Wonder Woman Rocks!

[beatrice_otter]

It is an AWESOME movie.  Yes, there need to be more women of color.  Yes, the ending is ableist as shit.  But the rest of it is SO GREAT, HOLY COW YOU GUYS.

One thing that left me raising my eyebrows: that was a, uh, really Christianized version of Greek mythology.  Zeus as the father/creator/wise guy in the sky who loves humankind and wants what is best for them, instead of a really powerful dude who likes to party and bang as many hot chicks as he can find and occasionally toss around thunderbolts.  The whole idea of humans having been good and then tempted to sin and thus corrupted.  Ares as Satan/evil personified who needs to be destroyed for the good of humanity, instead of just a really powerful dude who likes to fight a lot.  Those are really, really, REALLY not authentic ancient Greek perspectives.  And it's not "Judeo-Christian" either, because from my understanding Jewish theology doesn't really have either Satan-as-a-personification-of-evil or humans-as-inherently-sinful/corrupted.

Now, as a Christian myself, I thought it was fine.  Except that it does play into the whole idea of Christian theology as the default religious system of the whole world, which then is why I have such trouble explaining to my parishioners that no, not everybody believes in sin/damnation/hell and salvation/heaven as a dualistic system into which everyone and everything fits.  Not that comparative religions comes up much, but it does come up occasionally, and it would be nice if they already had the idea that "not everybody understands the world the way we do."

Comments

[kass]

from my understanding Jewish theology doesn't really have either Satan-as-a-personification-of-evil or humans-as-inherently-sinful/corrupted.

Correct and correct. :-)

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you! Good to have confirmation. I've always been interested in finding out how Jewish people talk about Genesis 2-3, because I know it has to be different than how we Christians do it. I know you don't interpret it as "and this is why humans are inherently sinful!" but I've always been curious what other major differences there are.

As for Wonder Woman, Hippolyta's story that she told Diana about their past was straight up cribbed from the Christian interpretation of Genesis 2-3.

[tielan]

You know, I didn’t actually clue into that until an article pointed out. I just went “Wow, Ares got a really bad deal - again.”

[beatrice_otter]

Really? I spent the whole time Hippolyta was telling Diana their history thinking "Hello, Genesis 2-3!" to myself.

[lilacsigil]

Huh, I guess I'm not as Christianised as I thought, because I didn't pick that up at all - it was just standard Comic Book Enemy Syndrome! It definitely wasn't Greek mythology, though - Ares is a frequent Wonder Woman enemy in the comics, but much more based in the Greek version than he was here.

[beatrice_otter]

For me as a Christian pastor, it was so, so obvious. Especially when Hippolyta was telling Diana the origin story, it was the Christian version of the Eden myth with the serial numbers filed off: people created to be good in a perfect world by a loving creator god, tempter comes in and corrupts them bringing EVERYTHING EVIL and twisting them so that evil becomes a human trait passed down through generations ... if you switched "Zeus" with "God" and "Ares" with "Satan" you could pretty much tell that story with no other alterations in a Sunday School class and nobody would raise an eyebrow. (Okay, you'd need a few other alterations. But not many!)

[lilacsigil]

Zeus the good guy and protector of humanity was just so strange, but your context helps. Though Zeus "breathing" life into clay and/or sleeping with Hippolyta to create Diana sounded more like him.

[beatrice_otter]

"then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."--Genesis 2:7

In Greek mythology Zeus has children in a variety of different ways, but not breathing life into a clay sculpture that I can recall. When you put the emphasis on Hippolyta doing the sculpting and Zeus basically just going "okay, yeah, I owe you one so ZAP there you go," it sounds different, but the more emphasis you put on Zeus doing it (if you're sticking with sculpting a being out of dust/earth/clay), the greater the resonance with YHWH. (Adam, btw, means "dusty one" or "dirt guy" if you translate it literally.) And if you put the emphasis on Zeus (the good/wise creator figure who wants to save humans) engendering Diana as a god to fight the personification of Evil ... then it doesn't sound at ALL like the actual Zeus "hey she's hot imma bang her" and instead sounds very much like the Christian version of YHWH going "I will send my [child] to defeat Satan and save the cosmos from sin/evil."

Basically, by focusing on Zeus the way they did and characterizing him as they did, they managed to make Diana's creation both sound like Adam and Jesus.

YMMV, it's not a straight-up "this is the only way this can be interpreted" but the evidence in favor of it is, to me, pretty compelling.

[lilacsigil]

Oh, I definitely agree with your interpretation, but Diana in the comics is formed from clay with (in most versions) no intervention from Zeus at all, so I took that as the only slight nod to classical Zeus - not the "making her to save the world" part, but the "putting life into unusual things" part.

But there's a more immediate Christian interpretation for that too, lol.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, I've never read the comics but I know the basic mythology. When you go with comics!Diana and it's all about Hippolyta, there is an ENTIRELY different subtext.

[jesse_the_k]

Although there's a Jewish take on the "formed from clay" story as well: see The Golem

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-golem

That humans -- say comic book writers -- can create by gathering dust and chanting the words of life.

[monanotlisa]

Same here -- I too merely thought this was a twisted and simplified mythology, Manichaean for Superhero Reasons, but mostly because no one at DC had either the interest or the knowledge in making a sophisticated canon of gods work in the confines of this movie.

[beatrice_otter]

Oh, I know it's because they were too lazy to do the research about Greek mythology and figure out a way to make it more authentic. But still, as a Christian pastor, I spent the movie simultaneously squeeing and going
o.o
o.O
O.O
0.0
because it is well beyond the Generic Christianified Simplified Mythology that one tends to get in superhero movies.

[laurajv]

you are not wrong about the Christianized version of the mythology. I was like "what? I've never heard this....oh wait yes I have wait does this make Diana Jesus in this world?"

Buuuuuut really why I watched this movie was because I wanted to see the look on my 5 yr old daughter's face and to a certain extent I don't care about anything except that.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, she pretty much is Jesus. I spent what little time in the movie I wasn't squeeing about going "this is so inaccurate to Greek mythology!"

[monanotlisa]

Hah!

[oracne]

That weirded me out, too. Hello! Ancient Greeks here! Well, filtered through Americans who don't care....

[laurajv]

my son's reaction was "well, this must take place AFTER Percy Jackson" and then we had to explain about fictional universes to him.

[beatrice_otter]

Lol.