As social media and the mainstream media flock to praise the success of Black Panther a new controversy has erupted.
A white conservative commentator posted an incendiary message asking why major public figures like the former First Lady had not also praised the Catwoman movie.
DC McAllister wrote: “Michelle Obama says it’s about time black kids have a superhero that reflects who they are. Why didn’t we hear this when Halle Berry as Catwoman was released years ago?”
Even Catwoman’s own writer waded into the debate by blasting his own movie as “sh**.”
Halle Berry’s disastrous 2004 movie was a box-office bomb, losing money and suffering a critical roasting. It still only holds a 9% aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes. The role has also famously been played on TV by Eartha Kitt and in other big screen outings by Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne Hathaway, but Berry’s portrayal was the worst received by far.
McAllister was clearly being purposefully naive, since that Catwoman had little cultural impact or value and is mainly remembered for Berry’s overly-sexualised PVC costumes.
John Rogers tweeted in response: “As one of the credited writers of CATWOMAN, I believe I have the authority to say: because it was a sh** movie dumped by the studio at the end of a style cycle, and had zero cultural relevance either in front of or behind the camera.
“This is a bad take. Feel shame.”
Rogers added: “Also full disclosure: I’ve never watched the movie all the way through in one sitting. I skipped premiere night… And they’d fired me anyway for, y’know, snark.”
He also admitted the film had passed through “somewhere between six and twelve writers.”
As McAllister revealed she had received death threats and extreme abuse over her original post she also fired back by explaining that the quality of the movie had nothing to do with her point.
She wrote: “The backlash to my simple question about Catwoman, since Michelle Obama did say it’s good for black kids to finally see themselves ON SCREEN (ie. a black superhero) in Black Panther, has been hysterical. She was talking about race not the quality of the movie.”
Since Obama and numrous celebrities and social media posts have celebrated the movie primarily for its positive and empowering depiction of a black hero and numerous strong black women, McAllister seems to still be (purposefully) missing the point.
BLACK PANTHER IS OUT NOW IN CINEMAS