Comic book depictions of superheroines as politicians illustrate how sexism weakens democracy and why comics history is relevant to contemporary politics.
Canadians won’t be able to stream ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ when it launches Christmas Day. Surfing streaming menus and reviews for what to watch and where may become a new Christmas movie tradition.
The makers of Justice League embed the film in a post-9/11, post-global warming, post-Brexit, post-Trump context. But it is loud and disappointing with some genuinely unimaginative action sequences.
American cinema mines Greek myth most strongly at times of profound social anxiety. In the age of Trump, we are already seeing key political battlegrounds framed as underworld quests in film.
From Kill Bill to The Hunger Games, women have been kicking butt in films (and in real life) forever. But we still act surprised when they do, because deep down we still see women as the passive sex.
Love, it is said, is a battlefield, and it was no more so than for the first goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Her legend has influenced cultural archetypes from Aphrodite to Wonder Woman.
In a world where public avenues for violence are increasingly open to women, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman presents us with an ethical and feminist model of fighting femininity.
Since the epics of the Homeric poets, there have been tales of the mysterious, war-like Amazon women. The myth is likely based on the ‘strong, free’ women of the nomadic Scythian tribe.
Pop culture has always found something sexy about female fighters, who feature in everything from Sumerian hymns and Greek mythology to the new Wonder Woman film.
From Wonder Woman to Doctor Strange, superheroes are at peak popularity. As political orthodoxies across the world fall away, these flawed, but good-hearted characters speak to modern anxieties.