The Many Lives of Batman

"The Many Lives of Batman , which is a collection of essays edited by my former PhD supervisor, Roberta Pearson. Reading this book showed me that I could get away with studying this kind of popular culture at a high academic level. It was published in 1991, so the most recent Batman text was Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster film. To my graduate students born in 1992 this is ancient history, but it is still very relevant. At that point you can already identity a fragmentation whereby Batman exists across many media in many different forms. You wonder if his meaning is going to completely break down, and split into so many different forms that there won’t be a single idea of Batman anymore. That’s what I engaged with in my own new book – to say that Batman has fragmented even more now, two decades on. I argue that Batman is an archetype that functions as a mosaic. He’s a statue made of fragments. That also applies to figures like Dracula or Robin Hood, or even Jesus. They are iconic figures made up of various different stories, some of which we accept more than others. The character is not one thing but made up of many different things. The appeal of Batman for me is precisely that he is so many different things, that all remain part of the same character. He is a father figure, a clown figure, a gritty vigilante, a policeman. He’s seen by some as camp, a gay icon even. He can be a science fiction character, a film noir character, a pop art character. These all work under the same framework, and he always has the same traits. He is orphaned, has no superpowers, is waging war on crime, is fighting to avenge his parents’ deaths, and is aided by his intelligence, gadgets and money rather than superhuman ability. I agree, and that’s one of the reasons why Batman is fascinating to people at a personal level. You could never be Superman, but if you trained hard enough, built your body and made lots of money, you could be Batman. He represents a normal person who has pushed himself to the peak of human ability and intellect. He’s an intelligent guy as well, not just a fighter. Batman began in May 1939. It’s usually credited to Bob Kane, although a recent book, Bill the Boy Wonder , has argued that Bill Finger played a large role. There is no clear-cut story. Mine too, although some people hate it. They are purist, and think Batman must be dark, uptight, militaristic and obviously heterosexual. I think Adam West’s interpretation works because he played it very seriously. The programme ran from 1966 to 1968, and I still enjoy watching clips of it on YouTube. But the first time Batman was on screen was in 1943, starring Lewis Wilson. It was anti-Japanese, in a word. It was quite cheaply made war propaganda, with a villainous scientist called Dr Daka, played by a non-Japanese actor. So Batman was bringing the fight to the Japanese, who [in the story] were in the US at time, brainwashing Americans. It introduced a propaganda element that was not in the comics. Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are about more than simply superheroes and costumes, CGI and effects. One of the key impulses behind the films was to make it as realistic as possible. Christian Bale underwent a rigorous training regime, as did Anne Hathaway for playing Catwoman. There is very little CGI, the stunts we see are all real and the story tries to imagine how it would really work. Batman doesn’t get Alfred to sew him a costume, he has to order 10,000 of them from Korea in bulk, because that’s how a billionaire would do it. The second film, The Dark Knight , also said something about post-9/11 American culture. It codes the Joker pretty explicitly as a terrorist. The Dark Knight asks how far we can go to fight fire with fire. If we are threatened by terror, to what extent can we take the gloves off? Batman terrorises the Joker with harsh interrogation, which obviously has a resonance for American policy. He takes a suspect from Hong Kong back to Gotham City, which is an example of rendition. And he infringes civil liberties, by using sonar to invade the private lives of ordinary citizens in order to find the Joker. There are all sorts of dilemmas posed. If we are threatened by terrorists, to what extent can we become terrorists in order to combat that threat? In the end, Batman has to go into exile, almost to be punished for crossing the line in battling the Joker. Batman is in exile, eight years after the events of The Dark Knight . Gotham City is in a time of peace, but peace based on the lie that Harvey Dent – who actually become [the villain] Two Face in the second film – never turned to evil and remained the white knight of Gotham, while Batman is the villain. Then Gotham is faced by a new threat in Bane, and Batman has to return from being an outcast to save the city. Bane, I think, represents the collective against the individual. There is even an analogy with the Occupy movement . Bruce Wayne is obviously a privileged one percenter, while Bane commands armies of prisoners and mercenaries, representing the mob and the mass."