I went to see Wonder Woman this afternoon. I really enjoyed it – loved Diana’s strength, resilience, no bullshit attitude and her belief in love. The costumes were amazing.
But you know what saddened me? That the villain – Dr Poison – had a facial difference. Jason mentioned it to me when we recorded our podcast on Friday, so I was prepared.
(Spoiler: she took the covering off to reveal a scarred face. I searched for a long time to find a picture of Dr Poison without the partial mask, but had no luck.)
There was no backstory about why she had a facial difference. She was evil, intent on killing people using chemical warfare, and had a facial difference.
I am tired of the trope that beauty equals good and facial differences equal evil. Let’s face it, Diana was stunning – luminescent and loving – she wanted to save the world.
Slate recently featured an article questioning why movie villains have dermatological issues.
“But it illuminates several aesthetic similarities between evil characters, making a convincing case that skin conditions are used as shorthand for evil across film genres. Six of AFI’s top 10 villains would get clinical dermatological diagnoses, the authors contend, compared to none of the top 10 heroes. Three of the villains (Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, and Mr. Potter of It’s a Wonderful Life) have alopecia; three have dark eye sockets, or “periorbital hyperpigmentation” (Vader, The Exorcist’s Regan MacNeil, and Snow White’s Queen); deep rhytides (wrinkles), facial scarring, and warts claim two villains each; and one top villain, the Queen, also has rhinophyma, a bulbous, ruddy nose with enlarged pores.”
I recently wrote about the issues with facial difference in Beauty and the Beast. “But it’s just a movie, stop ruining the childhood magic, people cried! Oh yes they did!
But when I raised the issue of Dr Poison on Facebook and Instagram, there wasn’t the same outcry. People are thinking more broadly – because of exposure and discussion about facial difference. When people tell me they are thinking about representation more because of my work, it makes me happy.
I hope You Can’t Ask That has helped, too.
Since You Can’t Ask That, I’ve seen a lot of Ellen – one of the participants with a facial difference. Our friendship is cemented by the experiences of stares and being othered, and also our love of fashion. We’ve ben recognised in the street, and it’s such a thrill. People’s responses have been so positive – they aren’t frightened at all.
A character like Dr Poison, with evil depicted with a facial difference, is the reason a child hides behind their parents when they see me. A character like Two Face is why the cleaner was scared of my face and left. A character like Freddy Kruger is the reason Ellen and I were sent violent tweets on Friday. People dress up as Scary Face for Halloween, and that’s supposedly just for a laugh.
In my lifetime I want to see a character with a facial difference be someone who puts people at ease, not instills fear. I want to see a person with a facial difference save the world, not destroy it.
Representation matters.
If we’re going to talk about how empowering Wonder Woman was, why can’t we have a character with a facial difference that is empowering too?
Here is a list of role models with facial differences.
You need to know them.
We might not see them on the big screen, but know that the good they do triumphs any evil represented in films like Wonder Woman.
You need to know them.
Update: my friend Melissa talked about the issue of facial difference as evil in her Silver Screen Queens podcast – she said it was because I’ve taught her to notice it. Listen here.
There is is also a much more comprehensive piece on Geeky Gimp about facial difference and wider disability representation in the movie. Read that here.
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Yes! I have noticed this ugliness in comic based movies, and comics themselves, before. Just because someone has an acquired facial injury, or born with facial abnormalities, doesn’t mean they are, or would turn, evil incarnate.
It’s a sad indictment by Authors and Scriptwriters that this is done over and over
I was talking about Dr. Poison with some folks on twitter. I can’t remember who said it but someone interviewed about/reviewing the film said that Wonder Woman spares Dr. Poison because she recognises that Dr. Poison represents “humanity’s flaws”. So essentially the writing team were too lazy to figure out a way to write a character who was flawed as a human being; they used facial difference as a cheap signifier for “the evil that men do”.
It’s also used to make Dr. Poison an object of pity, which in turn makes Wonder Woman’s compassion all the more commendable in the opinion of the audience. Wonder Woman thereby achieves true Goddess status; she is given the power of life and death and chooses to be merciful towards the “piteous creature”, which endears her to the audience even more; she’s not just a force for destruction, or a perfect, unreachable object of worship; the Goddess gets to show her human side by allowing Dr. Poison, the Imperfect Heroine, to remain alive. It’s a shame that Dr. Poison seems little more than an “ugly friend”/Disabled Villain trope plonked into the script to confirm Wonder Woman’s humanity while Dr. Poison’s humanity is erased to make her a cardboard cutout “baddie”.
I did not even pick up on this in WW, I thought she’s had an accident in the lab. I read your article though and villains with scarring or metal teeth or the monk in The Da Vinci code sprang so easily to mind I thought, ‘ how the heck have I not noticed this before?’ thanks for your list, I’ll look in to that.
when you can’t visually see what somebody looks like, it’s easy for there to be no judgements for me, I’m never much concerned about looks it’s about personality we are all human and if looks are of no consequenc we take people as they are in other words if somebody’s nice to us we return the favour and be nice back
And someone else who is really cool and has a facial difference is Dawn Shaw of Facing up to it fame:
http://www.facinguptoit.com/about/
who I discovered in 2013/14.