Monday, August 12, 2024

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

 The story of the thrupel who created the most successful female comic book character of all time, Wonder Woman. Professor William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) and his wife psychologist Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Rebecca Hall) co-creators of the polygraph machine, were joined by their Harvard teaching assistant Olivia Bryne (Bella Heathcote), the niece of Planed Parenthood founder Margret Sanger, in a three way emotional and sexual partnership that produced four children (two by each woman). 

Elizabeth and Oliva stayed together for 43 years after Marston's death from cancer in 1947, Oliva would pass aged 86 in 1990 while Elizabeth died three years later at the age of 100. The movie chronicals the three's relationship and how William based various aspects of the Wonder Woman character on aspects of their life together, including a bondage fetish along with the polygraph birthing the "lasso of truth". 

They were an odd bunch even by today's standards, but they managed to make their relationship a reasonably functional one. Williams DISC theory of interpersonal relationships (dominance, inducement, submission and compliance) comes across as pseudoscience now, but he really seemed to believe in it. ***

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