She lounges against a blurry cityscape, perhaps standing in front of a window overlooking Gotham. She uses the dreamlike urban variegation of streetlamps and headlights as a background against which to strike a Playboy-esque pose for the viewer. She may have just stolen some intimate moments with the Joker; his long purple coat – ruched to accommodate her small arms – covers her shoulders, but little else. She appears sewn into her red and black latex pants, on which are stamped her usual diamond motifs. A flawless, flat stomach tapers down from bulbous, balloon-like breasts that shine so brilliantly they appear to have been buffed and polished. Viewers may well wonder how she manages to hold herself with such poise, considering the effort it must take to keep her bust from upsetting her balance – each breast is (at least) the size of her head. Her hair is mussed, with unruly bunches barely bound by red and blue bows that match the colored ends of the opposite pigtail. Limpid blue eyes meet the viewers’ through wayward wisps of silvery strands. Her face seems almost incongruously young, and I have trouble reconciling her “come hither” expression with the childlike features proffering it.
I call this one The Sexpot.
Alex Malveda
* * *
“It is to laugh, huh, Mistah J?”
This is Harley Quinn’s first ever appearance. She sits on a desk, legs crossed, clad head to toe in her classic jester’s costume: a bodysuit with alternating red and black panels adorned with sporadically-placed diamond-shaped silhouettes. Her shoes are small, flat boots; gloves, one red and one black, lined with puffy white cuffs; hat, a dual-pronged jester’s hat reminiscent of those of the classic harlequins found in the Italian commedia del’arte vein. Strikingly, her face is completely painted white, her lips a wide black stain on a beautiful, heart-shaped face. Though her face is the only area of exposed skin – a flash of paleness standing in stark contrast to the rest of her costume, drawing attention to big blue eyes outlined by a large black eye mask – it too conceals, as her skin is entirely painted white.
Quinn is lithe – athletic – clearly capable of the kinds of acrobatics her costume could easily afford her. She might be right at home in a masquerade, except for her voice. Friendly, high-pitched, expressive, and decidedly feminine, the explosiveness of her Brooklyn accent is tempered by the lilting pitches of her exaggerated vocal theatricality. Her movements are predictably nimble, her swinging shoulders lending her gait a playful, subtle sensuality, her hips as round as her vowels.
The only time Quinn does not sustain this natural grace is when the Joker is tossing her, assaulting her, or otherwise physically accosting her. For example, within a minute of this introduction to the viewer in Episode 122 (“Joker’s Favor”), the Joker brusquely pushes her aside, almost toppling her from her perch on his desk as he rifles through papers. The is just the first (but certainly not the last) instance in which she is treated with the same level of care and compassion he reserves for objects that currently obstruct his way.
Quinn spends the rest of the episode – and indeed, much of the series – doting on the Joker, assisting in his plots to wreak havoc and/or foil Batman and the Gotham Police Department, and generally stepping in when the Joker’s schemes call for an attractive woman to act on his behalf or advance his plans in some capacity. For example, throughout the course of “Joker’s Favor,” Quinn spends time cutting the Joker’s hair (later in the episode, we discover she has been considering applying for beauty school), picking up the Joker’s latest villain at the airport, crashing a police ball and releasing a paralytic gas so the Joker can pin a bomb to the Commissioner Gordon’s chest, and facing down Batman with a knife. She performs many of these actions in a plainclothes disguise, revealing to the audience her natural physical features in the process: pale pinkish-tan skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair.
Quinn’s appearance – one of classic, all-American attractiveness – is not surprising, as it fits directly into prevailing contemporary beauty standards. What is surprising, however, is the degree to which the writers infuse Quinn with a self-assured, explicit sexual drive (especially given the television show’s young audience). Her sexuality is complex and multifaceted, and the interpretation thereof is irrevocably tethered to her corporeal presentation and practices. Her body is the foundation from which she draws much of her power as a super-villain, as her literal (and figurative) flexibility[1] and resiliency[2] are the closest things Quinn has to “superpowers.” Unlike characters like LiveWire and Super-Girl, Quinn does not possess supernatural abilities; unlike characters like Batman and Ivy, Quinn does not have access to the kinds of resources that would confer some advantage in espionage or combat.[3] Instead, Quinn must be a gymnast, relying on her considerable kinesthetic talents (as well as her intelligence) to render herself competitive. In this way, her body is one of her main weapons of choice, and her livelihood depends on her faith in her own abilities to wield and manipulate this unconventional weapon accordingly.
This confidence extends to a sexual boldness that often emerges in Quinn’s interactions with her partner. The Joker, however, cruelly rebuffs Quinn’s advances at every turn. In Episode 421 (“Mad Love”), she tries to cheer up the Joker by approaching him in a slinky red slip. As he rants about Batman, he acknowledges neither her presence nor the romantic, dainty tune she is humming. She screws up her face in frustration and decides to try a different tack: She gracefully hoists herself on the table, crawls over his blueprints, and politely clears her throat. “Go away, I’m busy!” he spits, dismissing her with his usual incivility. “Come on, baby!” she pleads as she positions herself on an invisible seat, arms outstretched to grasp unseen handlebars. “Don’t you want to rev up your Harley?” Amused by her pantomime, she cries, “Vroom vroom,” a few times before yelping in surprise as the Joker knocks her face-first from the table. She lands on the floor with a sharp exhalation of pain, falling out of view. Body still hidden, her hands then creep into frame. “Oh, baby!” she teases, presenting a flat rubber balloon. “I got the whoopee cushion!” She gives it a slap and air trips out, the force of the raspberry disturbing the Joker’s hair. He tenses, gruff as he lectures her about how his previous interaction with Batman was profoundly unsatisfying. After lashing out in anger, he moans about the infeasibility of one of his favorite ideas – a plan called “The Death of a Thousand Smiles.” Quinn slinks up behind him, slipping her arms around his chest and with a suggestively sibilant, “I know how to make some smiles, puddin’.” Moments later, the Joker slings her into the dark alley outside.
In Episode 423 (“The Creeper”), she surprises her puddin’ with a literal pudding pie. As he enters their hideaway, she rises from the mound of goop, cream clinging to her curves as it creeps down her body. She performs a breathy, “Happy Anniversary, Mistah J” a la Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President:”
Happy Anniversary, Mistah J!
You’re really swell and okay!
It’s seven years to the day…
Take the night off, let’s play!
After kicking a dollop of cream onto the Joker’s shoulder, Quinn tries to entice him into the game with a sultry, “Want to try my pie?… I’m sure you’ll want seconds!” Unsurprisingly, he cannot be bothered, and once more sends her flying through the door onto the sidewalk. She lands in a gooey lump by her pet hyenas, and her face wilts in exasperation as her pets lick off the gobs of pie coating her jester hat.
Quinn’s sexual drive is not limited to the Joker; she even has a moment in which she flirts with Bruce Wayne. In Episode 325 (“Harley’s Holiday”), she is proclaimed “sane” and allowed to leave Arkham Asylum. After running into Wayne in a department store, she almost recognizes Batman’s alter ego, asking him, “Hey, don’t I know you?” Wayne demurs, but holds up her hand to cover his eyes (to mimic Batman’s cowl) and persists, “Something about that chin…” A start, then she exclaims, “I know! You’re Bruce Wayne, the boy billionaire!” She briefly inspects his ring finger, then twirls herself into his arms. “Unattached, I see!” At the end of the episode, after a series of misunderstandings and hijinks find Batman leading Quinn back in Arkham once more, she asks Batman why he had been trying to help her all day. He confides that he “had a bad day too, once,” to which she replies, “Nice guys like you shouldn’t have bad days.” She rises to her tiptoes and gives Batman a quick peck on the lips. She turns to re-enter her cell, closing her eyes and smiling in satisfaction, but she decides to be bolder still: She spins back to Batman and kisses him deeply, one hand on each side of his face as she moans softly. She breaks their embrace with a flourish and a shy, “Call me.”[4]
Though Quinn makes unequivocal sexual advances towards both the Joker and Batman/Bruce Wayne (as well as other men on rare occasions),[5] and she begins the series wholly devoted to the Joker, Quinn grows closer to the botanist super-villain Poison Ivy as the series progresses. The women first cross paths in Episode 228 (“Harley and Ivy”) during Quinn’s first solo criminal outing.[6] They are both robbing the same museum, unbeknownst to each other until Ivy accidentally trips the museum’s alarm. Scrambling to evade the police, they are forced to work together to escape. What begins as a tense argument gives way to hasty, but pleasant introductions as they scamper around the museum and ultimately out the door. As the pair leaves the scene in triumph, Quinn reclining in Ivy’s car as the two speed away from their pursuers, Ivy celebrates: “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
The audience watches the women grow closer as they retreat to Toxic Acres, an abandoned chemical plant where Ivy maintains her lair/home. We see Quinn squirming as Ivy attempts to administer a shot. “I hate shots,” wails Quinn as Ivy prepares the inoculation. “You won’t last ten minutes here in Toxic Acres without my antidote!” warns Ivy, losing patience. Quinn finally complies, and, nursing her arm, admits, “You’d think living with Mistah J I’d be used to a little pain.” Ivy scoffs. “Why do you put up with that clown?” she asks, voice dripping with disdain. “I know he can be a bit rough sometimes, but my puddin’ loves me, really!” Quinn protests. Ivy refuses Quinn’s rationalizing and resignedly plops herself on a mossy chaise as if to emphasize her incredulity: “Uh-huh. You’re just one big, forgiving doormat, aren’t you?” With a knee-jerk defensiveness, Quinn bawls, “I am not a doormat!” A beat, then a sincere, “Am I?” Ivy, all sass and savvy, gently chides, “If you had a middle name, it would be “Welcome.” Harley deflates in shame, and Ivy comes quickly to her rescue, encouraging, “But cheer up, kid! You just need some lessons in good ol’ female self esteem. In other words, let’s play with the boys on our terms.”
The pair go on to break into Gotham’s Peregrinators Club. Ivy enters first, shocking the men with her mere presence (muffled complaints such as, “A woman… Here?” can be heard from the dumbfounded male audience). The chairman asks Ivy if she is taking part in “some kind of joke. Ivy, indignant, reprimands, “The joke, my dear chairman, is this obsolete, sexist mockery you call a men’s club. Now I ask you, what kind of adventurers refuse to admit women?” There are strident objections from her audience (“This is ridiculous, what does she know?”) as Quinn surreptitiously creeps around the men, dropping green pods every few chairs. Ivy continues, “Still, if it’s excitement you boys crave…” She throws one last, large pod on the ground, which cues each pod to erupt with vines that promptly ensnare the helpless men. Ivy slips one arms around Quinn’s shoulders and gloats, “That should keep you big, strong men busy while we weak little girls loot your trophy room.” Quinn is agog and praises Ivy with a reverent, “Gee, Red, you got style!” Ivy agrees as they leave the room, oblivious to the tumult behind them.
Importantly, Quinn only teams up with Ivy after the Joker has fired her earlier in that same episode. After Quinn and the Joker barely escape an encounter with the Dark Knight, the Joker is dissatisfied with what he considers to be Quinn’s subpar performance (which is ironic, considering she does all of the maneuvering and outwitting that ultimately separates them from Batman during the high-speed chase). Back at their hideout, the Joker berates Quinn with a sarcastic hypothetical: “Maybe I should just let you run the gang. Maybe you’re a better crook than the rest of us put together!” Quinn stands up for herself, arguing, “Maybe…” and finishing with a considerably more feeble, “…Not.” The Joker backs Quinn into a corner, growling through gritted teeth, before he literally and figuratively throws her out on the street. Outside, Quinn is defiant: “Fine, I’ll show you, you’ll be sorry! I’ll throw a big heist and I’ll be laughing at you! Hah, hah – you hear? Laughing!” She walks a few paces, resolute, before her spine curves and her head falls. Turning back over her shoulder one more time to glimpse the hideout, she whimpers, “I miss him already,” before she glumly continues on her way. This is a very different Quinn than we see later in the episode, arm and arm with Ivy, relishing their successful holdup.
In turning Quinn on to the virtues of “good ol’ female self-esteem,” Ivy acts as Quinn’s unofficial feminist sherpa, introducing Quinn to second-wave sensibilities and vocabulary.[7] As illustrated in the scene in which they crash the Peregrinators Club meeting, Quinn seems to admire this “style,” though never quite adopts it as her own. For example, later in “Harley and Ivy” the two women have chained Batman to a platform weighed down by an ironing board, a sewing machine, a refrigerator, and other such household objects. Ivy taunts Batman, “Here we have the typical male aggressor fittingly imprisoned within the bonds of female domestic slavery.” Quinn adds, “And frankly, folks, he’s never looked better.” Ivy continues, “Admit it, darling: You didn’t think two women were capable of bringing you down.” Batman deadpans, “Man or woman, a sick mind is capable of anything.” Ivy is unmoved. “A very enlightened statement, Batman. We’ll carve it on your headstone!” Quinn, out of her element in such an exchange, simply adds, “Aloha, sucker!” before kicking Batman into the toxic water. The episode finishes with Quinn, Ivy, and the Joker imprisoned back in Arkham. We see the Joker in a straightjacket isolated in a cell, mumbling to himself, “That’s it. Next time I start a gang, no women.” He pushes his head through the bars and calls down to Quinn and Ivy, who are in working in the prison garden. “Do you hear me? No women!” Quinn lifts her face to hear him and smiles. “I think we can still work it out,” she admits. She turns to Ivy for validation. “Don’t you?” Ivy’s face is out of frame, but one can only imagine her incensed expression as she throws a spade-ful of dirt towards her friend; it hits a stunned Quinn squarely in the face as the screen fades to black.
In this way, Quinn and Ivy remain a duo whose dynamism stems from their complementarity. Ivy draws upon her intellectualism to rationalize her criminal raison d’etre, taking advantage of both her (relative) command of feminist tenets as well as her extensive botanical knowledge to exact crimes in which plants are both weapon and prize. Viewed through the lens of Ivy’s Weltanschauung, plants are a metaphor for femaleness: creatures that are beautiful, but also strong (often poisonous if mishandled or ignored), underestimated in their complexity, and procreative. Quinn, however, has no such overarching criminal philosophy; she simply wants to please the Joker and/or have fun. As such, she and Ivy counterbalance the other’s personality and priorities: Ivy shows Quinn that there is more to criminality, love, intimacy, and womanhood than Quinn may have been previously aware, and Quinn shows Ivy the devil-may-care, carefree fun to be had when not every action or decision must conform to a kind of feminist deontology.
For all of their differences, the women do, however, bear one striking similarity: Neither tolerates demeaning sexist innuendo from strangers. This is especially ironic, given Quinn’s history of abuse with the Joker, though she does not seem to notice any inconsistency on her part. In one instance, Ivy sees the ferocity with which Quinn lashes out against lecherous men as an auspicious sign of Quinn’s shifting attitudes regarding her own mistreatment: As they flee the scene of a crime in Ivy’s car, Quinn is forlorn. “I remember when I would go driving like this with Mistah J,” she reminisces. This is not the first time in the episode Quinn bemoans her lost love to an aggravated Ivy. “‘Mistah J, Mistah J,’” Ivy repeats, shifting her usually smoky voice to match Quinn’s tuneful delivery. “Oh, change the record, Harl!” Ivy snaps. “You want to be some wacko’s victim the rest of your life?” As they pull up to a stoplight, they stop beside a car with three young men. The men proceed to harass the women, howling and cajoling in turn before Ivy interrupts them. In the driver’s seat beside Ivy, Quinn cannot hide her antipathy, but Ivy keeps her voice dispassionately dulcet. “Excuse me, boys,” Ivy purrs, “didn’t your mommies tell you that’s not the nice way to get a lady’s attention?” One man goads the women, “Oh, and what are you going to spank us?” The other men titter stupidly as the man slaps his backside. Quinn can stay silent no longer: “That’s right, pigs! And here’s the paddle!” She pulls out what appears to be a bazooka and shoots a massive projectile into the other car, giving the terrified men just enough time to leap from their car and run to safety. The women drive away, and Quinn and Ivy share a meaningful look as the men’s car explodes in a fireball behind them. Ivy is impressed, conceding, “There may be hope for you yet!”
Despite their disagreements over the Joker, the pair clearly influences each other. For example, in looting the Peregrinators Club trophy room, Ivy ventures outside of her usual criminal enterprise and partakes of ill-gotten gains having nothing to do with the botanical bounties she typically seeks (e.g., rare plants, plant toxins, etc.) And though Quinn does not ever fully embrace Ivy’s beliefs as her own (indefinitely distancing herself from the Joker proves too great an obstacle), it is difficult to imagine Quinn would have accomplished everything she does in “Harley and Ivy” as well as subsequent episodes (breaking up with, trying to kill, or otherwise retaliating against the Joker, starting a path towards living independently and crime-free outside of Arkham, etc.) without Ivy’s presence and support in her life.[8]
This influence is so pronounced and the women’s bond so strong that many argue that Ivy’s power throughout Quinn’s larger story extends beyond simply acquainting Quinn with Ivy’s ideological conceptions of feminism and empowerment. Indeed, much has been made of Ivy and Quinn’s unique relationship and the sexual undertones in her interactions with Ivy at their hideout:[9] The duo always wear underwear when at home together, their shirts barely reaching the top of their thighs. Additionally, Quinn and Ivy continue to live together in later episodes (see Episode 420, “Girls’ Nite Out”), even when circumstances do not indicate it is a necessity; they seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
Furthermore, as Ivy hears more of Quinn’s “moaning,” she gets increasingly upset that Quinn is not getting over the Joker. In “Harley and Ivy,” Ivy often fusses at Quinn as the latter mopes over her relationship. Over dinner one night, Quinn has fashioned the vegetables on her plate into a cartoon face vaguely resembling the Joker’s. As Quinn pushes her food around and stares down into her puddin’s makeshift zucchini eyes, she laments that she “doesn’t feel like [her] old perky self.” Ivy angrily brings her fork down on the steamed chard serving as the Joker’s hair and scolds Quinn. “Will you stop? I can’t believe you’re still mooning over that psychotic creep!” Ivy’s frustration, of course, can easily be interpreted as jealousy.[10] In fact, a proud feminist espousing “enlightened” views of womanhood might very likely extend her philosophy to include a kind of sexual liberalism, casting as extremely feasible the possibility that Ivy introduces Harley to the potential for same sex and/or polyamorous relationships.[11] Considering Quinn’s healthy sexual drive, the near-certainty that the Joker fails to meet her sexual and emotional needs, and the fact that Ivy and Quinn are often confined in the same space together (in their hideout or at Arkham when the Joker is free, such as in Episode 407, “Joker’s Millions”), it is not unreasonable to posit that a relationship transcending friendship develops between the two of them.
Their relationship is multifaceted – a study in ambiguous affection and implied sexuality – which renders what otherwise might be an uncomfortable closeness instead more agreeable for those ill at ease with queer manifestations of intimacy. This queerness[12] is particularly palatable because it conforms to an antiquated narrative long since used in fundamentalist religious circles to explain away or dismiss homosexuality. These groups argue that abuse – usually sexual in nature, and often occurring during childhood – somehow discourages typical psychosexual development and instead propels individuals to seek solace in same-sex relationships; these individuals presumably believe they will not encounter the same trauma they experienced at the hands of their differently-gendered partner (or parent).[13] (Though this is beyond the purview of this essay, it bears mentioning that this connection between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality has been investigated and been found to be based on untenable evidence and specious conclusions.)[14]
Quinn’s relationship with Ivy fits this discredited narrative. Indeed, in this way, her sexuality is not a threat to those who might otherwise be discomfited by viewing a same-sex relationship – particularly in a children’s show. Instead, the women’s increasing attachment to one another becomes a predictable development in the story of a survivor of severe domestic violence and not the expression of an individual with a complex, indefinable sexuality who is equally as comfortable with same-sex relationships as she is with those of the opposite sex.
In this way, though Quinn’s possible queerness is empowering in its very existence, the subtlety with which it is presented may in fact further obscure and mystify an already marginalized community. Indeed, the cliché of the “invisible lesbian” is a well-known phenomenon in cultural criticism circles. For instance, TVtropes.org (an extensive “pop cultural wiki” that catalogues the most common clichés in television and other media) lists “Hide Your Lesbians” as one of the many tropes related to queer characters onscreen. Its description is particularly apt in encapsulating Quinn and Ivy’s problematic narrative (or lack thereof):
…Lesbians? Forget ever giving them a resolution – at least onscreen. Heck, the plot won’t even say that there is a relationship, so that technically, anyone arguing that there isn’t one is not wrong. They may live together… they may sleep in the same bed; but [the writers] will not say that [the would-be lesbians] are a couple “that way.”
Canon homosexuality, except in the genres that focus on it specifically, is rare and sometimes restricted to subtext… This is also referred to as queerbaiting when it’s done for the purpose of catching as many fans as possible while still remaining firmly in technically straight territory.
[Queerbaiting] happens most often in series aimed at kids or teenagers – and… most often to female characters. One of the reasons for that is a Discredited Trope: the idea that lesbianism was a form of asexuality. It was believed that the average lesbian wasn’t actually attracted to women but was instead irrationally afraid of men (and therefore sex in general…), usually because she had been hurt by a “bad guy.”[15]
Finally, it is telling that, in her essay on whether or not Quinn’s backstory as an ambiguously queer character will cast off its shroud of subtext in favor of a more openly queer storyline in Quinn’s Suicide Squad spinoff, Tosha Rachelle Taylor refers to Quinn’s history as “crypto-queer” (“crypto” being a prefix denoting something secret, hidden, or unacknowledged).[16]
In Quinn’s case, the “Hide Your Lesbians” trope is also related to the phenomenon of “bisexual erasure” (also known as “bisexual invisibility”), defined as “a pervasive problem in which the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright.”[17] Quinn’s membership in a media that so discounts the validity of bisexuality precludes any kind of nuanced understanding of flexibility in Quinn’s sexual preferences and practices. Unfortunately, bisexual erasure – especially in the 1990s, during which Batman: TAS aired – was also a product of the larger lesbian community’s hostility to those women who engaged in sexual relationships with individuals across multiple gender identities and/or to those women who refused to assume the label of “lesbian.” In Sharon Dale Stone’s 1996 essay “Bisexual Women and the ‘Threat’ to Lesbian Space: Or What if All the Lesbians Leave?” the author describes current attitudes among lesbians towards bisexuality:
It is wrong, I am persuaded, to categorically dismiss bisexual women as inherently untrustworthy – a threat to lesbian space. Nevertheless, many lesbians – and lesbian feminists in particular – continue to vilify bisexual women. A few years ago, for example, Marilyn Murphy argued that because they freely choose to sleep with men, bisexual women are the only true heterosexuals. In this manner, Murphy defined the attraction a bisexual woman experiences toward other women as irrelevant and argued that these women are not competent to know and define their own sexual/sensual responses. This is insulting to the integrity of bisexual (and heterosexual) women.[18]
Besides being denigrated, bisexual women were also left unacknowledged. In Elisabeth Daümer’s 1992 essay “Queer Ethics; Or, The Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics,” the author argues, “Due to its problematic political and social position between two opposed sexual cultures, bisexuality has often been ignored by feminist and lesbian theorists both as concept and a realm of experiences.”[19] Furthermore, though both lesbians and bisexuals are more visible now than they were in the 1990s, they still suffer from issues of underrepresentation in the media, as confirmed in a 2012 BBC report on the prevalence of LGB characters that found “little portrayal of lesbian women, and hardly any representation of bisexual people.”[20]
In this way, though Quinn’s homosocial and homosexual development may be mired in troublesome tropes or problematic narratives, a legacy of lesbian and bisexual exclusion and abrogation nevertheless makes a portrayal like Quinn’s particularly crucial for its adaptive potential as an affirmation of queer identity. Newer works – especially the Harley Quinn comic series – have capitalized on her beginnings in Batman: TAS to inform a portrayal of Quinn as an explicitly queer character. These developments are necessary, as explained by “gay indie comic creator Brian Andersen:” “Of course, there were often allusions to queer characters in the comic books I read as a kid, but these allusions never connected with me. Allusions are all well and good, but I needed — I need — something more concrete.”[21]
__________________________________________________
[1] Precisely because she does not share some of the Joker’s stranger physical attributes (when not in costume, her skin is not bleached white, her hair is not dyed green, etc.), much of her power stems from her invaluable ability to, by virtue of her “normal” appearance, insert herself into plans and situations that warrant an inconspicuous agent.
[2] Her physical and emotional resiliency are powers in and of themselves, as she is the recipient of endless abuse from the Joker and still manages a full recovery after each traumatic episode.
[3] In Episode 420 (“Girls’ Night Out”), we see this discrepancy firsthand. Ivy, Livewire, and SuperGirl use their superpowers/resources to battle one another, leaving Quinn at a disadvantage that is often emphasized for comedic effect. Episodes such as these make even more apparent how “othered” Quinn is in the larger landscape of Batman villains and heroes.
[4] As this is the last episode to feature Quinn in Season 3 of the television show (before the transition to the new network/aesthetic of The Adventures of Batman and Robin for Season 4), one could argue that this episode was originally how Quinn’s story was slated to “end,” which could explain why she is no longer with the Joker and why Leland confirms that in a short time Quinn will “be ready to reenter society for good.”
[5] These other instances include the sexual advances she makes towards the Boxy Bennett and the Creeper. However, these should not be considered genuine, as they are merely attempts distract and/or convince the men of her good intentions.
[6] Technically, Quinn commits her first criminal excursion alone as Dr. Harleen Quinzel when the latter pilfers the clothes that would comprise her Harley Quinn costume from the costume shop. However, as she accomplishes this mission just before she becomes Harley Quinn (and it is done in order to break the Joker out of Arkham), it does not quality as Quinn’s first criminal expedition.
[7] For a description of the tenets of second-wave feminism, see Rampton.
[8] Indeed, in “Harley’s Holiday” (the last episode to feature Quinn in Season 3, see Footnote #31), it is not the Joker, but Ivy who is waiting to welcome Quinn back to Arkham. Ivy holds a potted flower – presumably a kind of “homecoming” gift for Quinn. Importantly, in what could have been both Quinn’s and Ivy’s last appearance in the show, Quinn’s last line (“Eh, what are you looking at?” to Ivy’s wry smile after watching Quinn kiss Batman) is directed towards Ivy.
[9] See Taylor’s “Harley Quinn’s Crypto-Queer History…”and “Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy: Friends or Lovers?”
[10] Quinn also has moments of jealousy, though these do not pertain to any of Ivy’s would-be male suitors, but to the female villain Livewire (with which Ivy shares some suggestive lines). When Livewire joins Quinn and Ivy for an ATM raid/clandestine shopping spree, Ivy admires Livewire’s abilities, telling her, “I really like the way you handle your powers.” During the heist, after Livewire has consistently humiliated Quinn, Quinn asks Ivy, “When did we become ‘the gang?’” Later in the episode, Livewire is staying with the two women in their hideout, the three having just returned from a very public argument in a nightclub. Livewire pays Ivy a backhanded compliment, and Ivy asks her, “You’re not going to get all hissy and rude again now that we’ve kissed and made up?”
[11] In making a claim for Ivy’s queerness her essay on Quinn’s “crypto-queer history,” Tosha Rachelle Taylor points out that the vanity plate on Ivy’s car reads, “Rosebud” (see Taylor’s “Harley Quinn’s Crypto-Queer History….”) Though this could be interpreted as a Citizen Kane reference, as Ivy may be familiar with classic movies (note the Casablanca reference later in that scene), Taylor also points to “rosebud” as a nickname for the clitoris – a euphemism that has emerged from a contested claim regarding William Randolph Heart and his lover (see Thomson).
[12] Queerness is a multifaceted term denoting several complex sexual, psychological, and social phenomena. As the term “queer” has a legacy of derogatory misuse and subsequent more positive re-appropriation by the theretofore slandered community, it is important to establish both a working definition for the term as well as its application in the context of this piece. According to a glossary compiled by multiple academics and accumulated in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s LGBT Center, “queer” is “an umbrella term representative of the vast matrix of identities outside of the gender normative and heterosexual or monogamous majority… [and] an umbrella term denoting a lack of normalcy in terms of one’s sexuality, gender, or political ideologies in direct relation to sex, sexuality, and gender” (see “Trans, Genderqueer, and Queer Terms Glossary”).
[13] For examples of these claims, see amicus curiae briefs for Donald Welch, Anthony Duk, Aaron Bitzer v. Edmund G. Brown et. al filed by the American College of Pediatricians and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays And Gays; Johnston; Nicolosi; Satinover; Sprigg, Peter, & Dailey; Throckmorton.
[14] See “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked” for Southern Poverty Law Center’s thorough, multi-sourced refutation of this causal link.
[15] More of TVtropes.org’s queerness-related clichés that hold particular relevance to Quinn’s story in Batman: TAS or her other adaptations are as follows: “Adaptational Sexuality,” “Ambiguously Bi,” “Bait-and-Switch Lesbians,” and “Depraved Bisexual.” For more information (including the article on “Hide Your Lesbians”), see “Queer as Tropes.”
[16] See Taylor’s “Harley Quinn’s Crypto-Queer History…”
[17] Quote from “Erasure of Bisexuality;” see also Yoshino.
[18] See Stone.
[19] See Daümer.
[20] See “LGB Consultation: Diversity & Inclusion: Report on the Portrayal of LGB People.”
[21] See Andersen.