Or else I would lounge in my claw-foot tub, in my pink bathroom, and smoke and read, in the style of Margot Tenenbaum from Wes Anderson’s 2001 movie, The Royal Tenenbaums. There would be a four-poster canopy bed and a striped chaise longue on which I’d artfully drape blankets - I would place it under my sash windows and curl up there to read my many leather bound books. I dreamt of a space where I could put my books and trinkets and funny light installations, where I could come home after my high powered job in the city - a job where everyone was kind of evil but I could kind of ignore it - and live in my flat, which would be as girly as I liked. It didn’t matter that I was in Belfast at the time. This future imaginary apartment was in a typical Manhattan brownstone. I grew up in the 2000s and Selina’s lifestyle, living by herself in her apartment in a fictionalised version of New York City, was what I aspired to and, in a very millennial way, presumed I would have one day. Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) in her apartment in ‘Batman Returns’ (1992) She may pull her bed down from the wall but at least she can afford to live alone. In 2023, it's hard not to view Selina’s bubblegum-hued pad as anything other than aspirational. She pulls her bed down from the wall! She has soft toys on her couch! She has a cat! But this might have been clearer in 1992, when the film was released. The apartment is meant to read as sad, pathetic and spinster-y. A large neon sign on the wall opposite the window reads “HELLO THERE”, an invitation to the guests that she - presumably - never gets the chance to host. Yet her apartment - marshmallow pink, littered with teddy bears, tacky and uber feminine - shows us that Selina yearns to be open to the world, rather than lonely and gloomy. She’s single, under-appreciated by the amoral bankers she works with, and bereft of a social life: her answerphone messages are only from her judgmental mother, emotionally unavailable men breaking up with her (pre-dating apps), ads for perfume (pre-advertising algorithms) or herself, reminding herself to go back to the office (she talks to herself a lot). This is how Selina Kyle, an overworked, underpaid secretary, played by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s 1992 cult classic, Batman Returns, comes back to her little flat in Gotham City after yet another long day at the office. United States Fantasy home: the clutter and comfort of Catwoman’s pink pad in Batman Returnsįor our millennial writer growing up in the 2000s, the Gotham City apartment encapsulated feline independence 4 days ago
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