Escapism is a slippery concept at the best of times, let alone under enforced lockdown. To escape is complete liberation, which is currently impossible outside of a Zen-Buddhist psychic shift (which my cynicism sadly precludes). Be that as it may, I thirst for distraction. I have to rely on the contemporary hub of spiritual life: the internet. But the greatest tool in human history has become just as toxic as the world it offers refuge from. Far-right ideologues and liberal alarmists are immersed in a new cold-war, one lacking the reassuring solidity of physical barricades. Not even Superheroes can sidestep this conflict. Superheroes are perhaps the most prominent archetypes in popular culture, modern reconfigurations of mythological heroes. The comic-book fan – once as innocuous as Peter Parker – has suddenly been invested with pop-cultural cachet.
But with great power comes great responsibility.
Perusing the comments section related to any female-led Superhero film shows just how thin the line between a hero and villain can be. They reveal the dark undercurrents that permeate this supposedly inclusive world of heroes and oddballs. The fanboy echo-chambers have become fertile zones for misogynistic rhetoric, both casual and caustic. The schizophrenic reaction to Cathy Yan’s magnificent Birds of Prey highlights the resistance to roller-derby heroines in contemporary fandom.
I’m hardly a comic-book movie afficionado, subscribing to David Cronenberg’s notion that inherent juvenility limits their relevance. I approach them with the same voyeuristic detachment as a Bond film; seldom shaken, rarely stirred. But there are exceptions: Guardians of the Galaxy wonderfully retrofitted the genre for its band of misfit toys; Logan interrogated death with a nihilistic rigour comparable to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. My expectations for Birds of Prey (and the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) were limited considering DC’s recent output. But the film explodes like a custom-made round from Harley’s glitter-gun, bathing the screen in violent neon buckshot. It mischievously defies genre conventions in documenting Harley’s quest for said emancipation. After an adorable animated origin story, the world’s most unreliable narrator puts an anarchic spin on narrative exposition. The film largely foregoes cosmetic CGI flourishes, instead grounding the action in an intricate ballet of choreographed madness. Cathy Yan’s artistic vision isn’t compromised by pernickety universe-building, an annoying trait that can turn these films into parenthetical pitstops. The film also avoids the recent Superhero fixation on Deer Hunter running times, never permitting a comedown from this gleefully narcotic sugar-rush.
But it’s the film’s baseball-bat demolition of the Bechtel test that really transcends genre trappings. That’s where the disconnect with various fanboy groups has come. Caution – wild generalizations ahead. Prior to the information age (before geek had become chic) the comic-book community was a safe enclave for many disaffected young men. They could pool their collective disillusionment with life and the opposite sex into the ready-made coping mechanism of the comic universe. Women in mainstream comics tend to operate in a Diet-Coke version of the mother-whore continuum. Characters such as Aunt May, Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson are the ‘mothers’ (or mothers-in-waiting) – personifications of idealised, nurturing femininity. The likes of Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Black Cat are the ‘whores’ – tempting seductresses who flaunt the status quo. This gross simplification of woman in comic mythology has extended into this golden age of Superhero cinema, with any deviation from expectations met with virulent scepticism. Jean Grey is actually a character that speaks directly to the ‘dangers’ of feminine self-actualization, with the Dark Phoenix a manifestation of unharnessed female rage.
Just look at the really successful female-led Superhero films. Wonder-Woman was a witty diversion, taking the maternal instinct to its zenith. Captain Marvel was a virtually omnipotent figure unburdened by human complexity. These are comforting depictions of uncomplicated female virtue (Madonnas). This never stopped a particularly vitriolic portion of the community from lambasting Captain Marvel. Brie Larson had the temerity to call herself a feminist ahead of the film’s release, incurring a virtual fatwa in the comic community. Invisibility, telekinesis – now those are nifty powers. Championing equal rights for women in the world? That’s ridiculous. Every film that focused on flawed female characters has suffered. Tank Girl was the prototype, focusing on a ‘hero’ who was firmly anti-establishment and defied hetero-normative conventions. Fat chance of success there. Catwoman complicates the issue slightly by being an absolutely shocking piece of cinema. But ineptitude didn’t stop dogs like Daredevil, Venom and Batman Forever from being successful. But Birds of Prey is a veritable case-study in showcasing fanboy misogyny.
Birds of Prey is a follow-up to David Ayer’s monochromatic Suicide Squad. That film was a huge financial success, with many embracing Margot Robbie’s performance as Joker’s psychopathic paramour: Harley Quinn. But the community seems to have gone somewhat lukewarm on our girl, despite the fact that Harley’s domesticated hyena had more personality than Suicide Squad. What happened? She now exists outside the sadomasochistic charge of the Joker, that’s what. Her direct relation to the ‘Clown Prince of Crime’ made her an irresistible accessory to Joker fanboys. But Birds of Prey requires the audience to identify with Harley on her own morally opaque terms. She is a complex character dealing with severe PTSD. This isn’t a tale of redemption; it’s a celebration of new-found independence. It also ditches the leery fetishization of Harley Quinn that David Ayer favoured in Suicide Squad. Quinn’s primary objective was to titillate men in semi-pornographic hot pants, acting as the crew’s sex-doll mascot. Cathy Yan has filtered Harley’s madcap sex appeal through the female gaze, erasing extraneous booty shots and accentuating the eccentric lovability of Quinn. This unrepentant scallywag doesn’t subscribe to either the Madonna or Whore roles, upsetting fanboy equilibrium.
We have to acknowledge the powerful influence of the #MeToo movement in exacerbating some of these toxic attitudes. The movement exploded in 2017, as pseudo-Soprano Harvey Weinstein watched his complex Jenga of sexual abuse collapse. It was a cornerstone moment in the quest to address women’s rights that prompted a vicious backlash in fanboy culture. They spied hidden social justice warriors in every buzz-cut and decaf-latte. Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released just two months after the Weinstein revelations and bore the brunt of this resentment. That film was destroyed by fans, who crucified Rian Johnson for destroying the Force and ingesting the Midi-chlorians (there goes another trigger). This is little more than a reactionary response to cultural change. Birds of Prey is almost custom-made for attack. The birds themselves are an eclectic mix of races and ages, fusing racial inclusivity and righteous femininity. The fanboys seemed to largely tolerate the racial politics of Black Panther as it operated within a rigidly patriarchal structure. But to combine racial inclusivity in a female-led project? And topping it all off is the homoerotic tension between arch-villain Roman and right-hand man Victor Zsasz. Ewan McGregor channels a Nathan Lane level of camp while Chris Messina menaces in a lower register of dead-eyed sadism. Even villainy is only tolerated within hetero-normative terms.
I just want to briefly bring in the sacred cow of fanboy fanaticism: Joker. Aside from being dual DC properties, Birds of Prey and Joker also share the task of cinematically representing deep psychic trauma. Joker director Todd Phillis apes Martin Scorsese to the point of nauseum. Yet the vacuously self-important Joker became a billion-dollar entity and multiple Oscar winner. It was too vapid and thematically obvious to engender the type of social unease that many anticipated. But I think there is something in the character of Arthur Fleck that is extremely attractive to fanboy culture. He is a poster-child for the brand of downtrodden masculinity that society tends to molly-coddle. Todd Phillips has unwittingly (?) created a martyr for all the frustrated, self-pitying trolls that cannot adjust to a changing cultural landscape. This shouldn’t surprise anyone with any knowledge of Phillips’s ‘formidable’ filmography. The creator of such odes to bro-dom as The Hangover and Old-School, Phillips has publicly decried the impossibility of making comedy in this post-MeToo environment. It’s little wonder he would produce such a blatantly obvious love-letter to disenfranchised maleness: he feels that way himself.
I hope the failure of Birds of Prey doesn’t prompt a knee-jerk shift in Harley’s narrative trajectory. The temptation would be to go all Cuckoo’s Nest on this ‘wayward’ Bird, a full-frontal lobotomy to bring her back in line. They can reinstate the smouldering sexpot of Suicide Squad; reunite her with ‘Mr J’ and assuage the fears of online mobs. If that happens it would be a stunning set-back for the representation of women in Superhero movies. And it would only embolden the worst prejudices of a fanboy faction whose whiny voice has become entirely too prominent.