The Dark Knight Rises – Bitch Flicks

Nolan Superfans and Antifeminist Trolls: How Much Overlap?

Singer writes of Nolan’s fans’ approach: “If there’s a potential mistake or flaw, it’s always the viewer’s fault, never the film’s (or, Nolan forbid, the director’s).” This is all too familiar in feminist media criticism. How many times do commenters assert we’re “just looking for something to be upset about”; that is our criticism should be attributed to our own over-sensitivity rather than the actual presence of flaws in the subject?

Matthew McConaughey in 'Interstellar' — Matthew McConaughey in *Interstellar*

Christopher Nolan is undeniably an extremely talented filmmaker with a unique voice. He has a high batting average with his movies; for my money his only real stinker is The Prestige, and that still has plenty of fans. Nolan deserves his clout. Interstellar deserves its moment in the cultural spotlight.

But there is something about Christopher Nolan’s movies that warrants a devotion that is just too extreme. As noted in Matt Singer’s Screen Crush article “What Makes Nolan Fans So Intense?”, daring to speak ill of a Nolan film tends to lure the kind of trollish comments that make internet writers wake up with cold sweats. In the case of The Dark Knight Rises, apparently these rose to the level of death threats (particularly harrowing considering the mass murder at a screening of the film in Colorado).

As a feminist internet writer, I’m familiar with nasty commenters. And maybe that is why I suspect a substantial overlap between the Nolan Defense Squad and the Misandry Accusation Squad I know so well. I might be misperceiving this; I certainly don’t have any hard data to back it up. It’s clear that both groups offer plenty to the general pool of internet trolls, but that doesn’t necessitate they overlap themselves. So I look to the underlying motivations of these groups for further support.

"Why so serious?" mage from Joker poster for 'The Dark Knight' — “Why so serious?” image from Joker poster for *The Dark Knight*

Singer aptly characterizes the intensity of Nolan fans by describing their approach to his films’ critics: “If there’s a potential mistake or flaw, it’s always the viewer’s fault, never the film’s (or, Nolan forbid, the director’s).” This is all too familiar in feminist media criticism. How many times do commenters assert we’re “just looking for something to be upset about”; that is, our criticism should be attributed to our own over-sensitivity rather than the actual presence of flaws in the subject?

The similarities don’t stop there. Singer further posits:

“Looking over Nolan’s filmography you see the same archetypal protagonist reappear again and again: the moody loner who is laser-focused on his mission… perhaps Nolan’s subject matter and his preferred sort of hero resonates particularly strongly with the kind of person who might, oh I dunno, feel so passionately about a movie that they would threaten to strangle someone over it.”

What’s more, this archetypal protagonist is also always a man. Sady Doyle’s review of Interstellar described “Christopher Nolan disease”:

“There is a man. He is a sad man. His sadness makes him no less manly. The wife of this man, she is dead now…The man’s sadness, a great struggle conducted in the deep darkness of his soul, fuels his life’s grandest endeavor: The blowing-up of cool shit. In this noble pursuit of the blowing-up of things, the man’s wounds are healed and his masculinity reaffirmed.”

So not only do we have the celebration of Men with a Higher Purpose, we have the reassurance that unwavering devotion to this Higher Purpose redeems the masculinity of men who succumb to the weakness of emotion in the face of their immense suffering.

I’d add the third prong to Nolan Fan Intensity: that there is intellectual cache in understanding his excruciatingly complex films, and in enjoying their darker themes. If you have to have a profound understanding of theoretical physics to properly appreciate Interstellar, people who like it are smarter than people who don’t. If you can keep track of the layered narratives of Inception and Memento, it proves your cleverness over people who were confused. If the bleak worldview of his Batman trilogy appeals to you more than those other inconsequential “fun” superhero movies, you are a more serious and thoughtful person.

Community's Troy Barnes tearfully admitting "I didn't get 'Inception'" — Community’s Troy Barnes tearfully admitting “I didn’t get *Inception*“

The Misandry Accusation Squad tend to have the same self-satisfied intellectual superiority complex. See: mansplaining, tone policing, unmeetable burdens of proof. And that’s where my glimmers of recognition when it comes to the Nolan Defense Squad become blaring misogynist troll warning klaxons.

A black hole or something. — A time library or a love boat or a black hole or something.

Let me be very straightforward: I had no idea what was going on for 90 percent of Interstellar, and I don’t really care to spend any more time trying to figure it out. Maybe love was the fifth dimension or maybe it was gravity; maybe black holes are made of tesseracting bookshelves, maybe transporting hundreds of embryos and (presumably) only one uterus in which to gestate them on the ark to save humanity was a totally great Plan B.

(While I’m at it: Nikola Tesla was not a sorcerer. Your daddy issues cannot be resolved by opening a dream safe. You probably couldn’t be a superhero even if you were a billionaire, or at least your broken back would not heal that quickly.)

So, yeah, I’m not smart enough to understand the science or lack thereof in Interstellar. But if you’re going to reject my hypothesis about Nolan fans because I can’t be bothered with theoretical physics, you’re kind of proving it for me. (Yep, that’s pretty circular logic. So is a lot of the bootstrap paradox nonsense going on in Interstellar.)

Do you think misogynist trolls and the Nolan Defense Squad overlap, or do they independently share a lot of traits? Do you have other explanations for their similarities?

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who firmly believes she did get Inception.

‘Two Days, One Night’: Marion Cotillard’s Insight From the New York Film Festival

Cotillard did triple duty at the New York Film Festival Sunday to promote ‘Two Days, One Night,’ which had its U.S. premiere. (The film is Belgium’s submission for best foreign film.) At 1, in jeans and a casual but chic top, Cotillard participated in a Q&A for a standing-room crowd. At 3 she changed into Dior and walked across the street to Alice Tully Hall and joined the Dardenne Brothers as they introduced ‘Two Days, One Night’ to a sold out audience, and afterward participated in a Q&A.

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

In Two Days, One Night, Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a worker in a solar panel factory who returns to work after medical leave for depression to learn she has lost her job after management forces her co-workers to choose between keeping her on staff or receiving their 1,000-Euro bonuses. After the owner of the factory agrees to a revote, Sandra spends the weekend trying to meet with each of her 12 co-workers to plead her case and persuade them to change their minds.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the veteran filmmakers who wrote and directed the film, raise global issues like wage stagnation, financial inequality, and the declining middle class, while focusing their story on a financially strapped woman desperate to keep her job.

“She’s a simple woman and very complicated at the same time,” Cotillard explained at a Q&A Sunday. “She’s just recovering from a very deep depression and she’s fragile and she’s going to discover things about herself that she didn’t expect.”

Cotillard, who received an Oscar for disappearing into her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, in which she affected the singer’s nasal warble and her sickly hunched over physicality, makes Sandra, in her tank top and with her weary eyes, just as believable. A rare combination of movie star and character actress, Cotillard chooses roles in high-profile Hollywood films like Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), along with parts in foreign and independent films, notably Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone and James Gray’s The Immigrant, just to mention a few.

Cotillard did triple duty at the New York Film Festival Sunday to promote Two Days, One Night, which had its U.S. premiere. (The film is Belgium’s submission for best foreign film.) At 1, in jeans and a casual but chic top, Cotillard participated in a Q&A for a standing-room crowd. At 3 she changed into Dior and walked across the street to Alice Tully Hall and joined the Dardenne Brothers as they introduced Two Days, One Night to a sold out audience, and afterward participated in a Q&A. As soon as the discussion ended she glided along the red carpet in the lobby for photographers and posed for selfies with fans, some who got a bit too chummy and close, but she never flinched.

Six things I learned about Marion Cotillard Sunday during the Q&A.

The Dardenne brothers have a long rehearsal process and take lots and lots of takes, and the actress is fine with that:

“Sometimes we would have already done 70 takes and I would ask for more… because some were sequence shots, which have to be perfect because you cannot edit… I trust them (the Dardennes) a thousand percent, so if they would have asked me to do 200 takes I would have done it because I knew there was a reason behind this amount of takes, and that was one of my best experiences as an actresses. They really offered me everything that I had always wanted in terms of relationships with directors, and today when I talk about the amount of takes, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a lot,’ but on set it was never overwhelming, it was never exhausting, it was just the process of getting something, getting what they wanted to have, and for me giving them exactly what they wanted to have.”

On whether she worried about going too deep into a role and how hard it was for her to come back when the movie is over:

“For Piaf it was kind of difficult because it was the first time I went that deep, and I immersed myself entirely for months into somebody else’s… But I’ve learned a lot trying to get back to my life after La Vie en Rose, so now I know that I need a process to come back to my life, and this process is as interesting as getting into someone, and now it’s part of how I work.”

On how she prepared for celebrity:

“I don’t think you are prepared for this very real weird thing actually… But at the same time it, when you’re an actor you’re looking for a connection with a lot of people you might never meet, but you want to tell a story, and you want this story to touch many people as a kind of connection… When I started in acting and people recognized me in the street it was so weird, but I didn’t know how to take it so I would run away. That was super weird. I felt very paranoid. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. And I’m a very sensitive person, and sometimes it would be too much, but I’m kind of used to it. It’s just a different connection to people. (She laughed.) And I like it.”

She admits to being drawn to playing dark and difficult women with big problems. (Next up is Lady Macbeth.):

“Unfortunately yes. When they offered me the role of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, I said yes right away without my brain being involved in this decision, and then I started to think, and I was like, ‘Oh wow, yeah, here we go again. Drama! Drama! Drama!’ I must be, yeah, attracted to the darkness for sure. But sometimes I’m having very sane, not schizophrenic conversations with myself, but still conversations with myself, thinking when are you going to stop playing people who are so fucked up? And I have no answer. I’m just waiting for sudden light. It’ll come. It’ll come.”

She did have a brief but memorable appearance in Anchorman 2 starring Will Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay, but it seems she needed help loosening up:

“All these guys are my idols, so that was kind of crazy for me. When they asked me I didn’t even read anything, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll be there.’ I mean being on a set with Will Ferrell was a dream, and I was freaked out in that huge field, and Adam McKay was like super far away giving me lines, like new lines over this megaphone, I could barely understand what he was saying. Can I say that I was hungover? So it was part of me being in a disastrous state and at the same time having a lot of fun.”

She doesn’t think she was that great in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris:

“That was a tough experience for me actually because it took me a long time to actually believe that I was on a set with Woody Allen… I met Woody Allen five days before we started shooting, and we didn’t really exchange things. We discussed a little bit about the vision of this character, but I had very little information, and then being on set with him I was so scared that I wouldn’t be good enough… I was always scared that he wouldn’t get what he wanted because we had talked so little, and I think that I might have misunderstood what he wanted at the beginning, and I knew that he was not very happy, which does stay with me and so yeah, I felt very uncomfortable… It was not very easy for me either to be in front of an actress like an rabbit in the light (sic)… I’m very happy that I worked with him… I could have done better.”

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

The Many Faces of Catwoman

Who doesn’t love Catwoman? She’s smart, sassy, independent, has her own moral code, and often outfoxes (or maybe outcats) Batman, one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Though I’d be hard-pressed to label her skin-tight, uber-revealing outfit as feminist, Catwoman is a famous sex symbol who uses her sexuality to her own advantage. The figure of Catwoman has gone through dozens of iterations over the years, which goes to show that this iconic figure is a potent anti-heroine or villainess who continues to appeal to audiences throughout the generations. Now I’m answering the question: which of is the most feminist representation?

Spoiler Alert

Who doesn’t love Catwoman? She’s smart, sassy, independent, has her own moral code, and often outfoxes (or maybe outcats) Batman, one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Though I’d be hard-pressed to label her skin-tight, uber-revealing outfit as feminist, Catwoman is a famous sex symbol who uses her sexuality to her own advantage. The figure of Catwoman has gone through dozens of iterations over the years, which goes to show that this iconic figure is a potent anti-heroine or villainess who continues to appeal to audiences throughout the generations. I’ve done a bit of meditating on these incarnations and questioned which of them is the most feminist representation.

Illustrated

First, we’ve got her comic book origin as The Cat in 1940’s Batman #1.

That’s right. Catwoman was birthed alongside the legend of Batman himself. Unfortunately, her creator Bob Kane was a misogynist and sought to portray traits that he coded as feminine:

“I felt that women were more feline creatures and…cats are cool, detached, and unreliable…You always need to keep women at arm’s length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that. So there’s a love-resentment thing with women. I guess women will feel that I’m being chauvinistic to speak this way…”

All I have to say is, “You’re right, Bob: you are a chauvenist,” and, “ew.” That said, Catwoman was designed as an unattainable love interest that personified the aloof and perhaps vindictive qualities her creators saw within female sexuality. Her depiction is more about drumming up some sexual interest and excitement for Batman than creating a nuanced character.

"Honey, if I went straight, you'd never pay any more attention to me." - Catwoman — In her earliest incarnations, Catwoman is an attention-seeking naughty girl type.

Though I’m a bit of a comic book nerd who’s absolutely drawn to strong female characters, I’ve never been interested in reading any graphic novel Catwoman series. Her later depictions always struck me as a lot of tits and ass without substance, which I’m primarily basing on the cover art. Her sexuality is showcased to the extreme where it’s hard to imagine anything else beneath it. (If you’re a reader of Catwoman comics and feel differently, please set me straight in the comments!)

Those are some ridiculously large boobies.

I am, however, intrigued by her more recent, vicious comic book portrayals. Those have grit and make me curious about her.

There are also multiple cartoon renderings of Catwoman that are more or less underwhelming. In Batman: The Animated Series, Catwoman does get to have layers in that she’s a jewel thief, an animal rights activist, and has her alter-ego as Selina Kyle, but her main role continues to be an elusive love interest for Batman as opposed to a compelling character.

Television

Catwoman made her television debut on the Batman series in 1966. Julie Newmar performed perhaps the most memorable version of Catwoman. I was certainly smitten with her. She was lovely, imposing, and “diabolical” (as Batman would say). She was a lone woman who commanded a group of male thugs. Among the great supervillains of the TV Batman mythology, she was the only woman, and she certainly held her own.

Julie Newmar Catwoman alt — The (in)famous Julie Newmar Catwoman

Lee Meriwether was chosen for the film version of the Batman TV show. She, too, was stunning and very similar in appearance to Julie Newmar. Meriwether’s Catwoman also had a faux-alter ego as Miss Kitka, Russian journalist designed to seduce and lure “Comrade Wayne” into supervillain coalition custody to elicit Batman’s rescue attempts. This may have been the first sustained disguise Catwoman ever put on. She was never Selina Kyle in the TV show, which left her somewhat one-dimensional, but none of the other supervillains really had alter egos either.

The last Batman TV show Catwoman is the late, great Eartha Kitt. A magnetic personality who brought more flare to the role than any before, Kitt was the first Black woman to play Catwoman…and, I believe, the first Black woman to prominently feature on the show. Race and inclusivity were and continue to be issues that most media fail to properly address. Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman was much like Nichelle Nichols‘ Uhura on Star Trek: a pioneer, a weather vane showing that times were changing, and a kickass character to boot. If it had been gratifying in Season 1 & 2 to see a solitary woman ordering around a gang of male minions, then it was even more so in Season 3 to see a Black woman calling the shots.

No other Catwoman purred quite like Eartha Kitt

Film

We got to see another talented Black woman, Halle Berry, reprise the role in 2004’s Catwoman. Unfortunately, the flick was universally considered a turd that was really a vehicle to showcase/exploit an Academy Award winning actress’s body with the most revealing catsuit of all time (and that’s saying something). I could really push the envelope to suggest a feminist reading of the film’s beauty industry critique, as Berry’s Patience Phillips struggles to destroy the anti-aging cosmetic corporation that employs her because it is selling a faulty and harmful product, but the fact that her boss (the one who kills her thus turning her into Catwoman) is a woman (Sharon Stone, no less) takes a lot of the steam out of that argument.

Halle Berry's uber-revealing Catwoman costume — Halle Berry’s uber-revealing Catwoman costume

We also have the most recent depiction of Catwoman in Christopher Nolan‘s third installment of his Batman trilogy: The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. Though I’ve never been a fan of Anne Hathaway, I was nonetheless generally impressed with her Catwoman performance. Hathaway’s Selina Kyle was strong, independent, clever, and had a righteous sense of class justice, and in spite of the catsuit, she wasn’t quite as sexualized as earlier film incarnations.

Anne Hathaway's tech-heavy Catwoman — Anne Hathaway’s tech-heavy Catwoman

That said, Hathaway technically isn’t Catwoman. She doesn’t give herself that name nor is she dubbed with it by an opponent or ally. Contrary to the opinion of fellow reviewer Kelsea Stahler, I think taking the title away from her divests her of some of the power, prestige, and legacy that is inherent in her name. Though I did admire Anne Hathaway’s smart-and-ruthless-with-a-smattering-of-conscience characterization, this version of Catwoman ultimately fails my feminist expectations because she ends up with Bruce Wayne in the end. She runs away to France and allows him to domesticate her. Stripping Catwoman of her counter-culture independence and settling her down with a man is tantamount to de-clawing her.

I bet Bruce Wayne will have a hard time housebreaking her

No, in this reviewer’s humble-ish opinion, the most feminist depiction of Catwoman is Michelle Pfeiffer from Tim Burton’s 1992 Batman Returns. Though this Catwoman is oozing sex, she always has her own agenda and is crafty enough to DIY-style make her own iconic cat costume. Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle is mentally unstable and has periodic breaks with reality, which is a realistic rendering of a woman suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being attacked and murdered by her boss.

Catwoman mounts Batman and licks his face

The end of Batman Returns has Batman stripping off his mask and asking Catwoman not to kill her boss, but to leave town and come away with him instead. This is the inverse of what happens in The Dark Knight Rises as Hathaway’s Kyle begs Batman to abandon Gotham and run away with her. Pfeiffer’s response as Catwoman is, “Bruce, I would love to live with you in your castle forever just like in a fairy tale. I just couldn’t live with myself, so don’t pretend this is a happy ending!” She then claws Batman’s face and kills her boss, using up all but one of her nine lives to do so. Now, I’m not all about killing or anything, but the point is that Selina Kyle rejects Batman’s idea of who she should be, what her moral code should be, and how she should heal. She acknowledges the appeal of the traditional “fairy tale” conclusion that ends her story with a man and love, but her need for independence and for self-actualization becomes too important for her to sacrifice by relying on romantic love to save her as she once would have before her transformation into Catwoman. Instead, her story continues on, and we can imagine all the possible paths she may have chosen for her life.

All the Catwomen are hyper-sexualized and mysterious. All of them wield power over Batman and Gotham’s underworld. Though Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is my pick as the most feminist of all the iterations I’ve seen, she’s still problematic as are all her Cat sisters. I see the feminist strength and independence in her, but I also see the way sex is her weapon and that she mostly exists as a foil for Batman, a temptation and a lesson on what rampant desires can lead to. Maybe I’m more like Batman than I’d care to admit in that I, too, recognize the appeal of Catwoman as a mixed bag, and I, too, am drawn to her against my better judgement.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Surprise: Rich White Men Dominate the Cinema

I don’t want to see the film Oliver Stone will want to make about Romney

Here is my draft of an open tweet I am working on for directors and producers of Hollywood who continue directing and producing movies mostly about rich white men:

@WealthyDirectors&Producers I know ppl r told 2 “write what u know” & the nxt logical step 4 filmmakers would b 2 “film what u know.” But, stop, we’ve had enuf of rich men.

So, an open tweet might not be the best format to address my frustration with Hollywood and the seeming upsurge in rich-white-man-falling-from-rich-graces story arc. And, it might not be practical to address it to a made-up twitter handle. But, when the system is so dang exclusive, I got to get by with my gimmicks.

Our whole movie-making industry fits comfortably into the laps of well-to-do white men between the ages of 18-35. So, even though great films are coming out, the ones that are – during a recession for Christ’s sake – are falling radically at the ends of a spectrum at around poverty porn or bewailing the epic fall of an epic hero.

Why is it, for instance, that we had to endure another Oliver Stone movie – a sequel to Wall Street – Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps? While it touched on some pretty timely issues – i.e. it followed our fall into economic crisis – it only looked through wealthy characters. These characters’ flaws were pretty solidly greed and excessive ambition. Help me out here, but that is just not where most Americans are at right now.

The two highest grossing movies of this year both feature obscenely rich playboys wielding their pocketbooks to fight crime. Tony Stark in The Avengers, is brilliant, but can only functionally be a superhero because he’s wealthy. While Bruce Wayne, in The Dark Knight Rises, would still be pretty badass without the money, he wouldn’t have gotten far in challenging Gotham’s worst without his high-tech gadgets and his martial arts training obtained overseas.

Past the summer blockbusters, even Oscar-chasers are focusing mostly on the stories of the rich and prestigious. Black Swan followed the story of a woman, (yes, a woman!) but she was a ballerina (not exactly an art form available to the middle-class budget) whose fall was connected with her ambition and rise to enormous success. The Great Gatsby is coming out in 2013, and while a great story on the failures of the “American Dream” it is still about the fall of a rich white man.

It seems like directors are pretty fascinated with the greed and corruption that led to the desperate state of our current economy. But, what about the result for the majority of Americans? You know, the big group of folks who are now dealing with tight budgets and un/underemployement? And why is the more pertinent entertainment not accessible to the groups who could relate to it? Why was Death of a Salesman only on Broadway? Doesn’t that seem like a good thing to send to theaters? I mean, if we have to look at the woes of white men – can they at least be struggling with culturally relevant strife? Why is Lena Dunham’s show Girls centered around the stories of struggling twenty-something (white) women, such a big hit on HBO and not a network? As in: why is a show about financially struggling young people available on a station that only people who can afford cable can watch.

Of course we’re not completely sunk. The third highest grossing film was The Hunger Games – a film featuring a strong young woman fighting the powers that be that continue to disenfranchise her and her society.

We need more people making film who aren’t obsessed with wealth and power. We need to address themes other than those concerning megalomaniacs. Wouldn’t it be a relief to see some blockbusters where the audience can actually relate to the problems the characters face?

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Erin Fenner is a writer based in Portland. She likes film and feminism and alliteration.

The Dark Side of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Warning: Spoilers ahead!!

So I’m writing this movie review with a lot of spoilers, because well, according to my Facebook newsfeed, everyone’s already seen it. But even if you have seen it already, you’re probably desperately longing for my insightful commentary of the film; I mean, how else will you know what to think of it?

No one here is going to deny that Christopher Nolan has managed to take the superhero movie to a whole other level: the characters have far more complexity, a hell of a lot less campy lines, and a darker, grittier setting than the more upbeat Marvel comics. Even the fight scenes in this Batman film had a visceral heaviness to them, with each punch sounding so thick and weighty, you could just feel the epic-ness pounding you from the screen.

My praise for Nolan as a filmmaker however comes mostly from his dealings with evil. Most directors have laughable Lokis (The Avengers) and shapeless Sinestros (The Green Lantern) whose overwrought motivations and plans for world domination just get more tiresome with every rendition. The genius behind Nolan’s villains is in how he makes them insidious by how fascinating we find them, exploring that ever-present possibility of the darker side of humanity is so psychologically interesting that we can’t turn away. For example, Heath Ledger’s Joker was infamously brilliant and is, I think, the best superhero villian, given that his motivation was just “wanting to watch the world burn,” and it felt so…seductive.

In a similar vein, Bane was inscrutable and intense; it wasn’t about some in-your-face world domination or strawman plot of blowing up the moon. Bane’s motivations are completely hidden until the last ten minutes of the movie. And that’s the draw. That’s why we keep watching. And in the last few minutes, when we learn that motivation, it was so simple, so seemingly counter to his character, that you couldn’t help but pity him. That motivation was of course love, and it was humanizing, equalizing even.

I feel a little bad bringing up the human fascination with darkness and villains in the aftermath of the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, but as with anything, it has become a media event, one where we desperately want to know the motivation of the killer. As humans we seek that casualty in those we consider perverted and ill in an attempt to validate our own humanity.

Besides the characters, the plot eerily parallels the current economic climate in the United States, looking basically like the occupy movement on crack. Even the scene of Bane breaking into Wall Street (which felt evocative of Rage Against the Machines, “Sleep Now in the Fire” video) was a reminder of our economic vulnerabilities in the West. There is a sort of palpable fear that has started to seep into the world’s economic consciousness, asking “how long can this continue?” This fear, of course, fed by the constant bank scandals that I hear about on the news every morning, the lack of any kind of new budget, and the general disillusionment with the viability of our political leaders (in both parties). Nolan did an excellent job of tapping into that fear, highlighting the destruction that can come from one good hack job on Wall Street.

The class warfare depicted in the film, with it’s disturbing scenes of makeshift courts to punish the wealthy and French Revolution style executions, brought home the problematic images of what happens when poverty reaches it’s breaking point. I especially found the violence that was present to be very familiar, reminding me of A Tale of Two Cities or Les Miserable, both stories that demonstrate the intense hatred that was turned onto the ruling classes during the French Revolution.

The revolutionaries of this film literally destroyed the vestiges of wealth as they smashed pictures and pulled scared socialites out of their homes and yanked the fur coats off their backs. However, the film did have some subtler points on economy, most notably offered by the reluctant billionaire Bruce Wayne (who admittedly has experienced poverty in his travels) when he critiques the charity functions where thousands are spent on venues and food. A valid point, since the money spent on the charity function could probably just have been given to the charity in the first place. Similarly, Catwoman states that the “rich don’t even go broke like the rest of us,” disgusted that even without money, Wayne will be able to maintain his lifestyle.

The two women in the movie actually play an important role in the economics portrayed: Catwoman as a sort of liaison between the wealthy do-gooders and poor revolutionaries. She pretends wealth in order to achieve her thieving, but claims herself to be a woman of the people. Miranda as well comes from nothing and has managed to rise up in the ranks of the world, only intending to tear it down again. I found it interesting though, that both women seem to at first be a part of the upper classes, but instead, stand as symbols for those who are struggling (though neither seems to have a very positive way of dealing with their financial difficulties).

Ironically enough though, the movie seemed almost an affirmation of class status quo, since these revolutionaries were the bad guys, and the billionaire (granted now broke billionaire) was the one who had to save the day and reassert order. On the one hand, at the end, there were scenes of the orphan boys heading off to stay in mansions and the bravery of the policemen, working class heroes if you will. However, I felt that the film had a lot of potential to address economic disparity, but didn’t seem to come to any new resolution, just reasserted whatever economic platforms existed in the first place.

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Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

‘The Dark Knight Rises’s Catwoman: a (Shhh!) with a Heart of Gold

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises [source]

While The Dark Knight Rises has had a more mixed reception than Christopher Nolan’s previous two entries in his Batman trilogy, everyone, even President Obama, can agree that Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was the best thing about the movie. Slate’s Alyssa Rosenberg calls her, “the best Catwoman ever to grace the big screen.”

And I loved her too. The Dark Knight Rises‘s Selina Kyle is smart, sexy, and complex in her morality: the trinity of characteristics that unites all incarnations of Catwoman. The other details of Selina and her alter-ego Catwoman shift constantly (a fate common to comic book characters). She’s been an amnesiac flight attendant abuse victim (in the Gold and Silver Age comics in which she first appeared), a wealthy socialite who burgles for the thrill of the hunt (how she was portrayed in my introduction to the character, Batman: The Animated Series), a meek secretary transformed into a badass vigilante after her apparent murder by her powerful boss (in Batman Returns), and, well, whatever Halle Berry was reduced to doing with the character (who, just to be clear, was not Selina Kyle, but rather Patience Phillips, and I will waste no more words on a character and film that is best forgotten). As Rosenberg puts it in her Slate piece, “Catwoman has, in the past, been a rich well for explorations of female trauma.”

So it was inevitable that Selina Kyle be portrayed as a sex worker, at least once Frank Miller got his hands on her. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has always been transparently inspired by Miller’s seminal comics Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. The former series first introduced Selina Kyle as prostitute:

Sex worker Selina Kyle in panels from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One [source]

And over the next twenty years or so of DC comics, the prostitute origin story would be hinted at, overtly dropped, slyly repackaged, forgotten, and popped back in at the whims of various comic book writers. Brian Cronin provides a thorough overview of the waxing and waning of this storyline in his Abandoned An’ Forsaked column. When it was announced that Hathaway had been cast as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises, speculation went wild regarding which Catwoman we’d get.

As it should be, The Dark Knight Rises offers a unique take on the character. And it stays cagey about her life’s details and origin story. But watching the film, I inferred that they were incorporating the sex worker background for the character. On the ride home from the theater I mentioned it to my husband, who is not a comic book reader, and he was bewildered how I had gotten that impression.

[SPOILERS for The Dark Knight Rises FORTHWITH]

As a comic book fan, I came in with the expectation that this movie’s version of Selina Kyle might be a sex worker. Because I knew Selina Kyle had been portrayed as one, most notably by Frank Miller, whose work has been so influential on the trilogy. So when Anne Hathaway’s Kyle seduces and absconds with a Congressperson (to provide herself with cover when she makes an illicit exchange, we discover) I figured she was doing this in the course of her business.

As that deal goes down, another character is introduced: Selina’s friend, played by Juno Temple, and according to IMDb named “Jen.” I don’t recall her being addressed by name in the film, but as soon as I saw her I thought to myself, “Oh, hey, it’s Holly Robinson!”

Holly Robinson as drawn by Cameron Stewart in Catwoman Secret Files [source]

Holly Robinson was created by Frank Miller in Batman: Year One, a fellow sex worker living with Selina Kyle. The appearance of that character, even though they’ve given her another name, signaled to me this character was meant to be in line with Miller’s Selina Kyle, a sex worker.

There’s also an offhand reference to Kyle living in “Old Town,” which I’ve never encountered in Batman comics (although there are many thousands I’ve never read, so maybe I am missing something) but which instantly called to mind the prostitute-run red light district of another Frank Miller comic, Sin City.

Selina Kyle’s primary motivation throughout The Dark Knight Rises is acquisition of the “Clean Slate,” a bit of technology that will erase her record, even her very existence, from the world’s databases, allowing her to escape an unspecified past where “she did what she had to do to survive.” Her past could be anything. It could merely be the thieving she’s clearly so adept at. But Kyle very pointedly shows no shame about her burgling, wearing Martha Wayne’s stolen string of pearls while dancing with Bruce at a gala, for example. It stands to reason there is something else she is running away from.

If you accept that The Dark Knight Rises‘s Kyle has a past or present as a sex worker, unfortunately the dynamic character seems much less innovative and much more like yet another iteration of the trope of the Hooker with the Heart of Gold.

The stock character of the Hooker with a Heart of Gold is problematic, even from a sex-work-positive feminist perspective, because the trope itself is not sex work positive. These characters are meant to be interesting because they are good “inside” even though they do “bad” things. The viewer is allowed to be titillated by the character’s occupation without needing to feel as though they condone it. And because hookers with hearts of gold are so often “saved” by men, it plays to a variety of male fantasies beyond women as commodities: that women need them; that women are “correctable.” The trope also reinforces traditional gender roles by masculinizing work for pay, often giving the hookers with hearts of gold tough, emotionally cool exteriors on the job (like men!) that when cracked (by a man!) show their soft, compassionate, womanly true self.

As we have with Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises, who steals and betrays and displays a general disdain for everyone she speaks with in the first half of the movie (other than Holly Robinson’s stand-in). But somehow Batman cracks that ice, first getting Selina Kyle to display emotional vulnerability, and finally inspiring Catwoman to heroically help save the same Gotham she’d been keen to abandon after helping it fall to anarchy. When we spot her casually dining with Bruce Wayne in Florence at film’s end, it’s easy to imagine she’s given up her criminal ways: another soiled dove lifted to grace by a good man.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, in hero-mode on the Bat Pod. [source]

Even though I just wrote it, I find this summary of The Dark Knight Rises‘s arc for Selina Kyle overly reductive, and Anne Hathaway’s phenomenal performance in the role nuanced and charismatic enough that it elevates the material. Which is why I don’t so much object that The Dark Knight Rises invokes the trope of the Hooker with a Heart of Gold, I just mind that it does so covertly. It weakens the film’s ability to twist the trope and present a feminist take on it, and wastes an opportunity to give the world an iconic, heroic, feminist character who does or did sex work.

So it doesn’t bother me that The Dark Knight Rises possibly included sex work in the character background of its Catwoman, but it bothers me that they didn’t commit to it. The film signals dog whistles to comic book fans and enable the character and movie to enjoy all the male-id-pleasing benefits of the Hooker With a Heart of Gold trope, without actually having to go to all the trouble of crafting a modern and respectable portrayal of the sex industry in a major summer blockbuster. It’s lazy, even cowardly, and Catwoman, Anne Hathaway, and us movie-watchers all deserved better.

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Robin Hitchcock is an American writer currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She had to take the long way home for weeks while The Dark Knight Rises filmed in her neighborhood in Pittsburgh.