Beyonce As Wonder Woman?

There's been recent talk, "buzz", whatever you wanna call it, about a "Wonder Woman" movie starring Beyonce Knowles. Probably because I'm not a big, dumb racist, but my first concern had nothing to do with the color of Knowles' skin but that she's sort of specialized in this really awesome, quasi-robotic, stoic pop star thing and because of that, she seemed less than ideal to carry a superhero(ine) movie. While her performances in movies haven't been terrible, she certainly coasts along, doing what she needs to do to seem convincing and nothing more, which works, but isn't anything spectacular.

And then I realized that Hollywood--and indie-wood too, but they don't make superhero movies--won't cast a good or interesting actor as Wonder Woman anyway and Knowles is way more fascinating than pretty much any other choice I could think of. This is further proven by the counter-rumors/reactions about some broad named Megan Gale playing Wonder Woman and about the only thing Gale has going for her is she looks a lot like Linda Carter who played Wonder Woman in the 70s. This is the bane of Hollywood casting, the tendency to find a person who first and foremost looks like the character/icon/famous person and worry about talent or context or anything else, second. Everybody sorta accepted it because it worked so well, but one of the many brilliant aspects of Iron Man was the rather daring choice of Robert Downey Jr. Not because of his drug problems or this or that but because while he was a white dude with facial hair, he didn't fit the super-hero role which of course, is what Tony Stark and Iron Man are all about.

Beyonce would make a pretty cool Wonder Woman. Physically, she's appropriate as she's obviously beautiful and charismatic, but also because her body's thicker and bigger and more in-line with how most women are drawn in comics and especially appropriate because of Wonder Woman's Amazonian roots. Sub-point real quick: Beyonce is short though--her physicality and charisma trick people--but she's only 5 foot inches. There's also a strange outsider-ness to Wonder Woman that I think Beyonce could tap into and the movie would have to focus a lot on the Diana Prince side of things, which Beyonce could do really well. Again, like Iron Man or even, the non-action, downtime in the Hellboy movies, what would make a "Wonder Woman" movie would be a focus on the non-superhero side of things. Some kind of weird 70s soap-opera meets Sex & the City pseudo jet-setting would be really kind of awesome.

Destiny's Child |MTV Music

Basically, the movie should look and feel like this and she should occasionally go fight crime or be worried about an impending super-villain crisis or some shit...

While it would be even less popular of a choice--and show why it's more tradition than race that worries comics fan--my vote's for talent-less, celebutante, Kim Kardashian. Like Beyonce, her body type and physicality match comic book proportions and she just kind of looks awesome as Wonder Woman in these from-the-gossip-pages halloween photos.

The Negative Zone: Lay Off Von Furstenberg's Wonder Woman Line!

The er, Dave Sim-like level of vitriol aimed at the fashion industry--and implicitly, women at large--because of fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg's for-charity line of Wonder Woman clothes and accompanying comic book is pretty silly. Not that something being for charity makes it not subject to criticism, but falling back on the "fashion's silly 'cause it costs too much" trope that fucking comic nerds that wear JC Penney Pocket Ts in earth-tones and plain-ass Reeboks every day of their life invoke when mocking fashion is especially wrong-headed here because well, the 25 dollar comic book is priced that high because you kinda expect to pay more for something going to charity. Same with the $46 shirt and $165 bag.


The equally misguided and condescending response to this line is directed towards Konstantin Kakanias' really strange art for the project. With a focus on the way Kakanias eschews conventional anatomy and proportion as if it's not an artistic choice. What's interesting about the art is how it looks nothing like contemporary comic book art and doesn't even have much to do with Silver-Age comic art either. The main influence here is clearly Pop-Art and Roy Lichtenstein and it's almost as if the art's giving you some weird backwards, inside-out speculative comics history where it wasn't Lichtenstein swiping from comics but if comics swiped from Lichtenstein. Out of its current context, I'd say plenty of comics fans would give it the benefit of the doubt and see the weird too-big heads, angular necks, and Pop-Art signifiers as just some crazy interpretation of Wonder Woman and nothing more.

The nit-picky argument against the art's especially frustrating because one could easily argue that the clothes aren't that good or interesting and certainly be onto something. Again though, maybe that has to do with maximizing their appeal so more people buy/donate, but it also has to do with the sort of populist intention of the clothes and the yes, message. A message that yeah, is a little played-out and obvious and is nothing more than loose platitudes about female empowerment, but is exactly what wearers of Von Furstenberg's clothing would want and more importantly, is a powerful and still-important message for the people benefitting from the charity: victims of domestic violence.

A problem with people ignorant of fashion and the fashion industry is lumping all designers and clothes together, as if there's not a different between Von Furstenberg's clothes which are found in a place like NORDSTROM and like, serious, couture-ish high-end fashion stuff, which the shirt and bag from this Wonder Woman line most certainly aren't.



To be real, while domestic violence certainly is not relegated to the middle and lower-class, it's effect on women of that social strata is significantly greater--financial dependence or inter-dependence is a big reason why women stay with abusers--and in a sense, these are clothes for that kind of women, but slightly better-made and slightly nicer.