From Catwoman to Mad Woman: How Hollywood Did Sean Young Dirty
How Joan Rivers, Tim Burton, and others contributed to the angry to crazy pipeline women deal with.
Women They Warned You About is an ongoing series focused on Hollywood misogyny and how the term "difficult" has been used on women in the entertainment industry.
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"To say that I was unfairly targeted is an understatement. But the more interesting question is why?" - Sean Young (The Guardian, 2015)
I never planned to include Sean Young here. Much of that was motivated by what I'd always heard about her: that she wasn't difficult, just crazy. But after reading Anna Bogutskaya's book Unlikeable Female Characters a few weeks ago, specifically her chapter on "The Psycho," I realized I need to include Young.
Because her story is indicative of so many things we've discussed already with women in this series: feminine anger at a Hollywood system who treats them like meat, frustration at the double standards male actors employ in order to be taken seriously (and get away with), and how often women's legitimate claims get boiled down to crazy talk. Young is right in that above quote. The more interesting question is why she was maligned, and left to become "a crazy-bitch punchline to the powers that be" according to Karen Valby in a 2008 profile for Entertainment Weekly.
To many, Young's story begins and ends in 1991, with an appearance on The Joan Rivers Show. Rivers announces she'll be talking about the "Batman/Catwoman Catfight" with a mystery celebrity that, when polling one random white guy in the audience, every one already seems to know is Young. Michelle Pfeiffer had already been cast in the role of Catwoman in the feature Batman Returns by July of 1991, when Young appeared on the show. Pfeiffer was a replacement for Annette Bening, who left the production after discovering she was pregnant.
