Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon - Softcover

Will Brooker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826413439 ISBN 13: 9780826413437

Publisher: Continuum, 2001

Synopsis

Over the sixty years of his existence, Batman has encountered an impressive array of cultural icons and has gradually become one himself. This acclaimed book examines what Batman means and has meant to the various audiences, groups and communities who have tried to control and interpret him over the decades. Brooker reveals the struggles over Batman's meaning by shining a light on the cultural issues of the day that impacted on the development of the character. They include: patriotic propaganda of the Second World War; the accusation that Batman was corrupting the youth of America by appearing to promote a homosexual lifestyle to the fans of his comics; Batman becoming a camp, pop culture icon through the ABC TV series of the sixties; fans' interpretation of Batman in response to the comics and the Warner Bros. franchise of films.

About this title

About the Author

Will Brooker is Director of Film Studies and Television at Kingston University, UK. He is the author of several books, including studies of Batman, Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Lewis Carroll.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Batman Unmasked

Analyzing a Cultural IconBy Will Brooker

Continuum International Publishing Group

Copyright © 2001 Will Brooker
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780826413437

Excerpt

1939-1945
ORIGINS AND WARTIME

We tried to console ourselves with Bat Man, but he was really too `bad'. It appeared that one of his main pleasures was to scare women in their sleep ... Bat Man gave no comfort. (Heinrich Böll, Irisches Tagebuch, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch (1957))

Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably ... Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands.

We open with a paradox. Barman's survival as a cultural iconover sixty years can be attributed to his ability to adapt andchange with the period. Yet for the first four years of hisexistence, the opposite appears to be true. The Batman of this period isnotable more for his consistency and adherence to an establishedtemplate than his fluidity; a fact made all the more remarkable whenwe consider that the surrounding culture was undergoing the profoundchanges of the Second World War.

    This consistency in the face of change seems at first glance entirelycontradictory to expectations. Perhaps this is why more than onepopular history of the Batman chooses to misremember these firstyears, glossing them into a more convenient framework in keepingwith the overall notion of the Batman as an inherently fluid signifier; inan earlier piece I was even guilty of perpetuating this `official' versionmyself. I now believe this reading to be an oversimplification, andhope to offer a more complex interpretation informed not merely bysecondary texts but by a study of the original comic books and theColumbia film serial of 1943. This reading will of necessity involvemany more questions, tentative theories and multiple possible solutionsthan it will present definitive answers.

    We can establish certain facts. Batman made his public debut in theMay 1939 issue of Detective Comics, issue #27. Robin first appeared inthe issue of Detective dated April 1940; the first issue of Batman, thespin-off comic book, was dated April-May of the same year. Japanbombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The Columbia film serialBatman was released in 1943.

    Around these key dates, America witnessed a massive shift in itspopular culture as the majority of commercial forms ? films,advertisements, posters, radio, comics ? were given a common focusand enlisted into the war effort. My argument in this first chapter willbe that Batman proved remarkably immune to the wartime`recruitment' process, and largely managed to retain his own uniquestyle while so many other popular texts ? and certainly most comicbook characters ? were drawn in to serve as part of a propagandamonologue.

    I will argue that the Batman `brand' ? the forms and conventionsgoverning Batman and his world, and all the primary aspects of theBatman `mythos' ? were established by the time America entered thewar, and were largely adhered to during the next three years. Duringthis period we might speak of Batman adopting elements of hissurrounding culture, rather than adapting to it. There are propagandamessages within Batman comics of the war years, but these are almostentirely along the lines of war bond appeals rather than militaristic oranti-Japanese content, and furthermore are in the great majority ofcases restricted to cover images. That these very rarely bear anyrelation to the stories in the comic itself suggests a form of tokenism ora meeting of minimum requirements, whether set by editors,publishers, audience or even government: a lip-service to the wartimecontext which almost feels tacked on to the very different agenda of theestablished Batman `mythos'. Similarly, while the Columbia serial isdescribed by Bob Kane as a crude `propaganda vehicle' and by BillBoichel in turn as `a blatant vehicle for World War II propaganda' ? thatis, as a co-opting of the Batman character to serve as an anti-Japanesepatriot ? the propaganda aspects of this film also seem bolted-on,mainly confined to voice-over or even, at a greater remove,imposed upon the film through its secondary publicity material.

    While the consistency of the Batman style and mood during thisperiod of great flux may on the surface seem contradictory, I willsuggest a simple explanation. During the first years of the Barman'sexistence the character proved a great commercial success, as isindicated by the launch of his solo comic book in early 1940, asyndicated newspaper strip in 1943 and related merchandise such ascut-out Batplanes and stick-on transfers, to say nothing of the extentto which the formula was imitated by other comic publishers. Onethe initial `brand' was established by late 1940, it was in the interests ofNational Periodical Publications, later to be renamed DC Comics, toretain the elements which made Batman popular, and also, crucially, todifferentiate it from the rest of the superhero market. In turn, whenBatman was adapted to cinema, Columbia's producers marketed theserial explicitly on the back of the comic book and clearly saw theimportance of keeping to the key elements of the Batman `mythos',while including sufficient `propaganda' aspects to locate the film withinthe contemporary patriotic-adventure genre and so to draw on a largeraudience than merely dedicated comic fans. The details of this processrequire us to consider the roles of readers, writers, artists, editors andproducers in the creation and subsequent governing of the Batmannarrative, and thus explain the various factors behind Batman'sresilience, consistency and fidelity to a strangely removed ideal ofurban crime-fighting while the rest of his culture went to war.

1. Establishing the Brand: Year One

In June 1998, some fifty-nine years after the publication of Detective#27, Denny O'Neil ? group editor of DC Comics' Batman titles ? gaveme a printout of the current Bat-Bible. This ten-page loose-leafdocument outlines `everything the present editor thinks new writersand artists need to know to do basic Batman stories'. As such itrepresents an updated version of the manuscript viewed by RobertaPearson and William Uricchio in April 1989, which in turn forms thebasis for much of their discussion in the concluding chapter of The ManyLives of the Batman. Pearson and Uricchio outline `five keycomponents [which] constitute the core character of the Batman:traits/attributes; events; recurrent supporting characters; setting andiconography'. O'Neil's 1998 Bat-Bible follows similar categories,with no-nonsense headings: `Who He Is', `Where He Lives', `TheBatcave', `His Associates', `His Character', `Bruce Or Batman?' `HisGear', `His City'. Some of these categories have evolved in theirdetail since Pearson and Uricchio's 1989 meeting with O'Neil; TimDrake, the third Robin in current `continuity', was introduced in1990, while the supporting cast of Gotham City's police force has alsodeveloped during the last ten years. These changes, however, do notinvalidate their basic summary:

the character remains a rich man who dresses in an iconographically specific costume (cape, cowl and bat-logo). Because of the murder of his parents, he obsessively fights crime, using his superb physical abilities in combination with his deductive capacities. He maintains his secret identity of Bruce Wayne, who lives in Wayne Manor in Gotham City. He is surrounded by a supporting cast of friends and foes.

Pearson and Uricchio find their `lowest common denominator oflonglasting and recurrent components' echoed in a cereal box panel of1989, where the same key elements ? `Who He Is', `Where He Lives',`His Character' ? are once again repeated, albeit in melodramatic styleand, curiously, in the past tense:

His name was The Batman. A dark, mysterious character of the night, stalking the streets, defying criminals with intelligence, athletic powers and state of the art gadgetry, terrifying enemies who dare cross his path. The Batman had a secret identity, that of Bruce Wayne(tm), wealthy playboy. At a very young age his parents were killed on the streets of Gotham City(tm) ...

The same basic template, the key codes which identify Batman anddistinguish him from any other character in popular culture, can befound in a multitude of Batman texts in various forms and for variousaudiences, whenever a brief definition is required. The entry onBatman from the 1986 History of the DC Universe, intended for comicbook fans, adopts a yet more hyperbolic prose style but incorporatesthe same essential points:

In Gotham City, the child orphaned by a killer's gun sharpened both his mind and body to a keen razor's edge. With his young partner Robin, the Boy Wonder, Bruce Wayne became a cancer on the underworld in the form of the Dark Knight Detective. The Batman.

In turn, The Super Dictionary, an educational volume using DCsuperheroes, which I bought with my own birthday ten-dollar note backin 1978, introduces the character to its projected audience of undertens:

Batman is an inventor. In his secret cave, he made his car, his helicopter, and many other things. Some of the bad people he fights are the Penguin, the Joker, and Catwoman, His other name is Bruce Wayne.

This privileging of Batman's `inventions' over his detective abilities isunusual, but even here we are given the traits of intelligence andphysical skill, while the character's dual identity, war against crime,supporting characters, location and accessories are also suggested orstated outright. Finally, the same characteristics are vividly presented ina media studies textbook for further education students, as part of acase study of Batman:

He has never had superpowers. He succeeds through ingenuity, skill and integrity as he faces everything the criminal world can throw at him ... he is a man dressed as a bat who seeks revenge on the criminal community who murdered his parents in cold blood in front of him when he was a child.

If I seem to labour the point that Batman can be reduced to keycharacteristics, it is because so much that follows will threaten anysense of consistency or constancy around the character. I feel thenecessity to establish a simple collection of defining waits as a raft tocling to before embarking on sixty years during which the Batmanundergoes so many transformations, and is subject to so manycompeting, often contradictory interpretations, that any definingessence sometimes seems eroded: the character seems to becomemerely a name and logo adopted by a multitude of different `Batmen',each representing a different facet of a specific cultural moment andtaking on the concerns of a period or the tastes of an audience.Although it will be my argument in the chapters that follow thatBatman is to a significant extent a fluid signifier, and that this hasensured his continued popularity for six decades, part of the character'scultural resonance must be attributed to the fact that the societalconcerns or audience meanings which the Batman has carried are notmerely absorbed by the yielding, malleable figure of a man in a bat-mask,but fitted within a quite rigid and consistent template whichspecifies not just the character's appearance but his location, associates,motivation and attributes. Whether Columbia wants to produce apatriotic wartime Batman, or Dr Fredric Wertham wants to argue thatBatman has a homoerotic relationship with Robin, or Grant Morrisonand Dave McKean want to portray the Batman as a wraithlike figuretormented by inner demons, the interpretation must correspond to aminimal defining structure, or it is simply not recognisable.

    The character's position as a cultural icon is, then, due to theextent to which he can adapt within key parameters. He must remainfamiliar while incorporating an edge of novelty; he must keep theloyalty of an older generation who remember their childhood throughhim and secure his place in popular memory, while constantly pullingin the younger audience who constitute his primary market. He mustalways serve the concerns of the present day, while retaining an aura ofmyth.

    This sense of myth and resonance which still surrounds the Batmanhag its source not in the specifics of his changes over time, but in theopposite, in those elements which never change. The myth lies not inthe details of continuity debated by fans, but in the narrative which hasentered popular consciousness. I could stop anyone on the street andask them what they knew about Batman, with a virtual guarantee ofhearing back the same list of key traits, the same story.

    Indulge me. This is what I would have told you about Batman whenI was five years old: Batman is Bruce Wayne, a millionaire who dresses in abat-costume and fights crime. He has no special powers but is very fit andstrong, and very intelligent. He lives in Gotham City. He fights crime becausehis parents were killed when he was young. He is often helped by his sidekick,Robin. He fights villains like the Joker.

    This may seem childishly basic. I am fumbling to express a vision ofthe Batman as I think `popular consciousness' remembers him: vaguely,naïvely, mythically, as it might remember the story of Jesus or Dracula,Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes, As Denny O'Neil has argued,

Batman and Robin are part of our folklore. Even though only a tiny fraction of the population reads the comics, everyone knows about them the way everybody knows about Paul Bunyan, Abe Lincoln ... Batman and Robin are the postindustrial equivalent of folk figures. They are much deeper in our collective psyches than I had thought. Because these characters have been around for fifty years, everybody in the country knows about them. They have some of the effect on people that mythology used to and if you get into that you can't avoid the question of religion.

Continues...

Excerpted from Batman Unmaskedby Will Brooker Copyright © 2001 by Will Brooker. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0826413439
• ISBN 13: 9780826413437
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368