Watch the trailer here. Try not to cringe too much.
My main problem with this Supergirl trailer is that they make her ephemeral, weightless. She’s got no emotional mass, just a silly little girl who above all must not be allowed to threaten male egos. She gets put down by that military dude and just sort of takes it, crumples up and starts to cry in her apartment. Are you fucking kidding me? She can arm-wrestle a jetliner out of the sky, but some military dude being mean to her makes her want to quit? That’s absurd. Ridiculous. Insulting. I could totally see a man treating her like that; I don’t at all see why she should let it get to her. Except of course she does, because a man needs to have power over her, at least once in this trailer. (Well, several times, actually.) Because that’s Hollywood. Because that’s what they think we mean when we say we want female superheroes. Because they can’t conceive of a sympathetic woman who also takes life on her own terms and accepts no bullshit.
The only woman in this trailer (well, short film, to be honest) who is allowed to have emotional power, drive, and confidence is her unbelievably bitchy boss who is clearly coded as a negative character. I’m not saying I want a grimdark Supergirl, but come on, can we have someone who can bench press a tank–and has known this about herself for years–maybe not be a neurotic insecure mess for no reason? Can we have her be confident, and embracing her attempt to live a “normal” life as just another challenge she knows she can overcome rather than a way to undercut her and make her look nonthreatening? What’s wrong with having a Supergirl who has a zest for life because she knows she can fly and fight and save people, who revels in her power and her ability to help people, and who chooses to live as close to normal as possible because it helps her relate to these funny little mortals with their frail little bodies who she loves so much?
BUT NOPE! Gotta have her be insecure coffee girl with mountains of hesitation. Gotta make her “relatable.” Not threatening. Not awe-inspiring. Yeah, sure, she’s basically a literal goddess compared to the people around her, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on her not being able to fly around corners quickly without wearing a cape! Ha ha! So cute and endearing! Let’s focus on her accepting a crappy job when she knows she can be so much more. Let’s focus on her unaccountable hesitation to experiment with her powers throughout her entire adolescence so that she only knows for sure that she can fly when she’s forced to do so. Let’s pretend that a girl who can get herself up into orbit just to enjoy the view would decide not to for no good reason, would decide to let her cousin handle all the heroics and test his powers, but not want to join him, the one other person on the planet who could really understand what life was like for her. Above all, let’s do everything in our power to ensure that the male viewers don’t feel inadequate or threatened by a power fantasy that they can’t explicitly relate to, because that, my friends, would be the worst thing ever.
This is not what we mean when we say we want female superheroes. Her interiority has been completely sacrificed on the alter of making her “relatable.” Her motivations are muddled, her characterization hamstrung. Would we accept this from Arrow, or Flash? Would we consider it an acceptable interpretation of Batman, or Superman? Even (to cross continuities) Peter Parker, the poster child of “superheroes with problems” isn’t hollowed out so thoroughly. A character who is predicated on POWER is not allowed to have any that isn’t safely contained and wrapped in a treacly candy shell of girls-are-so-neurotic bullshit.