A wonderful birth
Wonder Woman was born of a threesome, the polyamorous love of one man and two women and their belief that this comicbook hero could heal the world.
That’s the sensationalistic summary of “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” a film that opened Friday and explores the lurid genesis of the Wonder Woman character.
But focusing on that detail is selling the film, and the story, quite short. Because there are two major things happening with this movie, each provocative and enticing.
The first is that creative birth of a comic-book superhero who has become box-office mana from the gods, thanks to this year’s summer blockbuster “Wonder Woman.” After seven decades, the iconic heroine is finally getting her time in the spotlight as the most powerful woman on the planet. With “Marston,” we finally get to see the surprising but sensible manifestation of her from the mind of a brilliant but bizarre man — William Moulton Marston.
The second thing is all about what informed both the creation of Wonder Woman and this movie, the march of honest love and hushed truth against the dampening cloak of accepted social norms.
You see, as much as this film shares the birth of a hero whose subtextual purpose is to liberate the biases and constrictions of social standards, it’s also about living in the contained tyranny of those social standards.
Because the man who created the most celebrated woman of 2017 was in love with two women at the same time, living with them under the same roof. These women, whom he credited with inspiration for Wonder Woman, were also in love with each other, caring for the children they shared. And in the American era tucked between two world wars and beginning to hide behind the false purity of white picket fences, that living situation just wasn’t congruent with the so-called American Dream.
Though the fallout of such a lifestyle being exposed becomes a catalyst in this film, the beauty of this movie isn’t just the fair treatment of an unconventional love story, or the unpacking of a man often damned by history as a “weirdo.” It’s the belief that Marston, who also created the technology used in lie detectors, truly believed Wonder Woman would save the future by teaching young men to believe in peace and gender equality.
“Yes, he really thought that,” says Angela Robinson, the film’s director. “They wanted to save the world with his ideas. It was literal. … He knew men would never give up their power voluntarily, so he created Wonder Woman to psychologically train a generation of boys and men to love and respect a powerful woman.
“She wasn’t created to be a superhero; he called it psychological propaganda, literally.”
Given the inertia of change and a current climate that still has men in power viewing women as lesser than, there’s probably an argument to be made that Marston’s efforts failed. And yet, maybe not. Case in point: Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman” movie.
“You’ve never seen anything like it, literally, on film, that much screen time dedicated to this superwoman. It’s a worldwide phenomenon,” Robinson says. “The ideas that Marston talked about … she’s going to the front to stop the war, she doesn’t get why all the men are fighting. It does have the power to resonate. That’s what I like to do in my work, push forward to try to make the world a better place.”
So will Robinson’s movie make the world a better place? Probably not. It’s beautifully shot, poignantly romantic and just provocative enough with elements of bondage and polyamory to steal your interest throughout the 108 minutes.
But the messages contained in the film? Those could have some effect on the world. As more interest builds in Wonder Woman, more people are curious about the man who made her, and the woman who gave her form.
That’s what happened to Robinson, a lifelong Wonder Woman fan who first read about Marston in a Wonder Woman coffee-table book, then devoured any information on the Harvard psychology professor who pioneered DISC theory — a way of identifying predictable actions and personality traits.
DISC is an acronym for dominant, influence, steadiness, compliant. In short, it means that in a relationship there will be people or situations where dominant personalities prevail by “convincing” the other party to become compliant.
The scenes in which Luke Evans, as Marston, explains DISC theory play out like foreshadows of what’s to come. Smitten coeds are rapt in his words while he discusses why they’re in such a state — without saying as much. To his side, sitting on a windowsil, is his wife, Elizabeth, brilliantly portrayed by Rebecca Hall as a hyper-intelligent instructor whose mouth is the only thing bigger than her intellect. She’s also a reminder of the times, how a woman of that era can never be an equal of a man in the sphere of higher learning.
“A lot of the dialectic in the film is between fantasy and reality; in a lot of ways, Elizabeth is our way through the story. She’s the only one who’s a realist,” Robinson says.
Which is why she’s apprehensive when Marston wants to invite their teaching assistant Olive into their relationship — not because she doesn’t have feelings for Olive (played by Bella Heathcote) — she does — but because Elizabeth realizes the costs of such a union.
Robinson’s film follows those costs, a seemingly domino effect that tilts toward the creation of Wonder Woman.
“I wanted to tell a very organic love story that didn’t shy away from the aspects of their sexuality,” Robinson says. “For all the scenes, I geared them around DISC theory. The scene where Olive and Elizabeth first meet is setting up dynamics and foreplay … . I think of the lie-detector scenes as about sex, and the sex scenes about freedom and love and being who they want to be.”
And in the midst of it all, and the creation story of a superheroine, are elements of sensual bondage and role playing.
Robinson calls it a “positive portrayal of kink.”
“It was important to me that it comes from a female gaze.”
Which it does, fittingly for a year ruled by Wonder Woman.
Speaking of, does Robinson have dreams of seeing this film launch her into the director’s chair for a “Wonder Woman” sequel?
“Oh, I don’t know. I think Patty’s on it.”