The Bad Old Days

The Bad Old Days represented in Wonder Woman 2017 and Captain Marvel 2019.

 In this essay I will be discussing how the ‘bad old days’ of gender relations are represented in contemporary blockbusters. This essay will be discussing the works of Patty Jenkins’ 2017 film “Wonder Woman”, and the 2019 Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck film “Captain Marvel”. A discussion of how the films are periodically set allows them to have freedom to ‘explore explicitly framed gender politics’ as the issues in the films are ‘placed safely in the distant past, allowing audiences to feel secure in the knowledge of how far we have moved since then.’ (T McSweeney, 2020, P.68) 

The two films that will be discussed in this essay are American blockbusters which introduce both superhero leads as women, offering insight into Fimbianti’s statement that ‘In a world where the American film industry has long been mailed, circumventing oppressive systems that subjugate women into being objects of desire and submissiveness is no easy task.’(2021, P.10)  Highlighting how both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel ‘showcased empowered women, both behind the camera and in front, to critical acclaim and box office promise’. (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.2)  

Leopore stated that ‘Wonder Woman is no ordinary superhero: She’s the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism fully a century later. Feminism made Wonder Woman. And then Wonder Woman remade feminism, which hasn’t been altogether good for feminism…Wonder Woman began in a protest march, a bedroom, and a birth control clinic…Wonder Woman has been fighting for women’s rights for a very long time, battles hard fought but never won. This is the story of her origins—the stuff of wonders, and lies.’ (Lepore, 2014) Which I will be aiming to prove/ disprove throughout my essay.

Some argue that Wonder Woman’s feminist aspects of the film are ‘further complicated by the addition of the male gaze’ (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.9) here suggesting that the film has elements of the male gaze ‘hidden within its moments of female empowerment’. (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.9) Wonder Woman’s character links with the ‘bad old days’ throughout the film, as her character is always questioning to other male characters why the women are treated the way they are.  Though her character in ‘bad old days’ doesn’t exist in the next film she is in Justice League as this film isn’t ‘placed safely in the distant past, allowing audiences to feel secure in the knowledge of how far we have moved since then.’ (T McSweeney, 2020, P.68) As Justice League is placed in 2017, the use of framed gender politics is reversed. Justice League is created for the male gaze, erasing all the explicit gender politics that Wonder Woman created. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is created for the male gaze, here creating Wonder Woman’s character sexualized and as ‘passive’, she is included for the male characters to look at and fetishize. In Wonder Woman’s entry scene, the scene features a long shot of just Wonder Woman’s thighs. Doing this links to Mulvey’s ‘voyeur’ theory as this movie creates the feeling that we, the viewers, are secretly staring at Wonder Woman without her knowledge, giving us the sense that she is the object of our desire. The audience can fetishize Wonder Woman in her opening scene – suggesting to the viewer that she is the ‘passive’ character and we the audience are allowed to be the ‘active’ by watching and sexualizing her. Having the main female character being the honorary woman, sexualised and being the ‘passive’ in each scene, whilst letting the men and audience being ‘voyeurs’. This takes the ‘bad old days’ statement off as it brings the ‘bad’ element of the Wonder Woman scenes, where Wonder Woman says “What do these women wear into battle?”; “Where I’m from that’s called slavery”, here implying that what Diana sees is how women are treated and how “Where [she’s] from that’s called slavery” creating the ‘bad old days’ aspect. ‘Where [she’s] from’ is the island of Themyscira  which in DC lore is paradise island which is home to female warriors. Having this island as a paradise suggests that women aren’t sexualised that are seen equally, as warriors. Thus this is why Diana asked Steve “What do these women wear into battle?” which is implying she believes women on earth are also warriors like the ones she grew up with, and that they should dress appropriately for it.

  The scene I will be analysing for Wonder Woman (Jenkins 2017) is the no man’s land scene where Diana ‘stands up in what she believes in and saves the Belgian town’ from German soldiers. This scene ‘her powers outmatch both her male compatriots trying to hold her back and the German army shooting at her. She is empowered, self-assured, and unwilling to allow anyone to stand in the way of her desire to help the innocent’. (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.9)  Diana is surrounded by male soldiers, as they are walking through the trenches in Belgium, Diana notices a lady and her baby as the woman is crying out ‘help, please help. They have taken everything… homes, food. The ones who could escape were taken as slaves’, ‘they’ being the German soldiers. After finding this out Diana says ‘we need to help these people’. Whilst trying to persuade Steve and the other men with her she explains that the people in the village have nothing to eat then emphasis ‘woman and children’, suggesting to Steve that they are the weak and need to be helped. When Steve explains to Diana that ‘this is no-man’s land… it means no man can cross it’. The use of the word ‘man’ when Steve is explaining to Diana that it is unsafe for anyone to cross suggests that he believes the term ‘man’ means everyone. This statement was trying to hold Diana back, but due to her feminist characteristics, she just pushed her way forward to prepare to go into battle. By preparing she takes down her hair and takes off her coat revealing her armour which is underneath. The men around her gaze not in lust but for her leadership and strength in admiration, suggesting they see her as a warrior and not as a sexual object. Women are usually the subjects of the male gaze, supporting:  “With women as the image to be gazed upon and the man as an active subject who engages in the act of looking” (Harvey. p.68). Once Wonder Woman leads the soldiers into a battle she “emerges from the trenches, an independent subject rather than a sexualized object” (Morris. p.84). In this scene when Wonder Woman is fighting the German soldiers she doesn’t use her powers and skill set to kill the other soldiers, instead she uses her strength and ability to smash machine guns and push both: enemy and fellow soldiers out the way to safety. Therefore focusing on the prevention and defence, rather than creating death and destruction linking to her beliefs ‘that humans are good, and that the evil god Ares is causing their desire to wage war. While she later must learn that the situation is not quite so simple, her ability to see the promise of a better tomorrow is profound”. (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.9). By helping the soldiers, “She is not using her body to please a male character, she is using her body to save others on her terms” (Morris. p.84). This scene can be argued to create the ‘Female Gaze’ in the superhero media, as when Wonder Woman is standing up to fight close up camera shots are focusing on her armour, not sexualised body parts. The female gaze can be described as ‘neglected territory’ women adopt the ‘active’ view which Mulvey’s theory suggests is the ‘bearer of the look’ and objectify the gaze which ‘traditionally and stereotypically have been associated with males’. This undermines the dominant cultural alignment of masculinity with activity and femininity’ as ‘the object of the gaze need not to be confined to males.’ (Oxford References,2024). The female gaze can also be described as how women view other females, men, and the world in general. This ‘bearer of the look’ may be related to ‘identification, objectification, subjectivity and performance and construction of gendered gaze’. (Oxford References,2024) 

Yes, there are feminine attributes but it is used to  emphasise the strength of movement in how Wonder Woman deflects bullets from her armour, but also having the slow motion shot of her taking down her hair shows femininity. This scene ‘On the one hand, the scene represents a poignant, and arguably postfeminist, turning point in the film due not only to Wonder Woman’s Superior weaponry and strength but also the power of sheer determination and commitment to peace. On the other hand, Diana’s collaboration with allies to fight the battle also serves as an apt metaphor for Hollywood’s gender equality fight. The battle is long, it requires a collaborative effort with male allies, and many are sceptical of the outcome’. (C.B Donoghue. P496) Suggesting that, though this scene is female driven, it needs male support to get the job done, implying that though this scene is important in the ‘bad old days’ for the gender politics side as the film is set in the first world war and that we should see a difference in the world/cinema now. ‘In this dichotomy, Wonder Woman’s feminism fits closer to “immediate documentation for purposes of political activism.” The film is more concerned with adding the best feminist figures it can muster into the social zeitgeist rather than doing rigorous formal work and redefining the meaning of cinema.’ (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.11)

Although, unlike Wonder Woman being set 100 years ago in 1995, Captain marvel is set in 1995. Despite only being set 29 years ago, the ‘bad old days’ representation is still used in the film to represent gender relations in the blockbuster. 

In the early Marvel Comics, different variants of Captain Marvel were male, but for the 2019 film the choice to choose Carol’s Captain Marvel was made to favour the Feminist movement ‘me- too’ so they wanted to include more female superheroes on the screen. The first Captain Marvel comic was published in 1967, here Captain Marvel was a man called Mar-vell. The second Variant was produced in 1982 she was called Monica Rambeau, in the MCU Monica is first introduced in Wandavision, later seen fighting aside the MCU’s Captain Marvel in the 2023 film ‘The Marvels’.  Carol Danvers first appeared in the Marvel comics in 1968, Carol’s Captain Marvel comic persona was the character that the film was derived from. Captain Marvel has many strong female characters, the film narrative focuses on the life of Carol, aka Captain Marvel. The film didn’t focus on a man and woman relationship, instead it focuses on two best friends. Fimbianti stated that ‘Captain Marvel also escapes the film without any trace of a male romantic interest. She has meaningful relationships with both Nick Fury and fellow former Air Force pilot, Maria Rambeau with her daughter, Monica. This arc emphasises Captain Marvel’s ability to have purposeful relationships without them being heterosexually romantic—she gains strength in being a friend, rather than weakness in being a passive love interest.’ (2021,p.16) At the beginning of the film, Carol’s character’s ability was held back by her male trainer, her ‘training mantra is that, in order to become an effective warrior, she must fight analytically rather than emotionally.’ Even though Carol’s ‘power becomes more effective when fueled by her anger or excitement, and ultimately her suppression of emotion in battle only benefits those controlling her.’ Carol’s power is connected with how she expresses her emotions and she only reaches her full potential ‘when her emotion and logic are used in tandem’. (R Fimbianti. 2021,p.17) The movie is discrete on how they explore workplace discrimination against women, as the representation of how they use the male trainer to compress her emotions down and make the film about how Carol learns how to control her emotions. Learning to utilise them to give her strength expands the discussion of gender politics in films and how the male characters are always in control. Though ‘women face stereotypes of being less rational, more emotional and thus, weaker, than men’ having Carol’s character development be learning how to control her emotions and use them to make her strong connotes to her being a strong woman and using the stereotypes of women being emotional become a strength in the movie. ‘Captain Marvel’s feminist journey introduces [Carol] as a witty hero who is dirty, angry, and difficult… who destroys a male oppressor in an anti-patriarchal beatdown…The film rejects traditional male-gazey cinematography to present an empowered woman who must unleash her complete emotional intensity to achieve her full strength’. (R Fimbianti. 2021,p.18) The scene where Carol is on earth and reading a map of Greater Los Angeles, a man on a Motorbike drives up to Carol and tries to talk to her. Starting the conversation with ‘nice scuba suit’ here commenting on Carol’s armour and yet commenting on her appearance. Carol’s costume is important throughout this film as ‘her costuming infuses a level of combat practicality not often seen with previous female heroes. Although she still wears a skintight bodysuit, it mirrors the costuming of her male compatriots and does not overly emphasise her breasts’. (R Fimbianti. 2021,p.16) This is important when it comes to MCM movies, as in the past the female costumes have been severely overly sexualised. An example of this is Black Widow’s suit in The Avengers 2012 directed by Joss Whedom. The costume executed the characters breasts and bum. 

In both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel gender politics and ‘the bad old days’ are completely prominent as ‘both heroines’ journeys hinge upon the fact that, in society, women face stereotypes of being less rational, more emotional and thus, weaker, than men’. In Wonder Woman ‘her emotion and compassion fuel her heroic behaviour and she uses her immense physical strength to accomplish her goal of saving the innocent’. She is shown as being heroic as ‘she cares deeply for others’. (R Fimbianti. 2021,p.18) Though Wonder Woman is seen as a feminist figure as she ‘is empowered, self-assured, and unwilling to allow anyone to stand in the way of her desire to help the innocent’. (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.9)  she still needs male help to show her that not everyone on earth is innocent. The film shows that as she has been set to help the man’s world from the island of Themyscira, which is home to female warriors, she views the women she sees as warriors, as she is then confused as why women aren’t fighting when it comes to the war – she sees everyone as equal, as well as innocent. This is why Steve has to be there to still teach her how the world works. Ultimately, the film still has a man teaching a woman. Whereas in Captain Marvel, it ‘showcases an attempt at escaping the confines of the protagonist’s intertextual relationship to previous Marvel characters and defining her as a successful hero in her own right’.  (R Fimbianti. 2021, P.19) Meaning that throughout Captain Marvels story she didn’t need to have a love interest/man to help her realise her true potential. She has to escape the man which was bringing her down, and rekindle an old friendship to realise how strong emotions affect her power and make her stronger. Captain Marvel is a film about friendship and how platonic relationships make you stronger. Therefore both films uses the Bad old days to implicate the gender politic of each film.

Filmography 

Captain Marvel. Dir Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck 2019 

Wonder Woman. Dir Patty Jenkins 2017 

The Avengers. Dir Joss Whedon 2012

Reference list

Brannon Donoghue, C. (2019). Gendered Expectations for female-driven films: Risk and Rescue Narratives around Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman. Feminist Media Studies, 22(3), pp.1–17. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1636111.

Fimbianti, R. (2020). ‘It Wasn’t Made For Him’ Examining Female-Led Superhero Films ‘It Wasn’t Made For Him’ Examining Female-Led Superhero Films Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel and the Internet Commentary Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel and the Internet Commentary That Follows That Follows. The Macksey Journal The Macksey Journal, 1, p.213.

Harvey, A. (2019). Feminist Media Studies. [online] Google Books. John Wiley & Sons. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=BcG_DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT3&dq=Harvey.

Jill, L. (2014). The Secret History of Wonder Woman. [online] Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/jlepore/publications/secret-history-wonder-woman.

Male Gaze. Oxford Reference. Retrieved 23 Jan. 2024, from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100128610. 

McSweeney, T. (2020). The Contemporary Superhero Film. The Contemporary Superhero Film: Projections of Power and Identity.doi:https://doi.org/10.7312/mcsw19241.

Morris, H. (2018). Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism Wonder Woman’ s Fight for Autonomy: How Patty Jenkins Did What No Man Could. A Journal of Literary Criticism, [online] 11(2), p.12. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1343&context=criterion.Teresa De Lauretis (1986). Feminist studies : critical studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.