William Moulton Marston Quotes

If children will read comics [...] isn't it advisable to give them some constructive comics to read? [...] The wish to be super strong is a healthy wish, a vital compelling, power-producing desire. The more the Superman-Wonder Woman picture stories build this innner compulsion by stimulating the child's natural longing to battle and overcome obstacles, particularly evil ones, the better the better chance your child has for self-advancement in the world. Certainly there can be no argument about the advisability of strengthening the fundamental human desire, too often buried beneath stultifying divertisments and disguises, to see good overcome evil.

A woman character without allure would be like a Superman without muscle.

Oh yes, but not until women control men. Wonder Woman – and the trend toward male acceptance of female love power, which she represents, indicates that the first psychological step has actually been taken. Boys young and old satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy for Wonder Woman it means they're longing for a beautiful exciting girl who's stronger than they are. These simple, highly imaginative picture stories satisfy longings that ordinary daily life thwarts and denies. Superman and the army of male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaboratedly disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.

The talkies are the only art that would attract Leonardo da Vinci were he alive to-day. It is the only art that excites a scientist's curiosity, the only art that challenges the engineer, the only art that offers the great artist a medium capable of expressing every human thought and emotion, as well as the pure aesthetic effects of color and music. It is a baby giant, as clumsy as all babies are. Its noises are, we grieve to admit, often as inartistic as the squalling of a baby. But squalling babies have a way of growing up into soft-voices women and great singers. This is why we, the authors, have gladly played the role of nursemaids. We don't know what the baby will be doing and saying when it grows up. But we are sure it will make its mark in the world.

A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it train people seeing it to react abnormally.

The task of depicting character in the sound picture is, in one sense, far easier than in the silent picture. The latter, being essentially pantomime clarified with titles, is cruelly restricted as a medium of depicting human nature. Few of us express ourselves in postures and gestures. Our natural manner finds itself freer and surer in spoken words and, most of all, in decisive acts involving such forms of language as promises, commands, prohibitions, and so on, all of which readily lends itself to reproduction in talk and scene combined. To this extent, character drawing in sound pictures seems to offer pretty much the same opportunities and difficulties as in the drama of the Broadway stage. But a closer study brings out the somewhat startling fact that a sound picture, skillfully handled, can reveal more of a personality than any other device of art or science. The actor on the stage can talk, gesticulate, and move to and fro; but there his powers end. The actor of the talking screen can do all of these things and then carry on his subjective life in the presence of the spectators. We can show pictorially his memories, his fears, his hopes, and his cunning schemes. We can reveal his clenched fist in a close-up. We can show the beads of perspiration on his brow, as he trembles with suppressed rage.

Appetite emotion must first, last and always be adapted to love.

The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity.

People go to moving pictures to be made to weep or laugh, to be happy or unhappy as they watch what hap pens to the screen characters before them. They become completely absorbed in the screen action. They follow the story, willy-nilly. And in so doing, they are forced to feel the emotion/ aroused by the dramatic situations.Pictures makes millions of people, day after day, feel glad or sad, courageous or fearful, righteous or angry. He, can do this, that is to say, within limits, and these limits largely depend upon the story of the picture. If the producer has a powerful enough story, these millions for get themselves and their little joys and woes and escape into the scenes on the screen before them. Small wonder then, that, with such stupendous power over the thinking and feeling of myriads of men, women, and children, the moving picture producer is willing, even eager, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars — or even a cool mil lion or so — to secure and produce a picture for this world of movie-goers. But the story selected must itself have power enough to arouse the emotions of an audience. Excellent photography and good acting can help to carry successfully any story, but they can never put emotional meaning into a story that is built without emotional appeal.

In the spring of the freshman year, the sophmore girls held what was called "The Baby Party" which all freshmen girls were compelled to attend. At this affair, the freshmen girls were questioned as to their misdemeanors and punished for their disobedience and rebellions. The baby party was so name because the freshman girls were required to dress as babies.

The picture story fantasy cuts loose the hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender spots of universal human desires and aspirations. Comics speak, without qualm or sophistication to the innermost ears of the wishful self.

Tolerant people are the happiest, so why not get rid of prejudices that hold you back?

Comics, they say, are not literature – adventure strips lack artistic form, mental substance, and emotional appeal to any but the most moronic of minds. Can it be that 100,000,000 Americans are morons? Possibly so; but there seems to be a simpler explanation. Nine humans out of ten react first with their feelings rather than with their minds; the more primitive the emotion stimulated, the stronger the reaction. Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts.

Men actually submit to women now, they do it on the sly with a sheepish grin because they're ashamed of being ruled by weaklings. Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves.

Not even the church is so powerfully equipped to serve the public psychologically as is the motion picture company.