Annons
Berlatsky: I don't think this agenda is very common in comics! At least not in the corporate superhero comics of the 1940s that Marston was working on. Most of the creators at that time were working class, often Jewish, and were coming out of a pulp milieu; they were mostly interested in making money and providing entertaining product.Marston on the other hand was a WASP and a former academic… and a big old crank, too. His vision of a matriarchal utopia is pretty well-known among folks who read those comics—he isn't exactly subtle about it—so I knew more or less going in. Reading more of his psychological theories and his academic work, I was surprised at how directly he believed comics could be propaganda. There's one great story where Wonder Woman's scientist friend Paul von Gunther projects images of Wonder Woman into the brains of iniquitous industrialists in order to get them to submit and become good supporters of the war effort. So the idea that images of Wonder Woman could make men (and women too!) submit to an erotic matriarchal utopia is something Marston promotes very directly in the comics.
Annons
Annons
I don't know that I'd thought about the comics in terms of healing directly. Marston intended the comics to be inspiring and reassuring for girls. He has a lot of sequences where he says directly: women can do anything! Women are better at sports than boys! Here, Wonder Woman will show all you girls how to perform fantastic feats while wearing chains, because you are all awesome (especially when wearing chains)!There's one issue where it's about how people resist the idea of women contributing to the war effort, and Marston explains that women working in the war effort is actually awesome and vital. I think he was making a very deliberate effort to encourage girls to see themselves as strong and capable and awesome. Gloria Steinem, for instance, took that to heart, and said it inspired her.
Annons
Annons
No, of course that was about healing from trauma and from sexual violence and reintegration. I think the comic was talking about the necessity or power of female/female relationships, and mother/daughter relationships, in healing from trauma. I'm just hesitant to say that the comics themselves would heal people. People's response to art is so individual. I'm sure Marston would like to think that the sympathetic representation of trauma could be healing.Would you say that the comics are meant to be instructional?
To some degree. It's certainly supposed to demonstrate the seriousness of sexual assault. It very much insists that listening to children when they say they've been assaulted is vital. And he absolutely wanted people to look to mothers as love leaders who would lead them on to utopia and healing.I mean, Marston's comics are always meant to be instructional. He called them propaganda.It's awkward to mix the kinky propaganda and the serious propaganda against child abuse, but that was one of Marston's gifts. And that mixture was reflected in his life as a therapist and a sex radical polyamorous kinkster…
He didn't actually work as a therapist,which may well have been for the best! He was a psychological researcher—and yes, his theories about how dominance and submission were "normal emotions" were definitely reflected in the comics. He was also a huckster; he worked on inventing the lie detector (which never actually worked, of course) and he'd then use the lie detector in ads for Gillette, I think. And he did stage performances with the lie detector. He was a big old kinky carny.
Annons
I would say that Marston's particular lesbian utopianism is… somewhat hard for non-cranks to credit. I do think that the stigmatization of homosexual desire, lesbian or gay, is bad for everyone though, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Marston especially felt that female/female friendships and female communities were important for society, both in supporting women and as an alternative to patriarchy. I think that that's true, and that acknowledging the homoerotic bonds in those communities as a potential source of pleasure is better than living in a state of paranoia and shame.Do you think comics can be effective propaganda? Did Wonder Woman "work"?
It's always hard to know what effect art has or doesn't have, isn't it? There are feminists, like Steinem and Trina Robbins, who talk about the way that Wonder Woman has inspired them. And I know another dominatrix or two who has said that they found the comic inspiring and titillating when they were young—so I think Marston would consider that a success.Marston would be at least provisionally pleased with the advances in women's rights and gay rights, and glad that Wonder Woman is still around and still a touchstone for feminism and for sex and sexuality too. We don't have the matriarchal utopia he wished for, but maybe he moved us a little closer to it than we would otherwise have been. I like to think so, anyway.Noah Berlatsky is the author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948. On March 23, he'll be giving a talk on Wonder Woman at the Institute for Public Knowledge in New York City.Follow Noah Berlatsky and Tara Burns on Twitter.