From: gmark@cbnewse.cb.att.com (gilbert.m.stewart)
Subject: Re: Feminist Perspective of Batman Returns
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 16:21:10 GMT
Keywords: Batman, feminist, confusion, symoblic

In article <poznikof.711847807@sfu.ca>, poznikof@fraser.sfu.ca (Kenneth Shane Poznikoff) writes:
To start with, I agree with your friend.  You have overanalyzed the movie.
Secondly, I agree with you that nothing is inadvertent in a movie.  However,
you are being naive to think that the purpose behind anything that shows
up on the screen is necessarily what you think it is.
> 
> Then when Cat Woman and Batman are fighting he ends up knocking her
> down and she says "How could you,  I'm a woman".  That is so pathetic.

Women and people in general sometimes do pathetic things.  There is no
shortage of pathetic actions by either gender in the movies.

> > Like the security guard said, "I don't know whether to open fire or fall in
> > love!"  (As Catwoman was destroying a display case.)

Which many of the moviegoers at the screening I went to appreciated.
I tend to agree with you, but then you and I aren't the only market this
movie has.
> 
> This is so G__ D___ed corny and such a cliche.  In this scene
> also, the cat woman uses her whip to disarm the guards.  She makes some
> comment about their guns which is an allusion to their penis.  This to
> is such a cliche.  Sociologits are quite aware of the association of
> a gun and the penis in popular culture.  There are hundreds of articles
> written about it.  Its very old, very tiresome.

Just a word to the "penologists" out there.  Some of the theories may be
valid, but consider that almost any shape that is not completely spherical
and therefore has one axis longer than the other is a candidate for being
deemed "phallic" by these "penologists".  I don't believe phone poles or
rockets or wrapping paper tubes were designed by men to celebrate their
endowment.  A gun with no barrel just doesn't work all that well.  And
the fact that a gun has a hole in it does not necessarily mean that it
represents femininity.  Also, the fact that a gun represents power over
an adversary is not necessarily tied in with the physiognomy of males.
If males were exactly as they are but had not "nether protuberances"
and we all reproduced by some other means, I'd say guns would look
about the same.  And if a man has power over another man by using a bomb,
and that bomb was shaped like a doughnut, then I'd expect the Freudians
would be jumping out windows trying to analyze this.  But even though
the situation had changed, they would still find a way to rationalize
the sexual content of it from the female aspect.  Just more crap.

> 
> There are theories that argue that men's greatest fear is of castration.
> When she removes the guns, she is symbolically castrating the men.  This
> is effective (but none the less, cliched) method of raising feelings
> of resent in the male viewer.  There are other scenes that do this also.

It's cliched if you choose to interpret this as "removal of the great 
power of security guards by a woman."  I doubt it was that grandiose, but
anything's possible.

> the message is:  women are (should be) (can be) (will be) entitled
> to equal pay for equal work because they are men's equal.

I think the message is, "If you are thrown out a window by your boss,
your goodness will enable you to be revived by cats, and then you
can be an equal supervillain to men and make just as big an ass of
yourself by first destroying private property."

> acceptable.  This is disturbing because his/her ideologies are 
> most likely conformant with dominant ideologies -- capitalism 
> and patriarchy (male dominant society, hateful of women).

So you are saying that "capitalism = male dominant" and
"patriarchy = hateful of women"?  Consider that some might take the
extreme view that "capitalism = survival of the fittest" and
"patriarchy = protective of women".  This then could possible
be translated into "lack of capitalism = female dominant" and
"matriarchy = hateful of men".  Also, this could possibly be
interpreted as "survival of the fittest = male dominant", thus
leading to the conclusion that women cannot compete with men.
Quite a leap of faith, there.  And quite a generalization.
Which is what a lot of pseudo-Freudian interpretations seem
to be.  Not that they're always wrong, just often humorous.

GMS
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies