Wonder Woman: superheroine, not superhero

Abstract

The superhero genre, as the name implies, is a male-focused genre, whose lone ‘redeemer heroes’ enact ‘rites of order’ in which the Other is expelled from contested space and order is restored through externalised action. But William Moulton Marston’s specific vision of a feminist ‘loving authority,’ rooted in feminist utopian novels, created the superheroine, a genre figure incorporating ‘rites of integration’ in which oppositions are reconciled and otherness is integrated and domesticated. Wonder Woman may not have been the first female superhero, but she was the first superheroine – an alternative to the cowboy-derived superhero that offers a different vision of the genre – and though many depictions of Wonder Woman have not lived up to this vision, Marston provided a model other creators have taken up in figures like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batwoman. The superheroine opens the possibility for an evolution and transformation of the superhero genre and for other genres that convey and perpetuate – and possibly alter – our cultural mythology.

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