Fuck Yeah, Darling

2012-08-01

Selina & Holly—Unedited Queerty Post

Slightly extended version of this post about Catwoman for Queerty.com

If you managed to see The Dark Knight Rises this weekend—which plenty of people still did, despite the Colorado massacre—you might have wondered who that “cute little blonde thing,” as NPR’s David Edelstein put it, running around with Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle was. Played by Juno Temple, the character was described as a “street smart Gotham girl” prior to the highly anticipated film’s release, which had fanboys and girls speculating that she was probably Catwoman’s longtime gal pal Holly Robinson. Though never named in the movie, Temple’s character is in fact listed as Holly on IMDB, and her presence in Christopher Nolan’s final Batman flick is an awesome little easter egg for Catwoman fans. But as Edelstein points out in his review, she also subtly skews Selina’s sexuality, even for those unaware of her comic book history.

Introduced by Frank Miller in his hugely influential 1987 storyline, Batman: Year One, Holly is initially a particularly whiny underage prostitute who Selina takes under her wing as she transitions from dominatrix to costumed cat burglar. The character disappeared for much of the 90s, but was brought back—possibly from the dead; that’s comic, folks—in Ed Brubaker’s re-vamped Catwoman series in the early 2000s. Brubaker’s version of Holly is a recovering drug addict and lesbian who acts as Selina’s eyes and ears on the streets of Gotham. She even takes over the role of Catwoman during Selina’s 2006 maternity leave. The character earned Catwoman a 2004 GLAAD media award, though she’s so far entirely absent from the current series’ continuity—again, that’s the nature of the medium!

Despite lacking much in the way of character development, Temple’s character’s cozy relationship with Hathaway’s Selina did lead NPR’s Edelstein to suggest that the two might be more than just friends. And for those of us aware of Holly’s comic book bio, that’s an even more tantalizing possibility. It reminds us of what we learned in our college queer cinema class about the way LGBT viewers attempt to see representations of themselves, their lives, in media that rarely depicts them. Holly’s presence as Selina’s confidante and the brief moments of physicality between them in The Dark Knight Rises act as a way for bisexual women to infer things, whether intended or not, about the characters, and thus to see themselves in a potentially bisexual Catwoman.

We’re not going to presume to know what Nolan’s intent was in including Holly in his film and then not mentioning her sexuality. You could say that she’s a minor character and her sexuality isn’t integral to the plot. But then, how is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character’s sexuality integral to the plot? Or Matthew Modine’s? It’s not. But we sure as hell get to see Modine’s character’s wife for all of half a second, and we can guarantee it will be almost universally assumed that Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake is intended to be heterosexual. Whether Nolan intended Temple’s character to be viewed as a lesbian or not, what he’s done by including Holly in his Batman universe is allow queer people the opportunity to see themselves represented in Gotham on screen. Maybe the next Batman director will give us more than just a wink and a nod. —John Russell