So Wonder Woman, breaker of box office records, fortifier of women's hearts, is a curator at the Louvre.
At first, as Diana Prince walked through the courtyard of the Musée du Louvre, I thought they might just be setting up one of the popular "smash the fancy landmark" action sequences, or perhaps that someone had screwed up and not realized that I. M. Pei's pyramids did not exist during the World War I-era in which the bulk of the movie is set.
But then you see Diana at her desk, surrounded by glass cases full of beautiful artifacts - then only seemingly similar to Wonder Woman's Amazonian tools - that befit the collection of the world's greatest museum. And the purpose of showing her in the present is the delivery of a photograph of her and her friends during World War I that Bruce Wayne has unearthed for her safe-keeping, which is a perfectly sensible plot point to stage in a museum.
I said, after I left the movie on Sunday, that Wonder Woman may be the best conventional superhero movie I've ever seen, and I stand by that. Like most other female viewers, seeing a woman superhero on screen provoked a cocktail of emotions. Yet her "day job" in the present-day, which I assume will continue on for the Justice League movies set in the present, bothers me for two reasons.
First, it perpetuates the idea that art history is an unattainable, luxury discipline and that a career based in its study is available only to those with special circumstances and skills. (What I wouldn't give to bring Hestia's Lasso of Truth to an academic conference here or there.)
Second, you might actually need to be Wonder Woman to become a curator of ancient artifacts at the Louvre. I don't mean this to contradict my first point - I mean simply that there's no better person to curate a collection of Amazon warrior artifacts than someone who has actually used them. There's also little room in that model for an enthusiast of Amazon warrior artifacts to learn enough and argue effectively enough to gain equivalent prestige.
I wonder if Diana Prince will still be a Louvre curator in future films and if it could play a bigger role in the story at any time. I'm going to keep watching, but I hope her day job doesn't turn out to be just a flimsy character trait.