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DISNEY+ has just released She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, a new Marvel series starring the female (and feminist version) of one of its superheroes. The trailer already warned us that the ideological woke load of the series was going to be greater than the levels of gamma radiation in Bruce Banner’s blood, and after the first episode, we can confirm that its woke levels are so ridiculously high that they are off the charts.
Warning: spoilers ahead!
The series is about Bruce Banner’s (Hulk) cousin, Jennifer Walters, who is a very committed lawyer and social justice advocate. Already in the first scene, where she introduces herself to the audience by breaking the fourth wall of her office, we can see on the shelf behind her back a figurine of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court Justice nominated by Bill Clinton and icon of the progressive left.
One might think that the series would show its leftist political baggage through small nods like this figurine, or subliminally through plot and script subtleties. But no. The ideological content is more brazen and resounding than the Hulk on cocaine.
In a flashback, the protagonist tells us how she acquired her powers. While Jennifer was driving with her cousin Bruce Banner as co-driver, they have an accident and his blood falls on an open wound on her arm. The similarity of their DNA due to their kinship causes Jennifer to immediately acquire the powers of a Hulk.
The fact that she was the driver and they had an accident because she was distracted talking to her cousin is perhaps the only non-feminist point of the episode. I imagine that this detail, which reinforces the stereotype that women are bad drivers, was overlooked in the discussion groups in the writers’ room. Too bad. It’s probably internalized machismo that they didn’t know how to control.
Unlike her cousin Bruce Banner, who spent 15 years struggling psychologically to keep his green alter ego from emerging unchecked, She-Hulk can control her transformations at will in a very simple and natural way. This they discover in the section of the chapter in which Bruce Banner takes her to his secret lair to mansplain how to control her powers and how to use them in the service of humanity.
Tatiana Maslany is Jennifer Walter/She-Hulk. Mark Ruffalo is Bruce Banner/Hulk. (EFE/EPA by Etienne Laurent)
That with great power comes great responsibility is something we learned from superhero movies. However, She-Hulk doesn’t want to be constrained by this cliché, preferring instead to stick to the progressive mantra of being a woman who puts her professional career before everything else.
We discover that She-Hulk is better than her cousin Hulk at everything. She is stronger, smarter and more balanced both physically and mentally. The biggest challenge Bruce Banner/Hulk had was controlling his anger. She-Hulk doesn’t have that problem because she is a woman.
I quote, “here’s the thing Bruce. I’m great at controlling my anger. I do it all the time…” (there is a small dramatic pause here, the volume of the music increases and a slow zoom to her face adds gravity to her reflections) “when I’m catcalled in the street, when incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me.”
“I do it pretty much every day because if I don’t, I will get called emotional, or difficult, or might just literally get murdered. So I’m an expert at controlling my anger because I do it infinitely more than you.”
Wow, it turns out that all the problems of the previous Marvel movies could have been prevented if the superheroes and supervillains hadn’t had so much testosterone. Surely a universe dominated by empowered superheroines would have been an orchard of peace and tranquility, unlike the macho, heteropatriarchal society we’ve been forced to live in.
Although not much else happens in the first episode of She-Hulk, from the final scene and the glimpse in the trailer we can conclude that the series will be a kind of Ally McBeal with superpowers, mixed with Sex and the City and its girl talk among martinis, margaritas and cosmopolitans.
Disney uses She-Hulk to continue deconstructing masculinity
She-Hulk continues at full speed with the frantic task of deconstructing male characters that Marvel in particular, and Disney in general, has been doing in recent years.
In their attempt to rewrite the story in a progressive tone, they are not satisfied with replacing male heroes with female heroines, but they also have to humiliate their male predecessors.
Thanks to She-Hulk, we already know that Jennifer Walters is better than her cousin at everything, whom they leave diminished to a huge boy with self-control issues.
The Hawkeye series is actually about the new Hawkeye, young Kate Bishop who outdoes a depressed and tormented Clint Barton in every way. In the series Loki is introduced to his female version of the multiverse, who is the new and improved goddess of deception.
In Thor: Love & Thunder we got to see a Mighty Thor played by Natalie Portman, and in the upcoming Wakanda Forever we will see Iron-Man’s armor being worn by a young African-American girl who will be Ironheart, who will not only have the intelligence of the ill-fated Tony Stark, but presumably will also boast a big heart, great empathy, and great emotional resilience.
We await to see how this comedy of super-powered female lawyers which intends to be She-Hulk will continue, but what seems certain is that what we will find hilarious is not the fact that it is a comedy, but its pitiful visual effects and, above all, its caricatured and shameless Wokeism.
Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.
Social Networks: @ignaciomgm