GREAT MOMENTS IN INTERSECTIONALITY. It’s come to this: New Ant-Man film criticized for misrepresenting disabilities, falling back on ‘white science.’ Word salad alert:
Instead of helping Ava find a way to cope (and not necessarily eradicate) her disability, the film seeks to provide a cure. It does so with its own version of “white science,” a term coined by author Carol Clover in her psychoanalytic exploration of horror films, Men, Women, and Chainsaws. It refers to anything considered to be “Western traditional medicine,” usually dispensed or controlled by a white man. The quantum realm functions as this film’s white science, a magical but wholly scientific world discovered by Hank Pym. Once she is freed from the realm, Janet offers to save Ava by transferring her quantum energy into her. She lays her hands on Ava—a technique often associated with tent revival preachers who “cured” poor, afflicted people by touch—and saves the woman through scientific technology.
One could say Janet’s benevolence absolves Hank of his sins [of white privilege], or posits her as a white savior for this disabled woman of color, but it’s unclear whether any of that is directly coded into the film.
As Twitchy notes in response, “We think disabled audiences were there to see superheroes fantastically shrink and grow huge and blow stuff up and defeat the bad guys, but what do we know?”
Related: Identity Politics Totalitarianism.
And for your check-the-box retro needs, here’s A Guide to Properly Hating Old Movies.