Is Hollywood Becoming More Diverse? –Ivy

Is Hollywood Becoming More Diverse? I’m not sure. I’m going to write this post and hopefully figure that out by the conclusion. I’m not at all qualified to talk about this, so please take everything with a grain of salt. I just want to use this to talk about a scenario I find incredibly interesting. In the new Batman movie with Robert Pattinson, Zoё Kravitz stars as Catwoman. Catwomen of the past have been predominantly white, and exceptions to that definitely show up, but I guess that means that Hollywood is getting more diverse, putting a person of color in a role that’s been mostly white actors? However, while race in casting and characters is an incredibly important thing to discuss when asking this question, there’s more to it, and part of that is what I’m examining in this post. 

In the movie, Zoё Kravitz has a female roommate, Annika. She constantly refers to Annika as “babe” or “baby.” She intimately holds Annika in their shared apartment at one point. And yet, they’re not a couple in the movie. They’re unbelievably heavily coded, but they’re not a couple. According to director Matt Reeves, “[...] I don’t think we meant to go directly in [the direction of Catwoman being bisexual], but you can interpret it that way for sure. She has an intimacy with [Annika] and it’s a tremendous and deep caring for [Annika], more so than a sexual thing, but there was meant to be quite an intimate relationship between them.” This is obviously a bunch of malarkey. I just want to take this apart for a minute. First off, he can’t say “the direction of Catwoman being bisexual” so I had to put it in. There’s really no reason he couldn’t say that, and that’s the first sentence of his response. Yes, the question mentioned it, but still, I feel like the wording of that is a bit weird. Second, it’s a “tremendous and deep caring?” What on earth does that mean? It’s clear that he didn’t want his character to be queer and avoided it by saying that it’s more than romantic. I don’t exactly know how to explain this better, but his handling of this topic is quite annoying.

Zoё Kravitz in the 2022 Batman

On the point of the annoying handling of topics, Zoё Kravitz weighed in on the issue of Catwoman’s sexuality in the 2022 movie as well. She said “I agree” in response to a reporter saying they thought Catwoman was bisexual. Okay, you agree. Great. I’m not saying she isn’t allowed to say that, but I don’t think she deserves the mountains of praise she’s gotten for that opinion. Honestly, it changes nothing. It doesn’t make it any more canon, as those two characters never kiss, and it’s kind of a too little, too late situation. Or maybe not too late, but too little. Yes, it’s great that you interpreted that way, but that’s not in the movie, and that doesn’t really come through in the movie, as Batman’s dismissal of that relationship combined with the dismissal from the plot takes away anything Zoё Kravitz could have been trying to put in. 

I’d like to touch on the plot’s dismissal of them: while Annika is still missing, Batman and Catwoman kiss. If you were to go in with the interpretation Selina and Annika as a queer relationship (just as I did), any idea of that would be squashed as soon as the Bat and the Cat kiss. It’s 2022. Queer people shouldn’t have to rely on subtext in movies that only one actor thinks is there for representation. But if the subtext is actually intentionally put in there, it’s better to let it be and let that reading exist than to crush it with the weight of an ill-timed kiss. 

Now to return to the original question. Is Hollywood getting more diverse? I think “diverse” is a hard and abstract word to use. Because of that, I think it’s really not. We’re taking one step forward and two steps back here, and I can’t imagine that’s what diversity is. I do, however, think it’s an unanswerable question and therefore am only answering because I have to, but I’ll just say it’s a terrible question. 

––Ivy

Tannenbaum, Emily, et al. “Catwoman's Implied Bisexuality in 'the Batman' Does Not Count as Representation.” Glamour, 4 Mar. 2022, https://www.glamour.com/story/the-batman-implied-bisexuality.