Thoughts on Catwoman, Noir and Nolan

I'm going to say up front that I am not an aficionado in the Batman comics and in fact have not read them in many years. My opinions are based largely on The Animated Series, the second volume of the Catwoman comic series and the issues of Batman comics I collected back when I still cared. If I say something that seems out of line with things that have been happening in current comics continuity, that's why. I also don't really care since this is essentially about why I liked the things I paid attention to.

Having finally seen a full photo of Anne Hathaway in the Catwoman costume from Nolan's upcoming Batman movie, my feelings are a bit mixed. Not so much about the costume which I'm pretty happy with, but about this film in general. Expectations are so high for it after the success of The Dark Knight and fandom can get itself worked up into a froth over their own versions of what they want the film to be and reality, even if a well-made film, will often be a disappointment by comparison. With so much grumbling about the casting and the costume already starting I don't want any potential disappointment of failure pinned on her for the sake of scapegoating something. It's possible I won't like what they do with her character, or that she'll wind up like Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2-- set dressing with no necessity to the plot whatsoever. I think Nolan is much smarter and more talented than that, but not having seen it I have no idea what he has planned for her.

Except I suspect at some point she rides a motorcycle.

Up front I feel like I should mention that Catwoman is, far and away, my favorite comic book character ever and she has been since before I hit puberty. I recognize that I am very biased when it comes to her and that there is very little probability that I will ever be completely happy with how she's handled from writer to writer because in my head I've taken bits and pieces from her various incarnations and fused them into my personal idea of her most interesting self. Everyone is going to have different views on her and different degrees of investment in her as a character and I try not to let my own ideas color my expectations too much. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but I'm trying to be self-aware about my issues. I'm not going to waste energy fretting about the costume and will reserve my judgement for how they've handled her character.

As much as I enjoyed the campier portrayal in Burton's Batman Returns, I'm very ready for a more complex and grounded view of her; something more than just a mish-mash of tacked-on, superficially "feminist" ideas which must, by decree of the Hollywood formula, be stripped of validity by the end of the film. It's something the crew on Batman: The Animated Series tried to do back in the '90s, although they were severely hampered by broadcast standards and really didn't seem to know what to do with her at all until the end of the series. Judging from her first solo comic book series starring the mediocre art of Jim Balent and the downright crappy movie starring Halle Berry, most people really didn't know what to do with her beyond making her sexy in the laziest ways possible. The Animated Series couldn't even get away with that much, reduced to head-slappingly bad plotlines about animal rights and sexless flirting, with everyone being so darned earnest about everything. They tried, but they just didn't flesh her out as a full enough character, which is too bad considering the amazing things they did with characters like Mr Freeze, Two-Face and the Mad Hatter. They were much more successful with Poison Ivy, whose sexuality came across more easily and whose eco-terrorism was more compelling than Selina's animal rights crusade which just came off as preachy. The show that gave us the wonderfully complex Harley Quinn could only muster a half-hearted effort for the mythos's most well-known and longest-standing female character.

However badly they fumbled her character, I still give props to that show for doing some pretty fine noir for an animated kid's TV show. It wasn't just the dark palate they used (they painted most of the backgrounds on black paper for what they termed the "dark deco" look), the 1940s flavor to the show's design, the heavy use of gangsters and crime plots, or the other superficial elements that leap to mind with film noir; you can have a noir film without the lighting or the mobsters. What they nailed was the moral ambiguity, the fatalism, and the dance with one's own dark urges and criminality that are at the core of the noir genre. For all its stunning black and white cinematography, true noir is all about shades of grey and that's where the Animated Series and Nolan's movies really work for this concept. They get noir. So does Ed Brubaker.

Pretty good example of noir's atmosphere and philosophy.

In 2001, Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke relaunched the Catwoman comic book title with the intent to bring Selina back to this idea, as well as to try and establish a concrete world and back story for her. Too many writers over the decades never seemed to know who she was at her core or what to do with her. Sure she'd been nicknamed the Feline Fatale but at her core she's never been a killer; as a villain she was never on par with the Joker or Two Face since she's never been homicidally insane, or even a zealot like Poison Ivy or Ras al Ghul. So why her staying power? What is it about her that has made her so enduring and iconic? It can't be simply sex appeal since comics have always been brimming with sexy women characters. Why her continued place as a femme fatale when she's never been very ruthless and never been known for killing anyone? Because the very idea of the femme fatale is rooted in male anxiety-- she's dangerous not necessarily because of her intentions or her actions but because of the effect she has on the male protagonist. She is the temptation that leads him to his downfall, either spiritually or physically, whether she did it on purpose or not. She's too alluring and beguiling for him to refuse even though he knows he should, and that's exactly what Selina is to Bruce.

Out of the Past from Kathy's perspective is more like a Lifetime movie of the week.

She isn't insane, she isn't out to hurt anybody, and in many ways they're very similar. They're just compatible enough to be compelling but just different enough in their ideologies and methods to not be able to cross that thin line that divides them. The danger isn't so much that Bruce will go dark and become more ruthless, it's that he'll forget his past and everything that set him on his personal mission, settle down and try his best to be normal. As healthy as it would probably be for him to let go of his inner demons, it's the thing he's built his whole life around (and the whole reason anyone gives a crap about all those comic books, TV shows and movies he's in). There's nothing standing between them except their own issues, so the tension is always there under the surface as they each walk with one foot on that line without ever fully crossing over.

For my money, nobody got that better than Brubaker in his short stint on her book. Not only did he do his best to take what he felt worked for Selina from the different back stories that had been tossed out there after Frank Miller's Year One comic, but he also did his best to ground her character in something more concrete than just a vague idea of sexiness, heist capers and being attracted to Batman. He brought her back to Gotham, gave her a purpose more compelling than just elaborate adventures in exotic locations, and rooted her in something solid and believable. A lot of people take umbrage at the idea of her having been a prostitute in her younger days; admittedly it wasn't my favorite choice and it's one of my many issues with Frank Miller's take on her character (or most of his female characters). But Brubaker took it and gave it a purpose in her overall story instead of letting it exist simply for the sake of being dark or titillating. This gave her much higher personal stakes than if she'd been a bored socialite or the daughter of a crime boss or even a runaway orphan. It explains why she can't see the world in black and white the way Bruce does, why she can't bring herself to cross that line between them and why we should care about what she's managed to build from her life. Bruce is a character that has defined himself by one incident and built his life around it using all the advantages he had at his disposal. Selina doesn't have one single character-defining moment in her history and what she has was built by herself from nothing. She understands criminality and the things people will do to survive in ways Bruce never has because he has never been completely alone or without privilege, respect and pride. For her to cross that dividing line into Bruce's more lawful idea of heroism would take a kind of hypocritical self-denial that Selina's too savvy to trick herself into believing. She can never see the lowest people on society's totem pole as just criminals because she was one of them. She can never work strictly by the law or believe in the criminal justice system because she knows they often fail. For all their similarities and mutual respect and attraction, Bruce and Selina see the world in very different ways. Because of that, they also humanize each other.

Brubaker wrote their relationship as a tantalizing dance between two people who knew each other's secrets, who understood each other in ways no one else did, but who didn't have to come out and say any of it because they liked the dance too much to ruin it with the obvious. It was sexier than any double entendre or moonlit make out scene because he understood that the things that aren't said are far more tantalizing than the things that are. When done right, an exchanged glance or a charged silence can be far sexier than any graphic love scene. He also went out of his way to toss out Bruce's emotionless Machiavellian wish-fulfillment badass persona in favor of writing him as a human damn being, which practically no one else was doing at the time. (See above link for examples.)

That isn't to say Brubaker's run was perfect, there were plenty of things in it I thought could have been improved or were unnecessary. But what he did right, he did damned well, especially in paying attention to the characters, making them unique, flawed, likable people you wanted to read about every month. It didn't feel like a superhero book so much as a mystery/crime story with a few eccentricities. For the first time since the 90s, Selina seemed like a real person, not some idealized, self-obsessed sex goddess who floated through life on her tiptoes. She was someone who was learning from her past mistakes, growing as a character, weighed down by her history and a new sense of maturity and responsibility. She was someone with close emotional ties to people, who remembered where she came from but who had a sense of purpose for the future. They finally let her grow as a person in a way that was believable and made sense with her past. She was someone I could understand at last, and ultimately that's really all I ask for.

Do I think Nolan will use this rather dark personal history for her? Not really, and I'm all right with that. Not sure how the public would take to seeing a less romanticized version of Pretty Woman in their superhero crime thriller, and it seems more likely they'll go with the subplot from The Long Halloween and have her being tied to the Falcone crime family. So long as she's not just some personification of an idea with no further depth beyond her physicality, bad cat jokes and reminding the audience that our hero is an angst-ridden, tragic heterosexual man, I'll be fine with whatever back story they give her. I just want to know there's a real character in there. If they can do that much, then I'll be satisfied.

PULPS!

In the past few years, I've seen a resurgence of American pulp reprints. This is exciting for me, since the stories in these pulps influenced so much of the super hero and detective stories we know today.What is a pulp? A cheaply printed fiction book, very popular in the 1920s, 1930 , 1940s and on to the 1950s to a lesser extent due to hieghtened censorship.

What sort of things did they print? Everything from disturbingly morbid sci fi-horror to stories for the bored housewife about steamy romances. The covers were often beautifully painted teasers, half naked attractive young people being tormented by wild deformed cannibals on a space ship? Sounds pretty normal.

One of my favorite parts of the original pulps are the aforementioned covers. Many of the subsequent reprints are of the text only, and lacking in the marvelous full cover paintings that madeup each issued book, or the beautiful black and white pen drawings, often very detailed, that were scattered throughout the actual books. Occasionally I see a reprint that contains these aspects, and those are the ones I find myself drawn to buy.

I've read quite a bit of the Weird Tales reprints, although the variety tends to lack, since H.P. Lovecraft tends to dominate as much as possible. Cthulhu sells apparently. To be honest, I'd rather read a good ghost story or a unique take on an folklore. No offence to the Cthulhu Mythos, but you just don't make it to my nightmares. That said, H.P. Lovecraft was a genius at the pulp genre, but as a 'junk fiction' writer, he never did see his fanbase peak.

The pulps created a new outlet for crime writers. Endless detective stories, adventure, romance, and horrors could be released every month and easily bought by the average person. A pulp book averaged about 10-25 cents - a far cry from the $15 average of today. (Just one of those 10 cent books of yesteryear now will put you back a good $80-$300) Every month, and sometimes twice a month, a reader could pick up their favorite crime titles cheaply at even grocery stores, or so I'm told by those generations who witnessed it.

In an era without television, and with limited radio channels, reading was one of the few ways to find stories that were guaranteed to peak your interest.
Me? I buy every reprint of The Shadow I can find! The dialog might be dated, the titles mellow dramatic, and the subjects politically incorrect, but I enjoy a good detective story sluthed by an invisible spy with an endless repertoire of tricks! Who Knows...What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? Nothing like a good maniacal laugh.

Speaking of racist, if a character wasn't white, you can bet they'd carry most of the dark stereotypes that aren't allowed in fiction today. Fu Manchu was probably the most infamous evil asian, fullfilling the role of the mad scientist and classic antihero of his own books. His popularity spun dozens of evil asian titles. The racism doesn't stop there, it often portrays savage indians (both Native American and East Indians alike), and uneducated manservent blacks are fairly normal. While reading anything from another time, it's important to remember that values and ideals have changed a lot over the past 50 years.

Pulps have brought us many famous heros we associate with other media, such as Tarzan, Flash Gordon , or lessor known cult stars such as Buck Rogers and John Carter of Mars. Famous heros such as Batman were admited by their creators to be inspired by The Shadow. Film Noir took many of it's formulas and cliches from the detective pulps of the 1930s. Where would we be without our cheap fiction?

"Cherchez la Femme"

There's a popular phrase in the French mystery genre that goes a little something like; "[if you want to find the source of the trouble,] look for the woman". I know, seems pretty sexist, and it is on a big-scale picture: either the woman is deliberately causing the trouble through manipulative machinations, or she's not doing anything deliberately but people (probably men, since the use of the word "woman" is singular) are causing trouble because of her. Either way, the woman's the cause of something bad, and I don't think any female archetype is more exemplary of this concept than the femme fatale.

As is no doubt evident from the title of this blog, this is one of my favorite archetype, not only because film noir is one of my favorite film genres, but because of the interesting and contradictory nature of the role itself. Is it feminist? Is it anti-feminist? When is a femme fatale not really a femme fatale and where is the line dividing the two? I love contemplating stuff like this.

So, I decided that, in honor of my finally getting this blog going, I'd make a list of my favorite fatal femmes. But first off, I feel I need to define this role specifically, to understand where I'm coming from and why certain women are or are not included on my list. And also because I love talking about stuff in specifics because it makes me feel smart.

According to thefreedictionary.com, "femme fatale" is defined as:
1. A woman of great seductive charm who leads men into compromising or dangerous situations
2. An alluring, mysterious woman
Most specifically for film noir, the role of the femme fatale is summed up beautifully by John Blaser in his article No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir, "She refuses to play the role of devoted wife and loving mother that mainstream society prescribes for women. She finds marriage to be confining, loveless, sexless, and dull, and she uses all of her cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her independence. As Janey Place points out, "She is not often won over and pacified by love for the hero, as is the strong heroine of the forties who is significantly less sexual than the film noir woman." She remains fiercely independent even when faced with her own destruction. And in spite of her inevitable death, she leaves behind the image of a strong, exciting, and unrepentant woman who defies the control of men and rejects the institution of the family."

While that's just about pitch-perfect, I do need to qualify that with a sub-categorization of the archetype: the woman who is dangerous not because of anything she herself specifically does, but because of how the men around her see and react to her. They do get lumped into the femme fatale category instead of the good girl category, though, because they're presented in the film for the audience to see as dangerous, even if their actions and motivations aren't. (Think of Jessica Rabbit in the first part of the film, before she's specifically revealed to be a good girl drawn 'bad'.)

So, now that we're hopefully all on the same page I have to admit something kind of embarrassing. Despite it being one of my favorite film genres, and having taken a class devoted entirely to it, I haven't actually seen that much films noir. So I've probably left someone's favorite noir lady off the list, not out of spite, but simply ignorance. And so I won't have a really short list, I've also added female characters from other mediums whom I consider to be femmes fatales in part because they're cool and in part because a lot of the time, they tend to be forgotten when people talk about those classic 'dangerous dames'.

(Oh yeah, and there might be some spoilery stuff in here for people sensitive to that but I promise that if there's something really cool that needs to be a surprise, I won't mention it.)

So, finally, in no particular order, are my favorite femmes fatales.

Laura Hunt, in Laura. Gene Tierney's one of those actresses who, despite considerable popularity at the time, is known pretty much only to film buffs today. Which is too bad, because not only is she gorgeous (as she is primarily remembered for being), but she's actually a pretty good actress. Most people remember her for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Dragonwyk, or Leave Her to Heaven, which are all pretty good movies but Laura is my personal favorite. Laura herself is one of those faux-femmes, where she doesn't actually do anything wrong, but the film still sets her up to seem dangerous and tempting. While there are a lot of those types on my list Laura is very unique in several respects: she was a woman who had her own career in the '40s who wasn't a secretary or a schoolteacher-- she was an ad executive who got the job because of her intelligence, talent, and creativity, not her looks. She had her own apartment, which she didn't share with her sister, extended family, or kooky best friend, and which she paid for and decorated herself with her own money. She also had a love life that was not limited to one character, and an implied sex life to go with it. Oh yeah, and she's dead at the beginning of the movie and the male protagonist is the police officer charged with solving her murder. While the movie does deviate from the novel it's based on in a number of areas, it's not Laura whose character was significantly changed, but the male lead, Mark. Laura retains her career and independent personality, and Mark went from a more sensitive, intelligent, well-read guy to a more one-note, hard-boiled, man of few words. But both versions of Mark develop a fixation on the dead but still fascinating Laura, and through him, the audience does, too.

Gilda Mundson, from Gilda. Rita Hayworth's breakout performance as the fun-loving, sexy, and misunderstood party girl Gilda is one of those roles that absolutely outshines the rest of the film (especially the incredibly unsatisfying ending). Everything else fades away every time she's on screen and I find myself hard-pressed to remember what the actual plot of the movie is; all I really remember is something about a former Nazi, how incredibly unlikeable I found Glenn Ford's petty, vindictive, and patently uninteresting Johnny. Perhaps on the page, Gilda came across as some wild maenad of a woman, in desperate need of someone to tie her down until the frenzy leaves her system, but on film, she's a woman clearly enjoying her own sexuality and completely at home in her own body. This is the classic example of a screen presence being so compelling and memorable that it completely obliterates the film's moral about a woman's proper attitude and role, and overshadows everything else about the film altogether. It's also a shining example of a femme who is fatale only in the eyes of the men around her.

Norma Desmond, from Sunset Boulevard. With every film of his I see, I become a bigger and bigger fan of Billy Wilder. Of the four I've seen so far, this movie is my favorite in large part because of Norma Desmond. Here's a film that simultaneously writes a love letter to and gives a big middle finger to Hollywood, and no other character in the film captures that dichotomy like she does. She's egocentric, insecure, haughty, needy, talented, laughable, delusional, likable, hateful, pitiable, comical, and about a dozen more adjectives. Her role as femme fatale is probably debatable (for my money, Hollywood itself fits that role in the film), but while it may be pity that leads the protagonist to his doom instead of sex appeal, there's no denying that Norma is captivating. Gloria Swanson's career was revived because of this role, but unfortunately she was never able to break free from it afterward. Norma Desmond is simply too unforgettable to ever truly be upstaged. It really was the pictures that got too small to contain her.

Kathy Moffat, in Out of the Past. Probably one of the most quintessential noir films has one of the most quintessential noir ladies. Jane Greer is primarily remembered for this part, and it's well-deserved. Kathy isn't one of the faux-fatales like a lot of other women on this list, though she does a really good job of seeming that way at first. It isn't until the last half of the movie that we really see what she's made of, and it's definitely a testament to Greer's acting chops that she pulls off both the decent girl in over her head role and the stone-cold, calculating puppet master role seamlessly. In a movie filled with interesting characters, for me she tops the list. It's a lot of fun to watch her be so very, very bad and very nearly get away with it.

Megara, from Disney's Hercules. Yeah, yeah, I know it isn't cool to admit you like Disney stuff, but I'm an inveterate animation hound and in terms of out-and-out animation quality, it's hard to find better than Disney. Meg is one of those rare Disney heroines who dared to break the Princess mold, and she's also clearly an homage to the dangerous women of the silver screen. While she isn't a true femme fatale in the way that Kathy Moffat is, she certainly has elements of the archetype. She's one of the few brazenly sexual Disney heroines, actively attempting to seduce the protagonist at one point, and with a romantic life that pre-dated the meeting of the protagonist. While she isn't married to Hades, she's still in a stifling and unhappy relationship to him (as his minion) from which she is attempting to escape and her seduction and manipulation of the lead character are a direct means to that end. Of course, Disney couldn't go full-on noir with her, and she is ultimately a faux-fatale, she does still stand out as being sexually charged and dangerous. She's the Lois Lane to Hercules's Clark Kent, the brassy, street-smart big city gal with a heart of gold and her own set of ambitions.

Himemiya Anthy, from Revolutionary Girl Utena. To call her complex and mysterious is not to do her justice. Anthy is probably one of the more controversial characters from the long list of the show, along with her brother Akio, who is the epitome of the rare homme fatale. She is both victimized by her sexuality and able to manipulate others with it, the very image of passive-aggressive behavior, and epitomizes the qualities that result from oppression. She is spiteful, vindictive, and two-faced, but conceals it under a veneer of quiet, happy passivity. In terms of the fairy tale tropes the show uses as metaphors, she is the Witch because her brother is the Prince and since her role is defined by his, she cannot be the Princess, and there is no other role available to her. She uses her sexuality and femininity to take revenge on a world she despises, and seeks to escape from her eternally perpetuating role as the Bride. A lot of fans hate her, but their reasons for doing so are the reasons I love her. She is simply and endlessly fascinating.

Catwoman, from DC Comics. Even though she's been referred to "the Feline Fatale" for most of her long existence, the moniker never really stuck with me until Ed Brubaker's short but fantastic stint as her writer. He took her into noir not only as a femme fatale, but as a protagonist of her own story at the same time, which is a pretty neat trick. Of course, she qualifies more as a faux-fatale anyway, what with her never really being evil, or even all that bad, save for a lack of respect for other people's property. But she is most definitely a sexual being and a serious temptation for Batman, the usual protagonist of the stories where she appears. Whether or not you accept the idea that she was once a prostitute, a dominatrix, a child orphan turned street urchin, an abused housewife, a bored socialite, or a flight attendant with amnesia (seriously), she has nearly always been a woman escaping a bad situation and seeking independence. While her costumed identity started out as a play off of someone else's, she has finally begun to define herself apart from it, and with Brubaker finally found a distinct, unique voice that sets her as hard-boiled detective, seductive fatal woman, and ultimately someone too complex to be fully defined by an archetype. Probably the only thing she will never be is the "good girl", and that's fine by me.

Nami, from One Piece. Not so much now, but during the first "act" of the manga One Piece, Nami was set up as a very femme fatale-like character. She was mysterious and secretive, manipulative, independent, money-hungry, and in a very bad situation from which she was trying to escape. Of course, underneath all the lies, betrayals, manipulations, and dirty dealings, she was a good person at heart, and all her under-handedness was for the sake of the people she cared about more than anything. However, even after the resolution of this bad situation she still remained a conniving, manipulative, money-hungry, underhanded woman and I couldn't have been more delighted. She's smart, independent (one of the few fictional females who doesn't exist as a serious romantic interest to anyone), very comfortable with her own body and sexuality, even though sex is almost a non-issue in the book, and has her own ambitions which she is willing to use nearly any means to achieve, no matter what most people might think of her for it. Though she's unfortunately being drawn more and more as a sexualized titillation for male readers, her personality is always intact and remains at the core of her portrayal.

Nico Robin, from One Piece. Like Nami, Robin began as a classic femme fatale, but going a step further by being an actual villain. When she joined the main cast, nobody saw it coming, and for quite some time afterward, her past and motivations remained a mystery. Given her past role as an assassin, she is clearly lethal, and her calm, unflappable personality, immense intellect, and experienced and sophisticated air create a different sexuality from Nami's young, confident, more "in your face" style. But like Nami, she also does not exist as a romantic interest for anyone, and is her own fully-formed character with her own agendas and ambitions. Also like Nami, she does betray the main cast of characters for reasons that are not revealed until later, but her betrayal comes after several years of camaraderie and is more of a surprise. She too has been prisoner to a bad situation from which she has been trying to escape, as well as probably the most overtly abusive relationship in the series up until then. While she has also become more sexualized of late, her personality also remains intact and at the core of her portrayal, and so remains a character of interest and, if the hints being dropped are true, one of great importance on a very large scope, as well.

Also worth mentioning:
Phyllis Dietrichson from Double Indemnity. I know it's probably blasphemy to leave her off my main list, and she is very much a femme fatale, but the sexual chemistry between her and Walter was practically non-existent for me which detracted from the "evil seductress" routine. Still, a great performance by Barbara Stanwyck.







Lady Kaede, from Ran. Akira Kurosawa's epic retelling of King Lear is an absolute masterpiece in so many ways but one of my favorite elements is this lady. She's ambitious, vindictive, manipulative, seductive, dangerous, cunning, and possibly a little bit crazy. Better still, she sort of wins at the end.