Dark Knighthood: On Batman and the Heroes We Deserve
Knights in shining armor stopped being metaphors worth promoting long ago. Darkness is favored over shine given that the absence of light better reflects the complexities of our times and the heroes it deserves. It is perhaps because of this that Batman is still such a towering presence not only in comic book culture but in American culture in general. And yet there is something troubling about accepting a dark vigilante hero working outside the confines of the law. If superheroes are supposed to be mirrors through which we look at ourselves and aspire to be greater, then what is it that’s reflected when we look at ourselves through Batman? If darkness is his ally, then are we not staring into an abyss filled with bats? This may be so, but in this case the darkness stares back, and what comes out of it is the realization that justice is better served when it is defined by a higher sense of morality. And that sense of morality is not always contained within the law.
Batman is a character revered by the principle of moral rebelliousness. The war he wages against crime is relentless and well-argued through tried and true superhero tropes (which may be quite worn but work nonetheless). Now, as a vigilante he has to keep to the definition of the concept so he can be held accountable for his actions. Working outside the law comes with a stricter sense of judgment. Slipping morally can be a catastrophic thing for a hero that works in such ways. According to Jon Rosenbaum, vigilantes are typically defined as individuals who “defend [the established] order by resorting to means that violate [the] formal boundaries” of that order. Quite simply, they are characters that take the law into their own hands.
As an idea and as an example to follow, Batman upholds vigilantism as the most sensible option left open to battle crime. He speaks for personal responsibility and social accountability for the problems that plague modern society. At a distance he appears to be the hero our times deserve. But the example comes off as problematic when we realize Batman’s own take on heroism is quite unfeasible. Apart from the obvious economic disparities between Batman/Bruce Wayne and the common reader, working outside the law means the lines that separate villains from heroes further blurs itself. Vigilantes must be aware of the moral drives that inform their actions. But there is no one true mechanism or way to keep morality in check. Each hero must come into terms with the elements that make his or her fight just and right. This further complicates itself when government discourses come into play.
When superheroes are labeled vigilantes by the government, argues Mike DuBose, “it is not simply because they are conservative where they should be liberal, or vice versa. The issue is instead one of control.” In other words, the government’s concerns gravitate more towards the possibility of rulers resenting the fact they need to rely on beings stronger than themselves. To whom will people look up to? Rulers bound by the constraints of the law? Or demi-gods that need not answer to anyone other than the principles they themselves have chosen to uphold?
But vigilantism comes with a price. For example, Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ 1996 comic Kingdom Come sees vigilante heroics elevated into a problem made worse by public indifference.
In the comic, Superman, who has retreated into his Fortress of Solitude, is made to come out of retirement when superheroes both old and new make justice a means to a perpetual war on crime that does not fix the problem at its root. Superheroes are quite simply reacting to crime, not really trying to dig deeper into its causes. Out of their reactions comes catastrophe in the form of a nuclear explosion that obliterates the American Midwest. The reaction from Washington is entirely philosophical. They basically say that such a catastrophe would not have happened were people not indifferent to the reality of super beings keeping them safe. If people really cared about the consequences of living under such conditions then they would have realized that the common man should have taken the reins of their security and not the other way around. Essentially, the government’s response calls for an end to being victims in waiting. The comic warns that vigilantism can develop a strong dependence to outside intervention in situations that they should be able to attend themselves through the various state mechanisms originally created to safeguard security.
Appropriately enough, Kingdom Come’s Batman is an invisible, underground ruler that has turned Gotham City into a police state complete with Bat-drones. While crime has hit an all-time low in the city, rooting out the actual reasons why crime surfaces has not been addressed. The comic goes lengths to show the Batman character as trying everything within his power to fight crime without actually trying to stop it at the most basic and fundamental level. It is easier to stay a hero if the problem is ever present. It is as if Batman knew that once evil is completely eradicated his existence is no longer required. The end of the superhero, Kingdom Come suggests, comes when he or she finally decides to clean up the city, to erect new social structures and orders that better a people’s living conditions. Of course, this means accepting superheroes can create utopias in their image. But said utopias come out of a sacrifice that requires superheroes surrender their existence.
Batman’s police state means Batman does not want to let go of his existence. He wants to continue fighting crime so long as he does not eradicate it. Consequently, Batman ends up being nothing more than a dark mirror of morality through which readers can see the limits of their heroics and the extent through which they can consider themselves heroes. In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) the vigilante becomes something more dangerous. Miller’s Batman is an addict that feeds on the costume. Telling the story of a retired Bruce Wayne fighting with the urges of the bat wanting to come out again to fight crime and help an ailing city, The Dark Knight Returns contemplates Batman as the reason crime becomes a constant in the city. Batman’s return means The Joker and Two-Face become relevant once again. Their opposite equal revitalizes them. The Joker in particular is in a state of near catatonia before the Dark Knight rises again. But it is in the thrill of watching his nemesis roam free once more that his existence makes sense. The superhero here is held responsible for the crimes committed in the city in that the purity of his goodness can only be met by an equal force of evil balancing his existence. The price for being good is owning up to the responsibility of battling the evil the superhero himself has created, no matter how indirect the relationship between them is.
It does not help that Miller’s Batman so relishes the fact that he is back. On taking the cowl once again Batman says: “This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle—broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would…But I’m a man of thirty—of twenty again. The rain in my chest is a baptism—I’m born again…” His rebirth, a celebration of the danger he poses and how he himself sets up an eternal battle, is framed as a rediscovery readers can relate to: heroes are a necessary evil that, try as we must, will never cease to be needed.
After this ultimate realization we come to an equally important question: are superheroes really meant to be examples to follow? Returning to the concept of mythic mirrors, superheroes are often accepted as the heroes we truly need but do not have. In being mirrors they are supposed to invite our reflection in them and tell us that we are capable enough to right the wrongs of today. The whole point of superheroes? Well, it should go like this: the heroes we need today are non other than us, ourselves. The men and women that teach, police the streets, and tend to the sick and wounded. But what they really say is entirely different. They say that what we truly need has yet to exist. It is outside of us and, should we be so lucky, the extent of our responsibility rests on our waiting to be rescued by them.
We forget that the only reflections heroes can cast are of themselves. And Batman is the most dangerous reflection a hero can cast. Perhaps it is unfair to ask of Batman to reflect anything other than darkness. His world, his trauma, is drenched in it. It is who he has become. And yet, the morals he stands for and the principles he seems to uphold speak to a continuation of a dark state of affairs that works only if your definitions of what’s right and what’s wrong stand up to the tests of time. He might not kill his enemies, but their broken bones speak volumes to the violence that follows his pursuit of perpetual justice. In the end, Batman is a selfish hero that does not advocate vigilante justice. He just asks for the recognition any mythical being aspires to, to be remembered as a hero that subscribes to a higher authority: himself.
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