Lasso of Truth

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The Lasso of Truth is a fictional weapon wielded by DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira. It is usually referred to as the Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso and forces anyone it captures to obey and tell the truth. The lasso has sometimes been interpreted as a yoni symbol[citation needed], and with bondage and discipline ("B&D") practices.[citation needed]

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[edit] Origin

William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman but he also worked, in the period during and after World War I, on the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception while he was a doctoral student in the psychology department at Harvard University. This was the predecessor of the polygraph test. His wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, was a masters student at Radcliffe College and was also important to this research: "According to Marston’s son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marston’s wife, who suggested to him that 'When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb'".[1] Although Elizabeth is not listed as Marston’s collaborator in his early work, Lamb, Matte (1996), and others refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth’s work on her husband’s deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s (reproduced in Marston, 1938)."[2][3]

Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso was the direct result of their research.[4][1] In noting the correlation between it and the systolic blood-pressure test, Geoffry Bunn states:

“ Anyone caught in the lasso found it impossible to lie. And because Wonder Woman used it to extract confessions and compel obedience, the golden lasso was of course nothing less than a lie detector [...] Like the lie detector upon which it was modelled, Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso produced truth - and by implication justice and freedom too - through coercion. [5] ”

[edit] Later uses

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In the George Pérez version the Lasso was forged by the god Hephaestus from the Golden Girdle of Gaea that was once worn by Antiope, sister of Queen Hippolyta. Empowered by the Fires of Hestia, the Lasso forces anyone held by it to tell the absolute truth. The fires are said to even be able to cure insanity, as they did in the case of Ares, God of War, when he attempted to incite World War III. He renounced his plan when the Lasso showed him that such a war would destroy all life on Earth, including any potential worshippers he sought to gain from it.

The magic lasso has subsequently been shown to produce a wide array of effects. When battling the entity Decay, Wonder Woman used the lasso as a circuit between the earth and the monster, pumping the entity of death with life-giving energies that destroyed the creature. Wonder Woman has also used it to create a ring of protective fire around people to protect them from Circe's bestiamorphs. As the goddess of truth, Diana also used it to take memories of Donna Troy and restore her to life.

In later Post-Crisis comics, the power of truth was written as innate to Wonder Woman herself, with the Lasso merely a focus of that power. Storylines in the Morrison-era JLA comics depicted the lasso as an archetypal manifestation of universal truth, and, once broken, disrupted the underlying truth of reality itself. This allegorical interpretation is often ignored in later stories and by much of fandom, as the lasso was long established as magically unable to break, and was never before stated to be the ultimate representation of truth. During her adventures with the Justice League team of superheroes Diana eventually battled a villain named Amazo who was able to duplicate aspects of the lasso for his own use.

This lasso should not be confused with the lasso of the current Wonder Girl, Cassie Sandsmark. That lasso, given to her by Ares, has the power to shock a target with "Zeus' lightning" if Cassandra ropes her target and becomes angry with them.

In the Elseworlds tale Red Son, Wonder Woman was subdued and restrained in her own lasso by the Soviet terrorist incarnation of Batman. In order to free herself and rescue Superman from Lex Luthor's deadly red sun lamps, Wonder Woman snapped the cords of her "indestructible" lasso. The shock of the incident appeared to age Diana, leaving her grey-haired, frail, and unable to speak.

[edit] Television representations

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In the Super Friends animated series, the lasso possessed the ability to follow the telepathic commands of Wonder Woman, physically moving on its own to accomplish tasks. In Super Friends, Wonder Woman was typically displayed using the lasso as a tool for accomplishing feats of strength, leaving it unclear to what extent Wonder Woman herself possessed great strength or the lasso itself performed the feats.

The lasso features in the live-action Wonder Woman series. In season one the lasso had the power to compel those bound to tell the truth. Beginning with the second season, it also had the power to cause selective amnesia.

In the Justice League animated series, the lasso is only used as an exceptionally long, flexible, and unbreakable rope. In Justice League Unlimited however, Wonder Woman's lasso was officially portrayed as being able to compel the truth. This ability was finally unleashed in the episode "The Balance" by Wonder Woman's mother Queen Hippolyta who revealed that Diana had stolen the uniform before being told of its full capabilities. Upon touching the star on the tiara, various parts of the Wonder Woman costume began to temporarily glow such as the tiara, bracelets, belt and lasso. It was after this that Diana discovered that the lasso could compel truth. However, in the series, Diana only used the truth powers of the lasso once, on the demon Abnegazar to learn the location of Felix Faust, an event that occurred in the same episode.

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Lamb, Marguerite. "Who Was Wonder Woman? Long-ago LAW alumna Elizabeth Marston was the muse who gave us a superheroine." Boston University Alumni Magazine, Fall 2001
  2. ^ WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON, THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, AND WONDER WOMAN
  3. ^ The Polygraph and Lie Detection, p.292
  4. ^ The Polygraph and Lie Detection, p.295
  5. ^ The Lie Detector, Wonder Woman and Liberty: The Life and Works of William Moulton Marston, pp.108 and 112

[edit] External links


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