Corporations in Popular Culture: iZombie and Catwoman
Corporations in Popular Culture: iZombie and Catwoman
"I'm a social worker, my health insurance covers like 2 band-aids a year"
- Major, iZombie
While recent CW show iZombie and the 2004 movie starring Halle Berry might not seem to have much in common at face value, this blog post will illuminate the common thread running through both stories. For starters, both the TV show and the movie are based on comic books (more roughly so in the case of Catwoman, which may have just lifted the character from the comic books). However, I chose these two popular media for this pop culture mash-up review because of their similar villains. And by villains, I don't mean zombie Blaine from iZombie or Catwoman's Laurel Hedare. I would argue that the biggest villains in both iZombie and Catwoman are their respective corporations. Both media feature a prominent corporation that is making people sick for profits and are going to great lengths to cover up their wrongdoing and continue their work. These representations hit close to home when it comes to the role corporations play in the U.S. in real life.
The 2004 movie Catwoman starring Halle Berry is mostly memorable for its negative critical reviews that derided the film's bad writing and acting. However, upon a re-viewing, at least one plot line and its surrounding messaging landed with me. To recap, Catwoman is a film about a woman (played by Halle Berry) that works for a dangerous corporation that attempts to murder her when she accidentally discovers its darkest secrets. But instead of dying, she is turned into a Catwoman by an Egyptian cat that has magical powers. The corporation responsible for her death, Hedare Beauty, sells a line of cosmetic skincare and beauty products whose claim to fame are the prevention of aging (sound familiar?) Laurel Hedare, the wife of the company's owner, is living proof that the products work. She is an aging model but her skin looks relatively flawless; however, there is a catch. After years of using the products, Hedare's (and others') skin is as hard as metal and she can't stop using the creams or else she will suffer debilitating headaches among other frightening symptoms.
Throughout the film, Hedare Beauty is symbolic for the U.S.'s very real multi-billion dollar beauty industry. Although Laurel Hedare maintained a youthful look through the use of the anti-aging creams, the company still replaces her with a younger, newer model. This resembles the actual ageism of Hollywood and other entertainment industries that shut out women who are middle-aged and up due to beauty ideals and cultural values. At the same time, through the imagery and advertising deployed by Hedare Beauty, the film depicts a beauty standard as one of white, thin femininity. Both of the models hired to promote Hedare Beauty and the sales of its beauty products are thin, white women, another way in which the film mimics reality. To top it off, the protagonist charged with stopping Hedare Beauty from poisoning consumers and fighting Laurel Hedare in the process, is a Black woman. This is pivotal: it is often recognized that the biggest casualties of American and Western beauty standards are Black women (and I would argue, Indigenous women). This plot line symbolizes the struggle for Black and Indigenous women to overcome Western beauty standards and America's beauty industry to survive and thrive in America and the West. However, it should be noted that actress Halle Berry has been largely celebrated for her beauty throughout her career. It is important to highlight how Hollywood and other entertainment industries emphasize Black beauty as appearing similar to Berry: light-skinned, often biracial and thin. In other words, Black women that are deemed acceptable through proximity to Western beauty standards due to colorism.
Similarly, TV show iZombie (circa 2015) revolves around the wrongdoing of an all-powerful and wealthy corporation. In the show, the irresponsible actions of corporation Max Rager and the failures of the government and CDC to regulate it lead to the outbreak of a disease that turns people into zombies. Lead character Liv Moore (played by Rose McIver) contracts zombie-ism at a boat party where attendees are mixing Max Rager (an energy drink) with a fictional drug called Utopium. The combination of the substances generates the zombie disease in human partakers. However, Liv did not partake in Max Rager or Utopium: she was infected by a scratch from an already-infected zombie. This is another way that the disease can be spread to humans. It is eventually revealed that Max Rager executives are aware of their product's dangerous side effects including its ability to cause psychosis in consumers that drink large quantities of it. However, the corporation places more importance on its continued profits than the safety, health and well-being of the public. This leads to Max Rager's quest to cover its tracks, and like Catwoman's Hedare Beauty, kill anyone that tries to stand in its way. Once Liv's boss and former CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) employee Ravi Chakrabarti creates a cure for the zombie disease, CDC leaders refuse to make the cure accessible to the public and instead choose to profit from the privatization of the cure by making it ultra-expensive. This plot line mimics reality and the privatization of the U.S. healthcare industry and pharmaceuticals, which prioritize profits over human lives. Life-saving medications like the Epipen (which treats otherwise fatal allergies) and insulin for Type 1 diabetics have gone up exponentially in prices, leading to the deaths of patients that cannot afford their medicines.
Both iZombie and Catwoman depict worlds that are simultaneously parallel with ours and yet chillingly dystopian. The striking parallels to the real world indicate that the authors of these stories (the comic books) used the U.S. as their blueprint. These stories serve as both a warning and a crystal ball into our future. As dire as they seem on the big and small screens, it is important to realize that some version of them is already playing out in the U.S. In Flint, Michigan, government officials were paid off by a corporation and allowed it to poison the city's water supplies, harming an entire community. Corporations are responsible for putting toxic chemicals (like lead and asbestos) and other carcinogens in our food, water, homes, buildings, and beauty and hair products, which lead to cancer and other fatal illnesses (see Erin Brockovich, a film based on a true story). The current opioid crisis ravaging the U.S. was caused by pharmaceuticals and doctors willing to sacrifice patients' health for money. We live in a culture that would rather blame poor and other marginalized communities for negative health outcomes than regulate corporations and the harm they inflict on the public for monetary gain. There may not be a zombie apocalypse or other apocalyptic diseases cropping up in America, but the current state of affairs suggests that this scenario is never too far off.
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