I haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet, and if I do I’ll keep my big yap shut about it because anything I said would just be mansplaining. I’m not going to make the same mistake David Edelstein at New York magazine made.
Here are a few excerpts from Edelstein’s recent review of the film that everybody who matters is calling a triumph for all women and a rebuke to the prevailing sexism in Hollywood. (Did I say that right?)
The only grace note in the generally clunky Wonder Woman is its star, the five-foot-ten-inch Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot, who is somehow the perfect blend of superbabe-in-the-woods innocence and mouthiness…
While this Wonder Woman is still into ropes (Diana’s lasso both catches bad guys and squeezes the truth out of them), fans might be disappointed that there’s no trace of the comic’s well-documented S&M kinkiness. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers…
She looks fabulous in her suffragette outfit with little specs, but it’s not until she strips down to her superheroine bodice and shorts, pulls out her sword, and leaps into the fray, that she comes into her own.
Wow. Just… wow.
If you think it’s out of line for a movie critic to talk about the physical appearance of an Amazonian princess who inspires young girls everywhere and definitely wasn’t created by a weirdo bondage freak, you’re not alone. Edelstein’s colleagues at the magazine are not happy with him, as Heat Street notes:
Fellow New York movie critic Emily Yoshida acidly observed on Twitter: “I wasn’t really planning on writing anything about Wonder Woman, but I guess I kind of have to now huh.”
Culture writer Abraham Riseman tweeted: “I have tremendous respect for David Edelstein, but I just want to make clear that his views about WONDER WOMAN do not reflect mine.”
Sources at New York tell Heat Street several staffers intend to tell editor Adam Moss in person that they strongly object to the review’s perceived sexism.
This is the right attitude, and it gives me hope for the future of our country. It’s time to stop talking about the physical features of women who are specifically hired for their physical features.
Although… does this really go far enough? Wonder Woman, both the film and the character, erase the lived experiences of women who were born male. It’s bad enough that creeps like Edelstein notice that a supermodel is good-looking, but the whole thing is pretty damn transphobic smdh.
How about Wonder Person Who Identifies As Female? Tell me I’m right or else you’re a bigot.