Hannah Docter-Loeb

watching wonderwoman as a washingtonian: what ww84 gets right (and wrong) about d.c.

written by hannah docter-loeb

MOVIES ALWAYS GET WASHINGTON D.C.

WRONG. I remember watching Marvel’s Captain America: Winter Soldier, a movie supposedly based in the District. The opening shots are filmed at the Lincoln Memorial, the fight scene at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge seems legit, and the police cars resemble the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, but the streets give it away. Almost all of the filming, aside from a few shots here and there, was done in Cleveland.

This isn’t unusual for movies and T.V. shows. Certain “postcard” shots are taken in D.C., but much of the rest is filmed elsewhere, occasionally recognizable by the tall skyscrapers that would violate the Height Act if they were actually in the city. Much of Netflix’s House of Cardsis filmed 40 minutes away, in Baltimore. Aaron Sorkin’s West Wingwas shot on sound stages in California, with a tiny bit of D.C. footage sprinkled in. Other than a couple of scenes in the actual Smithsonian and at the Lincoln Memorial, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was filmed in Canada. Even the 2017 historical political thriller The Post was not filmed in its namesake city.

So why don’t many films and series actually film in D.C.? A quick Google search gave me some answers.

A lot of it has to do with the city’s

unique laws. Following 9/11, D.C. established a Special Flight Rules Area, prohibiting any unmanned aircrafts from flying within a 15-mile radius of Reagan National Airport. And as Associated Press’s Ashrah Khalil lays out, film crews need to contend not only with the local Metropolitan Police for permits, but with the National Parks service police, the United States Capitol Police, and the Secret Service. While I tend to prefer Marvel Universe movies, watching WW84 ignited my D.C. pride (pun intended). Although I had missed out on seeing it filmed firsthand––my family witnessed Gal Gadot soaring over Pennsylvania Avenue––it was quite exciting

But in 2016, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser instituted the District of Columbia Film, Television and Entertainment Rebate Fund, a tax rebate program that incentivizes filming in the city by allowing productions that spend more than $250,000 filming to apply for a rebate of up to 35% of taxable expenditures. The same program also encouraged production and crews to hire residents as a way to support the local community. It was likely this initiative that allowed the Wonder Woman sequel to film in the city starting in June 2018.

to see the city I love onscreen, and pretty accurately depicted. I enjoyed seeing Diana Prince (Gadot) and Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) trying to navigate the Metro escalator at what seems to be a suspiciously clean L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station (though the Green Line didn’t exist in 1984). There were great shots of the Old Post Office Tower, far enough that you can’t see the Trump Hotel lettering that tarnishes the once beautiful

building. I even caught a glimpse of my old bus route, along Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Not to mention, the fact that Diana lives at the Watergate Complex––the building where the famed scandal of the same name took place in the 1970s––is quite amusing.

That’s not to say that there are no inaccuracies in the film. Pennsylvania Avenue was not as bustling or developed as it is portrayed in the film. In 1984, the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) had just barely started developing the promenade into a more commercial and residential area—in fact, my grandparents were some of the first to move into Pennsylvania Avenue’s Market Square West apartment building in 1991. In one part of the film, Diana and Steve admire Roy Liechtenstein’s Brushstroke at the Hirshhorn Museum, which wouldn’t be acquired by the museum until about 20 years later, in 2003. But perhaps the largest inaccuracy is evident in the racial makeup of the people in the background. The film’s director, Patty Jenkins, tried her best to accurately portray D.C. by recreating old shops and using historically accurate cars––many of which were brought into the city just for the film. However, as many have pointed out, Jenkins fails to take into account the city’s racial diversity at the time. Although D.C. city is no longer the “Chocolate City” it used to be––currently about 46% of the D.C. population is Black––D.C. used to be a majority Black city. From the 1960s to the 1970s, the city’s Black population grew from 53.9% to 71.1%. The 1980 census reported that Black people made up 70.3% of the population in 1980, just four years before Wonder Woman is supposedly set.

That’s not to say that the area around where most Wonder Woman scenes were filmed were predominantly Black at the time. Like many movies based in Washington, most of the shots are of Georgetown and downtown D.C. In the 1980s and nowadays, most residents of these areas were indeed white. While I understand that it’s a superhero movie and that most of the action needs to take place in the center of the city, D.C. is far more than its landmarks and monuments––it is and always has been about the people. To have a majority white group of extras is an erasure of the city’s racial makeup, and reputation as one of the Blackest cities, at the time.

Jenkins’s portrayal of D.C. is a huge step in the right direction; however, there is still work to be done to give D.C. the accurate representation it deserves—not just in Congress, but in the media.