It is well known that the initial Wonder Woman comics championed the equality of women, restorative justice, and love. Less known are the charges of sadomasochism and homoeroticism against Wonder Woman which critics said came from the highly erotic and unconventional life of its author. The film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women attempts to portray that unconventional life and connect it to the thematic undertones of the early 1940s Wonder Woman comics.
We first find Marston sullenly following a band of suburban families going door-to-door collecting comic books. The scene culminates with these families jovially tossing the comics into a fire as Marston stands at the group’s periphery with the glow of the flames illuminating his disdainful scowl. Next we find Marston in a bleakly lit office, sitting at a table. Adjacent to him is a leader of the Child Study Association who begins to hold Marston over a fire of interrogation aimed at Marston’s private life and his comics. As Marston begins to answer her questions, his brief, reflective pauses occasion flashbacks which establish the social context from which his comics came.
This prologue invites audiences to associate the public scrutiny of the Wonder Woman comics to the private critique of William Marston’s psychological ideologies and relational life, i.e. to attack one is to attack the other. Indeed, to even understand one you need the other. Therefore, as the interrogation continues, so do the flashbacks. In these flashbacks we meet the “wonder women” – Elizabeth Marston and the teacher’s assistant Olive Byrne. Elizabeth is a fierce academic and bold feminist who is constantly criticizing and psychoanalyzing people and institutions. Olive is an inquisitive, well-mannered sorority girl at Radcliffe College, the female coordinate school of the all-male Harvard.
Olive allows the erudite couple to secretly observe the social dynamics of her sorority wherein the Marstons find support for William’s modified D.I.S.C theory (dominance, inducement, submission, compliance) of human behavior. William Marston believes that humans best flourish when they submit to loving authorities, seeing women as the ideal examples of both loving authority and submission. As the three grow closer professionally, their romantic desires for each other also increase which is affectively captured in the lie detector montage wherein each step of progress in their invention is coupled with a demonstrable increase of romantic interest. Their polyamorous relationship becomes the psychological cornerstone from which Dr. Marston and his “Wonder Women” critique societal norms and hope for a more authentic and fluid way of being human.
Their society, however, does not share the same hopes and quickly dismantles Elizabeth’s chance at an academic career, forces William out of Harvard, and irrevocably brands all three “perverts.” Forced out of the public spheres, Marston, Elizabeth, and Olive choose to develop their relationship in private and fetishized ways. Frustrated that he cannot explicitly articulate where his feminist and progressive social ideals come from, Marston decides to portray his psychological and sexual praxis through comic book panels and reach “the heart of America.” At this point, the flashbacks chronologically “catch up” with the interrogation scene.
While the two storylines eventually intertwine, the content and themes of each do not, which is unfortunate given the filmmakers’ early intentions of connecting Marston’s life to the themes of his comics. The film’s overall portrayal of William Marston’s relationship to his comics is extremely unbalanced. While emotionally and intellectually invested in Wonder Woman at the beginning and end of the film, the flashback scenes make his journey into comics feel reluctant and forced.
It’s clear where the sexually suggestive images in Wonder Woman come from, but less clear is how William and Elizabeth’s feminist ideologies translate through the suggestive material. I could draw a connection between Marston’s unequivocal belief in the equality of women and their essentially superior characteristics, but the film in no way demonstrates how he made that connection. At one point in the film, William Marston claims that Wonder Woman was “his love and his life.” Yet the prominence the film gives the polyamorous relationship between the three protagonists suggests that Elizabeth and Olive were his life. The film would have been better had it done without the prologue and interrogation scenes, which in no substantial way are supported by the flashback scenes (and vice versa)
The film audaciously probes society’s “normative” categories for human sexuality and gender roles. We could learn from its empathetic framing of relationships and desires we do not understand. As opposed to running away from emotions that scare us, writer/director Angela Robinson and crew offer a romantic, biopic that embraces emotion. Unfortunately, the convoluted plot detracts from the film’s provocative material.