In the weeks leading up to She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, the official social media accounts were filled with comments about how excited fans were but also, there were several comments tearing down the show, the premise, and the character before it even aired. While there were some valid criticisms about the CGI and how Marvel allegedly treats their CGI artists, many complaints were about how the show was going to be “too feminist” or “too woke.” The day before the premiere, the show started getting review bombed on websites such as IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes much like Ms. Marvel did for starring a teenage girl (among other reasons.)
Unfortunately, this behavior is all but unpredictable. Women-led Marvel projects (or women superheroes in general) have been hit with harsh criticism and backlash. There have been claims that male heroes are all being replaced with women heroes, emasculating men to show how powerful women are, turning the MCU into what’s now been colloquially referred to as the “M-She-U”. Of course, many people use the term M-She-U in a positive light now, celebrating the fact that after nearly a decade, women are finally leading Marvel films and television series. Sadly, you can’t go on social media to talk about women-led Marvel projects without running into someone who thinks that it’s the downfall of society or less seriously, “cringe”.
She-Hulk: Attorney At Law has made a point to provide commentary on how women are treated in every day life, whether people (men) want to admit it. In Episode 1, Jennifer is approached outside of a bar by a group of men who, even after she made it clear she was not interested in talking to them, continued to talk to her and follow her under the guise of “just being friendly”. Often times, women are put into these situations where men think just like that; they aren’t doing anything wrong, they’re just trying to talk; despite it being made clear that the woman is not interested.
They will follow women and intimidate them in an attempt to get attention and, unfortunately, it can often end in violence. Later in the episode, when she and her cousin, Bruce Banner, are talking about tolerating stress and regulating her emotions in order to be able to control her transformations into She-Hulk, Jen explains that she’s able to control her anger “all the time”. She explains how she stays calm while being cat-called or men explaining (mansplaining, let’s be honest) her own area of expertise. She makes a point to say that if she doesn’t, she’ll be called emotional, or difficult, or even murdered which she sadly isn’t overexaggerating about.
Real Responses to ‘She-Hulk’
The response to this, while many women were happy that they were being heard and their experiences were being shared in a show like this, other people complained that they didn’t want real-life complaints in their superhero television show. That they “hear enough of it”. If that’s not a problem in of itself, I don’t know what is. They also complained that Jennifer was too whiny, as if they weren’t proving her right.
In the comics, She-Hulk is famously self-aware with her fourth wall breaks and that trait is brought over into She-Hulk: Attorney At Law with Jennifer Walters occasionally making comments to the audience but the self-awareness has also been incorporated into the show in a meta-fashion. In the beginning of Episode 3, Jennifer breaks the fourth wall to explain that the show isn’t a “cameo of the week” type of show (despite appearances from Bruce Banner, Emil Blonsky, and Wong) and to “remember whose show this actually is,” which is a subtle call-out to those who are more interested in seeing these characters rather than She-Hulk herself and something we may have to circle back to when Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil finally makes his appearance in the show.
After this scene in Episode 3, there are a few clips from different news outlets which leads us to a YouTube-like video being played of a man in a car, saying, “They took the Hulk’s manhood away, but then gave it to a woman?” followed by comments below the video such as, “Why are you turning every superhero into a girl? No one asked for that!”. It then moves to a montage of different social media where we see things such as “Team He-Hulk” which, to me, is hilarious because it’s not even exaggerating what these people come up with online. And, no, maybe it all doesn’t necessarily make sense in the context of the MCU world but I think we can forgive that with the self-awareness of the show. There’s nothing wrong with a little social commentary.
Would you believe me if I said the exact same people who have spent week after week spewing this kind of nonsense under the guise of criticism are the same people who are now angry about being called out? I know, right? Totally unbelievable, unpredictable, never saw it coming. It’s as if the point smacked them in the face and they still managed to miss it.
There’s nothing wrong with having criticism of a show or the MCU in general, there is plenty to be critical of, but when your criticism is laden with sexism, it’s invalidated and nothing you say will be taken seriously. Women in the MCU aren’t going anywhere and women aren’t going to shut up and stop talking about their experiences because YOU don’t like it or because it makes YOU feel uncomfortable. It’s the world we live in so suck it up and deal with it and you know, maybe try a little empathy next time.
She-Hulk: Attorney At Law airs Thursdays on Disney+.
