The story of the Batman and Bruce Wayne has always intrigued me greatly. Originally motivated by revenge and feeling that the justice system had failed him, Bruce Wayne decided to become the Batman in an attempt to make things ‘right’ in the justice system. By being the Batman he essentially becomes a criminal himself. Batman operates as a vigilante, unleashing judgement on his own terms. Batman is the judge, jury, and executioner. Batman and Bruce Wayne are not to be mistaken as the same ‘person’ Batman was intentionally created by Bruce to not be just a man but something more, something unstoppable. In fact Bruce Wayne himself often talks about Batman as a separate entity from himself.
‘Know your limits Bruce (Alfred)’
‘Batman has no limits (Wayne)’.
(The Dark Knight)
Batman was supposed to be someone who could do the things Bruce never could’ve done, like a monster in the night he was supposed to be the monster that monster's were afraid of. He was supposed to be the one to stop the monsters of society through fear and terror. However Bruce Wayne was too selfish to allow Batman to realize his true purpose. In an attempt to keep the last bit of his humanity Wayne made a rule never to kill. He wasn’t selfish or greedy in the sense of wealth (he has enough of that) but to keep his humanity. And no one can blame him for it, however it is this very rule that enables the monsters he battles to keep killing more and more people. He ultimately gives up the lives of thousands of victims in exchange for his humanity. Sometimes to stop a monster you need to become one yourself and Wayne was not willing to do that, he was not willing to do what he had originally created Batman for which was to be an unstoppable force. Batman has the means and ability to stop these monsters permanently from ever harming another soul he simply has to kill them. If you had the ability to prevent the deaths of thousands and did not, aren’t you in a sense responsible for those deaths? Doesn’t this make you somewhat as bad if not worst than the monster killing these people since you had the means to stop this monster but CHOSE not to? Greed is usually thought of in the terms of wealth however it is much more multidimensional and complex than that. You can be greedy for anything. In Bruce Wayne's case, he had greed for his humanity. No matter what he did not want to give it up and along the way he came to indirectly disregard all the lives of his enemies victims so that he could just keep this humanity. He became a monster.
I have always had an interest in the story behind Batman as well because like you, we as consumers have always been led to believe that Batman is the epitome of justice. He sees problems in the world and goes to fix them all on his own because as we know, he works alone. While in theory he is a great vigilante for cleaning the streets of evil, he also has an aura of arrogance about him. As you mentioned, he is the sole leader in deciding what is right and what is wrong. For those who agree with him, they would call this the moral code. For the others who disagree however, this could be called a dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I do not believe batman is a monster. This is probably because I am one of the people he is trying to protect. In the villains of the Batman series however, Batman is just as monstrous as they are. Most of The Dark Knight movie is spent by the Joker trying to get Batman to admit that he is a monster as well. He wants Batman to kill him because then he would be proving his point that everyone is a monster. I believe he is on the brink of being a monster however because he does have some qualities which could be considered monstrous. He already has sort of a monstrous appearance by being a bat. He also has the ability to cause mass destruction since he has a whole bat cave filled with weapons. The only thing holding him back is his one and only rule, no killing. If he were to break that one rule, he would definitely turn into a monster.
I agree in the conclusion that Bruce Wayne is a monster, however I agree for different reasons. In fact, I question to what extent he may even be considered a hero. First of all, by his very nature, while more closely following the requirements of an anti-hero, is by definition criminal. He is a man who has taken it upon himself to, as stated, become judge, jury, and executioner for the criminals of Gotham. He has no right to do this outside of the context of the law. The law was created to keep order. It is a part of a social contract we have all decided to live by for the betterment of community as well as to keep peace. Under the law, the government and the police force are given the charge of keeping the public safe and disposing of criminal activity in a way that has been decided upon by those who must obey it. Who gave Bruce Wayne the right to decided who lives and who dies? Who gave him the right to take the safety of thousands into his own hands and provide his own set of morals under which we must live? It does not matter if his moral code conforms with those of the majority of society, he has no right to take the law into his own hands. If everyone had the right to enforce their own set of laws it would be chaos.
ReplyDeleteAs for his humanity, Batman’s determination to never kill is completely arbitrary and seems to only work as a way of self-justification for his actions. In reality any of the mass murdering, psychopathic criminals who he faces would have more than likely been executed by the justice system regardless. Even more so, it is likely that if the police had taken control of the situation in any of the grand scale showdowns Batman seems to have with these villains, whoever the criminal of the time was very likely might have been killed by officers during the whole debacle. Besides, after everything else that Wayne is willing to do to stop these criminals, no matter how criminal by the law’s standards, why stop at killing? Again, as stated he has likely let hundreds maybe even thousands die because of his own rule not to kill. All supposedly for the sake of his humanity? He does not get to make that decision. By saying he lets these villains escape and kill more people to save his own humanity he is basically saying that his own humanity is worth more than all the compounded deaths at the hands of his enemies. That is a whole new level of arrogance.
No, Batman is no hero. He is a monster who likes to play at heroism. His actions aren’t even altruistic in nature. If he wanted to make a difference he is a multi-millionaire. He could make a difference, legally, by working on betting the city through philanthropy. Even if he only spent the money he used, building an enormous bat-themed cave under the city, designing and manufacturing all his equipment, and bribing all the people who helped in the creation and maintenance of all of that. Because let’s be real him and Alfred did not build and maintain all of that. If he only spent that money he could have made a lot of difference. But he chose not to. No, because he felt that the law wasn’t enough he decided that he had the right to go out and enforce the law to his own standards. Should society allow that simply because his morals happen to align with the majority’s? In that case why not just give him control of the government and society? By advocating his actions we are basically allowing him to dictate people’s lives and safety.
Batman is no hero. In fact he is probably an even more dangerous type of monster. He is a monster who disguises himself behind a mask of heroism. He does what he does for a personal agenda of justice not for the people, but to set right what was done to him. He traded away his humanity when he decided he had the right to weigh lives. He may not be out there blowing up buildings or murdering people, but neither do some of the greedy corporations that are argued to be monstrous in nature. Okay I'm done now.
Nice job. You said pretty much what I was going to say in addition to some other things that I didn't consider.
DeleteNice, my blog post was also about the Batman universe! I mainly focused on how the villains of Gotham City are monstrous, and I wrote a little on the end about how Batman himself is a monster. I seem to have misinterpreted the prompt, because I wrote about how all of the monsters are created through money. You wrote about how Batman is considered a monster due to the fact that he is greedy to become human. This was not the argument I made, most likely due to the different meaning of “monster” I wrote about. To me, a monster is something that is either a fictional creature that strikes terror in people’s imaginations, or a real being that does something so crazy and horrific that they don’t seem human anymore. The villains of Batman all fit either one or both of these rules. I made a point in the end of my post that Batman himself also fits these rules, since he is considered mythical and a rumor to many small time criminals at the start of his career, and he is also able to do feats that are impossible for most ordinary men (ignoring the fact that he is impossibly smart, he is supposed to be a normal human). He is also considered a monster to all of the villains of Gotham, just like how criminals are considered monsters to the civilians that they prey on. Ultimately, anything can be considered a monster depending on the context and what you believe is the definition of “monster”. My post made the connection that all monsters were created due to the influence of money, and both Batman and his enemies exist due to someone’s greed for money.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen the batman movie actually. Yeah I know it is unusual... But in my memory batman is a super hero and he always saves the world. I like how you talk about that batman is the monster. I would say it is very brave to say it out loud. It is like to claim that what we have believed was wrong.
ReplyDeleteNot only batman but also if we think about all the other super her movies, Spiderman, superman, the avengers. All of these movies there are thousands of people died because of the fighting. They indeed save the world but what about the people they killed?? I like how you say that sometimes you want to defeat a monster you have to become a monster. Think about all the heroes, all of them have one thing in common that is they are not really humans. Batman is one but he has all the fancy weapons to help him. He invented the gadgets to be way better than anyone just to beat them up. Which reminds me of the movie of the king’s men. The last training for the rookies to become real secret agents, they have to kill their dogs. You have to become a cold blood killer to kill the bad people. But if we think about it, once you started killing, what's the difference between you and the monsters?
The scariest thing is that they all consider them super heroes, so do we. But are they really as good as what we thought?