Interview with Gail Simone
This is a pretty darn awesome interview with Gail Simone. (There's two more pages to it: here and here.)
Quoting my favourite bits:
(On why she loves Wonder Woman)
But there are a million reasons. I love that she's the DC universe's premiere badass. I love that she was giving messages of the power of womanhood in the 40's, you know, decades before Buffy or Xena or Lara Croft.
And there's a part of me that loves the pegasi and the princess-ness of it all, and all the trappings of Paradise Island. She's just brilliantly conceived.
And I like her with a dry sense of humor, while we're at it. The sisterhood aspect of the Amazons is tremendously compelling to me. Who wouldn't love to have that many sisters who loved you AND carried bladed weapons?
(On romance...)
It's fun stuff to write, as we got to see a bit of the Amazon mating rituals for the first time, which of course implies that a lot of the Amazons are coupled themselves, which I think would've happened even if they HADN'T been exiled on an island with no guys for thirty centuries.
(On a live-action Wonder Woman movie)
Wonder Woman could have a movie where she sits in a chair eating peanut butter and it'd still be better than Catwoman and Elektra.
XD
(On the recent Wonder Woman DVD)
All right, here's how I see it. I did the first two drafts of this film's screenplay and the basic plot and characters still reflect that. But as I've said, I don't write Wonder Woman as Man Vs. Woman. I just feel that Wonder Woman would have settled that debate in her mind long ago with the universal truth: that there's good and bad in every group.
Seeing a woman as powerful as Wonder Woman debating things like guys opening doors for women seems a little like it's lowering her, that she's stooping.
In short, the gender issue stuff in my drafts was more subtle and a little more about miscommunication than outright hostility.
So when I finally saw the finished product, which I enjoyed tremendously, the one sour note for me was the insertion of all this gender politics stuff. At this point, I don't feel it's right or fair or even interesting for Diana to mistrust men as a gender, in toto.
The feminist discussions they're having felt very early 70's to me, very first wave. I think for most of America, that discussion is past. So I was a bit taken aback by that.
(On feminism in media today in general)
Right now, most of the gender discussion these kids see is ignorant ranting by zealots on either side on the internet. There's very little exposure to the core concepts of what feminism is about, presented in an entertaining and non-academic manner.
And the shame of that is, that allows idiots and creeps to define the term FOR us. The Rush Limbaughs and morons of that stripe. He can call us feminazis, actually compare the desire to be treated fairly with Nazism, and where is the pop-culture voice that says "hell, no!" to that? Where is the popular media that addresses that sort of hateful nonsense head on?
You really should go and read the whole thing, as it's a damn good interview, and apparently there is more to come.
ETA: Sorry, my post got eaten, am fixing it quickly!
ETA #2: Fixed! I don't know where my brain is today.
Quoting my favourite bits:
(On why she loves Wonder Woman)
But there are a million reasons. I love that she's the DC universe's premiere badass. I love that she was giving messages of the power of womanhood in the 40's, you know, decades before Buffy or Xena or Lara Croft.
And there's a part of me that loves the pegasi and the princess-ness of it all, and all the trappings of Paradise Island. She's just brilliantly conceived.
And I like her with a dry sense of humor, while we're at it. The sisterhood aspect of the Amazons is tremendously compelling to me. Who wouldn't love to have that many sisters who loved you AND carried bladed weapons?
(On romance...)
It's fun stuff to write, as we got to see a bit of the Amazon mating rituals for the first time, which of course implies that a lot of the Amazons are coupled themselves, which I think would've happened even if they HADN'T been exiled on an island with no guys for thirty centuries.
(On a live-action Wonder Woman movie)
Wonder Woman could have a movie where she sits in a chair eating peanut butter and it'd still be better than Catwoman and Elektra.
XD
(On the recent Wonder Woman DVD)
All right, here's how I see it. I did the first two drafts of this film's screenplay and the basic plot and characters still reflect that. But as I've said, I don't write Wonder Woman as Man Vs. Woman. I just feel that Wonder Woman would have settled that debate in her mind long ago with the universal truth: that there's good and bad in every group.
Seeing a woman as powerful as Wonder Woman debating things like guys opening doors for women seems a little like it's lowering her, that she's stooping.
In short, the gender issue stuff in my drafts was more subtle and a little more about miscommunication than outright hostility.
So when I finally saw the finished product, which I enjoyed tremendously, the one sour note for me was the insertion of all this gender politics stuff. At this point, I don't feel it's right or fair or even interesting for Diana to mistrust men as a gender, in toto.
The feminist discussions they're having felt very early 70's to me, very first wave. I think for most of America, that discussion is past. So I was a bit taken aback by that.
(On feminism in media today in general)
Right now, most of the gender discussion these kids see is ignorant ranting by zealots on either side on the internet. There's very little exposure to the core concepts of what feminism is about, presented in an entertaining and non-academic manner.
And the shame of that is, that allows idiots and creeps to define the term FOR us. The Rush Limbaughs and morons of that stripe. He can call us feminazis, actually compare the desire to be treated fairly with Nazism, and where is the pop-culture voice that says "hell, no!" to that? Where is the popular media that addresses that sort of hateful nonsense head on?
You really should go and read the whole thing, as it's a damn good interview, and apparently there is more to come.
ETA: Sorry, my post got eaten, am fixing it quickly!
ETA #2: Fixed! I don't know where my brain is today.