On Batman and Hope

Oh, boy... It's been a minute, hasn't it? 

It's been a busy few years, and as time passes it has become increasingly obvious to me that I need a creative outlet. I've tried a number of meditative activities in the time since my last post to scratch the proverbial itch, some of which I fully intend to continue to do, but none have ever given me the satisfaction of putting "pen to paper" and expressing my thoughts in a written format. My leave of absence is largely the result of a more stressful and demanding job, which occupies most of my waking hours, both in the office and out. I love my job, and it caters to many of my atypical interests, but even doing a job you love can wear on you without a sustainable work/life balance. That's why, a few brain cells lighter and a few grey hairs heavier, I've decided to dig my heels in and give this writing thing another go. I don't expect any level of consistency- hell, this may be my first and last post in several years, but the interest exists, the drive exists, and (even if it is only for a short time) the time exists for me to indulge myself for a page or two. 

Now that the soft apologies for my absence have been made, I'd like to express a few thoughts I've had in the wake of The Batman. I think, and fair warning, this is purely subjective, Batman Begins came at a time when America was at its most "culturally primed" for a "realistic" take on superheroes as a genre. We were still deep in the Bush era of American politics, which to my mind and memory felt, perhaps counterintuitively, optimistic. The great cultural awakening experienced by people coming into voting age was only just on the cusp of happening, and while the enlightened among us were rightly coming to grips with the capitalist hellscape we had landed in, most of us were still in the throws of the pseudo-patriotic Islamophobia that the fringes to the political right cling to today. Times were as dark as they had been in a very long time, but culturally we were blind to it. (Note, I'm using "we" here very liberally, and I regret that. I've done a lot of growing in these 17 years, more than half my life, and I'm deeply ashamed of the person I was.) My point is, the America that saw Batman Begins was a brighter America (in my mind) than the one we live in today. The Obama era ushered in even more optimism. Hope was literally his campaign slogan. Even an economic recession was unable to dampen our spirits, which is remarkable. 

What does this have to do with Batman? Well, I'd like to think that our relatively optimistic outlook as a culture provided a contrasting backdrop for the films, all of which shared a grittier, darker aesthetic than the contemporary superhero fare. Spider-Man 3 was far from a masterpiece, and it had it's grim moments, but it was SNL compared to Begins. 

Frankly, these are 10-17 year old movies at this point. I'm sure I'm not forging any paths not already well trodden by minds far more invested and far more capable of intelligible critique than my own, but I would be surprised if there also weren't hundreds of intellectuals out there who've already written articles posing the exact opposite hypothesis. The Dark Knight, which is to this day one of the best comic book movies ever put to cellulose, gave us inspired performances by several participating actors, all of which were outshone by the masterful craftsmanship of the late Heath Ledger. Say what you will about the incredibly cringe-inducing army of dudes who idolize this interpretation of the Joker, but this was an objectively stellar performance. 

Then we had a sobering few years. A going-on two decade long war, the aftershocks of the aforementioned recession, four years of an incompetent goon in the white house, the utter disappointment that was Joe's first year, a global pandemic exacerbated by the dimwitted refusal of lifesaving vaccines, and the broad-scale degradation of basic human decency we've seen since 2016 left most of us (with the good sense to see the unfolding chaos) feeling a little hollow inside and a lot tired. It's become all too easy to give in to dark thoughts and dwell on the bad things around us, because there are currently a lot of bad things. If you're struggling right now to see the silver linings, know that you're not alone. There is light at the end, and you should hold on so that you can see it. 

I genuinely believe that culturally, right now, the last thing we need is another dark and gritty reinterpretation of a character like Batman, who while admittedly is one of the more tragic heroes in the DC pantheon, is ultimately in his current incarnation defined not by that tragedy but by the ways he copes with that tragedy. The Batman of modern comics strikes a tone that is simultaneously familiar to fans of the Nolan era films, yet wholly more positive than that interpretation of the character was able to be. The ever-broadening "Bat Family" is just one of many aspects of this character's story which has grown up-and-out of the edgy and violent bronze-age comics, and into a true force for the concept of hope in the DC Universe. 

Without spoiling the plot of The Batman in this post, which would be a real Nightwing-move, I'll leave this post with this. I understand that the movie tries to put an emphasis on what Bruce Wayne and Batman mean in this take on Gotham City, and the word "hope" is explicitly used to encapsulate that. Batman is a dark character and every interpretation of the character should remember that, but I just hope that Matt Reeves and Warner Brothers are willing and able to deliver on the premise of a kind and hopeful Dark Knight and give us a Batman worthy of this scene. 

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