Five years after comic book fans split the Internet over news that Anne Hathaway would play Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises , we're living through a fresh debate over over who will next wield the whip. The latest impetus was The Hollywood Reporter's announcement last December that Gotham City Sirens , a comic book series that often features Gotham's premiere cat burglar, would be adapted into a film.
But fans have since decoded a series of vague social media posts from rising stars Haley Bennett and Eiza Gonzalez and concluded that one may have snagged the role—fanning the inevitable flames of Reddit dissent , as some Redditors argue that both actresses are too young for Ben Affleck's year-old Caped Crusader.
To some extent, this is par for the course: Fans are always divided over casting choices for beloved comic book heroes, especially on anonymous Internet forums. But Catwoman is an especially divisive character in the publisher's extended universe simply because she's been reimagined so many times. Since her first appearance in , Catwoman has been white, black, and Latina; she's become a man-hating feminist stereotype and a loving wife to Batman; she's had alternate backstories as an amnesiac stewardess, a battered wife, and a cash-strapped prostitute; and she's been played by the quintessential performer of "Santa Baby" and by the former Princess of Genovia.
Though some of her characteristics have persisted—she's smart, mischievous but not evil, and sexually liberated, and generally wears some kind of cat get-up—Catwoman's identity, goals, and especially her costume have transformed throughout the decades, in comics, movies, television, and video games. Why has Catwoman juggled so many identities? Nevertheless, as a consistently defiant female character, Catwoman has been celebrated or punished in each era she's lived through, according to the prevailing social mores of the decade: She was cast as an amiable thief in the s, for instance; a supervillain in the paranoid '50s; an outcast in the '60s, '70s, and '80s; and an anti-heroine and feminist icon in the '90s, s, and '10s.
She's been transformed at the hands of iconic authors too: Frank Miller demoted her to a prurient side character, whereas Tim Burton redeemed her as a whip-cracking, girl-power icon, and Genevieve Valentine gave her new dimensions as an LGBT heroine in comics.
