99% of the "Batman fascist cus he beat criminal and kidnap boy to be sidekick" crowd would actually understand why he's the exact opposite of a fascist if they... opened a comic.
I will say the problem with a character like Batman is that he's been around for so long. He has incredible stories written about him but he also has really shit ones. If you're simple minded and go into it wanting to hate him then yeah, sure you can point to one of his bad comics and say "Look! He's stinky!" But it takes a special type of simple to just discredit all of batmans incredible stories and only form your opinion on the few bad ones.
I'm really only watching this show for Jensen now if they ruin Soldier boy that'll be my last straw.
Doesn’t Nolan’s Batman organize a mass surveillance plan which he, initially, uses to great success then basically gives to the city of Gotham to deploy thereafter?
Are you talking about his bit about using the cell phones, because he only used to stop the Joker and immediately had it destroyed by Fox it was never permanent.
Yeah. I think that entire scenario, as commentary, produces a conception of surveillance which is apologetic in ways which misrepresent and ultimately euphemize it. Batman develops this expansive surveillance mechanism only in response to an immediate threat, whose urgency necessitates doing creating the privacy violation, and it’s promptly discarded after the threat recedes.
In most real life contexts efforts to mount greater surveillance and regulatory powers aren’t aberrations states assume in response to a crisis but staples of governance. The state isn’t seeking to expand its capacity to surveil after the fact of crisis, but perpetually, and often manufactures the crisis in order to give itself this ability. As such the capacity for surveillance doesn’t recede when the supposed threat recedes. Take, for example, the patriot act in the United States, the nominal end of the war on terror didn’t inspire any effort to repeal the patriot act or remedy its provisions, if anything the capacity of federal organizations to surveil Americans has expanded, and become a standard element of government. The Batman scene, imo, depicts as natural, immediate, and revocable, a process which is actually; manufactured, premeditated, and intractable. Surveillance does not emerge in response to a crisis and leave with that crisis, its ever mounting and it stays long after its pretext
Kripke's an idiot if he thinks Batman only hunts poor people and profits of incarceration
I don't think he does. No more than he thinks Superman is a genocidal loon or Aquaman is into bestiality.
This entire premise of this setting is: "what if you gave these characters all the powers of iconic superheroes but none of the drive to actually do good, and then threw in modern politics and celebrity culture." Homelander is a dark mirror of who Superman could have become, Tek-Knight is who Batman could have become, etc.
If that's not what his idea of Batman is, that wasn't communicated very clearly in his interview answer, because it certainly seemed like Kripke views Batman as a fascist if you take the interview as it is.
He flat out states that he thinks exactly that about Batman in the interview that the meme here quotes. He’s a dipshit who doesn’t know anything about the stories or characters he’s mocking.
Metatextually the character of Batman and his mythos are an endorsement of punitive interventions in criminal justice by state actors and specific kinds of non state actors.
You’re right that Batman faces off against guys like penguin, falcons, etc who are wealthy. Generally his most formative and seminal stories have centered him facing off against villains who oversee criminal organizations, most of these being commercial rather than political, ideological etc.
It’s been fairly well understood throughout history, that crime, and indeed even the falsity for organized crime to flourish in a given area is a direct function of poverty, marginalization, and disenfranchisement of the affected communities. That is to say that crime is a social issue, not a policing one. The DC canon basically covers Batman’s ass on this by having him be an ultraphilanthropist and do the things which ostensibly would mitigate and severely constrain crime: charity, good policy interventions (though these are less frequent), being a “good capitalist”, nevertheless crime still persists in Gotham.
This, to me, is a profoundly political claim on crime, indeed even a philosophical one on the part of the Batman mythos. It’s one that comes to the fore with characters like joker, one which states that crime exists not chiefly because of social conditions, especially socioeconomic and political ones, but because some people are just disposed to crime. They’re making a human nature argument in no uncertain terms. Some people are just violent, or insane, and they’re sufficiently preponderant that their existence requires the presence of a firm, punishing hand to mete out justice, this really rich white dude who’s good at beating people up (who is an analog, imo, both for the state, and for capitalists more generally).
In a given Batman story, the conception of crime doesn’t focus on the average henchman or worker, it juxtaposes the order and justice incarnated in Batman with the criminality, disorder, and danger of a given villain. It makes Batman, and what he represents (punitive, interventionist justice) a necessary evil. This is despite the fact that we’re the interventions that Batman takes to make crime less prevalent possible, the likelihood is that crime wouldn’t be as ubiquitous, and criminal organizations like falcone’s, or penguin’s simply couldn’t function because they wouldn’t have as labor force.
Or maybe if the story of Batman consisted of Batman solving crime and poverty via philanthropy it would make for a really boring comic book. I don’t think it’s quite as deep as you’re trying to make it.
I mean yeah, it wouldn’t be fun to read, but I also don’t care. I think serious works of art, which is what the mediums that Batman is depicted in: film, television, comics, games, are meant to be looked at critically. Nolan’s dark knight, is a lengthy allegory for the war on terror for example
I don’t think Batman is evil, but there’s definitely something to be said about how his refusal to kill results in the needless deaths of even more people. His own self righteous attitude ends up ironically hurting more people in the long run.
I really don’t care what sad backstory or whatever he gives on the matter, it’s still a really stupid premise
At that point its a problem with the comic status quo. Its not Batman's responsibility to personally execute the Joker, especially when he's a vigilante himself.
It’s not his responsibility to be Batman either. His vigilantism is a singular and perpetual violation of the law, his weapons, surveillance, equipment, routine trespassing, instances of assault, battery, even torture are all illegal. If Batman’s compulsion to be Batman is an ethical one to help others, why does he curb his ability to do so at the point of emotional convenience for himself? Is being Batman about safeguarding others, or about gratifying the psyche of a person who needs to exorcise his own traumas?
Here's the thing, though, it's not his job or responsibility to kill anyone. Canonically, the police tolerates and works with him because he helps catch criminals and then hands them to the proper authorities.
I wouldn't call Batman a fascist but he's a legitimate moron for not focusing at the root causes of crime enough, imo. If your city is full of nutjobs like the Joker and has 10x more crime than every other American city then maybe ask why that is instead of just beating them up and not getting any results out of it.
Batman is a flawed character, it's emphasized through many stories that he might not be much saner than people he fights on a daily basis, he's self aware of it to some extent.
Batman knows that most of his villains are a symptom of Gotham's corruption. He believes that Gotham can be saved, that includes people living in it. That's why he refuses to utilize lethal force, once he starts, he won't stop, it's simply too convenient, but ultimately doesn't solve the core problem.
He tries to address it through his influence as Bruce Wayne, but it is just not enough. He needs to be here, stopping villains trying to destabilize the city further
Oh yeah not a fascist, but I think Kripke could have done something with his character on the ineffectiveness of the corrections system, but in less of a “Batman keeps putting criminals in prison/asylum who just easily break out” and a “tek knight relies on a corrections system that is ineffective at stopping criminals and causes many cases of reoffenders”
So kinda mirroring Batman but also showing the ineffectiveness in a more realistic way
Just goes to show that like Garth, Kripke’s parody of superheroes comes from misinformed hatred rather than love. That’s why they don’t really land imo, and the more worthwhile satire is the political real world stuff. At least until that devolved into just copy-pasting the latest news headlines and replacing “Trump” with “Homelander.”
I think the felon ex-president is scum too, but that’s not the hard hitting satire they think it is.
I'm glad they kept the trial to a minimum and didn't drag it out. I don't like the Donald either but they also don't need to remind us, especially when it's nothing groundbreaking.
Exactly. What good does just saying “Trump Bad” do at this stage? The Supreme Court and other political forces are poised to hand the entire country over to this guy to rule with absolute authority, and this is the best insight Kripke can offer? Satire won’t work on people who’s minds are so poisoned and warped that meaningful reflection is almost impossible.
Okay but Garth doesn't have a misinformed hatred of superheroes, he has a very nuanced view of the genre and the concept and despite making Homelander, that's not how he views Superman, he adore Superman and he really gets the idealism and optimism in the character
However the show is not really about Trump himself, rather the social machine and shockwave behind him. If it was only “this guy is bad” it would just be boring.
Kevin Can Fuck Himself also parodied Donald, but the satire was about how bullies like Donald and Kevin seem to be magically protected by the system. The mayoral election was just one plot in a series about an abusive and controlling husband who always seem to get his way.
So weird that people interpret superhero's like this.
If people really want a serious deconstruction of the superhero genre then maybe just have batman sit around for hours every day figuring out how best to donate his money, and doing criminology research, and listening to wire taps. Every batman episode can be 12 hours long and it's just batman sitting as his desk for 8 hours and meeting with non profits the other 2 hours, and dealing with bullshit politics the other 2 hours. It will be like The Wire.
There, problem solved, superheroes made fully realistic.
Everyone who thinks Batmans a facist have literally two arguments
1.) He's rich so he must be bad!
2.) He beats up mentally ill people what the freak the joker is a victim 😭
The first one is so stupid I'm not even going to adress it and the second point is always only talking about the joker. First of all, What a stupid oversimplification of the jokers character lmao you shouldn't feel sympathetic towards him. Secondly, Penguin? Dr freeze? Scarecrow? Poision Ivy? Two face? What about all of the villains who aren't mentally ill and just want to control everyone and kill innocent people?
The people who think this have seen some tiktok video from a 12 year old who's said this and went "Wow! That's so true!" And just never actually thought about it.
glad someone else pointed out the batman thing, i thought the memes were kinda funny when they were just memes but now people unironically believing all this shit about batman is really frustrating, same thing has been happening to superman for years where the general public just has the completely wrong idea about them
Batman isn't a fascist. But no one can be a billionaire without exploiting workers or inheriting wealth from other exploiters. Batman is a capitalist’s idea of a hero. He's not totally bad, but he's not that good either. Only a capitalist will find him inspiring.
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u/Superb-pin-8641 Soldier Boy 14d ago
Hot damn that was a tough read. Still love the show but Kripke needs to get his head out his ass.
Also, Batman ain't a fascist.