Wonder Woman 84 Meets the True Spirit of Christmas…and the Inauguration
By: Valerie Estelle Frankel
Tags: Kindness, Wonder Woman 1984, Wonder Woman, Trump, Prejudice

Wonder Woman's ’84, planned for Memorial Day weekend, delayed from Covid, has arrived at last Christmas Day 2020. The world is bored and miserable. People still squabble about the lame-duck Trump. In some ways this is an even better time for the release — particularly because of the film’s message.

Wonder Woman meets the Monkey’s Paw seems like a weak story proposal, and many characters like Maxwell Lord and Minerva Gordon are awkwardly hammered into it, as are the cool fight scenes. Throw in eighties décor and Steve Trevor playing fish out of water and backup for an increasingly depowered Diana, and the stew seems even more awkward. The lasso is a cool battle device, but its deeper mysticism of the power of truth is largely ignored.

Still, the subtle theme of the story, shining out from beneath the anti-greed message, reaches a particular resonance. This, like many recent films, gainis extra poignancy in the Trump era. Most of the wishes shown are the things true believers chant all their lives, mantras without consideration of deeper consequences. The Egyptian leader wishes to have the land of his ancestors with all the unbelievers barred from it. Lord takes his protection in exchange and, cast into a jail cell, he indeed repents and renounces his wish. However, besides bad consequences to himself, does depriving the poorest people in his domain of their water source actually improve his life? No — it’s just a comforting lie he tells himself.

This is best exemplified by the squabbling pair who wish the other would “go back where you came from” and “drop dead” — neither truly wishes such a thing on their neighbor. They say the words out of anger, a rote impulse to blame another. Granting the wishes hardly improves their lives and the man is shown in anguish over actually causing a death — one he never meant.

The president (who looks oddly unlike Regan) follows this pattern. His wish for more arms than everyone else to keep his people safe precipitates war, emphasizing how wrong this answer is. It too produces the opposite outcome desired. So many Americans today wish people understood the consequences of political bluster — what denying all abortions actually does medically or what would happen if we banished the undocumented immigrants who perform all our menial labor.

And who is the supervillain of this story? A con man, one who everyone’s seen on television, who fills their ears with what they want to hear until they’re eager to hear more. As he goes to world leaders and figures of power, offering them wishes, they willingly take what he offers without considering how much of their souls they give up in the quest. How is he defeated? By wrapping his lies in the lasso of truth and drowning out his empty bluster.

His enemy is the one woman who can see through the illusions. In her impassioned speech to the world, she asks them to realize that they’re all suffering, but by striking out in anger, greed, and fear, they’re making the world, and thus their own lives, worse. The film holds a mirror up to so many words spoken without consequence. “Do you really wish that waitress would die?” Are your neighbors who worship a different god truly such a threat? Will their suffering actually improve your life? It won’t.

The story ends with a Christmas celebration. Wonder Woman says “Happy Holidays” but that’s not the new post-Trump world. One of renewal and reconciliation is. It’s time to let go of all the bluster about throwing out immigrants and killing those who are different and pretending either act could solve our problems. It’s time to be kind. And that’s very Wonder Woman.

Valerie Estelle Frankel is the author of manny books on superheroines including Red, Blue, and Bronze: Inside the Symbols of the Wonder Woman Film https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071GRY6P1/ and Empowered: The Symbolism, Feminism, and Superheroism of Wonder Woman https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VLNJIY4/