{"id":125161,"date":"2017-10-19T23:37:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T03:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=125161"},"modified":"2017-10-19T23:37:01","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T03:37:01","slug":"in-year-of-wonder-woman-the-remarkable-tale-of-her-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/10\/19\/in-year-of-wonder-woman-the-remarkable-tale-of-her-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"In year of Wonder Woman, the remarkable tale of her creation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Just<\/a>
Just months after Patty Jenkins’ \u201cWonder Woman\u201d became a worldwide box-office smash \u2014 making Jenkins the first female filmmaker to helm such a massive blockbuster \u2014 the story behind the lasso-wielding superhero has also landed on the big screen. (Photo<\/a>: Wonder Woman\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Superman and Batman were born, like brothers, in 1938 and 1939, respectively. But psychology professor William Moulton Marston had grander and more progressive aspirations for his comic creation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world,\u201d Marston said around the character’s launch in 1941.<\/p>\n

The female-empowerment ideals Marston intended Wonder Woman to espouse have perhaps \u2014 as plenty of recent events in Hollywood and elsewhere have attested \u2014 not advanced as much as he and his feminist wife and colleague Elizabeth Holloway would have hoped. But 76 years later, worldwide dominion has indeed arrived for Wonder Woman.<\/p>\n

Just months after Patty Jenkins’ \u201cWonder Woman\u201d became a worldwide box-office smash \u2014 making Jenkins the first female filmmaker to helm such a massive blockbuster \u2014 the story behind the lasso-wielding superhero has also landed on the big screen.<\/p>\n

Angela Robinson’s \u201cProfessor Marston and the Wonder Women,\u201d which Annapurna Pictures released in theatres last Friday, charts an origin story to beat them all: the creation of Wonder Woman by the free-thinking Marston (played by Luke Evans) and his unorthodox family. Marston lived with both Holloway (Rebecca Hall) and Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), a researcher who moved in with the couple in 1926. They were a threesome who harmoniously raised four children together.<\/p>\n

The Marstons were collectively influenced by early feminists and suffragettes. (Olive’s aunt, Margaret Sanger coined the phrase \u201cbirth control\u201d and opened the first birth-control clinic in the U.S.) Marston studied gender, behaviour and sexuality, and his studies later filtered into Wonder Woman. He brought bondage imagery to the early comics, for one. Wonder Woman’s lasso, which forces people to tell the truth, was a version of the lie-detector test Marston helped invent.<\/p>\n

When Robinson (\u201cD.E.B.S.\u201d \u201cHerbie: Fully Loaded,\u201d \u201cThe L Word\u201d) came across the back-story to the sole superhero to ever capture her heart, she was floored.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just blew my mind. I literally couldn’t believe the story,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cI became totally obsessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Robinson first encountered the Marstons, their story has been notably recounted by author Jill Lepore in \u201cThe Secret History of Wonder Woman.\u201d But the tale has, Robinson says, been a passion project for a decade \u2014 long before a \u201cWonder Woman\u201d movie was a reality.<\/p>\n

Hall was brought to Robinson’s project initially after she, herself, sought the rights to Lepore’s book. Robinson’s desire to make the film, Hall says, was overwhelming.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wanted to make a romance about three people filled with love and hope,\u201d says Hall. \u201cIt’s quite brave to try to make in some sense a conventional romance where you ask your audience to accept that the romance is legitimately happening between three people \u2014 and not only ask them to accept it, but to root for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Marston\u201d was shot last fall when Hillary Clinton was presumed by many to be on the cusp of the presidency. Robinson initially worried that the film’s ideas might be \u201cpasse\u201d by the time it came out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat struck me to begin with was how contemporary a story it is,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cThe Marstons were ahead of their time and they’re still ahead of their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 1937 press conference, Marston declared that women would one day rule the world. The Associated Press picked up the story, and articles ran nationwide reporting: \u201cFeminine rule declared fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson initially had mixed feelings about some of Marston’s teachings but she’s \u201ccome to love him,\u201d she says. What most won her over was Marston’s 1928 book \u201cEmotions of Normal People.\u201d Published while he was teaching at Columbia (and before disapproval of his family’s arrangement would damage his career), Marston argued that what many consider \u201cabnormal\u201d in relationships and sex is quite natural.<\/p>\n

\u201cI as a filmmaker came to a conclusion that this movie does, which is that he was on to a lot of stuff, and the core of his message was about love and being true to who you are,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cThe first line of ‘Emotions of Normal People’ is: ‘Are you normal?’ And that just slayed me. He himself was grappling with what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Audiences didn’t initially respond to the much lower budgeted, more lightly marketed \u201cProfessor Marston and the Wonder Women\u201d as eagerly on opening weekend quite like they did to Jenkins’ \u201cWonder Woman.\u201d (The film debuted poorly with $737,000 on about 1,200 screens.) But its makers believe strongly in the relevance of the story behind the superhero iconography.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir story seemed to be so metaphorically significant to so many other things, like the history of 20th century feminism, the changing ways we look at conventional relationships and family values,\u201d says Hall. \u201cThere’s just too much in this story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson says she was both deeply moved by Jenkins’ film and saddened that such a film \u2014 a big-budget release starring a woman, directed by a woman \u2014 remains an overwhelming rarity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like not just women but men are really desperate for new ideas, a new message \u2014 not the same old thing,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cIt’s the perfect time to examine the ideas and the ideals, the people who were behind this thing that we all grew up loving, but also in some ways taking for granted, not knowing that there’s this incredible love story and these radical free-thinkers who conjured her into being with their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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