And of course, she's got a whole new look. With Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, the character is being reborn once again with Suicide Squad star Margot Robbie reprising the role. From the black-and-red Harlequin costume of her initial B: TAS and comics run, through her countless comic book and video game reincarnations, and the "Daddy's Lil' Monster" tee that took Halloween 2016 by storm, Harley Quinn's look has been evolving since the moment Paul Dini and Bruce Timm unleashed the chaotically charismatic character on the world. I’m tempted to say very few, not because her story felt unrelatable (Emma is a bored person yearning for passion and intensity, and isn’t that basically the tale of every teenager growing up in a small town?) but because it simply wouldn’t have occurred to them to identify with a female character.Harley Quinn may be a relatively new character in the DC Universe, having only got her start in the 90s sensation Batman: The Animated Series, but the cosplay and merchandising favorite has already had enough costume and character makeovers to make the Joker blush. Years later, I’m left wondering how many male students would have spontaneously chosen Emma Bovary as their alter ego. I had spent my formative years as a reader empathizing with male characters (does any teenager not go through a Holden-Caulfied-from- Catcher-in the-Rye phase?) because those were the ones presented to me in assigned readings. Of course I identified more with a young man looking for love and a place in the world at a time of great unrest. Without missing a beat, I chose the latter. When I was 17 and taking my end-of-high-school exams (the French equivalent of the SATs), the examiner asked me whether I identified more with Emma Bovary, the protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (the story of a woman tragically bored with her banal life) or that of Flaubert’s L’Éducation Sentimentale (the tale of Frédéric Moreau, a tortured, romantic young man coming of age during the 1848 French revolution). Growing up, we’re taught to identify with male characters, regardless of our gender, because their experiences as perceived and presented as universal.
Female friendships tend to be depicted (when they are depicted at all) as competitive and all sorts of complicated, while male friendships get to be uplifting tales of camaraderie. But while we are taught from childhood to care about stories about male friendship (from, say, Lord of the Flies to Ocean’s 11), the same isn’t true of their female counterparts. Now, don’t get me wrong, as far as I’m concerned, this sounds like an exciting story. I wanted a fresh start, but it turns out I wasn’t the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation,” Quinn narrates as images of her new (female) battle partners flash on the screen. Harley Quinn’s tale in Birds of Prey has very much been sold in promotional materials as a female empowerment narrative. To be a woman is to be a woman – meaning your experiences are understood and analysed only within the confines of your gender, usually by other women. In the world of fiction, to be a man is to be a person.
The new title makes it a bit more obvious that the film is, in fact, about Harley Quinn, who became an immensely popular character after the aforementioned Suicide Squad (just think of how many people rocked shiny mini shorts and bicoloured pigtails for Halloween that year).īut none of this accounts for what might be the most influential factors of all, which is that narratives about women aren’t widely perceived as being universal. Warner Bros, the studio behind Birds of Prey, seems to think that the film’s title is to blame: they’ve changed it from Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) – fun, if somewhat lengthy – to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. It premiered during the weekend of the Oscars, when pretty much every seasoned movie-goers’ eyes were turned away.
HARLEY QUINN BIRDS OF PREY LOOK MOVIE
I personally think that the timing of its release played a part – Birds of Prey came out in early February, known as the kiss of death as far as movie season is concerned. Some have blamed its R rating for its perceived paltry performance (with the reasoning that it cut off valuable potential viewers, namely young teens and families. This somewhat mitigates the apocalyptic reports of a box office flop, but sure – even I will admit it: Birds of Prey still hasn’t entered blockbuster territory.
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