Two movies opening this week are action-fantasies with girls as their central figures. Halle Berry as Catwoman is, I suppose, technically a woman, not a girl, but there’s something very girly about the way she plays the part. She has made various comments about this being a “strong woman” role, and how the plot has something to do with a woman discovering her power, but there’s little in the movie or in her performance to make the character seem like a real, mature woman in all her glory.
The “power” Berry discovers when she is transformed from ordinary, klutzy, put-upon Patience into a semi-feline super-creature is signalled by, first, her new ability to jump great distances and to land on her feet, by her losing her earlier klutziness, and by her now being able to wear a slinky leather outfit she had previously avoided, presumably out of sensible embarrassment.
The power of womanhood, in this context, is comic-book and clichéd: it’s a matter of attaining computer-generated physical skills, of being able to squeeze your slender supermodel body into a dominatrix outfit and wield a long whip. In other words, Berry becomes a hokey male fantasy of female power — which means mostly the power to turn men on.
Years ago there were complaints about Disney’s Pocahontas, which seemed to sexualise the protagonist (giving her notably generous breasts, for instance) in a context that was meant to be kids’ or “family” entertainment. This was deemed by some to be part of Disney’s Illuminati-style plan to corrupt American children, or perhaps to promote paedophilia, and Disney’s then head, Michael Eisner, was fingered as the chief culprit.
One may laugh at the element of right-wing American conspiracy-theory in this view, but there’s something to it: that criticism picks out the strain in American popular culture that infantilises its subject matter (and thus its audience) at the same time as it milks for all it’s worth any possibility of sexual stimulation. Not surprising when boys in their teens form such an important demographic in box-office terms.
Catwoman is also guilty of that odd mix of childishness and adult lubricity. There is the male-fantasy element of her tight, torn leather outfit and so on, and she has a night of passion with a cop played by bland Benjamin Bratt, who emerges with a neat triplicate scratch on his right shoulder blade. Grrrrr! Or, perhaps, miaow. Apart from that, Catwoman is very much aimed at kids of whatever age: the character’s emotional “arc” is elementary, and the violence is stylised and bloodless (though the final confrontation with the villain played by Sharon Stone feels rather brutal by comparison with the rest of the action).
The titular girl in the French computer-animation Kaena, by comparison, really is a girl — there’s no hint of sexuality here. Kaena is tomboyish, adventurous, and apparently has some special mystical bond with an alien entity inhabiting her strange flying-forest world. Disbelieving the high priest who upholds a destructive status quo, she goes on a quest to find out what’s really going on.
Kaena is fun, superbly imagined and animated, especially the shining gold demons. The action is much better than in Catwoman, where the new conventions of computer-generated superhero imagery are to be seen solidifying into clichés. Without even trying to be, Kaena is infinitely more feline (that is, gracefully agile) than Catwoman, who in her capering about on all fours is reminiscent not so much of a cat as The Lord of the Rings‘s Gollum.