Wonderblogging: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

A happy confluence of events brought me to catch Professor Marston and the Wonder Women tonight. It’s a biopic concerning the creator of Wonder Woman and the women he loved. If a period piece kinky romance about an MFF triad, psychological theory, and life influencing art sounds like something you’d be into, check it out![1] Granted, I’m biased.

*looks at title card* Yeah.

[1] So I’ll preface everything by saying I do not approve of the behavior in this film: faculty shouldn’t pursue romantic or sexual relationships with their students or TA/RAs. And if that’s a dealbreaker for one’s enjoyment of a story, well, that deal is broke.

Anyway, this is the story of Harvard/Radcliffe professor of psychology William Moulton Marston, his wife and co-researcher Elizabeth, and Olive Byrne, who is by turns student, employee, friend, and lover to both. It covers their professional, personal, and social development, which are intimately intertwined for both good and ill.

Something to emphasize is that this film doesn’t have Wonder Woman as its primary focus. She’s certainly there, in a lot of ways, but it’s not about her.

Primarily, Wonder Woman serves as a key component in two of the three frames the movie employs.

The first and most all-encompassing is Marston’s DISC theory of psychology—that many aspects of psychology, emotions, and relationships fall into categories of Domination, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. Besides the story as a whole serving as an illustration, various scenes are framed with a flashback to Marston discussing one of the categories in his class both to exposit the concept itself and to prompt the viewer for an illustration thereof coming soon after—or to serve as closing punctuation for one that just happened.

Then there’s the inquisition of Marston by people from a puritanical interest group who want to remove the BDSM, homosexual, and violent content (and more) from the Wonder Woman comic, or else force a Congressional investigation. Like the first, this is interspersed throughout the movie in (chiefly) flash-forward scenes, which emphasize plot, thematic, or emotional beats in the main narrative. In a couple rarer cases, this is done with Wonder Woman comics themselves, for a notably different tone. (I should note as well that I found the music quite effective in its analogous role.)

Lastly there’s the implicit framing that is Wonder Woman iconography or thematic elements showing up during the narrative itself. There I think the key thing isn’t so much the connection to that part of his work in itself, but highlighting what was important enough in his life, personally and as it related to his psychological and political theorizing, to be incorporated. And yeah, there’s kind of an Easter egg element to it, too.

Earlier on, the lie detector served something of a similar role. It wasn’t so much a frame for the story as a plot point (their work in inventing it) and as a plot device: it generated drama through revealing truth, and at times served as a comedic element through the build-up and release of tension combined with just what questions got asked.

Besides the broad motifs, I generally found the script to cohere well, with little things said or done getting paid off later in a big way. My personal favorite was when William described how, together, Elizabeth and Olive were the perfect woman, and later, when he’s in the hospital, they enter through the door as a single silhouette which then separates into the two of them before resolving into focus and direct lighting.

I found that the characters complemented each other well, and as is probably appropriate in this kind of thing the differences in how each relates to the others is a key way of developing them.

William isn’t the same thing to Elizabeth as he is to Olive: Elizabeth is in some senses more secure in her relationship with him, but at times there’s a real element of jealousy there. And not just that, but envy of what he can have as a man—a recurring thing here is that she can’t/couldn’t get a degree from Harvard because she’s a woman—and the recognition that she’ll probably always be in his shadow. At the same time, he as her co-researcher is her connection to the world she desires to be in professionally, and later more principally as her husband he’s her connection to the relatively safe real world she feels she needs to live in. Olive, for her part, is a bit starstruck by both him and Elizabeth, and though likewise envious of the entitlement inherent to William as a man seems to be more focused on the freedom than the power or standing per se.

For his part, William is the most action-oriented, the most open to taking risks, the most cavalier. It’s part of his charm or charisma, while also a bit of a damning point because of course he is. He’s been in a different position his whole life, one where he has more room to be independent, more room to come back from a failure. And he never quite seems to grasp that he has that advantage vis-à-vis Elizabeth and Olive. Granted, some of it’s also his academic passion—which itself gets tied up with his dick a fair amount.

And generally speaking, I thought they all had good chemistry together, for scenes not just of pure romance but the more trying drama corollaries as well.

One thing to bear in mind is this is more William’s story than Elizabeth’s, and more hers than Olives. These aren’t cavernous gaps, but they’re there. I think Olive got a bit less development than Elizabeth, and of course there’s a certain centrality to William in the comics work that goes beyond what it was with the strictly academic work earlier. I do wish that Olive’s fiancée had been a larger part of the movie (or, for that matter, her sorority or job later on), but those scenes were fine in themselves, and the distinct comparative lack of romantic chemistry between him and Olive was likewise appreciated.

All in all, though, no real complaints. Good story, I liked the characters, kink and sexuality were incorporated well aesthetically and thematically (which is particularly important since they’re inherent and indispensable to the narrative), and the multiple overlapping framing methods helped keep things interesting at all times. Again, I’m biased due to the inherent interest of it also being a biopic about the creator of one of my favorite characters, but if the genre’s right for you, I’d encourage checking it out, whether in theaters or at home after it becomes available.

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

Very intriguing to read. Thanks Icy. :)