Spider-man seems to be a vessel into which critics can project ideologies, like existentialism, or American-style 'liberalism' (which in that particular case, means neo-liberalism, globalisation, in essence, capitalism). Batman, on the other hand, seems to be the focus of oedipal readings.
Oedipus? Really? Have we regressed to Freudian readings, already? Okay…
Philip Orr’s “The Anoedipal Mythos of Batman and Catwoman” (Journal of Popular Culture. 27.4, 1994) never actually explains how it uses the word ‘anoedipal,’ but it’s presumably from Deleuze and Guattari, with whose work I’m not familiar. The bulk of his paper seems to have little to do with the Father (in the Freudian or Freudian-derivative psychoanalytical sense), with killing father figures, or with having sex with mother figures. Clearly, without understanding Deleuze and Guattari, I can’t legitimately criticise this paper (perhaps the ‘anoedipal’ has nothing whatever to do with the ‘oedipal’?), but the paper itself doesn’t seem focused on anything in particular, anyway.
Its choice of source texts is random at best. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns are certainly linked by a noirish aesthetic and by the ideological implications thereof (even more so than the appearance of the word ‘returns’ in both titles), but Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke and Batman: The Cult seem randomly chosen, cherry-picked even, in order to make a particular point about Batman/Bruce Wayne’s psychology as it pertains to fascist implications of identity, a particular point that is, sadly, extremely unclear. If Orr is aware of the long history of the character, he’s chosen not to reflect that knowledge in this paper.
Then we have Mark Fisher’s “Gothic Oedipus: Subjectivity and Capitalism in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins” (ImageText. 2.2, 2002), which splits its vision between, on the one hand, oedipal readings of Batman and his Rogue’s Gallery of father figures: the memory of Thomas Wayne; the servant-come-father figure, Alfred Pennyworth; the corporate power of Mr. Earl, Bruce’s own private Claudius; the protective but manipulative Henri Ducard/Ra’s al Ghul; the reluctantly helpful Lt. James Gordon; and Morgan Freeman, reprising his role as everybody’s favourite mystical negro, this time named ‘Lucious Fox .’ On the other hand, the paper addresses the capitalist implications of Bruce Wayne’s fight for, and use of, his vast, vast, mind-bogglingly huge, fill-a-money-bin-and-swim-in-it pile of cash.
It’s absolutely true that the Batman mythos concerns itself with fatherhood and family. Despite Batman’s pretentious brooding and tendency towards acting like a general more than a parent, there’s no denying that he has always surrounded himself with children, building a family (if a dysfunctional one) out of a collection of orphans, himself included. Even the oh-so-dark Miller version of Batman adopts the former members of the Joker gang, as well as his new girl wonder, Robin, in the process raising a family and an army, simultaneously (there’s something about the convergence of domestic and military hierarchies in there, but it’ll have to wait for another time).
This arrangement stands in ironic juxtaposition with the ever-smiling, and godly-paternal aspect of Superman, who had pets (a dog, a horse, and a monkey) and a kid sister of sorts (Kara, his cousin), but whose junior version, Superboy, was a younger version of himself, not a protégé. That aspect of pre-Crisis Superman has changed, of course, and the current Superboy is a protégé, but one created by an enemy of Superman’s, the Cadmus Project, as an easily-controlled replacement for him after his brief period of being dead, in the early 90s. After the fall of Cadmus, that Superboy was foisted upon Superman by fate. Now there is an oedipal narrative!
The psychology makes sense. Superman doesn’t deliberately build a family around himself because he had one for his entire youth, despite being the ‘Last Son of Krypton,’ and having a dead father (pre-Crisis). Batman, however, was orphaned at age 11, and as a result, takes on a replacement father, Alfred, and compulsively rescues orphaned children. Dick Grayson and Jason Todd’s parents died. Tim Drake’s father was initially comatose but recently killed in the Infinite Crisis mini-series. The Huntress/Helena Bertinelli’s father, a mafia crime boss, was executed. Batgirl II/Cassandra Cain was raised by an abusive assassin who, predictably, also died. Even Batgirl I/Barbara Gordon’s strained relationship with her father, Commissioner Gordon, lead her to the ‘bat family.’
But back to Fisher. I can see why fatherhood/parenthood would seem to figure largely in the Batman mythos, but as I’ve just tried to demonstrate, the application is bass-ackwards. Bruce Wayne doesn’t kill his father to become Batman, even in an anachronistic or symbolic sense. He becomes Batman to make up for the loss of his father, which is totally different. With that, I’m going to simply ignore his oedipal reading, and move on to the part of his paper that is far more interesting.
Fisher’s argument regarding class and wealth in Batman Begins is fascinating, but suffers from a failure of pessimistic imagination, to quote Sarah Vowell. Essentially, he argues that the film sets up a narrative of capitalism gone wrong, with the seemingly city-wide depression caused by Ra’s al Ghul, and the symbolic theft of Wayne Enterprises by Mr. Earl, who intends to sell the company’s stock on the open market. To correct this situation, we have Batman literally battling Ra’s al Ghul, and Bruce Wayne waging corporate war on Earl. In both narrative threads, Fisher argues, ‘good’ capitalism returns to Gotham in order to correct ‘bad’ capitalism. It’s essentially an extremely shallow morality play that, surprise surprise, happens to champion capitalism either way.
I think Fisher’s being a little too optimistic, though. The film’s antagonists are ‘good’ capitalists. Ra’s al Ghul’s meddling with Gotham’s economy should merely correct itself, if we follow the ‘invisible hand’ philosophy of capitalism (which is fallacious, but so wide-spread that’s effectively part of the ideology), in which any change or fluctuation is just the nature of the beast (and that biological metaphor is, of course, part of the fallacy). Earl’s assumption of ultimate power over Wayne Enterprises, his desire to sell it on the open market, and his eagerness to produce military hardware for profit is the ultimate expression of mercenary capitalism. He’s making money, therefore he just is in the right, according to that point of view.
Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham and his conscious correction of its economy, exemplified by battling Ra’s al Ghul and taking back his family’s corporation, is not a capitalist move, but an imperial move. Carmine Falcone, who would be a walking cliché of a ‘goodfella’ if he weren’t played with so much glee, even calls Bruce “the Prince of Gotham.” Bruce appoints Lucious Fox as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. If he were assuming a position of capitalist power, he would take that position for himself. Instead, he assumes a position of noble power, of right by birth to decide the fate of his father’s company and the people in it, and of the people of Gotham City. He might intervene for the better (though even that is up for debate), but the very concept of the vigilante is that he or she decides what constitutes ‘justice’ and actively corrects situations he or she has determined to be ‘unjust.’ The film does not champion capitalism. It champions the power of an élite noble class in the guise of free-market capitalism, which is even more manipulative and frightening.
Posted by orion at February 25, 2006 6:05 PM