animatedamerican:fjuri-the-fury:terapsina:annerbhp:tchallasams:annerbhp:diana-prince: Wo
animatedamerican: fjuri-the-fury: terapsina: annerbhp: tchallasams: annerbhp: diana-prince: Would you like to buy an ice cream? Okay, so it’s even the small things. The way she eats the ice cream. She just eats it. No coy lick or self-conscious taste. There’s no male gaze here. No oral/sexual pleasure of the viewer. Just she eats the ice cream and it’s the kind of sloppy big bite of someone who is not self-conscious of eating, who hasn’t been trained from birth to think about how she looks as she does everything, even eating. Hasn’t spent her life being told that her purpose is in being attractive, even as she does a vital daily thing like eating. Doesn’t have a voice in her head saying, oh but ice cream, it’s kind of fatty, and what will people think. She’s just, wow, this thing is delicious, I think it’s great, the person who makes it deserves to be told how great their skill is. How great their actions that have lead to this product are. Even in this she demonstrates valuing people by their actions and abilities and choices and who they are, not what they look like. Fuck. This is agency. And the fact that is so rare and startling and obvious to me, the fact that Diana Prince eating ice cream moves me so much is So Terrible and makes me despair for our civilization and (nearly) all media produced before this. And during the shot when she takes the first bite, Steve is reaching his arm out to pay the ice cream seller. That movement is much bigger and more eye-catching than Diana eating the ice cream. This scene normalizes females eating on screen (which shouldn’t have fucking been a problem in the first place), through both subverting the erotic eating trope and allowing women to eat and enjoy whatever they want without feeling self-conscious. Kudos to Patty Jenkins. Yes! Excellent point! And even more, Steve isn’t looking at Diana as she eats. A big part of the male gaze is that the default POV of films is generally that of the straight, white, male viewer. And generally Steve would be the stand in for that default gaze, but he doesn’t even look at her! He doesn’t buy it for her so he can watch. And he doesn’t even pull some Nice Guy bullshit like, I did something nice for you now do something nice for me, even as a vague joke or subtext. He isn’t trying to get anything out it. He just thinks she’s probably never had it and might enjoy it. It’s about her enjoyment, not his. Despite everything trying to tell us that women feed appetites but aren’t meant to have any of their own. Apparently I am never going to get over Diana Prince eating ice cream. Yes, all this. But I’d like to mention that IN ADDITION to that, there’s also the overt humor of the moment that could have been gross too but wasn’t. The ice cream seller offers her the ice cream but Diana is not familiar with the concept of ‘goods for money’ so they could have made a big joke about it with Steve basically giving her an immediate ‘lesson’ about how she can’t just TAKE the ice cream and how you’re supposed to pay for it. That’s basically how introducing a character from an Utopian society to a capitalist world always works. And that’s always the joke ‘oh look how silly and uneducated this person is, doesn’t even know they have to pay for stuff!’. But here though Diana does take the ice cream without planning to pay (because yes, she doesn’t know that she’s supposed to) Steve doesn’t make it into a ‘big deal’, he just reaches over and pays. And so the scene flawlessly skips over any need to publicly shame or embarrass Diana and we can just focus on how adorable Diana is when eating ice cream for the first time in her life. And I really truly appreciate that a lot. bless every single one of you I’ve been waiting and waiting for this very gif set and the amazing comments sisters I love you all so much right now this post has gotten EVEN BETTER but okay I gotta say another thing about this scene, and that’s what “you should be very proud” implies about Themysciran culture. First thing: Diana assumes, almost certainly incorrectly, that the guy selling ice cream is the one who made the ice cream, and thus has a right to be proud of it. Which suggests that generally on Themyscira, women sell/distribute their own work; there isn’t a merchant/middleman profession. (Which I think makes sense, given the size of the island and its population – there’s much less of a need for someone to collect and transport goods from the makers to the consumers.) Second, much more important thing: Diana has been taught to value and respect the work of people who aren’t warriors. I’ve seen the trope of “person newly arrived in modern world tastes A Food for the first time and is delighted by it” any number of times before, but I don’t remember ever seeing that reaction immediately followed by thanks or praise directed at the maker. I mean, just compare this moment with Thor’s “I like this drink! Another!”; he’s praising the coffee, and the acknowledgment of whoever made the coffee is at best implied. But Diana turns at once directly to the person who gave her the ice cream. You made this food! It’s awesome! You deserve to take pride in it! … and okay I think that’s pretty excellent. (Incidentally, has anyone ever seen a name for the trope in question? TVTropes was unhelpful, astonishingly.) -- source link