The Batman spoilers follow right from the top
Another day, another buried gay.
The Batman opened in cinemas on Friday to much fanfare, and deservedly so. Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the Caped Crusader, a character who has been reenvisioned countless times since his inception in the 1930s, is a unique take on the troubled vigilante.
Refreshingly, Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne isn’t the playboy billionaire we’ve seen before. He is, in fact, rather emo. Set against a grunge-inspired film-noir Gotham, Bruce’s job is less to fight the bad guys and more to save Gotham from itself – a problem of which he is at the centre.
To help he has his faithful Lieutenant, not yet commander, Gordon (played by Jeffrey Wright) and occasionally the stealth skills of one Selina Kyle (not quite yet Catwoman). While the noir stylization relegates Selina into a femme fatale role, Zoë Kravitz adds a surprising amount of gravitas.
Warner Bros.
And, apparently, an element of queerness to the film. Kravitz said she interpreted her relationship with a character named Annika, a fellow waitress at the Iceberg Lounge (a mob haunt run by Colin Farrell’s Penguin) as “some kind of romantic relationship”. When a reporter commented on being happy seeing Selina finally portrayed as bisexual, she replied: “I agree.” (Via Variety)
We agree to up to a point, and that point is the happiness. The clues that Selina is bi are buried so deep in the subtext you need a spotlight as bright as the bat signal to find them. She refers to Annika as ‘baby’ a few times, but then to others calls her simply ‘my friend’.
Comparatively, she macks on Batman within mere minutes of meeting him. While we would never deny the palpable chemistry between her and Pattinson on screen, the difference between the two relationships is staggering.
Warner Bros.
Blockbusters have had trouble representing queer relationships on screen for a long time. From Valkyrie’s cut bisexual romance in Thor: Ragnarok to Star Wars‘ very firm rejection of the potential bisexual relationship between Poe and Finn, big studios, it seems, are more concerned with not upsetting a portion of their fanbase (the toxic one) than portraying these worlds in any way that reflects reality.
Yes, you could easily argue that these films are decidedly hyper-real. However, when directors explicitly say that they’re going for a ‘grounded’ real-world approach and are excited for how their films will shape cinema, there is no way to excuse a lack of explicitly queer relationships.
We might forgive the transgression of subtextual queerness (there if you want to see it, but easily whitewashed if you’re a homophobe) if there was anything else to make up for it in the film, but there isn’t. Annika has been dead this whole time.
Warner Bros.
So not only is Selina’s one bisexual relationship not explicitly confirmed on-screen, even if we extended the latitude to The Batman of taking subtext as fact then The Batman falls firmly in the trap of burying your gays. (Also fridging, in which the death of a female character is used to spur another character’s actions, usually a man though in this case the trope still stands.) Annika’s death is what prompts Selina to finally take revenge on Carmine Falcone.
This isn’t to say we didn’t like The Batman, nor Kravitz’s portrayal of Selina. Our umbrage is with the consistent refusal to explicitly acknowledge queer characters and relationships with the same weight and importance as straight people and heterosexual relationships – while simultaneously trumpeting the progress and real-world impacts of these blockbusters.
Until queer characters and relationships are treated equally on screen, the claims – whether by fans or studios or actors – of the transformative quality of cinema must always be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
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