Catwoman in Film: Changing Attitudes About Raging Women Clawing Their Way to the Top

To celebrate Women’s History Month, this article is the last of three AwardsWatch pieces that focus on the theme of women in film. On April 25, 1940, DC Comics Batman co-creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane introduced Catwoman to the world. Some comic books gave Catwoman a tragic, troubled backstory as an exploited sex worker, a thief, or an orphan.

On March 16, 1966, Catwoman became three-dimensional when the live-action series Batman hit the silver screen, and many actors would portray her: Julie Newmar, Newmar’s stunt double Marilyn Watson, Eartha Kitt and Lee Merriweather. On July 30, 1966, Merriweather had a chance to play the icon on the big screen in a promotional ploy for the television series to garner more viewers. In all these televised incarnations, Catwoman captivated scores of fans despite having no backstory, being a thief and a mastermind villain, a seductress who never could seal the deal and get Batman to ditch his goodie-two shoe ways.

A little over fifty years after her birth, Catwoman would finally upstage the titular hero in Batman Returns thanks to writer Daniel Waters and Michelle Pfeiffer’s complex performance, which reflected a flawed, contradictory, but ultimately victorious anti-hero. Tim Burton was not a fan considering this incarnation strayed from his original conception, a black widow (not the Marvel variety) type who relished in titillating and killing men. A subsequent film degraded her when she stood alone, and later films succeeded in putting Catwoman back in her place, with her relationship to Batman defining her, the embers of her messy, human exploration and initial ascendence not fully extinguished. To date, there are four films which feature Catwoman as the protagonist or a prominent figure: Batman Returns, Catwoman, The Dark Knight Rises and The Batman. There will be spoilers.

Before delving into the details, it is important to note that movies are collaborative, expensive efforts, which are artistic and business products of their times. Each viewer may analyze a film differently. There is no single way to read a text or attribute a creator’s intentional goal when making a film unless explicitly stated. The collective subconscious influences can be more obvious to those consuming versus those making the film, especially as the time between opening day and the timing of the viewing widens. It is safe to say that few people set out to make a bad film or demonize a huge segment of society… except for Birth of a Nation or perhaps Dinesh D’Souza.

Batman Returns was the top domestic box office movie for 1992. Burton was reluctant to drink from the well that made Batman successful. Despite his success, he was not into the hero. Burton’s note to Waters was not to make her the standard issue “sexy vixen.”  Waters’ Catwoman, i.e. Selina Kyle (Pfeiffer), starts as an average, relatable woman, a “working girl.” Some of her dialogue is cringeworthy, specifically harping on her singleness as if it was shameful, but a lot of her troubles are universal. Overworked and undervalued, Selina walks the streets of crime-ridden Gotham, which makes her vulnerable to attack with no time to process her trauma. Initially a Red Triangle gang member holds her hostage, and Batman (Michael Keaton) rescues her, but no one comforts her. Instead, she recovers by furtively seizing her attacker’s taser and attacking him with it. In a world where anger and physical aggression through self-defense are acceptable options for women to wield, Selina may not have needed to become Catwoman, an outlaw, to express her rage at the world’s incessant psychological and physical assaults.

Selina cannot even find refuge at home. Her answering machine only provides a string of messages expressing dissatisfaction about the role that she plays in the caller’s life. Her mother complains about Selina not living up to her potential. Her boyfriend ditches her on the holidays. A pre-recorded voice sells a perfume to her and suggests that it will make her irresistible to Gotham’s men. Selina even chastises herself by earlier, offscreen leaving herself a message to return to work. Her home is awash in pink, but it is really a courtroom. The verdict: Selina is found guilty of being a bad, undesirable woman.

Unsurprisingly, Selina is not rewarded for her industriousness, and she was unaware that earlier, her boss, Max Schreck (the magnificent Christopher Walken), had planned to take out his frustration on her after a speech does not go according to plan. The shady, charming businessman is the real mayor of Gotham in spirit. He owns department stores, wants to build a power plant, has a loving, reciprocated relationship with his son, is deft at outwitting the Penguin and unfazed at stopping anyone, including Batman, who poses a threat. He is the real villain of Batman Returns because the Penguin never poses a credible threat to Batman, and the people never get disenchanted with Schreck. Unchecked, Schreck would be the villain of every subsequent movie with a heavy rotation of outlandish, obvious villains acting as distractions. Schreck murders Selina when she figures out his nefarious plans to bilk Gotham’s denizens and does not even bother to cover his tracks. Murdered women are not a problem unless they are high profile. Being a woman is a thankless, lonely, and dangerous job. She is not enough, and when she excels, she gets punished.

Cats are a girl’s best friend, and they resurrect Selina, who has a black cat at home, Miss Kitty. A cat is a perfect antidote for such a woman. Cats exist without questioning their existence or assessing themselves as inadequate, and their breath of life not only revives her, but gives her the power to express emotions that are normally not permitted for women. Batman Returns is the only Batman movie that explicitly uses supernatural elements. When Selina returns home, Burton stages the scene like a reprisal to her first onscreen entrance in her home. She is dazed and going through the same motions, initially, unthinkingly ruining her place, but once her answering machine plays another perfume ad, which references the appeal of a boss asking an employee to stay late (as if sexual harassment is a good thing), Triggered, Selina snaps, starts destroying everything in her home that seems normative feminine and covering everything with black spray paint. It is a personal riot or act of resistance, which starts with destroying her own things as a recognition that she feels betrayed and unrewarded for being a good, meek, soft-spoken woman. She stands in her apartment triumphantly with the wide window framing the tableau of destruction with cats lining the foreground. The inside and outside feel less separate, more accessible. Her sexuality is for her. Later other men and by proxy, the audience, get to enjoy it vicariously, but when men equate her overt sexuality with consent, they get rejected. Everything is broader to reflect her internal expansion.

At her core, Selina is a messed up, three-dimensional person. Her resurrection leads to a second adolescence: bad behavior, sexually adventurous, forthright, and questioning authority. People need a second adolescence to reverse the artificial, societally constructed limitations faced when developing, to exorcize societal shame and expectations. Growing up in a misogynistic world stunted Selina from fully embracing her talents so once she let go of the earlier version of herself, the one that she thought the world wanted, it led to a full spectrum of choices: continue in her accepted societal role, become a villain, or strike her own path as a vigilante with a different moral code from Batman.

Batman Returns depicts Selina going through all these stages. On her first night out as Catwoman, she rescues a woman but upbraids her in a fit of projection, blaming the woman for being in jeopardy and not saving herself for others. She exhibits confidence at work to silently confront her murderer and convert ladies’ man Bruce Wayne into a stumbling fool. Selina becomes a villain when she expands the destruction of her personal property by taking her riot on the road to Schreck’s department store. Dressed in the iconic black latex catsuit, she steals jewelry, taunts security guards, and destroys the entire place, which leads to a fight with Batman, who becomes an obstacle in her plan for vengeance and unintentionally sets her on the path to criminality. Catwoman is the only person who gets close enough to Batman to wound him and holds her own in physical combat.

Batman Returns depicts violence as unflinching and consequential. Unaware that the Penguin is working with Schreck, Catwoman allies with him to stop Batman, but he frames the Caped Crusader with the murder of the Ice Princess (Cristi Conaway), who dies like Selina. When women get thrown from heights, they land with a thud, not as broken and bloody as they would be in real life, but clearly dead. There is no respectful cutting away. It snaps Catwoman out of her dance with the devil. Recovering her conscience makes her fractured and vulnerable to attack. She cannot be a villain because to the Penguin, she is just a sex object. Once she spurns his advances, he attacks her, which understandably leads to a glass shattering scream. Even as Catwoman, Selina is subject to the indignities that women still face when rejecting advances.

When Selina meets Bruce Wayne, he holds the promise of everything that Selina wanted before Schreck murdered her: an interested eligible bachelor offering the life that she was taught to want. When they discover each other’s alter egos, Catwoman becomes a Batmanesque figure, a vigilante whose trauma inspires her to stop Gotham’s main villain, who is not the Penguin, but Schreck. In the denouement, Batman unmasks by ripping off his cowl and offers her legal closure: turning Schreck into law enforcement. She rejects his offer with a devastating scratch and a speech that explicitly rebuffs her earlier, normative fantasies of nuptial bliss: “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.” Walking through a gauntlet of bullets that Schreck fires to try and kill her and Batman, Catwoman kills Schreck in an electrifying finale because she believes that Schreck’s money will make justice impossible, which based on his track record, seems like a fair assessment. In the final scenes, Bruce is in civilian wear, and when the Bat-Signal appears in the sky, Catwoman takes Batman’s place at the top of the city skyline.

The visual implications are clear. Batman unmasks, and only Bruce remains whereas Catwoman takes his place as Gotham’s hero. The film validates her behavior and assertion that justice does not exist. Catwoman is not punished for rejecting conventional morality and killing people is on the table yet it transforms her into a hero, not a villain, by explicitly replacing Batman with Catwoman. Murdering the villain is the answer and gets her a promotion. In their first meeting, Bruce notices that Selina has “a dark side.” Selina replies, “No darker than yours, Bruce.”  This dialogue was a setup to a subversive way for Catwoman to finally beat Batman: by defending Gotham’s innocents effectively and being willing to reject the entire system. By the end of Batman Returns, she literally takes Batman’s place.

Unfortunately, that potential was obliterated with the release of Catwoman, which took all the wrong lessons from Batman Returns. Catwoman does get to be the standalone hero. This film kept the aggrieved working girl with a nightmare, homicidal (lady) boss (Sharon Stone) and added a heavy dose of Egyptology to the supernatural explanation for the titular character’s powers. Patience Phillips (Halle Berry), an artist, works at a cosmetics company who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. While Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle was a realistic mess before the resurrection, Patience is the kind of person who trips in her home when no one is watching and complains to loud neighbors across the street in a whisper. It is so dumb that it is painful to watch. As Catwoman, Berry got saddled with a more provocative catsuit that had cut outs to better show cleavage and her other assets (think a more modest version of Prince’s backless chaps at the 1991 VMAs). Some of the CGI cats in this would feel more in place if it was a Shrek film.

This Catwoman incarnation is more animalistic and feels less like a real woman in the way that she moves and behaves. The script even emphasizes that she is unique, unlike other women, which makes her the opposite of an everywoman. Most frustratingly, she obeys the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde trope. Patience has no memory of what Catwoman does. She is robbed of her agency at night, and her empowerment in the day. She just blurts out rude things and gets attracted to jewels then is horrified at her behavior. She gets a romance with a hot detective (Benjamin Bratt) and has a sassy best friend. Even her apartment window is narrower with a dark backdrop; thus, subconsciously reflecting how diminished this version is. The window loses its symbolism of innate, self-worth that only an invisible audience witnesses. Patience uses her window to get an actual audience, her noisy neighbors, who still ignore her. Her empowerment is more like a naughty wish fulfillment, not directly tied to her death. She has annoying neighbors and wants shiny things so she will run roughshod over anyone who stands in her way. The raging woman as a toddler is not a great look. For better or worse, it came in 71st in 2004’s domestic box office and won Razzie Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actress and Worst Screenplay. No one bought this sham as empowering or cathartic but Berry, having won an Oscar a year before, was a good sport and showed up to the Razzies to accept her award, with her Oscar and sense of humor in tow.

More people cheered over Christopher Nolan’s take on the feline in The Dark Knight Rises, which ranked number one in 2008’s domestic box office. Anne Hathaway brings dignity to the role as The Cat, who is never referred to as Catwoman. This Gotham is cleaner in appearance, and the villains seem realistic, but the violence pulls punches. The camera pulls away at the death blow, and sound effectively conveys the pain, but compared to Batman Returns, it is polite and sanitized. Bane feels like a maniacal, ideological terrorist, and Selina is a thief. Bane ends up stealing the spotlight from everyone because he turns out to be a proud papa helping his adopted daughter with her plans.

Catwoman and Bane use rhetoric that sounds revolutionary and sympathetic to the common man, but other than having the back of her fellow thief and friend with some queer implications, Selina is only out for herself and sulks over not being born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She hates the “haves” and being a “have not” because she is not one of them. She seems more disaffected in a Mark Wahlberg fashion: she did the crime but wants a clean slate to live up to her appearance of having a luxurious life and upper-class features.

She later uses victim rhetoric to garner sympathy from cops in interrogation and further distance herself from her association with Bane. Her fear of Bane and his associates function as an excuse for siding with Bane even though she ultimately kills him and is more than capable of facing him. Long before she betrayed Batman, she did not think twice about shooting a random guy at a bar. She is closer to Burton’s hopes for Catwoman: a woman who enjoys hurting men and could get the jump on Batman. She is a walking contradiction: a smart and daunting foe who gets easily caught.

This Selina only becomes redeemed and domesticated once she fully aligns with Batman. Nolan clutches his pearls at the modernized French Revolution rhetoric, and by the denouement, Catwoman does too. Her window moment is silent and impersonal, someone else’s window, while chaotic rioters wreak havoc on those that she used to target and steal from. It is palatable when a pretty girl does it, but horrifying when it is a mob. There is no message of empowerment through subversion, the nuance of being a full human with flaws.

Batman Returns’ Selina would be disgusted with Nolan’s version. Waters’ Selina could never go back to the person she was whereas Nolan’s Catwoman settles for this fantasy by becoming the significant other of the most eligible bachelor in Gotham. There is nothing wrong with having a romantic relationship or wanting such a dream, but the redemption implies that she was angry because she could not find the right man and was poor. Anger is easily dissipated and rooted in circumstance. It is a regressive idea of female rage. Her embrace of heteronormativity erases her criminal past and fury. She does not hate men. She hates not being one of the “haves.”

The Batman strikes a better balance and may be the best Batman film to date though it was in seventh place in 2022’s domestic box office, which could be because of the post-pandemic slump or fatigue over so many Batmans.  Matt Reeves’ Gotham is a mix of Seattle overcast grunge, a postmodern stamp on Manhattan’s 70s. The villains feel like conventional gangsters and serial killers.

Even though the latest version of Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) hues closer to the comics, and her anger is righteous, she never achieves the three-dimensionality of Batman Returns, i.e. the real possibility of becoming a villain. If women are truly seen as human beings, they must be capable of great evil as well as great good. She wants to kill one gangster, whose activities include sex trafficking and strangling women, including her mother. Unlike the first cinematic Catwoman, she is not a disillusioned everywoman. She suffers similar financial woes, but she was always a vigilante who never had a normal childhood. Misogyny is less systematic but lies in the extreme margins of society, a sign of criminality. Aligning with Batman is not an act of self-betrayal because justice is possible when criminals, not the well-established, are the ones guilty of femicide. It also traffics in the tragic mulatto and daddy issues tropes, which may be well-wornm, but works in this case because the acting is sublime. She does not pose a credible physical threat to him, but to everyone else.

This Selina Kyle would be a normal woman if she had a decent man as a father figure. Her anger is excusable, rational, and relatable. In many ways, she is more normal and reasonable than any of her predecessors in her grievances and reactions. Like this Batman (Robert Pattinson), she moves away from vengeance and starts saving people, but unlike him, ultimately decides to leave Gotham and find a normal life once she has accomplished her mission. She leaves him because he does not want to move on, not because she is opposed to a relationship. She is safer because she is subordinate and his helpmate. She is not someone who is scarred from all the trauma but is instantly healed—forget that she found her friend’s body, nearly killed a person, and got assaulted. Her apartment window moment is very similar in staging to Batman Returns, but not in spirit. She is having a normal day. Her apartment is always in disarray and is serving as a safe house to a woman in danger. The scene is a normal day in her life, but it acts as a way for Batman to surreptitiously spy on her and know who she is and get an eyeful when she changes from her work uniform down to her skivvies to put on the least stylized, most homemade cat suit to date. While she may not be as sexualized in her disguise as her predecessors, she is an unconsenting image for Batman to consume and may be the most exposed of any Catwoman even with Catwoman’s costume. It is easy to rationalize that Batman is not a peeping tom because he is investigating, but he is. While it is often a misdemeanor, it also has the potential to be a sexual offense, which makes it an odd way to depict his initial attraction to her. So Selina Kyle, who wants to kill sex offenders, is unwittingly falling for one. Oops. It probably never occurred to director and co-writer Matt Reeves how problematic this scene was and only considered it as a way for Batman, and incidentally the audience, to catch an eyeful without trying.

There is no such thing as the ideologically perfect Catwoman though anyone may have a favorite regardless of how flawed she may be. While Batman Returns’ Catwoman is dated for expressing more concern about the press’ misrepresentations of her weight, she is the closest that any of them came to living as a complete human being. Her outrage at quotidian indignities and repugnant crimes felt organic and less stylized because they are all rooted in the same hate tree. Other films shied away from the prevalence of misogyny, including the internalized misogyny that Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle must confront. This self-accountability redeems her, so she turns away from evil. Her greatest battle was the one that she fought with herself.

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Sarah Vincent

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