An Analysis of the Cultural Dismissal of Wonder Woman
tential role of Wonder Woman as a figure of justice obscured by her sex , her gender , her feminism , and a perceived threat of sexuality , as part of Wonder Woman ’ s larger impeded legacy in America ’ s embedded culture of misogyny .
COMIC BOOK
Wonder Woman was specifically developed to infuse love into the violence of traditional superhero justice . Drawing upon ideas from the literature of women ’ s suffrage , William Moulton Marston , Wonder Woman ’ s primary creator , believed that women held more capacity for love than men , and that a society “ ruled ” by women would help realize a more peaceful world ( Lepore Location 12375 ). Wonder Woman ’ s early comics were concerned with “ women fighting male dominance , cruelty , savagery and war-making with love control backed by force ” ( Lepore Location 5098 ). These comics were filled with imagery of bondage and liberation that represented an intricate dynamic in which the personal strengthened the societal ( Lepore ). These origins have largely been minimized over Wonder Woman ’ s history since Marston ’ s death in 1947 ; in the 1950s , stories began to focus on her super strength or romance with Steve Trevor , and in the 2010s Zeus became her father , displacing her original origin of being formed by her mother from clay without a man ( Lepore Locations 5692 , 5716 , 5735 , 9526 ; Wonder Woman Vol . 4 # 3 ). Yet many of Wonder Woman ’ s original elements have continued to inform the character ’ s approach to justice . One of Wonder Woman ’ s primary tools remains her Lasso of Truth , which forces people to not only tell the truth , but to also see the truth about themselves . In one of her early appearances , Wonder Woman supported the rehabilitation of Nazi spy Baroness Von Gunther ( Wonder Woman Vol . 1 # 3 ). In “ Expatriate ,” she helped save a group of marauding aliens from destruction ( Wonder Woman Vol . 3 # 18-19 ). In a
155