I’m horning in a bit on Noah’s Wonder Woman action. In comments to the last post, Maddy pointed out that WW would be a natural for a stranger-in-a-strange-land approach to sexism.
… she is coming from a place where she is loved and adored by all, where she has never been a second-class citizen, where she has never faced discrimination or bigotry. Then she enters the “real world”, where there are all those things …
Whereas it might take twenty or so years of life for me to become aware of things like sexism and misogyny, Wonder Woman would be able to recognize it instantly. So if we’re looking at her from a what-does-she-bring-to-feminism point of view, I think she’s very useful in that …
So, if anybody knows, I’m wondering if WW has ever been used in that way, either as an outsider commenting on sexism or an outsider simply commenting on our society as a whole. It’s such a common device that I’d be kind of surprised if it didn’t show up at some point in her career.
George Perez’s run definitely had some of this; as I mentioned, Diana has a lot of Silver Surfery how-strange-these-morals-be kind of moments in that. The animated film was also working with this idea somewhat; WW is horrified by the sexism in man’s world, etc.
It didn’t work especially well in either case, really. It’s kind of a cliched trope to begin with, and WW’s status as insider/outsider to our culture is pretty confused to begin with….(she’s wearing the flag, for example.)
Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier (both the limited series and the special) touches on this as well.