Nevertheless, Selina Kyle has had a decidedly rocky history.
Despite debuting as an atypically in-control and unpunished woman at a time
when virtuous female characters tended to reflect the extremely limited
concepts of femininity common in the forties and femme fatales always received
their comeuppance, Catwoman eventually succumbed to the nasty whims of her
mostly male creators. She might be declawed in plot lines that wed her to bland
Bruce Wayne or tortured luridly. Even when more progressive minded writers gave
Catwoman something to do, childish artists depicted her as a sex object to be ogled.
And on the number of occasions when she became too much of a handful, she was erased
altogether. In fact, after she had the distinction of being Gotham’s only
villain to get a mention in Frederic Wertham’s comics-industry-rocking
excoriation Seduction of the Innocent
in 1954, Catwoman was isolated in the kennel for twelve years until Julie
Newmar repopularized her on TV.
Needless to say, the fact that Catwoman is a woman is
intrinsically tied to her difficult history, which Tim Hanley relates in his
new book The Many Lives of Catwoman: The
Felonious History of a Feline Fatale. The author studies how his topic was
treated in comics, television, film, and video games, noting the positive
depictions (her initial appearances in the comics and later ones in The Long Halloween and Catwoman: When in Rome, her treatment on Bill Dozier’s sixties TV series and
today’s Gotham, as well as Tim
Burton’s Batman Returns) and the less
positive ones that objectified and patronized her. The take away from this book
is that Catwoman was a great female character full of potential, but the small
minds in the patriarchal comics industry rarely knew what to do with her.
Hanley supports his thesis with an intense look at
Catwoman’s many appearances (and absences). This can get a tad tedious since he
spends a lot of time summarizing comics arcs, and while his constant quoting of
the awful dialogue in Batman Returns
doesn’t undermine his argument that the film offers a positive, feminist
depiction of Catwoman, it does fog up a discussion of the film’s most positive
attribute by continuously reminding us of its shittiest one.
The Many Lives of
Catwoman still manages to be an excellent study as a whole, achieving a skillful
balance of history and analysis. Hanley integrates his cultural findings with neat details about the Catwoman film Burton and Michelle
Pfeiffer intended to make, the original casting choice for her first TV
incarnation (not Julie Newmar), and the woman who quite possibly inspired her
in the first place (not Jean Harlow or Hedy Lamarr as Bob Kane would have you
believe). The Many Lives of Catwoman definitively
captures Catwoman’s history, compellingly explains how she has bucked and
reflected society’s treatment of women, and relates it all with attentiveness
and humor.
