In Ong's 1945 article, he first discusses Superman comic books and Superman as character (pp. 36-37). But Ong then turns his attention to Wonder Woman comic books and Wonder Woman as a character (pp. 36-40). However, Ong does not explicitly name the Harvard psychologist, with a Harvard Ph.D., who created Wonder Woman comic books, William Moulton Marston. Nor does Ong explicitly refer to Marston's article "What Comics Do to Your Children" in Your Life (October 1939; Lepore, 2014/2015, p. 415n.44, does not provide the page range). In Lepore's 2014/2015 book The Secret History of Wonder Woman, she says, "He [William Moulton Marston] wrote an article called 'Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics.' It was published early in 1944 in American Scholar [1944: pp. 35-44], the journal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society" (Lepore, 2014/2015,p. 251).
Subsequently, Lepore says, "In the fall of 1939, he [William Moulton Marston] wrote an article for Your Life called 'What Comics Do to Your Children.' His defense of comics was not unlike his defense of pornography, in that anonymous letter to the editor of the New York World in 1927: on behalf of his family, 'I like comics,' Marston wrote. 'I like them the same way and for the same reasons my youngsters like them and I know that they produce in me the same general effects they cause in children.' They allowed him to fulfill his wishes. Marston loved nothing so much as fantasy" (quoted in Lepore, 2014/2015, pp. 314-315). Granted, comics involve fantasy, and they obviously also involve images.
In "Epilogue: Great Hera! I'm Back!" in The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014/2015, pp. 281-297), Lepore brings her readers up to the 1970s. It turns out that Gloria Steinem (born on March 25, 1934) was fond of reading Marston's Wonder Woman comic books when she was a girl growing up, and she planned to feature Wonder Woman on the cover of the first issue of the new Ms. Magazine in July 1972. In this way, the character Wonder Woman became part of the feminist movement in the 1970s.
In addition, Lepore notes that in 1975, "ABC launched The New Original Wonder Woman. Set in the 1940s, it was based very closely on Marston's comics, as was its theme song," Lepore says (p. 290). Lepore even quotes the lyrics of the catchy theme song of the television show. "The star of The Original Wonder Woman was Lynda Carter, a beauty pageant winner who'd represented the United States in the Miss World contest in 1972" (p. 291).
In Lepore's wonderfully revealing "Afterword: The Hyde Detector" in the 2015 paperback edition of The Secret History of Wonder Woman (pp. 299-321), she highlights Marston's close relationship with his mother. Lepore reports, "(Marston's father died on January 17, 1923)" (2015, p. 320). "He [Marston] was an only child who came to his parents late in their lives" (Lepore, 2015, p. 302). "He [Marston] was, all along, his mother's boy" (p. 302). "She [Marston's mother] wrote him every week, and he wrote back, sending word, in letter after letter, of his accomplishments, like a schoolboy. Did Marston do everything he did for his mother's approval? Had I missed that entirely? (p. 304).
Yes, Lepore had indeed missed Marston's significant relationship with his mother as another significant relationship with a woman that influenced Marston's visionary feminism.
Now, the tall (5'9") busty young Lynda Carter (born in 1951), with body measurements of 37-27-37, and weighing 122 lbs., had a gloriously beautiful body, which she showed off in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume over the course of the four years that the Wonder Woman television series aired (1975-1979). In 2024 - around 50 years after the inception of my mid-life crisis in late February - early March 1974 -- I watched the DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series, and I became infatuated with busty young Lynda Carter's gloriously beautiful body in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume.
I was so infatuated with her that I felt mildly euphoric for about ten weeks - I stopped feeling mildly euphoric a few days before the election on November 5, 2024. But my incredibly strong infatuation with the busty young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman persists uninterrupted to this day, I am delighted to report. Clearly the image of her on the big-screen television in the living rooms of my home in Duluth, Minnesota, on which I watched the DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series struck a deep and responsive chord in my psyche - and I look forward to receiving whatever further creative responses that my psyche may produce in my ego-consciousness.
You see, based mostly on my own recent experiences in late 2024, I have a fundamentally positive view of the great potential for humankind of images being received by our psyches and responded to by psychic materials floating to ego-consciousness and being processed productively by the recipients of the psychic materials. Yes, I also see mom-son porn videos on the internet as sources of such images that may evoke deep psychic resonances in certain male viewers' psyches. Yes, I see all forms of images as connected with what Havelock (1963) refers to as imagistic thinking (in primary oral cultures - to use Ong's terminology). However, I also recognize that not all images are images of positive events. In addition, I recognize that not all materials floating to ego-consciousness from the unconscious depths of our psyches are positive materials. In this respect, I recommend what is known in Ignatian spirituality as discernment of spirits. In the final analysis, when we are processing materials out of the unconscious in our ego-consciousness, we must exercise discernment of spirits and adjudicate the positive or negative potential of the materials and of possibly acting of the materials.
Now, my protracted experience of feeling mildly euphoric for about ten weeks in late 2024 prompted me to remember certain events earlier in my life involving my short-lived but memorable infatuation with a young woman in February-March 1974 - which she ended before the end of March 1974. This march down memory lane brought back vivid memories of certain events that have influenced my life ever since then - vivid memories that then prompted me in 2024 not only to recall them but to want to talk about them with others, which I did.
In 20/20 hindsight, I today see my feeling mildly euphoric for about ten weeks in late 2024 as a great spiritual consolation (in the terminology of Ignatian spirituality), and I now see all the memories and certain other activities associated with my experience of feeling mildly euphoric as great blessings in my life.
In any event, my incredibly strong infatuation with the busty young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman culminated in my appreciative article "Young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" in New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication in the Fall 2024 issue.
Now, photos of the busty young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman are available for twenty-first century fans of Lynda Carter to purchase at Amazon.com. Because I am an ardent fan of the busty young Lynda Carter in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume, I have bought four photos of her, and I have framed them and displayed them in my home office in the back bedroom of my home in Duluth, Minnesota. As an ardent fan, I am infatuated with the busty young Lynda Carter's spectacularly beautiful body in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume to this day.
Now, when we consider ourselves to be a fan of another person, we are infatuated with that person to one degree or another, even though the other person may not even know us and may not know of our infatuation with her or him -- as the case may be. For example, I became infatuated with Father Ong as a teacher in the first course (of five courses) I took from him at Saint Louis University in the fall semester of 1964 - at which time I bought a copy of his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies, and I began reading some of his essays -- above and beyond the ones that he had assigned us to read in it. I also bought copies of certain books he mentioned in class, and I read them on my own later on. For example, I bought and later read Albert B. Lord's 1960 book The Singer of Tales and Eric A. Havelock's 1963 book Preface to Plato - and if memory serves, I read them in the summer of 1965. In any event, my infatuation with Father Ong continues to this day. I could even say that he has been the greatest love of my life.
However, I should also say for the record that in the 1960s I was also infatuated with President John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1960s, I also initially became infatuated with the work of C. G. Jung, when I read the paperback edition of Victor White's Jungian book God and the Unconscious.
Just to be clear here, I have not been seriously infatuated with any girl or woman in my life as ardently as I am ardently infatuated with the busty young Lynda Carter in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume. But my ardent infatuation with the busty young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the 2024, when I was 80 years old, was the first time in my life that I became infatuated with a beautiful Hollywood actress. As I watched the busty young Lynda Carter perform in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume in the DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series on the big-screen television in my living room in Duluth, Minnesota, she evoked a deep response in me.
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