The Dark Knight in Us All: How Batman's a Muddled Representation of Our Wounded Psyches

This weekend Chris Nolan is poised to yet again smash opening numbers with THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the final film in his gritty, more Frank Miller than Bob Kane Batman series. Already this flick is tracking off the charts but how and why do we care so much about what a fictional 1 percenter does in his free time in NYC? I mean, seriously, he doesn't have any superpowers, he takes himself WAY too seriously, and he dresses up like a fucking bat to fight people. Like with pointy ears and all. A long essay, maybe even a whole book could be written about how, in this day and age, with religion at all-time lows people need new mythology and from such has been born this fascination with these superheroes, all of whom possess abilities greater than our own and back-stories practically patterned after Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. And yet Superman, the closest thing we have to a god considering his omnipotence, and with a long track record of success (4 films in the 80's, a hit series and accompanying movies in the 50's) can't lift a modern franchise to save his life. And sure Thor got a few viewers as a god hero but he also was quickly rolled into the whole Avengers thing which, while an entertaining flick, presents one with the question: Why would they blow their load on a big ensemble piece if they could've gotten big numbers rolling each character out 1 by 1? That is, what is it about Batman that makes him so compelling movie after movie, series after series, interpretation after interpretation compared to all these others who get maybe one, 2 sequels and then either need to be combined with others (IRON MAN, I'm looking at you) or put aside for a few years before somebody tries to reinvent them (INCREDIBLE HULK, you can take the stage)?

First off, there's the basic idea that Batman IS a normal person. Sure he's got some money, a robber baron anachronism from the gilded age but he's a standard, flesh and blood human being. He trained really hard with the best martial artists in the world and he has a bunch of expensive toys only he could afford. But we can relate to him because all of us secretly either believes we could be Batman given the right circumstances or at least believes perhaps Batman could exist. There is no Krypton. Nuclear explosions don't give you superpowers, they give you radiation poisoning. Magic rings are gay (not that there's anything wrong with that, just a little immature humor here, folks). Mutations may give you extra webbing in your fingers or perhaps a thicker skull but they don't allow you to fly, run through walls, or control metal. And Tony Stark's kind of a douche. No, Batman could be real, he could be Warren Buffett's son fed up with the corruption of the city and, instead of moving to a ranch where he's a modern gentleman farmer, he could be Howard Buffett during the day with a lavish penthouse overlooking Central Park (or, in Nolan's version, a view of Lake Michigan and Magnificent Mile) and at night stopping the rising Chi-town murderers.

Howard Buffett - secretly Batman?

Okay, so maybe the man would need to work out a little bit more but you get my point.

He's attainable. And plenty of people have pointed this out. But just as important, just as divine in his mythology are the myriad of colorful and diverse villains. From the Joker, a mad man with a smile painted on his face who wavers between wanting to seize power and simply wanting to kill everybody and everything, to the Penguin, a squat man of class you could imagine walking down the financial sector of any city armed with a monocle and dangerous umbrellas (my brother hates umbrellas) to a seductive cat (pussy cat) named Catwoman who Batman wants to fuck almost as much as he wants to fight to others like the Scarecrow (a smaller character who went bigtime in BATMAN BEGINS, along with somewhat sideline character Ra's Al Ghul) who plays on our fears and Poison Ivy, like a living venus flytrap and Two-Face the politician (we can all relate to that). And then there's Batman's ward Robin, the kid of acrobats who follows along in the adventures until the Joker murders him with a crowbar and then he's replaced - actually there are a few Robins. And even a Batgirl. And the universe becomes so wide and complex but there's one thing that holds true for all of them - namely, that again none of them have any freakish superpowers. They're just normal people changed by their situations and their own fucked up psyches into supervillains. It's interesting to note that in Batman's world all his enemies goes to Arkham Asylum - that is to say, they're all mad. In that way does Batman delve beyond the simple nuts and bolts of good Vs. evil into an even more frightening, deeper exploration - namely, the line between sane and insane. Is it insane to dress like a flying rodent and run around saving a city that didn't ask for your help? Perhaps - but not as much as it is to want to blow up a hospital just to get your point across.

Batman and his villains are so intriguing because the battle therein is one of the id vs. the ego, an eternal struggle between giving into one's hatreds and fears and destroying a world that for all intents and purposes is cold and heartless and uncaring or to try and fight the quixotean fight to bring justice and peace to a world that never has and most likely never will know such things. Superman is obviously an alien. Tony Stark is a rich boy with his toys. Spiderman's the nerd who becomes a badass but goes back to being a nerd  - the secret wish of every geek who's ever been bullied, to walk around all glasses and unathletic but know secretly that you could crush all these kids - and occasionally getting to be the hero that those same bully jocks look up to in awe.

But Batman - Batman could be a mental battle going on inside the mind of an unstable rich kid, a universe he created to figure out his own demons, where the good guys are a little more human and flawed and the bad guys are only super-powered by their own brilliant madness.

So along those lines, let's look at these villains, specifically the two appearing in DARK KNIGHT RISES, and at Batman himself, and see how they've changed through time to reflect the culture - and the madness going on inside all of us.

BATMAN

He first appeared in Detective Comics # 27, way back in May, 1939. As the title would lead one to believe, he was a detective who happened to dress in disguise, perhaps to get around union PI rules or something. At first he was a bit of a thinking man with some brawler skills but it wasn't about the toys really until a bit later.

The real heyday for this first thinking man's Batman was the 1950's/60's. It was around this time that a very successful Batman TV series began, a 120 episode run from 1966-68. This series featured brilliantly cheesy dialogue (Robin always saying "Holy" and then describing the situation, like "Holy diabolical scheme, Batman") and great day-glo colors but for the most part it was borderline comical. Whenever they had fights the punches and kicks were accompanied by comic book "Pow" and "Oof" covering the screen and occasionally Batman would seduce his enemies with a special groovy dance called the "Bat-usi" (named after the 60's dance craze "watusi"). Adam West played this Batman and would parlay this fame into a career as Mayor of Quahog on FAMILY GUY.

But then Batman went through an evolution. With Jim Starlin's "A Death in the Family" (in which the second Robin is beaten to death by the Joker with a crowbar) to arguably the two greatest Batman stories of all time written by 2 of the greatest comic book writers of all time, Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" and Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" he got much darker. America was fully in the 80's around this time with its uprising of punk rock, with New York at an all-time for squalor, with cocaine flooding the streets and a youth culture responding to its parents' free-spirited hippiness with a mixture of apathy and downright dark despondence. As such, Batman was darker - he wasn't always doing the right thing, he was human, and he was violent as fuck.

This was followed by Tim Burton's massive hit BATMAN, a 1989 flick where Batman's a thinking man with a cool car and a jet, a few toys (quote from The Joker "Where does he get all those wonderful toys?") but - but he never smiles. The Joker's on the loose and it threatens everything he holds dear. He's also a yuppie response to the darker comic images, seen dangling by those leg things that make you taller supposedly and wearing turtlenecks. It should be noted, though, that this was a different Batman from what we'd seen before. It wasn't the guy in gray lycra. He wore all black - heavy tough rubber. Much darker, much less happy or frivolous than the man in the earlier series, no doubt a nod to the recent change. He'd continue like this into the next Burton Batman flick, even into Schumacher's more campy versions though it was all starting to get silly as the villains were looking more like a bad acid trip - or maybe a kid experimenting with mushrooms and highlighters while smoking salvia, acid having much more of an edge. In the first one he was stiff but by the end he could hardly move and the great fighter was more like professor gadget with all the toys and all. And ridiculously long bat ears. End film franchise number one.

Along this time came the cartoons. BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES was the biggest, running from '92 to '95 and presenting a square jawed hero who was in keeping with the 90's - a bit nicer but still tough. Ready to make the tough decisions but always choosing to save his enemies instead of letting them die. He was trying to do the right thing, to be a good guy all around and chock full of morality and all. He had a tough voice and his eyes would narrow but this one was a bit more detective and, even more, was a bit less reliant on his toys except for the bat grappling hook thing he'd swing on. This would be followed up by BATMAN BEYOND, where an old Batman sets up a young hungry kid with a new Batsuit that amps up his power and abilities to fight futuristic villains in a darker, borderline dystopian Gotham City. The message was loud and clear - Batman had lost and almost given up with all the drugs and villains and corrupt businessmen out there - but there was still hope, even amidst this new breed of future criminal.

Then, in 2005 came BATMAN BEGINS. This Batman was much more fluid than the last franchise, almost as if he evolved from the lithe hero in BATMAN BEYOND and the ninja-esque batman in ANIMATED SERIES. They set up his backstory, which the previous franchise refused to do except for a brief blurb about his parents' murder - it showed him training, fighting, getting beaten down, becoming a criminal and in the process making his own version of peace with the murder of his parents in a city they helped build. But he was darker. His suit was like ninja padding, not heavy rubber with nipples like the Schumacher one had been. His batmobile wasn't a cartoony bugatti-inspired thing but a military rambler his family's company made he had tailored to fit him. He didn't rely on the toys as much as his kick-assitude and his consigliere/weapons man Lucius Fox who handled all the brainy stuff while Batman handled the fighting and Alfred mostly filled in as the father figure Bruce Wayne desperately needed, a response to all the children of broken homes that currently populate our world. He was cynical - the bad guys don't deserve us to do the right things to them, they deserve to be taken out. He'd go one step further in the second movie with phone hacking, a Patriot-Act-esque infringement on privacy he wipes out after using it just once, just when desperate to get the Joker. He's violent. He's angry. He knows the system doesn't work, that bureaucracy has failed, that he's not simply a helping hand to the city but a downright necessity in a time and day when nobody cares about anybody but themselves and when malcontents just want to destroy a world towards which he, to a certain extent, feels a bit of animosity as well. In DARK KNIGHT, he takes on a Joker more similar to the original anarchist joker, combined with the darkness of Moore's Joker, than the one who appeared in the midyears looking to make jokes and simply fighting Batman out of amusement, not out of any ill will. A perfect example of the chaos and turmoil in all of us, the destructive impulses that rest deep in our psyche performed brilliantly by Heath Ledger in his posthumous-Oscar-role. A perfect counterbalance to Batman and the resounding reminder why Ledger will be eternally missed.

Which brings us here, DARK KNIGHT RISES, where he'll mount his final battle between good and evil. In the first movie he went from nothing to being a hero. In the second the pundits and gossipers, looking for ratings no doubt, tried to tear him down and as such soon aligned with politicians who, far from being concerned with right or wrong, are most worried about a power they can't control. From that he goes into hiding, running away. In this one he'll finally appear, no doubt at a time when the world needs him to vanquish an enemy who shows us that we may doubt the dark knight inside all of us, but our true inner courage and heroism comes from rising to defeat the vile elements looking to destroy us - greed, jealousy, chaos, villainous ego - and the hero, flawed but still in the end the better, the strong, the good, the hero. Can't wait.

Now, let's check out the villains who'll appear in DARK KNIGHT RISES:

BANE

Bane came about during a time when DC Comics, feeling like comic book audiences were waning, decided to shake things up by killing/maiming its two top characters, Superman and Batman. It was the 90's, grunge had taken over, everyone was confused and disillusioned but in a melancholy way. Disinterested might be a better term. So they constructed some weak plotlines and introduced new characters who came out of nowhere to perform one of the biggest gimmicks in comic book history. For Superman that was a big grey beast named Doomsday (really phoning it in here) who came from outer space, or something, looking for Metropolis to destroy it, or maybe it was to fight Superman, who knows, it was all just weak as shit and in the end Superman and Doomsday died in a double mortal K.O. This was followed by the DEATH OF SUPERMAN comic and then a series where 4 Supermans emerged, including one who was black and wore a suit of iron, until the original Superman somehow returned but now with long flowing locks. Batman's at least was a bit more realistic.

Bane was a genius raised in tumultuous Caribbean revolutions and well-educated, he also became a roid freak (in his case it's an experimental drug called "Venom") and after escaping from prison, he decides to take over Gotham - namely, he heard that fear of Batman was what kept the city in line and as such he figures by destrying Batman he'll take it over. He sets free all of Batman's enemies from Arkham and after cleaning them up Batman comes home where Bane, who's discovered Batman's identity, waits to destroy him, literally breaking him over his knee. A former apprentice of Batman's takes over the mantel but becomes a bit dark, violent - his name was Azrael, for fuck's sake. In the end, though, he cuts Bain's venom tubes and, now weakened, he beats him. The original Batman goes through heavy training and rehab and bounces back within a year or so.

Bane appeared in Schumacher's last miserable Batman movie, BATMAN AND ROBIN, Bain is portrayed as a snarling idiot Poison Ivy basically just brings along as a bodyguard, equal parts lucha libre wrestler and S&M musclehead with a bad case of cirrhosis. He has a scene when he's about to break Batman but Batman, played by George Clooney (that's a one point deduction for Clooney, by the way) easily cuts the Venom tubes and then takes out the weakling like child-looking Bane who emerges when the tubes are cut, like deflating a tire. At least I think that's what happened. I don't know, it was an awful movie.

This Bane will harken back to that original one, the one who killed somebody when he was 8 while imprisoned for his father's crimes in revolucion. A criminal mastermind who raises an army like a South American revolutionary with one goal - to take over a city in America by force and to take out the mythology of the fearsome Batman. Supposedly his performance is already getting great acclaim and all the pre-viewers have been simply gushing over this Bane, played by Tom Hardy (you might remember him as the cool Brit from INCEPTION), some even going so far as to compare him to Ledger's Joker. Considering last year was Time's year of the protester and South America basically dominated protest and revolution in the 20th century, there's a lot to work from. Maybe this half-assed gimmick of a character might finally be created in a way to add something truly cool and organic to Batman's 7 decade mythos. Oh yeah, right, I forgot, he's really just a dig at Mitt Romney. God Rush Limbaugh is out of touch with reality.

CATWOMAN

One of Batman's oldest villains, she first appeared in Batman #1 in 1940. A whip-wielding cat burglar with a taste for the good life and a seductive lilt, hers and Batman's fate have been intertwined ever since - not all bad but certainly a lawbreaker, one must wonder what would've happened had she merely sold high-priced dresses at Saks 5th Avenue instead of using her persuasions and sultry moves to steal. Hell, she didn't even have a costume at first.

She would go on to dress as a cat-ish chick in skintight lycra and then leather and then who knows but always with her whip, always as sexy lady Selina Kyle when out of the outfit, and always with a flirtation-cum-kissing-cum... relationship with the Bat.

Still, one can't help but love this pussy. In the 60's series she was played by and essentially launched the careers of Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt (no doubt blazing the trail for Halle Berry's black Catwoman in the eponymous movie, which we'll get to in a sec).

But as long as there was Batman, pretty much there was Catwoman. And it's always seemed like they'd be a perfect couple if only they could cross the chasm between them. Like Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. Some say she was a fetishized heroine, the sexist result of geeks finally getting to manipulate a woman on the page and as such leaving her somewhat flat - essentially little more than just a chick who uses her tits and tight clothing to distract people while she robs them. No mastermind and certainly not REALLY dangerous. She just doesn't like to play by the rules.But important nonetheless.

So of course she appeared in '92's BATMAN RETURNS, Burton's second Bat-flick. Played by a never-hotter Michelle Pfeiffer, she seemed to want to empower women, a direct reflection of the idea of women moving up in the workplace as well as a direct response to the glass ceiling so publicized in the early 90's. She is disgusted by how women cower waiting for a man to save them and tries to beat the men at the own game. But when she realizes she's become a villain she never wanted to be, she does the right thing and disappears. Though somehow armed with 9 lives (one nod towards superhuman abilities that makes no sense but, of course, must be suspended for whacked out Mr. Burton), she mostly keeps with the whip and agilities - nothing sexier than the scene of her flipping through a department store whipping the heads off mannequins with precision.

She was in the animated series but did nothing different. Well, except for she was a hot blond as reflection of Pfeiffer's coiffed light locks. Then came her turn as a kind of good vigilante in Halle Berry's CATWOMAN. And Berry's body was fucking amazing - possibly Catwoman's hottest ever. But it lacked the comedy and somewhat vulnerable nature that had made Catwoman's character so great, not to mention her affair with Batman which Freud would have a field day with. And certainly her outfit can be called nothing if not fetishization, making the ambiguity not one of good v bad but of a sexual nature - amplified by some heavy lady love tones. Again, not to say the movie's unenjoyable - it just doesn't make sense with all the other Batman/Catwoman mythology and when such happens it fucks up whole universes.

Now it's time for Anne Hathaway to play Catwoman. Haven't really liked Hathaway for a long time. She's not as hot as she tries to think she is, certainly not as funny, and at the Oscars she reminded me of that girl in class who makes loud silly remarks she thinks will align her with either the cool kids or the funny kids but in the end just irritates everybody so the teacher has to let out a patronizing chuckle. Still, I have to say in some pre-shots she looks hot. and the reviews say she brings back that blend of comedy and sexuality inherent in the original Catwoman while allowing her to still be tough and empowered without getting preachy, certainly the best of all worlds. And - I mean, shit, Hathaway does look kinda hot on that skintight suit with a mask on her face.

So let's see how Mr. Nolan finishes it. Batman has reflected our times. First a message of one man's resilience, smarts and strength in a city of crime as the soldiers returned from WWII. Then a living comic book, filled with canned quips and hits and colorful villains more likely to elicit mirth or comedy than real true fear during the 60's. Then he became a dark figure of vengeance, fighting his own internal demons as he fights the external demons of the world in the dark ages known as the 80's. Then a stiff hero giving us something to believe and becoming more and more cartoonish until he's replaced by cartoons as we go through another evolution as a society and culture in the 90's.

And here Chritopher Nolan has reborn him for our times - a time of corporate corruption, of true ambiguity not only as to who are heroes are but as to what makes a hero in the first place. With villains not ripped out of colored ink and newsprint and wild fanboy fantasies but instead ripped out of the deepest wounds in our disenfranchised, disillusioned minds. Not a battle for the city but a battle for our own souls.

Needless to say, I'm thinkin' it's gonna be one helluva fuckin' movie. Let's just hope Batman's victory on screen presages our own societal victory off it.

- Ryan