Chemicals and Crazy People: The Evils of Batman’s World

Batman, the creation of Bob Kane and Bill Finger, who first appeared in DC Comics as a comic book superhero in May 1939, is not a classic superhero in the sense that he possesses supernatural abilities. Instead, he relies on his intellect, training, tools and determination. The villains he faces are different from the classic binary of good vs. evil as well. This paper examines how evil is portrayed in Batman’s world—evil as embodied by the villains he confronts and evils that result from hopes disappointed, opportunities denied and evil that does not even arise from evil intentions for personal gain, the evil of people who, as Alfred tells Batman, “just want to see the world burn”.


Introduction
Batman creator Bob Kane was only 23 when Batman debuted. Kane was influenced by noir films and pulp fiction in creating his iconic hero (Ross, 2018). Batman's appearance was based on a number of sources from popular culture of the 1930s, including the lead character from a 1930 silent film entitled The Bat Whispers and a 1934 pulp character, the Bat, a hooded crime fighter who paralyzed villains with a gas gun. Another bat character, the Black Bat, a district attorney scarred in an acid attack, appeared in pulp fiction almost simultaneously in his own cape and black mask and co-existed with Batman until the early 1950s (Morrison, 2011).
Batman was a controversial figure whose brooding, violent nature contrasted with the sunny optimism of Superman, who had been introduced the year before.
"With his dark visage and troubled history, he stood in stark contrast to Superman, who ushered in the golden age of comics a year before Batman's first appearance. This initial version of Batman had no • Criminals should always be bad and never triumph over good. Comics should make it clear that they should not be imitated. Authority figures (cops, government officials, organizations) should be respected.
• A ban on torture.
• An order to respect the sanctity of the family (i.e., no divorce or gay people).
• A ban on comics dealing in racial and religious prejudice (Abad-Santos, 2015).
Batman was written to be friendlier, brighter and more heterosexual, and a love interest was introduced for him. These changes were reflected in the Batman TV series starring Adam West, but this is not the Dark Knight of Christopher Nolan's films or Frank Miller's graphic novels.
Batman's villainous opponents were, if anything, even less original than Batman in the beginning (Morrison, 2011 (Patton, 2008). It was nominated for eight Academy awards and garnered two: Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger, who played the Joker. Ledger, who died before the film's release, received the award posthumously.

Batman vs. Superman
Comparisons of Batman to Superman are legion among comic book fans and instructive in understanding the complex character of Batman. While both characters are orphans, Batman vs.
Superman, a website hosted by the University of Maryland University College noted these obvious differences: • Batman is a billionaire; Superman is a middle class farm boy.
• Batman succeeds with the use of gadgets and electronics; Superman has super powers.
• Batman believes in using force first and asking questions later; Superman questions first.
• Batman has no steady relationships; Superman has Lois Lane.
However, the contrast between the two most popular comic book characters of all time goes deeper than that. Grayson (2000)  Optimism is in short supply in Batman's world of chemicals and crazy people. Morrison (2011) says Superman would have seemed pompous and preposterous in Gotham, but Batman owned his twilight territory of the high-tech, the super-rich, the fetishistic and demented. Batman's villains personified various psychiatric disorders ranging from kleptomania (Catwoman) to schizophrenia (Two Face), and Batman had issues of his own.
"Superman made a kind of sense in a hopeful, science fiction way: a do-gooding orphan from another world who decided to use his special powers to help the people of his adopted world achieves greatness.
The decision of the rich, but otherwise powerless, Bruce Wayne to fight crime dressed as a bat took a bit more swallowing" (Morrison, 2011, p. 24).
Batman differed from Superman in his approach to being a superhero as well, and the difference is perhaps what makes him more realistic and relatable to his fans. Fingeroth (2004) asserted that classic superheroes have no axes to grind, no agendas to put forth and pursue. They are not active agents of change. Instead, they react to what the villain is doing. "Once they cross that line, the mission is different. Then, they are not there to protect, but to reform. And that can be a slippery slope indeed" (Fingeroth, 2004, p. 162).
Batman's goal was to reform Gotham. As a result, he became a vigilante, whose use of force stopped only at deliberately taking a life. "Superman's brand of essentially optimistic problem-solving found its cynical counterpart in Batman's obsessive, impossible quest to punch crime into extinction, one bastard at a time" (Morrison, 2011, p. 26).
Batman's vigilantism ultimately does not work and cannot produce real safety and freedom, because, as Commissioner Gordon points out in Batman Begins, the criminal element responds to it by escalating the violence. "We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar; they buy armor-piercing rounds" (Jim Gordon in Batman Begins).
A large part of what makes Batman such a complex character is that rather than solving Gotham's problems, Batman instead recreates the conditions for their reproduction by beating but not killing his opponents. As Ross (2018) (Hooyman, 2003).
Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Cat Woman, is a repressed, inept secretary who is pushed out of a window by the selfish, greedy millionaire for whom she works. Reborn as Cat Woman, she starts making her own decisions and taking what she wants. A feminine counterpoint to Batman, she is both villain and superhero, as she tries to foil the plans of her evil boss against Gotham while also assisting Penguin in capturing Batman. She and Batman have been described as "a dysfunctional Romeo and Juliet" (Hooyman, 2003). Cat Woman might be more aptly termed an anti-hero. She initially helps Bane in his revolution against the rich and powerful, but comes to regret the human cost of anarchy. When she picks up a broken family photo in a destroyed apartment, she says, "This was someone's home", to which her friend replies, "Now, it's everyone's home" (Selena Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises). (2010)  Bane leads a populist revolution brought on by what he calls "necessary evil" and violence. He wants to overthrow the elite and promises to return governance to everyday people. However, in The Dark

Berninger, Ecke & Haberkorn
Knight Rises, Bane is eventually revealed to be little more than a front for a crook named Roland Daggett, a board member of Wayne Enterprises who wants to steal it from Bruce Wayne. Bane's economic populism a ruse used to stoke the most gullible of Gotham into supporting not a reform of power. Bane is another villain whose childhood was marked by deprivation and abuse. He was born inside a prison and forced to serve time for his father's revolutionary crimes. He was also used as a test subject for a super steroid known as Venom, which was injected directly into his brain, giving him vast physical strength, but also an addiction to the drug. disfigured by a drunken, brutal father who cuts his mouth saying, "Why so serious, son?" In another story, it is his crazy wife who hurts him while advising him to have more fun.
These various tales serve to defy those who would find logical, predictable explanations for the Joker's actions, when in fact, his crimes, as Batman puts it, "make sense to him alone". In The Dark Knight, Bruce comments that "criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. We just need to figure out what he's after" (The Dark Knight, 2008). In response, Alfred warns Batman (and us) that he does not fully understand this man that some men aren't after anything; they "just want to see the world burn". The Joker rejects the sort of easy categorization that would be applied to Gotham's other criminals when Batman says, "You're garbage who kills for money" and the Joker replies, "Don't talk like them. You're not, even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak like me" (The Dark Knight, 2008).
The character is sometimes portrayed as having a heightened sense of self-awareness that other It is a debate echoed in our own modern-day debates over the insanity defense.
"The Joker hasn't just done criminal things, he's done unimaginably awful things, things of the utmost moral repugnance. But how much blame-moral blame-should we assign to him? … We ought to remind ourselves of the fact we began with: namely, that the Joker really isn't playing with a full deck and there is a strong sentiment among us, not universally shared but not uncommon, that genuinely insane people often aren't morally responsible for what they do, and therefore don't deserve moral blame for their misdeeds. Maybe then, the Joker shouldn't be held morally accountable for his actions" (Robichaud, 2008, p. 71

The Evils We Confront in Batman
The classic binary of good vs. evil, superhero vs. arch villain may give the audience some sense of satisfaction in other superhero stories, but in Batman, there is a lingering sense of discomfort as we are subtly presented with evils perpetrated and tolerated by society that produces the monsters Batman fights. In the Penguin and Two Face, we confront society's love affair with beauty and perfection and rejection of disfigurement and difference. In Cat Woman, we witness the marginalization of women and in the Penguin, the Riddler and the Joker, we see the effects of abusing children. Bane suggests problems with how society treats its prisoners. The Joker also confronts us with society's willingness to sacrifice everyday citizens, whose lives might be considered expendable in society's plans: "You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. You know the thing about chaos? It's fair" (The Dark Knight, 2008).
The Batman legend also hints at such simmering fears as terrorism, technology and using violence as a solution to problems. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is trained at what is essentially a terrorist plot to aid Wayne Enterprises board member Roland Daggett in his takeover of the company. Bane's false revolution is revealed to be not so much a call to improve the public sphere as a desire for one group to supplant another in power. Batman is able to restore democracy to Gotham with the help of the very public whom democracy is meant to serve, but one wonders if the Dark Knight is showing us yet another evil we not want to see-that democracy contains within it the seeds of its own destruction, which will be realized if we do not remain vigilant.
Martin Luther King stated in his "The Humanist Hope" sermon that "evil was beyond the responsibility of God as well as beyond the reach of man…evil was too deeply rooted in human character" (Branch, pp. 700-701). Arendt said, "The trouble with Eichmann was that there were, and still are, so many like him…that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal" (p. 174). Michael Gelvin (1997) noted, "We are fools to deny it…we are essentially good and bad always" (pp. 162-163).
Through Batman's legend, we see that like Gotham, we experience evil because we tolerate it if it isn't happening to us. We are forced to confront the notion that democracy must be defended against institutional failure. However, perhaps Batman's greatest contribution is helping us understand that we all battle evil in our private Gothams. In contrast, goodness is the acknowledgement, awareness and acceptance of good and evil in oneself and the consciousness of the inner struggle to balance one's own will with the needs and desires of others.