Feeling the future: Wonder Woman discourse and the demands of media response

Abstract

ABSTRACT Public discussion of blockbuster films and TV shows increasingly focuses on the power of representation, with certain works celebrated for their potentially beneficial effects. That celebration, however, often rests on the assumption of non-diverse audiences. Using media discourse on the film Wonder Woman (2017) as a case study, this article examines testimonies describing the psychological effects of fictional content in medicalized terms. Repeated references to tears and hunger tie narrative representation to the bodies of marginalized people, suggesting that responses to representation are involuntarily experienced in a standardized form. In many cases, the unexpected nature of these responses is highlighted. This article argues that public discussions of fictional media representation reify a strict model of media effects, denying complex or diverse readings and positioning cultural change as dependent on audiences “feeling” hegemonic readings of media texts. This discourse works to exclude those who cannot or will not conform to its affective norms, requiring psychological homogeneity that is rhetorically constructed as inescapably natural—as well as imperative to the promotion of cultural diversity. “Feeling” media associates media consumption with the creation of a better future, describing media effects as powerful precisely because of their presumed ability to remake the world.