proclaim that it is an amazing superhero movie. Not an amazing female-led superhero movie, or even an amazing female-directed superhero movie. No. An amazing superhero movie. Period. Full stop. No further identity-politics-driven categorization needed. It’s on par with Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, which I and my husband absolutely ADORED. In fact, as we left the movie theater on Saturday, we were debating with ourselves which was the better comic book movie of the two (that conversation lasted well beyond the drive home and we even ended up going home to list out superhero movies and rank them. Because we are THAT nerdy).

Beyond Wonder Woman being an absolutely delightful and entertaining film, it’s almost an added bonus that social justice feminists seem to be torn on the movie (kind of ironic, given the constant outrage last summer that not everyone on the planet fell completely in love with Ghostbusters and we were all a bunch of sexist pigs for hating that pile of feminist drivel. What happened, feminists? I thought all women had to love every action movie that starred women or they’re traitors to their gender. Isn’t that what all your b*tching and moaning was about last year?) We’ve talked about this before – because star Gal Gadot is Israeli and served in the IDF and is unapologetic about her heritage, the pro-Palestinian, anti-Semitic left can’t stand the idea that a talented and beautiful and capable woman like Gadot is starring as one of the most iconic female superheroes ever. And not only starring as an iconic female superhero, but that her movie is actually making money and having success with wide audiences.

(I have to quickly mention how much I ADORE Gal Gadot and that I have a serious girl-crush on her. She needs to be in all the most awesome movies ever and I will go see every single one of them. Not just because of her politics or whatever, but because she is amazingly talented actress who deserves to be a big-time Hollywood star. Okay – I’m done gushing… for now.)

Which brings me to this screed from Essence magazine (oh hey – I’m a white chick visiting a racial site. Does that mean I’m not racist anymore? Doubt it…) entitled “Why Supporting ‘Wonder Woman’ Is Dangerous For My Black Feminism And Liberation.” Oh, and she even begins her column by point-blank saying that if you aren’t a black female or identify as “femme” (whatever the hell THAT’S supposed to mean), her column isn’t for you –

Author’s Note: If you ain’t a Black woman or femme, this conversation ain’t for you.

Already she’s doing a FANTASTIC job of reaching out to people who might not agree with her. I can tell that this is going to be a fun read.

In this column, author Arielle Iniko Newton proclaims that if you go see Wonder Woman and you support actress Gal Gadot, you are not a supporter of black feminism, because of Gadot’s Israeli background (oh gee, that’s not racist or bigoted AT ALL).

Mostly, Newton’s beef is with prominent black actresses and celebrities who expressed support and admiration for Gadot and director Patty Jenkins and their work on Wonder Woman. Because somehow when the likes of Lupita Nyong’o and Kerry Washington express an opinion about a movie, they have to take into account their skin color and make their opinions match the opinions of people who have the same sort of skin color they do. Because HEAVEN FORBID a black woman disagree with another black woman  –

Wonder Woman shattered box office records this weekend, due in part to the promotion carried by mainstream feminism, but also Black women who championed the DC superhero film to their large audiences. Black women like Ava DuVernay, Kerry Washington, and Lupita Nyong’o made public their delight in seeing the film starring Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins (both of whom are White women) surpass expectations and reel in over $100 million in a matter of days.

When I first saw these iconic Black women express their laudations of Gal Gadot, who is pro-Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a former combat trainer with direct ties to the oppression of Palestinian people, I thought of the longstanding and tacit requisite of upward mobility that requires Black people to distance themselves or abandon those of us without social influence, political clout, or financial security. I think about how we are left to scurry for scraps as we survive in a White supremacist world that sees us as disposable while our faves engage in behaviors that are antithetical to our Liberation.

Why, pray tell, is this a problem? Because Diana Prince isn’t obsessed with skin color or ladyparts? Because she actually sees people as – GASP – Actual Human Beings??? That she’s not interested in being the Victimized Flavor of the Week or hiding behind some identity category to make herself sound oppressed?

Just when I think I’ve beaten this dead horse into a bloody pulp, some hyper-focused social justice cultist comes rushing in to resurrect the tortured beast. Sigh… fine. Here we go (and there will be some minor spoilers for the movie, in case you haven’t seen it. Consider yourselves warned –

If you can’t enjoy a movie or some other piece of fiction without separating the politics of those involved in creating it, you shouldn’t even bother. The story in Wonder Woman has very little to do with race or skin color or even politics. The entire movie revolves around Diana Prince wanting to stop a deadly and terrible war. There are moments where she meets innocent men, women, and children affected by the horrors of World War I and she wants to stop and help every individual person that she can. That is her duty as an Amazon warrior – she is tasked with ending humanity’s cruel treatment of one another and showing them a better way. But she’s not naive about the realities of war, either. She knows that she’s going to have to engage in combat to bring an end to the conflict – which she does brilliantly. It’s actually one of the more emotional parts of the movie, which is kind of uncommon in most superhero action flicks.

But nope. All black feminists can see is a woman whose politics they disagree with portraying a character on screen and they have to hate on the entire movie because of it.

(Side Note: Yes, this movie takes place during World War I, rather than World War II which was when the original Wonder Woman comics were set. I admit, when I first heard they were making that change to the movie, I wasn’t very happy about it. But now that I’ve seen the movie and the story they wanted told, I am glad to say that they made the right decision and I’ve never been more pleased to be wrong about something I predicted.)

The rest of Newton’s column is a lengthy diatribe about Black oppression and White supremacy (yes, capitalized like that) and how Blacks will never be liberated because Palestinians and Israelis don’t get along – it gets revoltingly tedious the more I have to stare at it. Here’s a sample of her self-righteous word vomit, if you’re interested –

White women’s herstory of usurping our labor and capital for their own social and political gains is widely documented. Despite the tendency to minimize White women’s roles in bolstering anti-Black racism as merely complicit, we know that White women were (and still are) active in fueling anti-Black oppression. White women and their feminisms urge us to reform patriarchy and “crack the glass ceiling” with their 77 cents, while demanding we excuse their racist and misogynoiristic treachery for the greater female good.

“Herstory.” “Misgynoiristic.” “White women’s roles in bolstering anti-Black racism.” Yep, I think she got all the made-up social justice buzzwords shoehorned into her column. She might even have made up a few more, just to be completely sure she sounded like a blithering moron.

Part of me wants to dismiss this as idiotic satire because the whole thing sounds stupid. But I know better. This is the Cult of Social Justice at its most serious and its most ridiculous. It’s almost not even worth responding to, other than the fact that it’s yet another example of feminists hating on a movie that they practically DEMANDED that Hollywood produce for them. And now that it’s popular and mainstream audiences love it, feminists have to find something wrong with it.

So, here’s a clue for Hollywood (and I have to bring up Ghostbusters again) – when you make a movie for feminists, most people are going to hate it and it’s going to completely bomb, or at least not do very well. But if you make a movie for wider audiences that just happens to star a woman (and is even directed by a woman) and you market for the majority of movie-goers, you’re going to see success.

Moral of the Story: Don’t make movies for feminists. Make movies for everyone else. Let feminists shriek about it. The rest of us will happily pay for a movie ticket.

It’s really that simple.