| 11-23/24-1966 | "Marsha, Queen of Diamonds" |
Carolyn Jones as the mesmerizing
Marsha...
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A man's
greatest fear embodied: a heartless WOman who reduces him to an adoring
fool, using / belittling him, robbing him of wealth and dignity, enslaving
him only to be cast aside when he no longer serves her purpose...
Inexplicably, Chief O'Hara escorts the notorious diamond thief Marsha into a jewelry store...
With the chief demanding she be given the most expensive jewel...
He further confounds his fellow officer when he drops on his knees before her right on the sidewalk...
"All I ask is the chance to be near
you and
bask in the glow of your adorable presence..."
Marsha has turned the poor Chief into her slave! And his reward for serving
her? She locks him up in a cage!
"I don't mind the cage
as long as it's near you..."
But having used him to lure
Commissioner Gordon to her
lair,
Marsha has no further need of the
Chief and abandons him to pine away,
caged with other enslaved men hopelessly
in love with her...
Admiring herself while awaiting the Commissioner...
Informed one of her desperate admirers tried to commit suicide by tumbling himself to death in a clothes dryer, Marsha responds: "How boring..."
Marsha cares only about enslaving Batman
and getting the gigantic BatDiamond...
Gordon arrives, demanding O'Hara's release...
Marsha shoots him with a "Love Dart..."
She watches him sink to his knees,
in abject adoration of her...
"I'm yours to command," he avows...
She encourages him to profess his adoration of her...
Being caged does not lessen Gordon's devotion...
"I'll roll myself into a ball and
you can use me as a footstool..."
But Marsha has no interest in his displays of affection
and leaves Gordon caged to argue with
O'Hara over who adores her the most...
The
authority figures of Gotham have been rendered utterly impotent, babbling
like idiots for the love of Marsha...
Batman appears before the imperious Marsha...
And gets hit with a love dart...
"It's some kind of love-inducing drug..."
"To make me fall in love with... Marsha!"
Robin urges him to resist...
"Don't try to fight it, darling..."
"Relax and worship me..."
"On your knees..."
"On your knees!"
Batman's super-will allows him to resist Marsha,
but Robin, The Boy Boner, is no match
for such a powerful Hypnotrix...
She shoots him with a love dart...
"He's mine now..."
And Robin comes crawling to her,
eager to serve his new-found mistress...
"You adorable creature!"
Lording over her young worshipper...
Explaining
to Batman that unless he marries her, Robin & the others will spend the rest
of their lives as her slaves...
Batman
looks like a man had by the bat-balls, and Marsha like a WOman who knows she
has them where she wants them...
Marsha
thoroughly subverts and perverts the male power structure of the series,
using the most powerful weapon there is... Love... True Love, of course, is
a form of surrender, and Marsha exploits this innate tendency in all men,
assuming Feminine Power by controlling the Power of Love... While some
have seen the Marsha character as neurotic or psychologically depraved,
Marsha of course is a Mythic Blow-up of a most natural phenomena - all girls
want the big rock, to get married and control their husbands... Marsha is no
different, she just thinks bigger: she wants the Bat Diamond & the greatest
man under her power... And she will use any man to get what she wants...
This episode plays closer to high school reality and rings true for many a
teen-age boy who had a crush on a girl who used him to get the pin from the
BMOC, leaving the crushee flat...
B&R think they have Marsha captured...
But she blasts them with Diamond-dozing gas...
Thanks to Starman* for the large vidcaps...