on heroism and villainy, and fandom’s perceptions thereof (wanda maximoff)
Alright. I’ve been planning this post basically since the first week that WandaVision aired, which is honestly evident in some of what I posted since then. I couldn’t address this till the show was over, though, both because I wouldn’t be working with all the data and because I didn’t want to jinx it. (I’m not a particularly superstitious person, but I firmly believe that if I make my hopes about fiction too public it diminishes their chance of happening. Chalk it up to trying to guess too much of True Blood season six, or to posting a long tumblr rant about why I thought romantic FitzSimmons would be a disaster literally the week before the season one finale aired, or, I don’t know, caring about Game of Thrones at all.)
Luckily, this is going to be a positive essay, not a negative one, because the specific thing I want to discuss is villainization, specifically of women, specifically of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). I acknowledge the inherent issues with MCU Wanda (some relevant links for donations will be at the bottom of the post) but the thing is, I imprinted on her basically from the get-go. Art friend asked if I planned to cosplay her before Age of Ultron was even released, and cited her “ballerina hands” (I did a one-act play in high school wherein I played one of three ballerinas experiencing a psychotic break, during which time I taught myself how to stand and use my arms and hands like a ballerina, and I never broke myself of the habit) and it was basically fated from that moment. I’m also very partial, as I’ve said before, to sad girls, and Wanda is one of the saddest.
So anyway, prior to her show, Wanda had consistently been one of the best parts of wildly mediocre event movies. Civil War is legitimately one of my least favorite MCU installments but the scene where Wanda’s talking to Vision (Paul Bettany) about her powers and how people perceive her is incredible.
Wanda is also a mentally ill/neurodivergent queen, which deserves its own essay but which does need to be mentioned. She has depression/anxiety (she talks about taking antidepressants in her 2015 comic series, even!) and glaringly obvious PTSD and she’s, you guessed it, probably autistic. WandaVision specifically deals with the aftermath of her post-Snap mental break and the magical anomaly it caused, and this could have gone very disastrously in the wrong creative hands. Based on how media often handles mental health issues, especially women’s mental health issues, I was both excited for and nervous about this show.
Full story here.