Sidetracks - June 15, 2017

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. For more links and commentary you can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr. You can also support us on Patreon.

Clare

1. Gina Prince-Bythewood will be the first black woman to direct a superhero film—she’ll be tackling the Spidey-verse movie Silver & Black, focusing on Silver Sable and Black Cat.

2. From Thea James, here are eight Wonder Woman stories to read after watching the new film.

Jodie

3. The most important pop-culture news of all is obviously that the Black Panther teaser trailer is out & it looks amazing. What a time to be alive!

4. Would you like to see a thread full of cast shots from the Black Panther trailer? (This question is clearly rhetorical.)

5. Sadly, yet another Black Panther spinoff comic, World of Wakanda, was cancelled. The Daily Dot once again explains how current metrics for measuring comic book sales aren't really working.

6. chaila wrote a Wonder Woman post - DIANA IN A MOVIE & I love it.

7. I also liked Liz Bourke's article Love and War in Wonder Woman - particularly her examination of the many different ways 'Only love can save the world' can apply.

8. Film Critic Hulk SMASH wrote That Wonderful Wonder Woman about how and why the film works.

9. The Calgary Herald ran an article about how a First Nations First World War Hero helped Eugene Rock find his character in Wonder Woman.

10. Related, Mark Gatiss doesn't think there were any black soldiers in Queen Victoria's army & called the casting of a black actor in a recent Dr Who episode 'problematic'. History begs to differ. This is an especially frustrating comment to see after Sarah Dollard's fantastic Thin Ice episode just got through reminding audiences that there were a ton of black people in Georgian England and we should be quick to interrogate ourselves if we start thinking of British history as a white space.

11. Contemporary setting confirmed for Wonder Woman sequel! Also, both Patty Jenkins & Gal Gadot seem to be under contract for a second film so it seems like a pretty firm deal. I mean, maybe see it again in cinemas just to make sure it definitely happens...

12. Patty Jenkins explains why the world needs Wonder Woman.

13. A great detail from Wonder Woman that I squeaked out loud at (although I recognised this more from the Superman TV show than the films tbh.)

14. Finally, My Soul Looks Back and Wonders: A Critical Examination of the Wonder Woman movie takes a look at the film's presentation of race (among other things.) I'm mostly including it because I did not catch a lot of the American related race stuff (even though the whole 'the Native American character is called Chief uses smoke signals' problem seems really obvious looking back) and instead got swept up in 'They acknowledged that black and Asian soldiers existed in the UK & fought in WWI!' so this was a good balancing article for me.

KJ

15. brainwane presents a collection of links on callout culture and the problems with it. Lest you think this is a new problem, one of them is a Ms. Magazine article from 1975, and another is an essay by Joanna Russ. I haven't had the opportunity to read most of these yet, but I plan to go back and check them out.

16. 17. In this fascinating (and spoiler-filled!) review of Wonder Woman, Hoai-Tran Bui discusses the ways in which Diana's character reflects and deconstructs the Disney princess narrative. I drew a number of these parallels while watching it, but I didn't see everything mentioned here.

17. From Tor.com, "Princess Buttercup Became the Warrior General Who Trained Wonder Woman, All Dreams Are Now Viable" is a must-read for anyone who ever loved The Princess Bride. I hope there will be many epic crossover fics.

18. (No, I'm not done with Wonder Woman links yet.) serrico writes an excellent essay on why World War I was the perfect setting for this particular coming of age story.

19. One more: Feminist Frequency shares a review that is more critical, in particular around the use of violence.

20. From IndieWire, an article that looks at the line between adaptations and fanfic, with A Handmaid's Tale and American Gods (neither of which I have yet seen) as its examples.

21. The Pudding examined two thousand Hollywood screenplays and broke down the dialogue for male and female characters into percentages. Pornokitsch took a look at the data for genre films, with predictable results.

22. Finally, a brilliant street artist/vandal is putting googly eyes on things in Bulgaria, and the pictures are wonderful.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

A critical look at the disfigured villain trope in Wonder Woman:

The Wonder Woman Movie's Treatment of Disability, by Carly

[readingtheend.com]

WHY IS MARK GATISS LIKE THIS. It is like no matter what happens the universe will never, ever allow me to enjoy Sherlock or Doctor Who. Everyone is the WORST.

[bookgazing]

Yeah I had no idea Gatiss was so like this (although I read his first novel & that should have given me a clue). Also have you heard he's teaming up with Moffat to make a Dracula series? It's like we finally get rid of Moffat on other projects & the BBC just throws money at him again.