okay i havent seen anyone bring this up in regards to wonder woman and im disappointed in that so i figure i should talk about it a little bit
now look, i really loved wonder woman. i did. i had some issues with it, like i will with any movie, but i did genuinely enjoy it. but i havent seen a single person talking about dr poison, and i think that needs to change
namely the scar and accompanying prosthetic mask
i was immediately saddened at her reveal, because here was another in a long tradition of movies to have disabled villains. namely superhero movies. i can really only speak to the marvel side of it, but this is a trend i’ve noticed a lot recently. (even guardians of the galaxy, which doesn’t feature a disabled villain as the main villain (though nebula does use prostheses) has a running gag about taking prostheses away from disabled people, like thats supposed to be funny)
look at iron man 3. the whole movie was about people with physical disabilities being used for evil and doing evil things because of their disabilities. look at the disabled villains in logan, and how the main villain’s prosthesis was used to make him othered and intimidating (similarly to how the reveal of bucky’s prosthesis was meant to be intimidating in the winter soldier). and isn’t batman’s whole shtick is that all his villains are disabled??
when are we going to stop using disability as a code for evil??
i looked up the original character of dr poison in the comics, because i was SURE that the prosthetic was a design element they had (unfortunately) chosen to keep from there
i was shocked to discover that the original character had no such thing. this was something they actually ADDED for the movie. and why?
i read an interview where the director of wonder woman, patty jenkins, says that dr poison is “damaged” and thats why she wants to hurt people
and i quote: “There is that way of being a damaged and dark person where you’re waiting for other people to face that wrath too.”
like how blatant can you be that you think disabled people are evil?? i was so completely disappointed when i read this, because though i was upset when i saw dr poison’s prosthetic in the movie, i thought SURELY it was coming from a place of ignorance, not malice. but i was proven wrong
i know there’s a lot of creators on this site. a lot of artists, a lot of writers. can we just collectively agree now that we are going to STOP this trend?
of using prostheses to be intimidating.
of using disability to mark otherness and badness
what kind of message is this sending to our disabled kids and teens? and us?
what kind of message are we sending by continuing to support this trend without speaking out about it?
we MUST DO BETTER. we absolutely must
for too long disabled people have had to absorb messages that their disabilities make them bad. this shit is vile. let it stop with us. let it stop now
please feel free to discuss, especially if you’re a prosthesis user, which i’m not. we NEED to be talking about this and getting the idea that this is bad in our collective consciousness. i’ve seen discussion of the other worrisome elements in wonder woman but i’ve seen absolutely nothing about disability. let’s change that. speak up
ALL OF THIS.
ALL OF THIS. Her character bothered me immensely during the film, and especially during the climax.There’s a way to do disabled villains right – and I think about this a lot since I want to get the balance right in my own writing – but this was nowhere close.