I have seen a lot of movies in my life. I have had classes to where I needed to analyze and write about them..I never thought of superhero movies as being abusive toward women, until now. Dabney Evans wrote an article on May 15th, 2018 called “What do Avengers, Black Panther and Wonder Woman have in common? The Abuse of Women”. This was published on Womensnews.org and I found it very interesting. Evans starts off her article by giving examples of how Wonder Woman expresses abuse against women. Some of those examples being: her brother is her nemesis (which is a real life situation, abuse within the family is not as rare as we may wish to think), the emotional and physical abuse that she goes through in the movie, and even the comments that male actors made about her appearance. I also thought it was very interesting that Evans used some statistics in her article. She stated that “According to UNFPA, at least 5,000 women die per year as a result of honor killings and nearly two million are forced to undergo female genital mutilation, often at the behest of family. My own personal opinion on this was..we had to watch a video of a young female getting genital mutilation done (not actually showing anything, just the face and surroundings of the female) in my Human Sexuality class last fall. It made everyone in the class cringe. That young female did not want that to happen, she begged and pleaded with her own mother (who was holding her down) and her grandmother (who was performing the mutilation) to not do anything to her..while her younger sister was in the corner watching everything unfold. I think it is just plan sad that women are still being treated this way by anyone, yet alone their families. This article really pointed out to me how movies can have hidden things within it and also how the world is still causing women pain…and meaning to.
What do Avengers, Black Panther and Wonder Woman have in common? The Abuse of Women