Opinion | The question about female empowerment at the center of 'Black Widow' - The Washington Post

Is a woman really empowered if she’s following a man’s definition of what it means to be liberated and strong? That’s the question raised by “Black Widow,” the long-awaited Marvel movie featuring Scarlett Johansson’s spy-turned-superhero, Natasha Romanoff. The film doesn’t have a particularly deep or satisfying answer, given that it’s a very expensive corporate product rather than a radical feminist text. But it’s a concept worth pondering, not just on-screen but off it.

No superhero is complete without an origin story, and “Black Widow” is about Natasha’s relationship to the men who made her what she is — and how their idea of what it meant for girls to reach their full potential warped her life and that of her “sister,” Yelena Belova. (If it wasn’t already obvious, this column discusses the movie’s plot.)

First and foremost is Dreykov, a sinister Soviet-era bureaucrat who prides himself on his ability to make use of “the only natural resource the world has too much of: little girls.” Through mind control, forced sterilization, family separation and a brutal training regimen, Dreykov transforms his captives, including Natasha and Yelena, into willowy, balletic expert markswomen and vicious street fighters. They are avatars of hyperfemininity employed to hypermasculine ends.

He’s not alone in thinking beautiful lethality is the highest goal a woman can strive for. When Natasha and Yelena reunite with Alexei, the Soviet superhero known as Red Guardian who posed as their father when they were girls, he’s delighted by their ruthlessness. “Yelena, you went on to be the greatest child assassin the world has ever known!” Alexei crows. “You both have killed so many people. … I couldn’t be more proud of you!”

Some of the best moments in “Black Widow” are scenes in which the characters banter over the absurdities — and vicious cruelties — of this male-defined vision of female superheroism. Yelena mocks Natasha’s signature landing after a jump, which involves her legs akimbo and a well-timed hair flip. When Alexei asks whether Yelena is grumpy because she’s menstruating, she snaps back, “I don’t get my period, dips---. I don’t have a uterus,” a reference to the hysterectomies she and Natasha experienced at Dreykov’s hands.

There’s an irony to this franchise raising questions about what it means for men to dictate what female strength and empowerment look like. Black Widow is the invention of three men, legendary Marvel editor Stan Lee, writer Don Rico and artist Don Heck. And though “Black Widow” is directed, at times with grace and specificity, by Cate Shortland, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is overseen by another man, Kevin Feige.

Feige is not alone in using the power of Hollywood to shape what it means to be a strong woman. Joss Whedon, who also worked in the Marvel franchise, shaped a generation of action heroines with his “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Darren Star helped define single-girl aspirations for sex and romance in his hugely influential adaptation of Candace Bushnell’s “Sex and the City” columns for the New York Observer. Michael Schur’s sitcom “Parks and Recreation” even shaped conversations about female ambition and likability in politics.

That these creators are all men doesn’t disqualify them from having real insights about women’s strength and liberation. But when men are defining what it means to be empowered, it’s always worth taking a careful look at the criteria they’re setting for women, and to discuss whether everyone ought to view freedom and strength on masculine terms.

Of course, ideas about what makes a woman powerful don’t take root without enthusiasm, or at least grudging collaboration, from women. In “Black Widow,” it’s Melina, the Soviet scientist who once posed as Natasha and Yelena’s mother, who develops the mind-control techniques and synthesizes the chemicals that are essential to Dreykov’s program.

Off-screen, women such as “Girlboss” author Sophia Amoruso and “Lean In” advocate Sheryl Sandberg have promoted a vision of female success that — while less toxic than any supervillain’s plot — still looks a lot like an argument for chasing the same opportunities and work-life balance that men have always prioritized. In politics, Republican women such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) seem determined to prove that they can be even more gun-obsessed than their male counterparts.

“Black Widow,” though it casts a gimlet eye and a precisely aimed gun at men who advance a twisted idea of a strong woman, doesn’t exactly end with Natasha, Yelena, Melina and their counterparts swearing off militarism and redefining empowerment on their own terms. After all, there are jets to fly, vengeance to seek and a billion-dollar, multiplatform action franchise to feed.

But even if it’s hard to lean out and abandon, or at least assess, a well-trod path to success, women watching “Black Widow” at home and in theaters would do well to take the pause that Natasha and Yelena can’t. We have choices other than to be assassins, supermoms or girlbosses, if we take the time to define them for ourselves.

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Opinion | The question about female empowerment at the center of 'Black Widow' - The Washington Post
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