So I decided to lay off all of the philosophical mumbo jumbo about Batman and just write about Batman. Here is just a few pages of what I came up with so far. Not sure where in the paper it will go, but it is making me feel a bit more grounded in what I am actually trying to say. Hope you agree.
Craig Knight
April 1, 2012
Batman Begins…Again
Modern Batman stories reveal an
individual driven by vengeance. His rage is directed not only at the individual
who killed his parents, but ineffective police force that failed to protect his
parents as well. The scene is set in a dark alley outside the cinema where
Thomas and Martha Wayne are happily preoccupied with their 8 year old son’s
reenactment of a scene from his favorite movie “The Mark of Zorro”. The tender family moment ends abruptly when a
robber emerges from the shadows and kills both of his parents while he watches,
powerless to save them. Wayne’s effort
to remedy his lack of power becomes a running theme in his adult life. He seeks to eradicate it along with Gotham’s
criminal element as a masked vigilante and along the way meets foes like the
Joker and others who share similar pathologies but have chosen to wreak havoc
on society instead saving it[1]. But Batman’s origin as a masked avenger is
not uncommon. Other masked vigilante’s
within the comic book universe such as Spiderman and Daredevil are just a few
who share origins spawned from the painful loss of loved ones. Spiderman’s decision to become a hero came
from using his powers for self gain. His
first mission after being bitten by a radioactive spider was to enter a
wrestling competition and use the money to impress his love interest Mary Jane
Watson. After winning this competition
and getting cheated out of his winnings, he witnesses a robbery and decides to let
an armed thief escape with the purse. He later discovers that the same thief he
let escape killed his beloved uncle Ben Parker in an attempt to steal his
car. Daredevil similarly loses his
father a professional boxer, to the criminal known as the Kingpin because he
refuses to throw a fight. One vital
element of the Batman story is the recurrent pivotal moment of his parent’s
death. This crucial moment remains vital to the setting, which is one of the
most important elements of the Batman mythos.
It is here where Bruce Wayne first becomes aware of Gotham as a concrete-clad
beast that he must conquer. But as Frank Miller reveals in his stories Batman:
Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, conquering the beast cannot be
accomplished without becoming a part of it. In the former, a 25 year-old Bruce,
the prodigal son of Gotham returns home after traveling the world in search of
training for his monumental task as the caped crusader. But Frank Miller’s Bruce Wayne is still a
novice to crime fighting. Although he
possesses many fighting skills, he is still naïve to the ways of Gotham. It is a city where most of the police force
and city officials are corrupt and fighting crime is no easy task. He is not
yet aware of the symbiotic relationship between he and the city. He sees only an enemy that he must
conquer. Part of Miller’s narrative
skill in this tale is in taking the reader down Wayne’s dark journey to
knighthood with his inner monologue as the only lamplight. It begins on a plane closing in on the city.
Bruce Wayne gazes out of his window as the captain announces the final
descent. He ponders that from where he
is sitting just above its clean shafts of
concrete and snowy rooftops, which are the
work of men who died generations ago it looks like an achievement. He continues to ponder and then decides
that he should have taken the train, [he]
should be closer…[he] should see the enemy. Another example comes a few pages later as he
walks through the belly of the beast on a
twenty-block walk to the enemy camp where along the way he is sized up like a piece of meat by the leather
boys in Robinson Park, waded through pleas and half-hearted threats from
junkies at the Finger Memorial and stepped across a field of human rubble that
lay sleeping in front of the overcrowded Sprang Mission. Although Miller’s opinions of city
dwellers is of course screaming from these pages,[2]
they do represent a fair view of a character who has experience trauma at the
hands of one of its inhabitants. In this scene Wayne is portrayed as an
embittered spirit who has declared war on the city the injustice it has dealt
him.
Batman: Year
One is a coming of age story for the dark knight. It comes just before he actually realizes
that the film of corruption that consumes Gotham is a vital part of his identity,
an identity that feeds on the night. So
he decides to embrace this part of Gotham that awakens at dusk and form a
symbiotic relationship with it. His
heroic deeds however are not without their share of breaking and entries,
assaults, and obstructions of justice.
In essence, all of the things that people, especially criminals fear
about the night must include Batman or he will be obsolete. Time Warner a company that has in the past
decade been instrumental in reinforcing the noir image of Batman makes this
evident. In an episode entitled ‘Nothing to Fear” from the Emmy Award winning “Batman:
The Animated Series”, he shouts the words, ‘I am vengeance, I am the night, I
am Batman’ as the villain Scarecrow attempts to drive him insane with a fear
toxin which reveals Bruce Wayne’s greatest fear of disappointing his father. Batman shouts this declaration to anchor his
self and face this fear to reaffirm why he dons the cape and cowl. In essence,
Batman needs Gotham as much as it needs him. Without it he is merely Bruce
Wayne Billionaire playboy who lives off of his father’s money. Gotham is a living-breathing reminder of his
parent’s death and his purpose, especially when the sun goes down. When reading the Batman comic, the reader is
always conscious of that alley where Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed. He [Wayne] keeps the reader hyper-aware of
this small stretch of darkness and tar through his many excursions through the
dark streets of Gotham while behind the wheel of the Bat mobile or as he stands
on rooftops gazing down at the city. The
reader can get the sense that somewhere below there is an injustice waiting to
happen just like the one that happened to his parents. His power is in his
ability to prevent such crimes but his powerlessness is in knowing that there
will always be another.
[1] There are various origins
of the Joker and they all have a unique perspective on the character’s
motives. For the sake of continuity I
will refer to Alan Moore’s version taken from the story “The Killing
Joke”. In this story he is depicted as a
former engineer who quits his job to become a comedian. After he fails at this endeavor he becomes
desperate to feed his pregnant wife and decides to help a group of gangsters
rob a business next door to his former job at a chemical plant. During the
planning of this robbery he finds out that his wife and child to be are killed,
but he is forced by the gangsters to continue with the job. Batman foils their
plan and in an attempt to escape he falls in to vat, which bleaches his skin,
turns his hair green and his lips ruby red. After this the man known as the
Joker emerges.
[2] Later in his career Miller
was berated by many of his fans for his extreme and allegedly racist views
especially about the Middle East. He has
also made many inflammatory statements about the OWS protestors. Many of these statements can be found on
Miller’s blog.
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