Originally a Twitter thread from 2020.
We do not live in Gotham.
Nor do we live in Metropolis.
Those are fictional.
So is Batman.
And Batman is not a hero.
Batman is a monster created to excuse white people’s maladaptive coping.
Don’t be like Batman.
A thread.
I’ve written this before, in the context of 9/11 memorials.
Back in late September of 2001, the trauma model we now use didn’t really exist. At the time, the model was still mostly based on some distorted ideas from the 60s & 70s, built by Freudians trained in the 50s & 60s.
(We know so much more about how trauma works in the brain and the body now, mostly because
- 1) computing got WAY better, VERY fast, so
- 2) psych labs could afford to do data driven psych
- 3) imaging improved at the same rate
- 4) and a generational shift started.)
Before planes started flying again, some of us with psych degrees (but not tenure) spent an evening in a too quiet bar together, trying to come up with a metaphor, a narrative model, for what was going to happen next.
(Before Wikipedia. And smart phones. And WiFi everywhere.)
We settled on Batman, mostly working from the Tim Burton versions and our shared cultural comics nerdery. (Don’t at me with canon arguments.)
Bruce Wayne is not psychologically healthy. His only effective solace is inflicting significant harm on others.
(My suspicion has long been that modern iterations of Gotham have significant Scientology influence, a narrative developed to discourage the idea that psychology and therapy even exist. And even if it’s not, Gotham is some fucking ableist propaganda, and DC could do so much better, but for some reason, won’t.)
Bruce Wayne has power — money, access, influence. Alfred Pennyworth, as young Bruce’s guardian, should have hustled that kid out of Gotham and into therapy. (Yes, there was therapy for orphans as early as 1909, when the earliest iteration of Bruce Wayne was born.)
In terms of the United States’ broad white culture, the Bat appeals precisely because he has every aspect of white power: wealth, access, influence, sex, gadgets, the ability to lynch those he decides need to be punished, and a compliant/complacent law enforcement environment.
(But Batman doesn’t kill —
You sure about that? His narration is unreliable and it’s not like he drops off his victims at the closest ER. No, he leaves them in dark alleys and on rooftops. He claims he doesn’t kill. BIG difference.)
Like generational white wealth in the United States, Bruce Wayne’s wealth could fix far more of Gotham’s systemic issues than the Bat’s fists & tech could ever hope to touch. Think what something as simple as a community bank to break Gotham’s redlining could do.
Just in property damage alone, if Bruce Wayne wanted to improve Gotham, not destroying it regularly would help far more than the Bat ever does.
I swear, a big reason Gotham is poor is because the insurance premiums must be astronomical. And the property taxes have to be worse, because Gotham has to fund rebuilding that infrastructure every year somehow.
Think about Bruce Wayne funding the Gotham equivalent of the Black Panthers’ food programs. Or GOTV. Or clinics. Or housing.
Bruce doesn’t, because the Bat craves the excuse to cause damage.
The Bat cannot live without sadism.
Just because the Bat directs his need for blood and violence at those the Bat considers deviant doesn’t mean the Bat is right.
(Dexter isn’t a hero, either. Nor is Punisher. These are all people choosing monstrous behavior.)
There is no scenario where Bruce Wayne/Bat is a hero. At best, he’s a profoundly damaged tragedy of wasted potential, the victim of a murder who still draws breath. But that’s Bruce at 17. Bruce is also an adult, with the resources to stop any time he wants.
He doesn’t want to.
And the United States is Batman.
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