Gal Gadot Believes Wonder Woman is for Girls and Boys — “It Goes Both Ways”
JB Augustine
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Gal Gadot took an inclusive position on playing Wonder Woman this week when an interviewer broached the topic of how empowering the character is for women and young girls.
Talking with Entertainment Tonight, Gadot was asked about playing “an iconic character” for the second time in Wonder Woman 1984 when she is the mother of two daughters.
She replied:
“But I got to tell you, it’s not just for the girls. It is for the girls, but we can’t reach the place where we are going to stop talking about female, men, you know women empowerment, feminism and all that before we work on both female and male. We can’t just empower women, only by focusing on women, we also need to educate the boys and the men so a young boy that goes to see this in the cinema, this amazing woman that does those amazing things, that he can believe a woman can do that, you know what I mean? So it goes both ways.”
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Her comments are counter to a lot of what we see and hear from Hollywood. Brie Larson said A Wrinkle In Time wasn’t made for white dudes after the film failed at the box office and later urged Hollywood to move faster on representation and diversity with superheroes.
Larson conversely showed love for the WW1984 trailer, tweeting it and asking Siri how to travel through time to the June release date.
SIRI – HOW CAN I TIME TRAVEL TO JUNE 5TH 2020 https://t.co/PUQ3DKK6ee
— Brie Larson (@brielarson) December 10, 2019
New DC Extended Universe stablemate Ewan McGregor talked of subtle, everyday misogyny when discussing Birds of Prey’s script and how much “men need to be taught to change.”
Elizabeth Banks, proud as she says she is of Charlie’s Angels, still blamed men for her film’s disappointing theatrical performance and wrote off Wonder Woman’s success as the result of a genre males like.
But Gadot stands neutral and is drawing commendation for it. YouTuber YoungRippa59 called her answer to ET “masterful” and added she went out of her way to “correct” what the interviewer was alluding to – Gal is “a woman who has two daughters. Right? Girl power!”
He continued boys, girls, and everyone can enjoy Wonder Woman, a movie, or a character as long as the stories are good and not devoted to some facet of identity politics.
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Personally, I think the question wasn’t that big a deal but Gal Gadot’s answer and redirection were smooth. I’m pulling for Wonder Woman 1984 to have a strong story for Diana and all its characters notwithstanding any agendas.
The film, directed by Patty Jenkins, is out on June 5th.
How do you feel about Gal’s response to ET and feminism? Comment below.