The Changing Image of Batman in Comic Books and Movies (original) (raw)
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The polarisation of Batman and its significance in contemporary culture
Batman is one of the world’s most popular superheroes. Since its creation by Bob Kane in 1939, Batman has given birth to an array of comic books by various authors, along with television series, film franchises, and an unparalleled cult following. Arguably, part of the popularity has to do with the fact that, like us, he is human, and on a seemingly simple but honourable mission: crime is evil and it has to be stopped. Yet, in what follows, what will be argued is that beneath this virtuous veneer lurks a darker reality, something indissociable from the character of Batman and unpalatable for most of his fan base. In short; Batman initially faces fascist antagonists who effectively support the neoliberal agenda, then he faces fundamentalists who do not support the agenda, causing rifts in his ethical code. Batman himself is a social liberator but fans believe Batman to have an unshakeable ethical conscience, in what follows we will analyse Batman’s ethical rifts in an attempt to define his social and to an extent political stand. This essay will trace the progressive polarization of Bruce Wayne from a brooding loner to an ahistorical opiate through his alter-ego Batman, to a reluctant fascist, to ultimately a socially-engaged anti-neoliberal critic in Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy as well as the graphic novels from which the films draw inspiration.
Complexity in the Comic and Graphic Novel Medium: Inquiry Through Bestselling Batman Stories
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2011
vs. the World, and more. Nevertheless, how many of the people consuming those products would visit a comic book shop, understand comics and graphic novels as sophisticated, see them as valid and significant for serious criticism and scholarship, or prefer or appreciate the medium over these film, TV, and game adaptations? Similarly, in what ways is the medium complex according to its advocates, and in what ways do we see that complexity in Batman graphic novels? Recent and seminal work done to validate the comics and graphic novel medium includes Rocco Versaci's This Book Contains Graphic Language, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, and Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics. Arguments from these and other scholars and writers suggest that significant graphic novels about the Batman, one of the most popular and iconic characters ever produced-including Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley's Dark Knight Returns, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum, and Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Killing Joke-can provide unique complexity not found in prose-based novels and traditional films.
Bourdieu vs. Batman: Examining the Cultural Capital of the Dark Knight via Graphic Novels
Framescapes: Graphic Narrative Intertexts, 2016
Bill Finger and Bob Kane's character of Batman is undoubtedly one of the most popular characters in the DC superhero-verse, instantly identifiable to a range of audiences. The chapter examines how the perception of Batman had changed since he has been the focus of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller, Batman: The Killing Joke (1988) by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth (1989) by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean. I discuss how the aforementioned graphic novels increased Batman's status in popular culture, his 'capital,' not only because the medium of the graphic novel at that time (1985-1990) was being heavily marketed as more literary than the comic book, but also because these graphic novels directly addressed socially-relevant and complex themes related to urban neuroses, psychological trauma, and class warfare. The public's perception of the 'idealised' superhero was also undergoing a fundamental change, superheroes increasingly being presented as morally-conflicted vigilantes rather than mythical saviours, Batman being the most prominent of this 'new' type of hero. By utilising Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Capital, I argue how different mediums, authors and audiences developed Batman's cultural capital, Bourdieu's Theory of Capital concerned with the ways in which consumers of cultural goods use said goods as markers of status, and how these ideological markers are constructed through social conditions. The chapter concludes with a depiction of how the world of Gotham has become embedded in Western popular culture via the aforementioned graphic novels, and the media inspired by them, such as Nolan's trilogy of films and the Arkham Asylum video games. Batman has become a symbol of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat alike, representing our fears in regards to change, urbanisation and class.
Tribhuvan University, Nepal, 2015
The central character Batman of ‘Batman Begins’ is presented as a superhero though his way of saving Gotham city is quite, and it is due to certain developments - as identified by Robert Jewett and John Lawrence - in conceptual level of traditional myth making that makes Batman, a superhero. Differentiating all the traditional myths as classical, Jewett and Lawrence have coded it as the American Monomyth as the traits of which is the America’s own that is secular superheroism that developed during the period of pop culture, the American origin history. So is the ‘Batman Begins’. It has also a secular superhero, Batman who is - unlike other traditional superhero - no more shown as a transcendental, heavenly and Godly power rather he is shown with some humanly mastering skills such as Martial Arts, Detective with scientifically upgraded instruments and gadgets to perform the superheroic deed of saving Gotham city from evil of archenemy Ra Al Ghul that is realistic along with secular superheroism that leading it towards the American Monomyth. In addition, Batman was generally found to be invented and reasserted specially at the context of its hard time or crisis with its specific purpose since 1939. And, so is the ‘Batman Begins’, it has its own context of post-9/11 terrorist attack and global war on terrorism; and its reassertion as the reassertion similar to the decade of 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90’s is to represent and support for its contemporary national interest of war policy and to spread trust, confidence, faith, and national and patriotic sentiment among its people, society and its allies.
Batman – A Man, a Bat, or Both? A Psychoanalysis and Reader Response of the Dark Knight
Batman, the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, the Masked Manhunter, whatever alias he is given, the clad hero is still a relevant icon today as he was back in his May 1939 debut in Detective Comics #27. The attention readers give to a fictional character is not strictly make-believe fluff. More so, the reading of a character requires a suspension of disbelief and the making of a character, a certain mindset. Comic books are not just catered affectations for young children. Although they can be seen this way, the colorful pages provided stories reflective of the feelings from era to era. For these reasons, Batman serves as a pivotal example of both psychoanalysis and reader response theories.
Dawn of Justice: Accountability, Revisioning, and Batman in the Twenty-First Century
Politics in Gotham , 2019
Geoff Klock argues that the enduring significance of The Dark Knight Returns lies in its revision of Batman. This revision does not insist upon an entirely new iteration of the character, but rather attempts to cohesively unite each version, articulated in different years, by different creators, for different audiences, into a single figure. By doing so, Klock argues, the details revealed in Dark Knight, such as an armored chest plate or the violence and injury Batman endures, are retroactively understood by the reader to have always already been there. Zack Snyder’s (2016) Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a work heavily inspired by Dark Knight, as demonstrated by Batman’s mecha-suit, the use of media and government, and the film’s grim themes and visual palette. Critics almost universally hated it; A.O. Scott pithily remarked that the film was “about as diverting as having a porcelain sink broken over your head”—in other words, not at all. However, I argue, in this chapter, that this is precisely the point. Like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman v. Superman attempts a revisionary synthesis of Batman and his politics, not by armoring Batman or pitting him against a Reagan-ized Superman, but by demonstrating the violence that has always been inflicted by Batman against others. In interrogating Batman v. Superman’s use and depiction of violence, particularly as perceived and experienced by Superman, I will draw on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination, and war and terrorism studies, particularly relating to the use of torture in Guantánamo, as well as Steve Brie’s investigation of fascism in The Dark Knight Returns, Will Brooker’s and Neal Curtis’ readings of the pharmakon in Batman, and Curtis’ examination of sovereignty in superhero comics.
Holy Terror, Batman! Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and the Superhero as Hardboiled Terrorist
Conceived in the late thirties as “bold humanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism” (Morrison 2012, 6), the superhero has flourished as one of the most resilient archetypes of American popular culture. This essay analyses the literary and cultural contaminations that have engendered an unprecedented revision of the paradigm since the 1980s. In particular, it will take into account three graphic novels by American cartoonist Frank Miller (1957 - ), one of leading figures of the mainstream comics renaissance, whose ideas have indelibly influenced the artistic development of both medium and genre. The Dark Knight Returns (1986), The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002) and Holy Terror (2011) constitute an ideal Batman trilogy that charts the character’s evolution as political counterpoint to the perceived crisis of American identity. In this regard, Reaganism and 9/11 are polarized as historical discontinuities triggering the need for a new kind of a criminal (super)hero. It will be in fact demonstrated how the novels hybridise the latent generic links to hardboiled pulp novels (R. Chandler, D. Hammet) with narrative and aesthetics elements appropriated from the culturally-received concepts of terrorism and terrorists. This fruitful contamination on the one hand “play[s] with reader assumptions about genre” (Baetens and Frey 2015, 46), while on the other hand deconstructs the ideological underpinnings of the archetype, as the moral dichotomy and the alienation of justice from the law.
"I'm Eight Years Old Again": Batman's Tragedy, Memory, and Continuity
Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 2019
Whether in comic books or their movie adaptations, Batman stories return obsessively to the moment Thomas and Martha Wayne were killed. Using Cathy Caruth's definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as "the overwhelming events of the past repeatedly possess[ing], in intrusive images and thoughts, the one who has lived through them", this essay focuses on how Batman's origin story must be continually revisited to allow him access to his heroic identity. The dreamlike "oneiric climate" of continuity as described by Umberto Eco, however, makes forgetting an ongoing threat, and later comic book events such as Crisis On Infinite Earths attempted to wipe superhero memories clean. Subsequently Grant Morrison et al. sought to bestow "hyperconsciousness" to Batman during their run, allowing him and his stories access to seven decades of previous adventures-and transforming the narrative experience into a game of recognition for the long-term audience. But both Morrison's and Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's subsequent time on the Batman title inflicted amnesia on their hero. The former created a vicious vigilante, without a secret identity holding him back; the latter a well-adjusted Bruce Wayne, without a Batman at all. Examining the differences in these approaches to memory illustrates how remembering itself is a heroic act in the tragic continuity of superhero stories. Full text available: https://refractory-journal.com/im-eight-years-old-again-batmans-tragedy-memory-and-continuity/