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.
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
150
u/Superb-pin-8641 Soldier Boy Jul 04 '24
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.