thebatfamilyofgotham:

androbeaurepaire:

naomialmaz:

You know what that scene in Justice League with Diana trying to subdue newly returned Clark before having to engage him in combat (and losing, let’s note that as well) reminded me of? BvS, when Clark tried subduing a Batman ready to fight him before having to engage in more serious combat (and losing, but like, more definitively). 

Both scenes had a member of the Trinity trying to talk another down and failing, whether because the method used was wrong (Diana calling Clark Kal-El, which isn’t his true name at all, along with Clark being newly resurrected and confused) or the opponent was dead set on fighting to the end (hey Bruce). 

What really interests me about those two moments is not only the parallels that are there, but how some people responded to it. On the one hand we have Superman trying to talk down and get help from another person, but a person hellbent on seeing him taken down. So after trying at least three times to ask him for help finding his mother, Clark engages in battle with the dude dressed as a bat so he can get him to listen to him, because time is of the essence and he doesn’t have time to play. 

The outrage from certain people that watched this scene came from them thinking that Clark “should have tried harder to get Batman to listen to him” or “he should have kept trying to ask for help” even though we clearly see a Batman that’s not gonna listen no matter how many times this superpowered alien tries asking. He was there to fight and that’s it, kryptonite weapons and all.

Then we have the JL scene, where we have Diana, apprehensive about bringing Clark back, having to fight said newly alive reporter because he’s confused and angry and threatened. So she tries the Lasso of Truth to get Clark to see who he is; or rather, who he is not, since she calls him Kal-El, a name Clark doesn’t go by and doesn’t identify with as much as his actual, human name. When that doesn’t work she has no choice to engage him in a fight and she eventually loses, though she does (rightfully) hold out longer than the rest of the league. 

The complaints here, however, were very different from the complaints leveled at Supes: people were pissed that Diana, the one that wanted to fight Clark the least, did not beat this man—who did not know who he was, mind—within an inch of his second life, because…she can? Because she’s strong enough to do so and so she should have? This is where I get confused, because the complaints and anger that Supes beat Wonder Woman in their short fight take nothing into consideration—not the circumstances, not how the characters actually act, nothing—other than the fact that some Injustice comic panels show a Wonder Woman beating up Superman so the movie should have shown that too. 

First of all: why are y’all so ready to see Wonder Woman beat Superman? Would that make her more of an icon, more of a superheroine in your eyes? Would beating Superman legitimize her in a way her movie, comics, existence didn’t?

 Second question: why are y’all so ready to see Wonder Woman beat up a confused and disoriented Superman? The dude was awake for five minutes before he had to fight what he saw as new threats to his person, so him giving his all and not holding back makes sense, which is something people have been complaining about since MoS when it was shown that *gasp* he’s not the strongest/bestest there is, but he’ll learn. 

What doesn’t make sense is Diana going God Killer on someone she saw not too long ago sacrifice himself for the good of the world, because that’s not a Diana I know or care to see on the big screen. She would never attack Clark like that, and the outcry about it makes me wonder about how we see these people on the screen. 

On the one side we have Clark at the end of his rope trying to get help for his mother from a man he’s been investigating and knows to be going off the deep end, and on the other we have Diana trying very hard not to hurt a man that didn’t plan to be there and is just confused and angry, and I have to wonder

what people would say

if the roles were reversed. If it was Diana trying and failing to talk Bruce down, would people have cheered her on and complained that she should have beaten Batman faster? If it was Clark trying to talk down a newly resurrected Diana, would people have complained about him trying to talk her down before engaging in a fight? It makes me wonder.

This is a really good post and if I can add my two cents, I guess op nailed the issue when they talked about icons.

What people have mostly reacted negatively to in the DCEU so far has always been about the heroes “not being” or “not reacting” the way “they are supposed to”. Like, people complained Superman was too introverted and too “dark” in MoS, not happy and smiley and perfect enough, people complained Batman broke his moral code and had a mental/moral downfall in BvS, etc.

Complaining about Clark not holding back against Bruce long enough AND about Diana holding back too much with Clark is basically complaining about those heroes having perfectly human, emotionally complex and understandable reactions, instead of iconic and mythical ones (Superman being adamantly good, above the pettiness of humanity and perfect, Diana being adamantly the heaviest hitter and most unbeatable member of the League).

Icons, per definition, are sacred. Untouchable. And when someone tries to tell you a story about hope coming from darkness, a story about getting better, well. They have to show you how things are not perfect in the first place in order to do that, right ? You can’t heal, if there is nothing broken in the first place.

People refusing to accept broken, beaten, flawed, emotionally complex and human characters as their heroes, as their icons, are people refusing to be told that.

Questioning your heroes mean questioning your ideal. It means questioning yourself.

And people unwilling to do that in the first place will always, always find a way to use the sacredness of icons as a shield, against their own human vulnerability.

This reminds me of a post that went around after BvS, where the OP was so offended by that scene where Bruce puts his hand on Diana’s arm because she’s Wonder Woman and obviously as Wonder Woman, she should’ve broken Bruce’s arm immediately in front of all those people, despite the fact that there were civilians all around, despite the fact that she had already won the hard drive from him using guile, despite the fact that she had no actual quarrel with him despite his hand on her arm because 

“[if] a guy, any guy, firmly grabs your arm, as if you were his possession to claim or you are a criminal and he does not want you to escape, [if you were] Princess Diana of Themyscira, would you allow him to keep using that hand in the future? Even that arm, for what it matters?”(original post here)

I think @androbeaurepaire was right when they defined Wonder Woman’s legacy as “Diana being adamantly the heaviest hitter and most unbeatable member of the League” but I think a more important layer isn’t her being unbeatable, it’s her being the Feminist Icon. The Warrior Feminist Icon at that, the one who should be disgusted by any man touching her and see them as second class citizens, should constantly be disgusted by men looking at her, and repeatedly calling out them being physically weaker than her; as the OP in the post I’m referencing explains

 “Wonder Woman […has been…] a fierce Amazon, for the last 5000 years and dealt with all, and I mean ALL, kinds of men and […] fought hard to gain respect for the women of the World.”

 All the other things she’s dealt with as a character, the Gods, war, heartbreak, human life, ect ect ect, are all not relevant. People expect her, someone who’s five thousand years old, who has lived among men for so many years, to react to violence whenever she is slighted because it inspires in us viewers the ‘oh yes he got what he was coming’ feeling when we see someone do something sexist. The same thing happened in the fight with Supes. We wanted her to win. We all did, because it calls on that part of us that goes ‘yes we need her to beat him, that’ll show everyone else’. That’s what I find fascinating, the desire to put aside plot and  character motivations and the movie as a whole for a moment’s gratification of seeing a woman beat up a man, and I think it’s because we’ve been taught that’s how Strong Female Leads act. I can see, for example, Xena punching out a man who touches her without permission, and Black Widow, if she wasn’t on a mission (And even then I’m sure they’d make sure that she looks at the screen or at someone else in disgust, or that she’d have to take a call and expressly spell out how disgusted she was that the man touched her and how she wished she could’ve punched him). Leia Organa, Jessica Jones, ect ect. I think a part of her being both the “most unbeatable member of the League” and also a woman, to us translates to some stereotype we’ve all picked up over the years of media consumption, that a warrior woman who’s dealt with sexism should always see all men and all acts by men towards her as an attack that should be met with force and it’s just one of the many things I love about the DCEU, the way they don’t just throw the characters into little boxes, that the situations have so much depth. Like in the scene where Bruce grabs Diana’s arm, as I said, he was, essentially, the victim there. He had been robbed, stopped in his mission to literally try and save people’s lives, at least in his own way, by a woman he knew nothing about who only wanted the hard drive for a picture. If Wonder Woman hadn’t been Wonder Woman, I doubt the issue of him touching her would’ve come up, she was, at that point, a villain. Even though Diana did most of the heavy hitting in JL, people focus on her not beating Superman. Because she’s the Icon. We’ve already decided how each battle of hers should go each time, because we’ve put her into this stereotype, she’s now equivalent to the Feminist movement in our minds, her wins are the wins of all Feminists, when she punches a man, she’s punching the glass ceiling, ect ect, and I think it’s kind of sad that people only see her that way, that they only see the most basic level of the movie, that they miss so much of the story by not taking the time to distinguish it from Marvel’s action movie style of writing actually think about it properly, the DCEU is poetic and full of meaning and it actually needs to be dissected to fully appreciate it. The DCEU actually relies on human stories and development over cliches and it expands the comic book stereotypes into something real, and I love it. 

,,,anyway… it’s 6 in the morning and I should probably go back to sleep, I’m sorry for rambling….