By Talibah Sadiyah Khatun Miah [Edited by Austin Steele & Carla Norman]
Module: HST5413 (re)Writing History
Since the introduction of the masked vigilante, Batman, to the city of Gotham in 2007, his actions have been scrutinised, especially in comparison to those of Gotham’s most notorious criminals, Joker and Bane. While historians such as Bridget Highfield firmly believe that the people of Gotham rallied behind a ‘false idol’ whose ‘sugar-coated crimes’ were intentionally overlooked, most historians of Batman, led by Tamara Clement and Jason Robin, disagree that Batman was even idolised in the first place.[1] This essay will explore who the people of Gotham were, whether the same crimes were committed by both Batman and his opponents, and how far Batman was idolised. On the whole, the city’s villains may have been condemned but not for the same crimes as Batman, whose intentions greatly differed from those of the criminals. Therefore, the people of Gotham (including the justice system) did not fully or consistently idolise Batman during his career. Batman may have been admired but there were also times when he was not only condemned for his actions but considered more important to stop than Joker or Bane.
In neither their condemnation of the anarchists Joker and Bane nor their idolisation of Batman were the people of Gotham unanimous. With Conrad’s view in mind, Gotham can be split up into the general (voting) public, the justice system and Gotham’s incarcerated.[2] In Why So Serious? the Joker prophesied that when things start to get out of control, Gotham’s ‘civilised people’ would turn on each other and their morals in hypocrisy.[3] In some ways this was true, since the Joker’s ‘social experiment’ almost succeeded when the civilians in one of the two ferries rigged with explosives voted in favour of pressing the detonator that would blow up the second ferry holding Blackgate’s prisoners.[4] Likewise, in Highfield’s view, the people of Gotham were indeed hypocritical at the very least as they allowed Batman to manage the crime-infested streets between 2007 and 2008 but condemned the Joker whose actions also resulted in less crime.[5] Though the Joker’s methods were more violent, the actions he took resulted in the elimination of almost all organised crime, the imprisonment or death of corrupt officials and the city’s vigilante going into hiding.
Batman, unlike the Joker, did not suffer the consequences of his ‘salvation crimes;’ the police department may have chased him immediately after Harvey Dent’s death but Highfield suggests Batman was not officially considered a fugitive, which would explain why the investigation into the masked vigilante dwindled.[6] Some of the people of Gotham did condemn the city’s villains in any way they could, whether that was Blackgate’s prisoners throwing the detonator to the ferry full of civilians into the bay, or members of the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) risking their lives to fight Bane’s army in late 2016.[7] In their attempt to stand up against the super-criminals, the selfless people of Gotham showed it was in the rejection of terror that the Joker and Bane’s plans could be destroyed.[8] Thus, Gothamites displayed the ultimate act of heroism by not giving into their terrorisers.
Both circumstances resulted in Gothamites supporting the super-criminals. During Bane’s terrorisation of Gotham many prisoners of Blackgate joined his army and even civilians followed his orders to take down the rich and bring power back to the people. Though Bane’s promise to liberate Gothamites was a far cry from his true plans to ravage the city and ‘poisoning their souls’ with false hope as a means of ideological torture.[9] Consequently, by ‘[ripping] the powerful from their decadent nests’ and wreaking havoc throughout the city, one in every thirty people of Gotham aided and abetted Bane as opposed to condemning him.[10]
One reason why Batman was such a controversial figure throughout his vigilante career was because some of his methods to gain justice were similar to those of his rivals. In The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, Crane describes an encounter with Batman where he clearly stated that he aimed to ‘turn fear against those who prey on the fearful’.[11] This explains why Batman donned his cape and cowl, since fear was the only way he believed he could shock people out of apathy.[12] Similarly, Bane’s tactics heavily depended on the juxtaposition of fear and hope. His autobiography, Child of Darkness, gives an insight into the mercenary’s ideology and training. Bane focused on the need to purge societies ridden with corruption; bringing ‘Gotham to ashes’ in order to forge a better future.[13] Both Batman and Bane used fear and darkness as weapons to interrogate and suppress. For example, Batman’s interrogation methods included hanging criminals upside down from a wire string and dropping them from a height or using physical violence, like he did with Joker. In the latter case, Batman jammed the interrogation room door shut as he knew it was not the moral thing to do and the GCPD would try to stop him from hurting Joker.[14] Bane used fear as a method of submission when he hijacked Gotham Stadium and blew up the pitch in front of thousands of civilians.[15] Even in their fighting styles Batman and Bane were similar. When Clement cross-examined news footage of the two in action, he discovered that their physical training had been from the same source: the League of Shadows, a secret society dedicated to purging corrupt cities.[16] Bane described the league as having trained his mind and body to overcome fear and use any means necessary to fight injustice. Batman’s training may also have included ideological training similar to Bane. In this sense, Bane can be seen as a warped version of Batman, displaying to the people of Gotham what Batman could potentially become.
Indeed, the Joker also believes Batman to be a foil of himself, someone who ‘completes’ him and is outcasted by Gotham.[17] The Joker claims the people of Gotham’s morality is ‘like a bad joke’ and they would ‘cast [Batman] out like a leper’ at the first sign of trouble or when they had grown tired of Batman’s vigilantism.[18] This is especially emphasised due to the deaths of innocent people that Batman is blamed for. Highfield argues that Batman could have saved the lives of five people, including two police officers, if he had just revealed his identity.[19] She argues there was no ‘rhyme or reason’ to Batman’s actions and that they were just made on a whim, much like the Joker.[20]
Commissioner Gordon, despite having worked alongside Batman between 2007 and 2016 and often granting him concessions outside the law, had also questioned Batman on the consequences of his actions.[21] The risk of escalation of crime and terrorism in Gotham meant that even with the Dark Knight’s best efforts to protect the city, it may not have been enough.[22] Delphine Conrad describes how a secondary party enacting justice outside the law meant super-criminals like the Joker and Bane would see an opportunity to rise up to the challenge.[23] Commissioner Gordon had written in his police notes if ‘[the opposers of criminals] start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics,’ alluding to Batman’s arsenal of advanced technology and equipment that threatened the prowess of the Mob.[24] Batman’s attempts to rid the city of corruption had exacerbated the situation, making it worse before it got better, as his introduction to Gotham changed the political landscape where organised crime dominated. Kessock states that Batman’s arrival ‘signalled that it was no longer necessary to operate within the boundaries of the law to police crimes.’[25] This only attracted more dangerous criminals to Gotham who used ‘more aggressive and insidious tactics’ to operate.[26]
The people of Gotham were aware the Joker’s sole motive was to cause ‘chaos’; he robbed a bank while simultaneously killing his accomplices, murdered two innocent police officers and blew up a hospital.[27] Yet somehow the Joker's actions resulted in a significant drop of in crime, falling by forty-six percent in just twelve months, something Batman had not been able to do.[28] Kessock’s damning analysis of Batman highlights just how similar his actions were to the Joker. She argues that Commissioner Gordon was right to fear an escalation brought about by Batman offering criminals a new vendetta and ‘focal point for their rage at being foiled’.[29]
The nature of the action, however, relies on the intention and consequences to even be considered a crime. While Batman’s methods to fight criminals were outside the boundaries of the law, often it was over relatively smaller issues, such as engaging in a police car chase, which were arguably necessary for Batman’s principle of the greater good, as described by Thaddeus Crane, who was a known ally of Batman.[30] Clement and Conrad argue that any criminal actions on Batman’s part were almost always in response to villains and their plans to destroy Gotham.[31] Clement suggests that Batman’s smaller crimes outweigh the benefits of his vigilantism, while more serious crimes, like when Batman took out an entire SWAT team, was a defensive move - not to protect himself, but rather, the city. Furthermore, Batman’s motive was always aligned with the core values of the GCPD: to protect, defend and fight for Gotham.
Batman and his opponents can be symbolised by preservation versus annihilation of Gotham. Both Bane’s and the Joker’s autobiographies are pervaded with words such as ‘chaos’, ‘purging’ and ‘destroy.’[32] In contrast, Batman did not view compassion as a weakness but as something that separated him from the criminals he fought, who had no mercy. This was evident when Batman caught the Joker and sent him to Arkham Asylum rather than killing him. According to Batman, he has only one rule, which was to never kill.[33] It is inevitable that anything outside of that rule is within the moral boundaries he created, as long as it is for the greater good of defending Gotham’s ‘soul’.[34] Batman made the ultimate sacrifice when he transported Bane’s fusion reactor bomb alone over the Bay of Gotham so that it would not detonate in the city, killing himself in the process.[35]
The people of Gotham did not unanimously, fully or consistently idolise Batman. Without an identity Batman became an enigmatic symbol, rather than a hero or idol. He was ‘whatever Gotham needed him to be’[36], whether that meant a fallen vigilante or a symbol of hope.[37] Anonymity, Robin argues, has allowed Batman to be an archetype that the people of Gotham can be inspired by; knowing that behind the mask, Batman could be anyone.[38] In Crane’s unveiling of Batman, he provides new information around the murder of Harvey Dent (Gotham district attorney), claiming Batman’s self-sacrificing nature reached its pinnacle when he nobly took the fall for killing Dent and five innocent people in 2008, despite being innocent. This was all in the name of providing the people of Gotham with a ‘white knight’, an ordinary person capable of quelling corruption lawfully.[39] Batman took this sacrifice because he believed the people deserved to have their faith rewarded. Thus, if anyone was idolised, albeit falsely, it was Harvey Dent who the people of Gotham believed died as a martyr. A holiday was created in his honour - ‘Harvey Dent Day’ - and the Dent Act, which denied parole to criminals prosecuted by Dent before Harvey’s death, passed in courts.[40] These two things memorialised Dent in a far more eternal and intangible way compared to a destructible statue created for Batman in 2016.
An analysis of opinion polls taken throughout the Dark Knight’s career reveal instances where admiration or belief in Batman decreased drastically.[41] This was often in alignment with major events such as the death of Harvey Dent or Bane’s expose of Commissioner Gordon and Batman’s cover-up of Dent as a murderer. Therefore, Batman’s methods were often outside the law and similar, though not the same, as Bane and the Joker’s crimes. This, however, was not something the Caped Crusader shied away from, but actively acknowledged and accepted as a by-product of protecting Gotham from corruption. Kessock, despite her view of Batman as a catalyst of crime, concedes that Batman and Gotham were ‘inextricably linked’.[42]
To conclude, though the individual actions of Batman and prominent villains, including the Joker and Bane, seem similar, the intention behind the actions differed. Their ideologies were characterised by a dichotomy over the preservation or annihilation of Gotham. For the Caped Crusader, everything he would do was driven by a need to protect Gotham, even if that meant occasionally breaking the law or sacrificing himself and his reputation. In this way Batman was condemned at times and revered at others by the general public and justice system, though never for the same things or in the same ways as the city’s criminals. [43]
Footnotes
[1] Bridget Highfield, False Idol (Hell’s Kitchen: HK Press, 2018), p. 3; Tamara Clement, The Bat (New York: DC Publishing, 2017), p. 34; Jason Robin, The Dark Knight: Why We Need Him (Gotham: St. Swithens’ Press, 2016), p. 576-570.
[2] Delphine Conrad, Symbols in Society (New York: DC Publishing, 2017), p. 54.
[3] Joker, Why So Serious? (Arkham: Arkham Asylum Publishing, 2009), pp. 33-45.
[4] Joker, Why So Serious? p. 33; Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight: A Biography Gotham: Bruce Wayne University Press, 2016), pp. 54-67.
[5] Highfield, False Idol, pp. 3-6.
[6] Damien Picariello, Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 36; Highfield, False Idol, pp. 3-6.
[7] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016, Gotham Tribune News Archives, Gotham.
[8] Kyle Kizu, “‘The Dark Knight’: The Tragedy of Heroic Symbols.” Medium, The Projector, 19 July 2018, <www.medium.com/the-projector/the-dark-knight-batman-joker-christopher-nolan-10th-anniversary-9e2a2ff6fbc0> [accessed 21 December 2019].
[9] Bane, Child of Darkness (Pena Duro: The Pit, 1986), p. 100.
[10] Bane, Child of Darkness p. 36; Gotham City Police Department, Crime Rates, 2008-2009, Gotham City Police Archives, Gotham.
[11] Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, pp. 54-56.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Bane, Child of Darkness, p. 198.
[14] Gotham City Police Department, Commissioner Jim Gordon - Police Notes 1993-2017, 25 September 2008, Gotham City Police Department Archives, Gotham.
[15] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016.
[16] Clement, The Bat, p. 34.
[17] Joker, Why so Serious? p. 63.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Highfield, False Idol, p. 34.
[20] Highfield, False Idol, p. 98.
[21] Commissioner Jim Gordon - Police Notes, 25 September 2008.
[22] Conrad. Symbols in Society, p. 54.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Commissioner Jim Gordon - Police Notes, 25 September 2008.
[25] Shoshana Kessock, “The Hero Gotham Deserves: Is Batman Good for Gotham City?” Tor.Com,<www.tor.com/2012/07/25/the-hero-gotham-deserves-is-batman-good-for-gotham-city/>. [accessed 21 December 2019].
[26] Kessock. “The Hero Gotham Deserves” [accessed 21 December 2019].
[27] Joker, Why so Serious? pp. 46-100.
[28] Gotham City Police Department, Crime Rates, 2008-2009, Gotham City Police Archives, Gotham.
[29] Kessock. “The Hero Gotham Deserves” [accessed 21 December 2019].
[30] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016; Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, pp. 54-56.
[31] Clement, The Bat, p. 34.
[32] Bane, Child of Darkness, pp. 100-198; Joker, Why so Serious? pp. 46-100.
[33] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016.
[34] Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, pp. 54-56.
[35] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, pp. 54-56.
[38] Jason Robin, The Dark Knight: Why We Need Him (Gotham: St. Swithens’ Press, 2016), pp. 42-44.
[39] Crane, The Unveiling of the Dark Knight, p. 56.
[41] Gotham Tribune, The Caped Crusader in Action, 28 July 2016.
[42] Gotham Institute of Public Opinion, The People’s Voice, November 2007- November 2016 <http://www.gipo.org/thepeoplesvoicedataset> [accessed 4 November 2019].
[43] Kessock. “The Hero Gotham Deserves” [accessed 21 December 2019].
Bibliography
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