When studying modern mythos in terms of comic books, I kept myself in the lense of female superheros being the goddesses of today. I use the comic books as the goddesses’ mythic narrative, but it also moves beyond written and into a visual medium which seems to be a very intriguing thing to the culture of our world today. The pictures and narrative storyline of the female superheroes provides a clear understanding of their purpose in the world created by the writers.
When I posed a question of are these writers using these characters as tools to maintain a patriarchal culture or are they strong female role models created to instigate a change in the views of the world, the answer I arrived on was that they were no different from the heroines before them, a bluff of female empowerment made by males who truly hold the authority. To get to the real problem with new mythology we need to first examine the ancient goddess idolized in our society today. Athena is one of the most well known goddesses from ancient Greece.
She is Goddess of Wisdom and of War and is a good example of the template used for our modern day female superhero. Often called a feminist goddess, she is described as strong in both her character and body, independent and fierce, wise and rational. The story of Athena’s birth is well known. Zeus consumed the Titan goddess Metis and began to suffer a headache, Hephaestus then splits Zeus’ head open to relieve the ache and out of the wound sprung Athena. If you look close enough, Athena was born of man and woman asexually, but it was often said, even by Athena herself that she was born only of man.
This course of action is a denial of the maternal origin and her mother is never seen in ancient myth as a disrespect. The denial of birth and female power to give birth commandeers this power and creates another layer of patriarchal views on the creation of life in the world. She belongs to only her father and sees herself as his greatest and most trusted heir. She was a part of the world in a way the women of her time were not allowed to be, a goddess of both war and wisdom, when the women in society were seen as irrational and unpredictable by the men around them.
But she still remains a beacon of what a perfect women should be in their society, virginal, beautiful and loyally pledged to one man. If we fast forward a little over 2000 years, in 1941, America saw the creation of a superheroine named Wonder Woman, a hero created in a response to the overmasculinization of the comic book superhero genre (Cocca). She was a superhero made to solve the world’s problems with love rather than violence, so the author, Will Marston decided to make her female to conform to gender norms. Even if she was cited as the first feminist superhero, she was still created in the perimeters allowed in the patriarchy.
Her origin story dates back to ancient Greece, where Ares and Aphrodite disputed about which gender would rule the world, men with violence or women with peace. Aphrodite created a super-race of women who is taken down by Hercules after he seduces their leader Hippolyta so Aphrodite hides the survivors on an island later named the Bermuda Triangle created as a world just for women. Without men, the women have no children and become depressed so Athena helps Hippolyta make a child from the clay and Aphrodite gives it life. They name her Diana, who later in the series becomes the Wonder Woman we all know.
Where it gets interesting is when an Army Pilot named Steve Trevor crashes on the island, she saves him, they fall in love. Diana leaves everything she knows and her female utopia to live in a patriarchal world to be with a man. She stays loyal to one man, just like Athena to her father. Will Marston says that he “had the character come to the United States. with American Steve Trevor so she could fight alongside him and a group of college women to subdue Axis spies, common criminals, and mythical characters, as well as to teach “Man’s World” the peaceful and qual ways of the Amazons”(Cocca).
Although she is born from all females, in the end she denies that and decides to leave the island as refute the idea of her femininity. Today the most recent reboot has rewritten her origin as an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus because the writers though only one parent being involved with reproduction may confuse the readers. How strange, when Athena popped out of Zeus’ head, everyone seemed to understand just fine.