The Women of Suicide Squad: Considering Feminist Messages

This article on the first Suicide Squad film was published on Legendary Women, August 2016.

Suicide Squad has been heavily heavily advertised with trailers all known for their fun and sometimes jarring theme music. At last it arrived, and certainly, the soundtrack was delightful. The Joker creeped people out, Will Smith’s Deadshot was cooler than cool and pretty snarky too. But what about the women?

There were a fair number of female characters in this one — an improvement on Superman/Batman’s enigmatic Wonder Woman plus the various females Lex Luthor was happy to sacrifice (by my count, all of them). However, every single one in Suicide Squad was a) fridged, b) bikinied, c) revealed as inept or d) all of the above. For all the fans eagerly awaiting the first Wonder Woman film in theaters (there was a cartoon made-for-TV movie in 2009 and Lego Wonder Woman has cameoed on the big screen but this is splitting hairs), trusting her to the team who made dark, anti-heroic Superman/Batman and now this bikini romp is feeling problematic.

So let’s break down the cast and their concepts.

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