(By Kevin
Smith, Hollywood Reporter, 02 May 2014)
As Bruce Wayne's alter ego continues to pervade pop culture,
TV and film, a famous fanboy expounds on the primal fear at the
heart of his appeal.
Since he was
created 75 years ago by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Batman has captured more
fancies than he has colorful characters from Gotham's Rogues Gallery en route
to the revolving door of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The appeal of
the Batman has become so undeniable that at the conclusion of his latest
multi-billion dollar franchise, the Caped Crusader wasn't gifted with the
eight-year vacation his character was afforded by Christopher Nolan between The
Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Instead,
Warner Bros. lit the Bat-Signal and put his Bat-ass right back to work: on TV
in Fox's Gotham, in video games like Batman: Arkham Origins, in animation like
the short-lived Beware the Batman on Cartoon Network and on the big screen
again, in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel sequel, the tentatively titled Batman vs.
Superman, and the director's just-announced Justice League.
But why does
Batman endure? In the age of the Marvel movie, a mild-mannered doctor can lose
his temper and become a giant green monster, or a rich guy can put on a flying
suit of armor and blow away bad guys with repulsor technology. In The Avengers, a whole slew of super souls
battled side by side, giving us so much ass-kickin' eye candy, the worldwide
audience collectively screamed, "JUST TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW!" The
Marvel heroes were unwittingly designed for today's modern movie, where digital
artists can finally depict not only what it looks like but also how it feels to
be Spider-Man swinging through the canyons of Manhattan.
By
comparison, however, on paper Batman comes across as kinda dull. He pulls on a
mask and a cape and fights street-level bad guys. He has no superpowers. He has
cool tech like Iron Man, but he likes to rely on his brains and brawn more than
anything else. In a world of super- heroes, he's pretty uncinematically normal.
When you take away the Batmobile and the Batcave, Batman is just a guy fighting
mad men in makeup. He's not invulnerable: He's a human being. And therein lies the appeal of the Batman: He
is one of us. We can't identify with Superman because, in the real world, he'd
be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We can't identify with Wonder
Woman because, in the real world, we don't know any Amazonian women made from
clay. We can't identify with Green Lantern because, in the real world, there
are no aliens giving out power rings.
But in the
real world, parents die. Sometimes it's a car crash that does it, and sometimes
it's a natural disaster. Sometimes it's merely something mundane and medical.
And sometimes, it's a grisly crime at the hands of the desperate or demented.
The thought of losing both parents is a primal fear that preoccupies our
childhood imagination: There never has been a child who hasn't fretted, at one
point in their lives, "What if Mom and Dad disappear and I'm left all
alone?" It's a terrifying thought for a kid: "What would happen to me
if the only two people in the world who love me the most were suddenly
dead?" See, it's the Passion Play
aspect that keeps us coming back to Batman. In 1966, Batman went mainstream in
a campy television show that only once mentioned the heartbreaking origin of
the Dark Knight. This was a fun Batman, Biff-ing and Bam-ing bad guys -- in
Dutch tilt shots -- simply because it was the right thing to do. But after
Watergate and Vietnam, the bubbly Batman was returned to his onerous origins as
the boy whose life would be forever altered in Crime Alley. And to a country
and world that had lost its innocence with the assassinations of JFK, RFK and
MLK, the more somber Dark Knight Batman had a deeper impact than the Bright
Knight that was the Adam West iteration of the character.
Ask someone
in 1966 why Bruce Wayne became Batman and they couldn't tell you. Ask anyone
now? Even the least geeky of us can tell you a young Bruce Wayne watched a
mugger murder his parents in the midst of a back-alley robbery. We take this
aspect of the story to heart because it's what appeals to us about Batman the
most: his humanity. Before he was punching the Riddler in his turkey neck,
Batman was a boy who survived the worst thing that can happen to a child. Yes, we love the look of a man in uniform --
particularly when that uniform includes a cape and cowl. But while Batman is
visually arresting, it's what lies at the heart of the character beneath the
bat emblazoned across his chest that we respond to. We root for him with a mix
of pity and power, the way we silently cheer on any kid we read about in the
news who has to deal with issues and complications some full-grown adults
couldn't be expected to weather.
And in this
less innocent age, where greed and corruption are so commonplace it makes our
world more like Gotham and less like shiny-happy Metropolis, we trust the
establishment less and less. When even priests and politicians are pederasts,
what authority figure can you believe in anymore without including caveats or
excuses? Although he's a fictional character, Batman presents an adult any
child (and most adults for that matter) can feel safe with, knowing that this
masked man with his hidden identity will ironically never betray your trust. He
will lay down his life to save yours. But because he spent his formative years
honing his body and mind for a lifelong war on crime, we know he won't have to
die for us: Unlike most messiahs, you can't stop the Batman.
At the core
of the character is an arrested development of sorts: Only a child makes a vow
as untenable as “I will spend my life avenging my parents.” And even though he's a lethal fighting machine
who refuses to kill, at the heart of the heroic adult is just a broken boy --
so broken, in fact, that the man adheres to the juvenile promise he made as a
child. But without parents to tell him
he's mounting an impossible task, the shattered kid becomes the driven adult,
and his dark days make him a Dark Knight.
Bruce Wayne is the original "boy who lived," but his Voldemort
isn't the Joker -- it's injustice. The injustice of loving parents taken too
young. The injustice of a ruined childhood. The injustice of those
superstitious and cowardly criminals taking not only things that don't belong
to them, but also the innocence, joy, safety and security of the wonder years.
It wasn't
fair what happened to Bruce Wayne, so instantly, we're on Bruce Wayne's side.
But he wins our loyalty not because he's the victim we never want to be, but
because he's the survivor and champion every one of us dreams we are, with or
without childhood trauma and tragedy. Bruce the Boy vows to avenge his parents'
murders, and Bruce the Adult makes good on the promise, taking it all one step
further: On his watch, no child will ever have to know the pain of losing Mom
and Dad. So even though this billionaire playboy has mountains of money with
which to dry his eyes or can boo-hoo into the bosoms of any woman (or man) he
desires, Bruce Wayne spends every waking hour as a soldier in the service of
strangers. And because of this, we feel more connected to Bruce Wayne and
Batman than Tony Stark and Iron Man, or Clark Kent and Superman. Or the pope. Or the president. Even the good ones.
We won't let
Batman go because, for such a ridiculous notion, he's so easy to believe in.
He's a spiritual icon of survival for so many that it doesn't matter if he's a
fictional character. He endures because of that young boy who made it through
the worst thing that can ever happen to a child and came out stronger for it.
And since every one of us has either faced or will face their own personal
Crime Alley, where we lose someone precious to us, it's good to know there's
someone out there who can show us how to survive heartbreak -- even if he does
it by overdressing and socking bad guys in the mush.
Kevin Smith
is the writer-director of Clerks, Dogma and the upcoming Tusk, starring Justin
Long and Michael Parks. For DC, he has
written Green Arrow: Quiver and Batman: The Widening Gyre. He also is the
executive producer of Comic Book Men on AMC.
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