51
BLACK
WIDOW’S
REVENGE
A character rooted in sexist
origins reclaims the narrative
By Eliana Dockterman
CultureBlack WidoW sauntered into mainstream
consciousness in 2010’s Iron Man 2. Not walked—
sauntered. Natasha Romanoff, the Russian agent
turned U.S. spy played by Scarlett Johansson,
first meets Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert
Downey Jr.) when he’s working out in a boxing ring
with his employee, played by Jon Favreau, the film’s
director. Favreau’s Happy Hogan condescendingly
offers to teach Natasha how to box, so she slips off
her high heels, slinks into the ring and immediately
kicks the man’s butt. That’s the joke: Surprise! This
unbelievably fit woman can fight.
But it’s the moment after Natasha handily beats
Happy that truly rankled fans. Stark turns to his as-
sistant turned girlfriend Pepper Potts, played by
Gwyneth Paltrow. “Who is she?” Tony asks. To which
Pepper replies, “Potentially a very expensive sexual-
harassment lawsuit, if you keep ogling her like that.”
Tony, after Googling for photos of Natasha in her un-
derwear, quips, “I want one.”
Victoria Alonso, executive vice president of pro-
duction at Marvel Studios, never liked the line.
“It bothered me then and it bothers me now,” says
Alonso, who was a co-producer of Iron Man 2. “I re-
member thinking, ‘She’s not a thing.’ But how apro-
pos: the world sees a sexy woman and thinks that be-
cause she is beautiful, that’s all she has to give.” The
scene feels like a relic of a pre-#MeToo Hollywood.
It was a different Hollywood, and certainly a dif-
ferent Marvel: for 10 years, more white men named
Chris headlined Marvel movies than women and ac-
tors of color combined. It took 17 movies for the Mar-
vel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to introduce a female