Batman and social policy
Batman is a great example of escapist media—it is enjoyable to watch and easy to become distracted by his fighting crime with bat-themed gadgets. However, I’ve started to notice how much Batman media involves social commentary, from both sides of the aisle, which is what I will be discussing today.
The Batman (2022) was a great movie, with fantastic performances from everyone. Robert Pattinson is one of the best Batmans yet, and Zoe Kravitz was fantastic as Catwoman. Paul Dano made such an impression as The Riddler that I can’t imagine anyone else playing him. Jeffrey Wright was the best Commissioner Gordan that we have seen on screen, and Colin Farrell was truly unrecognizable as the penguin. The cinematography is just gorgeous, with so many shots that made me pause and take in the beauty of the screen.
The movie is incredible, and it comes highly recommended by me. The Batman also has a lot of truly interesting social commentary dealing with poverty, social policy, and corruption in modern American politics. From now on, I will have to discuss spoilers, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie, stop reading.
Batman and The Riddler have an interesting parallel between them; both are incredibly smart vigilantes who were orphaned at a young age, and they are remarkably similar. Even The Riddler views them as similar, as he even wanted to watch the city’s walls explode with Batman. For those who have seen the movie, you know that The Riddler does what he does because of corruption in the city, specifically due to the promised funds that were to go to his orphanage but were never delivered. Essentially, he is a criminal due to lack of social funding.
The Batman posits that social welfare programs will lower crime rates, which is seen with The Riddler as well as Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is a shut in, rarely leaving the house not as Batman, and he is far from charitable. In the movie, the mayor-elect asks Bruce Wayne to continue the charity that his father has started, as she believes that the charity helped the city. She says that Wayne does not do much for the city, and in a way, that’s true. The mayor obviously doesn’t know that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but even Batman is not stopping crime from occurring—in fact, Batman might be doing more harm in his vigilantism, as Batman inspired The Riddler, who believes he is getting justice and exposing the corruption in the city. Batman also doesn’t prevent crime, only stops it when it’s in progress. The mayor seems to believe something like public college would allow for people to find better paying jobs so that they wouldn’t have to turn to crime to survive, or violence to take out their aggression.
The Batman shows the faults in policing, where members of the Gotham City Police Department are corrupt with the mayor and other political elite, and where the “real mayor” is the gangster Carmine Falcone. Batman’s crime-fighting also doesn’t save the day—he fails to decipher The Riddler’s plan and allows the city to get flooded. By the end of the movie, Bruce Wayne decides to become more charitable and fund more social programs, which is the movie’s way of telling us social programs will make crime less appealing.
You don’t need me to tell you how great The Dark Knight is—Christian Bale delivers a fantastic and iconic performance as Batman and Bruce Wayne, and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent was inspiring and tragic at the same time. Need I say anything about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker? The action was well thought-out and paced excellently, and it made the comic book concept of Batman feel truly real.
It’s true that it’s not the most realistic movie there is—a vigilante like Bruce Wayne would have more mental health problems than the cool and calm billionaire he is. Also, The Joker is not actually an anarchist—yes, for the entire movie he talks about anarchy and chaos, but someone who follows the political ideology of anarchism is not about chaos and violence; in fact, they tend to find that the government is violent. Anarchy is derived from the Greek meaning, “No Leaders.” Alan Moore, an anarchist and Batman comic writer whose story helped inspire The Joker in the film, had this to say in an interview on anarchy: “Anarchy is, and always has been, a romance. It is clearly the best way and only morally sensible way to run the world. That everybody should be the master of their own destiny, that everyone should be their own leader.” Moore restated his stance on leaders by saying leaders cause 99% of all problems. Think of someone like Noam Chomsky, an anarchist not because he likes chaos but because he thinks all presidents are war-criminals who only serve the wealthy and that nobody in the president’s position can fix the problems they create.
As I previously mentioned, the graphic novel The Killing Joke inspired The Joker in the Dark Knight—or at least his backstory, or lack thereof. The Killing Joke tells us that The Joker was a down-on-his-luck comedian whose wife just died, causing him to go insane. In the graphic novel the Killing Joke, Joker said, “I’m—not exactly sure what it was. If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” This is demonstrated well in the movie, where Heath Ledger’s joker gives multiple backstories to different people.
This was done intentionally, though, and I have an interpretation that I find fascinating—The Joker doesn’t represent anarchy, but instead represents a threat that we can’t understand. He is a man who is dangerously misanthropic for no reason. He represents how Americans felt after 9/11, and what did the U.S. government do to prevent further terrorist attacks? They passed the Patriot Act and increased surveillance on U.S. citizens. The government is now able to spy on us through our phones, and what did Batman do in The Dark Knight? He got a suit which allowed him to connect to every phone in Gotham City to stop the threat of The Joker. The Dark Knight poses that the one way to prevent crime and terrorism is by spying on the masses. This is not. to say that’s the only message the film is relaying—Bruce Wayne is still a philanthropist in this movie, implying that attacking poverty will help lower the crime rate.
Both of these movies are fantastic, and it is interesting to see the political differences between the two films—one sees the best way to prevent crime is to fight poverty, while another sees that surveillance will act as better prevention. This just goes to show the versatility of Batman and the talent of its writers. I am excitedly awaiting the sequel to The Batman, and am making room in my schedule to watch Batman Begins.