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00:00This video is brought to you by June's Journey,
00:02a free-to-download hidden object mystery game set in the 1920s.
00:06You're stronger than you believe.
00:08You have greater powers than you know.
00:12Our era's three most high-profile female-led superhero films,
00:15Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Black Widow,
00:18are all tales of empowerment.
00:20In that way, they're a departure from many older female superhero films,
00:24such as Catwoman and Elektra,
00:26or even Black Widow's early MCU appearances,
00:29all of which relied more on sexy aesthetics than a dynamic narrative.
00:33She is potentially a very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit
00:37if you keep ogling her like that.
00:39But how deep or nuanced is the picture of female empowerment
00:42presented by movie's biggest superheroines?
00:45Discussions of Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Black Widow
00:48often led to the question,
00:49are these films feminist or not?
00:51But that query doesn't have a simple answer.
00:54A more useful question to ask is how each movie presents feminist ideals.
00:58I think this film is incredibly diverse, it's intersectional,
01:02and it's about overcoming suppression.
01:06Here's our take on the feminism of modern-day superhero films
01:10and the blueprint they present for delivering super empowerment to all women.
01:13If you're new here, be sure to subscribe and click the bell
01:21to be notified about all of our new videos.
01:30Like a lot of mainstream cinema,
01:32Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Black Widow
01:34tend to portray empowerment as a largely individual process,
01:37by highlighting the development of strength and heroism in a singular character.
01:41That character is depicted as exceptional,
01:44in many ways elite or separate from most regular women.
01:47I'm the man who can.
01:49And though she does work to help other people,
01:51her movie journey is mostly about character growth,
01:54thus potentially making feminism feel more like a personal struggle
01:57than a collective one.
01:58Captain Marvel's origin story aligns with a type of mainstream,
02:01popular feminism that is all about overcoming obstacles to achieve success.
02:05As Carol gets back up after being knocked down and doesn't take no for an answer,
02:09the implicit message is that a strong individual woman can fight
02:12through barriers to forge her unique pathway to success.
02:15Near the end of the film, though, Carol begins to use her powers
02:18to partner with the refugee aliens, the Skrulls,
02:21in their battle against the Kree colonizers.
02:23I'll help you find a home.
02:25And here, her movie starts to express the ideals of third-wave feminism,
02:29an outlook which emerged in the 1990s that's defined by an emphasis
02:33on multiplicity and difference, coalition and community.
02:37Star Brie Larson said that Captain Marvel is all about intersectional feminism,
02:41a term coined by Kimberly Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how gender,
02:46race, class, and other identifying factors intersect and overlap
02:49to create different levels of discrimination and privilege.
02:52African American girls are six times more likely to be suspended than white girls.
02:57That's probably a race and a gender problem.
03:00It's not just a race problem.
03:01It's not just a gender problem.
03:03So even if the film spends most of its time focused on her personal empowerment,
03:07it concludes with her taking on a mission
03:09other than and different from her own.
03:11You found my family.
03:13Feminist philosopher Amy Allen defines three types of power,
03:16and these definitions can help us to better understand
03:19the different forms that empowerment can take.
03:21The first type of power is power over,
03:23which is defined as the domination of others.
03:26Can you imagine what I could do with an adventure under my control?
03:30The second type of power is power to,
03:32which represents individual empowerment within a static system.
03:36The third, most radical type of power is power with,
03:39which represents people working together to resist or subvert unequal systems.
03:44We can see this progression between the three forms of empowerment in Captain Marvel.
03:48While working with the Kree military,
03:49Carol exhibits power over, using military strength to squash the resistance.
03:54At this point, Carol has been taken in by the concept of post-feminism,
03:58that is, the idea that a strong woman like Carol doesn't need feminism.
04:02She's living in a technologically advanced world
04:04where her gender doesn't seem to have stopped
04:06her advancing up the military ranks.
04:08But that post-feminist myth is debunked,
04:10and Carol has to reject the idea that feminism is no longer necessary
04:14once she realizes all the ways she has been controlled and held back.
04:18I've been fighting with one arm tied behind my back.
04:22But what happens when I'm finally set free?
04:26Carol uses power, too,
04:28when she defeats Yon-Rogg and the other Kree who captured her,
04:31exhibiting individual empowerment.
04:33I have nothing to prove to you.
04:35But then, near the end of the film,
04:36as Carol begins to use her powers in conjunction with others in need,
04:40this represents the start of a power with mindset.
04:43We just want to hope you and I lost everything at the hands of the Kree.
04:50While Captain Marvel ends with these third- and fourth-wave feminist values,
04:54Wonder Woman follows the opposite trajectory.
04:57It starts by depicting a third-wave feminist utopia
05:00through Diana's life on Themyscira,
05:02where her fellow Amazon women have raised her
05:04with exceptional self-sufficiency, confidence, fighting skills,
05:07What did these women wear into battle?
05:09and never to experience shame or insecurity.
05:12In this opening,
05:13the Amazons wield their strength in a power with capacity,
05:17working together for collective empowerment,
05:19as they protect themselves from men.
05:21However, Wonder Woman actually moves away
05:24from explicitly feminist ideas as the film goes on.
05:27In the end, when Diana fights her nemesis, Ares,
05:30at the height of her power,
05:31she is totally alone, separated from her community of Amazons.
05:35She displays power over in this final showdown,
05:38dominating Ares,
05:39Goodbye, brother.
05:41and fighting on behalf of humanity rather than with them.
05:44Black Widow builds on Captain Marvel's model
05:46and likewise moves toward a power with ending.
05:49It goes even further in attempting to make a feminist point
05:51about broader systemic oppression,
05:53when Natasha Romanoff and her sister,
05:55Black Widow Yelena Belova, conclude their story
05:58by literally destroying the system that has harmed them so much,
06:01simultaneously freeing others from its control.
06:04You took my childhood.
06:05You took my choices.
06:06You tried to break me.
06:07But you're never going to do that to anybody ever again.
06:10Those who are freed also come back to support their fellow widows,
06:13even though it would have been safer for them to run away.
06:16You came back for us.
06:18We need to be honest, Abby.
06:20In different ways, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman,
06:23and Black Widow all put forward the idea
06:24that empowerment comes through knowledge.
06:27There's so much,
06:29so much you do not understand.
06:30In Captain Marvel, that's self-knowledge.
06:33My name is Carol.
06:36Carol starts out already powerful,
06:38but she can't access her powers and become fully empowered
06:41until she learns who she really is,
06:43battling the loss of her history, memory, and identity.
06:47Meanwhile, at the start of Wonder Woman,
06:49Diana is already in full control of her powers,
06:51but like Carol, she must learn more about herself
06:54in order to become an empowered hero.
06:57In Black Widow, Natasha learns more about her family
07:00and the role they've all played in the Red Room,
07:02which in turn gives her the knowledge to destroy the Red Room
07:04and make peace with her past.
07:06So, in different forms, all three films embrace the maxim
07:09that knowledge is power and illuminate tactics
07:12of disempowering women by depriving them of education
07:15or a sense of identity.
07:16You stole me from my home, my family, my friends.
07:21Like Carol and Diana, Natasha begins her solo movie,
07:24but she's already physically empowered after a lifetime of training
07:27to be a super spy and assassin,
07:29even if she doesn't actually have superpowers like the other two.
07:32Natasha's isn't even an origin story since she's already an Avenger.
07:36The focus is on her achieving emotional catharsis,
07:44which will lead her to become a better hero and Avenger.
07:47But since Natasha's story was already finished
07:49through her death in Avengers Endgame,
07:51the impact of her emotional empowerment is limited.
07:54In fact, the more dramatic empowerment story in Black Widow
07:57focuses on the younger generation of women in the MCU,
08:00especially Yelena's journey.
08:02I've never had control over my own life before,
08:04and now I do.
08:05I want to do things.
08:07Even though Black Widow and Captain Marvel
08:09end on a power with note,
08:10it's worth noting that much of their screen time
08:13is still on power too, or individual empowerment,
08:15prioritizing choice and individuality,
08:18fighting and overcoming obstacles,
08:19if no one else will defend the world from Ares,
08:22then I must,
08:23and finding oneself.
08:25So they don't really go all the way toward depicting with depth
08:28what kind of collective empowerment might look like.
08:31Even within Black Widow's story of destroying the Red Room,
08:34most of the Black Widows don't actually have a voice.
08:37Overall, our heroes are still individuals operating
08:40primarily on the symbolic level.
08:42It's about what you believe, and I believe in love.
08:46Next up, how these superheroes fight sexism.
08:49But first, I want to take a moment to highlight
08:51the sponsor of this video, June's Journey.
08:53It's an incredible hidden object game that's free to download.
08:57It combines everything I'm looking for in a game,
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09:06The game centers on June Parker,
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09:10and I'm obsessed with her grit and determination
09:12when it comes to solving the mystery
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09:16Each scene of June's Journey is beautifully painted
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09:31We all need to unwind sometimes,
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09:53Diana, Carol, and Natasha are all super women living in a man's world,
09:57often explicitly fighting against the forces of sexism.
10:01Carol's empowerment journey is directly linked to overcoming sexism.
10:04She grows up being discouraged by her sexist father,
10:07then joins the Air Force where women aren't allowed to fly combat missions,
10:11and are constantly looked down on by their male peers.
10:14You do know why they call it a cockpit.
10:16By the end, Carol has learned from her history of dealing with sexism,
10:19and this knowledge and experience powers her in the final battle.
10:23Black Widow presents much darker and more extreme examples of female oppression.
10:28The Red Room, the organization that trains Natasha to be an assassin from her early childhood,
10:32takes little girls from their families in the hopes of making them elite killers known as widows,
10:37murdering those who don't make the cut, and forcing hysterectomies on those who do.
10:41Unfortunately, these storylines parallel the all-too-real problems of human trafficking
10:46of young girls and fights over women's reproductive rights.
10:49The greater point underlined here is that, in this world, and still too often in ours,
10:54females are treated as disposable.
10:57I can finally come out of the shadows,
10:59using the only natural resource that the world has too much of.
11:05Girls.
11:07Captain Marvel and Black Widow both illustrate the popular feminist connection between
11:11injury and capacity, which feminist scholar Sarah Bene Weiser argues
11:15is one of the defining characteristics of popular feminism.
11:18Feminist campaigns working to build confidence in girls and women
11:21often define female empowerment as the process of overcoming injury to achieve full capacity.
11:26But while this type of feminism is meant to inspire and empower women,
11:30it can again focus on individual resilience while leaving oppressive structures intact,
11:35try, fail, learn, keep going, hashtag like a girl,
11:39and can even inadvertently suggest that hardship is good for a woman's potential.
11:44Carol has been injured in many ways, the loss of her memory,
11:47the brainwashing at the hands of the Kree, and the sexism she has experienced throughout her life.
11:52I made you the best version of yourself.
12:00What's given can be taken away.
12:03But the film portrays these setbacks as things that have made her stronger and more powerful.
12:08Likewise, Black Widow and Natasha's arc leading up to it emphasize how much Natasha has been injured
12:14and what she has had to overcome in order to become a hero.
12:17Natasha, too, comes around to this what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger thinking.
12:21Pain only makes us stronger.
12:24Didn't you tell us that?
12:26And in this way, her film suggests she couldn't have become the Black Widow,
12:29and the Avenger we know, had she not been so deeply traumatized.
12:33Throughout her MCU history, Natasha has arguably been too defined by her experiences in the Red Room.
12:39For much of her Iron Man 2 and Avengers appearances,
12:42we don't really get to see much of her personal journey apart from moments that underline either
12:46her past trauma,
12:48I got red in my ledger,
12:50I'd like to wipe it out,
12:51or the fact that she is beautiful and can manipulate her beauty.
12:55So Black Widow's message about fighting an oppressive establishment that hurts girls and women
12:59is complicated by how much this figure has always been shaped by male creators.
13:04Black Widow was introduced in Iron Man 2 as a sexy spy who poses as a lingerie model,
13:09Did you model in Tokyo?
13:11Because she modeled in Tokyo.
13:12And in her early appearances, she was a male fantasy of the strong, sexy,
13:16cool woman who may be better than the guys in some ways,
13:19but always knows she's there to support and not truly outshine them.
13:24I'm always picking up after you boys.
13:27In Black Widow, directed by Kate Shortland,
13:29we can see the character's story trying to grapple with this history.
13:33Why do you always do that thing?
13:34Do what?
13:35That thing you do when you're fighting.
13:36This thing that you do when you whip your hair.
13:40When Yelena jokes about having a hysterectomy,
13:42Is it your time of the month?
13:44I don't have a uterus.
13:45Or a grief.
13:46this feels like a direct correction to outrage over the scene in Joss Whedon's Avengers Age of
13:51Ultron when Natasha voices that her infertility makes her a monster.
13:55You still think you're the only monster on the team?
13:58As Natasha concludes her story by destroying the patriarchy of the Red Room,
14:02it's as if Natasha the character, too, is trying to break free of her history.
14:06The problem, though, is that because Natasha is canonically dead in the story that follows,
14:11this feels like a redemptive project for a character who didn't get that journey to empowerment,
14:16and still can't really define a journey that's already complete.
14:19Wonder Woman, meanwhile, is almost a hypothesis about what a woman would look like if raised in a
14:25world without men, if she came into this world already empowered.
14:29Diana isn't held back by sexual difference because she doesn't even understand it.
14:33She's not aware that she's stunningly beautiful,
14:36nor that sexism or other forms of oppression exist.
14:39Not everyone gets to be what they want to be all the time.
14:41Me? I am an actor.
14:44But I'm the one color.
14:45But from this starting point, Wonder Woman's messages about sexism are at times contradictory.
14:51The first Wonder Woman film is set during World War I,
14:54but while it does acknowledge the sexism of that time,
14:56I do what he tells me to do.
14:58Well, where I'm from, that's called slavery.
15:00Diana herself does not really face it.
15:03She doesn't need feminism for herself.
15:05And though the film does not quite depict a post-feminist world,
15:09because sexism and racism are at least touched on,
15:11it distances itself from a more direct feminist message by the end.
15:15A choice each must make for themselves, something no hero will ever defeat.
15:22Director Patty Jenkins has even said that Wonder Woman is not feminist,
15:26but rather a universal character.
15:28But while the idea that we could all be like Wonder Woman
15:30if we never experienced sexism is appealing and captivating,
15:34the film doesn't provide much of a concrete blueprint
15:37for feminist empowerment or change in our world.
15:40Moreover, where she's supposedly a hero to women,
15:43in her films she primarily interacts with men,
15:45and is even put at the mercy of men's superior human knowledge.
15:48When she meets Steve Trevor, he becomes her instructor in the world of men.
15:52Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?
15:57This and other things.
15:59In fact, a dialogue analysis done by scholar Pete Jones reveals
16:03that Steve has the same amount of dialogue and narrative centrality as Diana.
16:07This is made even worse in her sequel, Wonder Woman 1984,
16:10wherein Steve is brought back to life and again made into the central focus,
16:14I missed him.
16:16thus lessening Diana's narrative control even more.
16:19In the first film, after Diana's faith in humanity is destroyed
16:22and she doubts if humans deserve her help,
16:24Diana must choose which viewpoint to adopt.
16:27Steve's?
16:28It's not about deserve our time.
16:30or her mother's?
16:31Be careful in the world of men, Diana.
16:35They do not deserve you.
16:37In the end, she chooses to listen to Steve.
16:39It's not about deserve.
16:41Apart from how all three superheroes interact with sexism,
16:44it's also interesting to look at how their powers relate to their womanhood.
16:48Both Diana and Carol use their emotions,
16:50which are more often associated with women than men,
16:53to access and trigger the full force of their superpowers.
16:56On Holla, Carol is indoctrinated with a male-centric idea of logic over emotion,
17:02taught to suppress her emotions in order to be a better fighter.
17:05There's nothing more dangerous to a warrior than emotion.
17:08But as the film continues, Carol learns that her emotions are the key to her power.
17:13Wonder Woman has always been a notable superhero figure
17:15for embodying traditionally feminine ideals like the power of love to save humankind.
17:20Only love can truly save the world.
17:23Natasha in many ways fits a more traditionally male idea of strength.
17:27Her power, or heroism, is not typically connected to her womanhood.
17:31Except in that, as we've seen, she's been defined by the misogynistic trauma she has faced,
17:36like her hysterectomy.
17:37They sterilize you.
17:39One less thing to worry about.
17:41The one thing that might matter more than a mission.
17:44The lessons she's internalized about how to survive in a man's world
17:48are also largely not that useful for imagining a new way
17:51of structuring our world and social relationships.
17:54Still, in Black Widow, her heroism, too, is tied to her emotions,
17:59specifically her ability to keep her empathy in the face of
18:02psychological conditioning that was meant to take it away.
18:05Tell me, how did you keep your heart?
18:08Both Captain Marvel and Black Widow also center the protagonist's
18:12relationship with another woman, emphasizing the significance of
18:15female friendship and sisterhood in women's lives and success.
18:18Carol's best friend Maria Rambeau, the person who knows her best in the world,
18:22is Carol's anchor to her past and her real identity.
18:25You are Carol Danvers.
18:28And Maria reminds her, and implicitly all women,
18:31that empowerment is not actually dependent on having superpowers.
18:35And you were the most powerful person I knew,
18:38way before you could shoot fire from your fists.
18:45Superhero movies do tend to present a fairly generic narrative of empowerment.
18:50The series The Boys sends up this trend through its fictional
18:53Girls Get It Done Superhero promo campaign,
18:56which underlines how the girl power used to sell female superhero characters
19:00can often be glib, superficial, and a little boring.
19:04Don't worry.
19:07Girls get it done.
19:09To be fair, it's not the job of movies to teach us about social or political theories.
19:14But it is important to think about how movies that are labeled as empowering or feminist
19:19actually depict these narratives on screen.
19:21Even if individualist narratives may be symbolically powerful,
19:25they need to go further in order to provide an actual model for how progress might be made in
19:29the real world.
19:30Representation matters.
19:32Diverse storytelling matters.
19:34The female experience matters.
19:35As audiences keep demanding higher standards of representation,
19:39these superheroic depictions of feminism get progressively closer to reflecting a relevant
19:44real-world feminist message, one that can empower the hero in all of us.
19:48Every woman has the potential of being something extraordinary.
19:55This is The Take on your favorite movie shows and culture.
19:58Thank you so much for watching and for supporting us.
20:00Please subscribe and never miss a take.
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