Knowing that the man in the costume is a Six Flags performer doesn’t reduce the child’s awe over meeting Batman in person. Photo by Travis Langley.
Screen History
1940s Serials
Batman’s screen history starts with the Columbia Pictures serial Batman (1943), starring Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft as the first live-action Batman and Robin four years after the character’s comic book debut. In the days when a typical Saturday for many meant sharing a community experience in the seats of their local theaters, watching a full-length feature plus newsreels, cartoons, comedic short films starring the Three Stooges or Our Gang, and at least one chapter of a film serial, Batman was new, not something they’d all known their whole lives. Through one cliffhanger after another for 15 weeks, they watched the Dynamic Duo fight American hoodlums, Japanese agent Dr. Tito Daka, and Daka’s mind-controlled “zombie” slaves.
Fear is a recurring element in Batman’s stories, but one fear in particular shaped this serial’s creation—xenophobia, exaggerated fear of foreigners or strangers. Anti-Asian sentiment was not new to America during World War II, and the depictions and descriptions of the Japanese in this serial were overtly racist. The serial’s narrator tells us that buildings in the city’s Little Tokyo district have sat empty “since a wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs,”1 referring to the U.S. government’s 1942 relocation and internment of over 100,000 American citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry into War Relocation Camps in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.2 No such relocation occurred for any of German or Italian descent, only for those whose ancestors came from the Axis alliance’s Asian member. “Daka, the sinister Jap spy,” with his “twisted Oriental brain,” embodied the Japanese alien that many feared still lurked in America, having somehow avoided getting rounded up—a point driven home when Batman tells Daka, “We’ve been searching for you ever since you killed those two agents assigned to your deportation!”3
The serial nonetheless contributed to Batman’s mythos. Just as The Adventures of Superman radio program added Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and the deadly Kryptonite to the Man of Steel’s life, the Batman serial gave the Dark Knight his Batcave,4 its entrance through a grandfather clock, and a leaner butler, Alfred, who sometimes helps the heroes in the field. A better written if more poorly acted sequel followed, 1949’s Batman and Robin, free of the racist propaganda. Both serials did well at the box office, and yet the 1950s saw no new Batman on screen, perhaps because scathing critiques like Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent incited a backlash against comic books. A 1965 theatrical reissue of the Batman serial, presenting all 15 half-hour chapters in one marathon showing, proved successful enough that it paved the way for new Batman cliffhangers, this time on TV.5
Batman (1966–1968 TV Series, 1966 Motion Picture)
“Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”
—Batman (Adam West), Batman: The Movie
The unintentional campiness viewers enjoyed in the re-released 22-year-old Batman serial inspired deliberate camp when executive producer William Dozier and writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. brought ABC a television series comedic enough to make adults howl and straight enough for kids to enjoy heroic derring-do. TV had depicted Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Tarzan with no less earnestness than their original source material. Among superhero shows, Batman was something new. Actors who could deliver the silliest lines straight-faced proved critical to the series’ success. Dozier explained to actor Adam West “that it had to be played as though we were dropping a bomb on Hiroshima, with that kind of deadly seriousness.”6 West became their square, hard-nosed Batman. Adults got the jokes, kids got a kick out of seeing heroes fight bad guys, and it worked as intended.
The show rarely ventured into any overt psychological issues. “We were superficial,” Adam West has remarked, “what did we know?”7 Even when it did, the deliberate farce had no need for accurate depiction of mental illness or its treatment. Mind control popped up in several episodes, in no way resembling any real-world hypnosis or brainwashing techniques. In one episode, the Siren’s voice compels Bruce Wayne to sign his fortune over to her and then jump off a building;8 in another, the Sandman makes Robin activate the machine that will kill Batman if the Caped Crusader doesn’t escape that week’s cliffhanger.9
After Bruce Wayne makes the Joker a vice president of the Gotham National Bank as part of a plan to expose the clown’s counterfeiting,10 Commissioner Gordon decides the millionaire playboy has lost his marbles and has him committed. A straitjacketed Bruce escapes, rolling with the fall out the back of the Anti-Lunatic Squad’s van. The story ends with a doctor giving Bruce a clean bill of health and pronouncing that the tumble from the van has knocked some sense back into him, thus restoring his sanity. The doctor’s method for testing soundness of mind baffled me even as a child: He taps a reflex hammer to Bruce’s knee.11
Despite all their antics, none of this Batman’s enemies are ever labeled criminally insane. The flamboyant felons escape from Gotham State Prison, not Arkham Asylum. The most psychologically relevant story element, in terms of long-running characterization, is the curious condition of King Tut (see Case File 2–1: King Tut).
Batman (1989 Motion Picture)
“A lot of people think you’re as dangerous as the Joker.”
—Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger)
Fifty years after the character’s comic book debut, director Tim Burton brought us a cinematic Batman who operates from the shadows. Executive producer Michael Uslan wanted Burton to base this one on the first year of Batman’s Detective Comics stories (pre-Robin) plus adventures later separately written by Dennis O’Neil and Steve Englehart.12 The popularity of Frank Miller’s then-recent four-part graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns indicated that fans might be ready for darker Batman tales. Burton added his own flair: For the first time, we saw a neurotic Batman and an awkward Bruce Wayne. Although the movie did have a few odd bits of camp (remember the scruffy news anchors?), the strangest humor came from the Joker and suited his nature.
The script took a noirish approach and made Batman more believable by surrounding him with a noirish city. Burton’s Gotham City looms, described in Sam Hamm’s script as “if Hell had sprung up through the pavements and kept on going.” Burton and production designer Anton Furst looked at New York and “decided to darken everything and build vertically and cram things together and then just go further with it in a more cartoon way,” Burton explained.13 “It has an operatic feel, and an almost timeless quality.” The creators of Batman: The Animated Series adopted these principles as well. “This neo-Expressionistic, Germanic city”14 with its Gothic architecture gave us an environment that needed Batman. He and his city go together. Each helps us believe the other.
Another important contribution Burton’s film added was the Voice. As Batman, actor Michael Keaton dropped his voice, making it deeper and rougher, which helped us accept that people wouldn’t recognize Batman as Bruce Wayne—on this one point, no suspension of disbelief was required. “Bruce Wayne is a man about town, a luminary, so people know his voice. So I came up with the idea of dropping his voice down,” Keaton explained, “as Batman it comes from a lower thing that he drops down into, a place he has to reach to become a quasi-vigilante.”15 The comic book stories themselves now refer to Batman affecting a gruffer voice when costumed.16
In Burton’s vision, Bruce Wayne spends his days sleep-deprived, his awkwardness no act. Instead of following the traditional depiction of Batman as formidably fit, physically as well as socially, Burton chose to humanize Bruce Wayne by making him weak. Auditioning one muscle man after another for the role, Burton had found himself unable to picture someone who already looked like an action-adventure hero deciding to dress up like a bat. Once he envisioned a weaker man wearing the costume in order to transform himself, the concept came together. “We just took off from the psychology of saying, ‘Here’s a guy who doesn’t look like Arnold Sch
warzenegger, so why’s he doing this?’ He’s not trying to create an image for himself, he’s trying to become something he’s not.”17 Burton’s Batman wears the costume as armor, a bulletproof exoskeleton that confers the power and strength he otherwise lacks. “He does it because he needs to, because he’s not this gigantic, strapping macho man. It’s all about transformation.”18
While Burton’s Bruce Wayne transforms back and forth between Batman and Bruce, psychopathic Jack Napier makes one irreversible transformation from a menacing, grim-faced gangster who kills for practical reasons into a cackling, clown-faced master criminal who kills for the dark humor of it all.a
Batman Returns (1992 Motion Picture)
“Sickos never scare me. At least they’re committed.”
—Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer)
For the sequel, Burton wanted to bring in Catwoman—to him, Batman’s most interesting antagonist after the Joker—while studio execs insisted on using the Penguin, whom they saw as Batman’s number-two foe, so this film wound up with both. “You could find the psychological profile of Batman, Catwoman, Joker, but the Penguin was just this guy with a cigarette and a top hat,” Burton said of the challenge to characterize Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin.19 The profile did not gel until Burton gave the character another layer that would tie him into the motion picture’s theme: duality.
In this sequel, Batman and Catwoman each have dual identities, their light and dark sides. Bruce and Selina, two uncomfortable, uncertain, unhappy people who can each walk unassumingly in daylight, transform into their confident, assertive counterparts by night. When all other party guests chat and dance at a masquerade, milling about in their costumes and masks, Bruce and Selina each arrive in formalwear, respectively tuxedo and gown, no masks other than their civilized fronts. “Selina, don’t you see?” Bruce tells her toward the movie’s end, right before he tears off his mask. “We’re the same. We’re the same, split right down the center.”
In Batman Returns, the dark side is animal nature: the bat, the cat, and the chilly little bird. Unlike Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, who don animal outfits, Cobblepot was born a “freak” with flippers instead of hands. Whereas they decide to become nocturnal animals, he endeavors to become a man who can step into the light, except he tries to do so through trickery and without relinquishing his beastly nature.
In both of Burton’s Bat-films, Bruce Wayne is distant, the villains steal the show, and the love interests hold our attention. Vicki Vale and Selina Kyle give us perspectives we follow through the course of each story. Though conscious of complaints that the Joker stole the first movie and that the second film showed Batman too little, Tim Burton felt these criticisms “were missing the point of the character…. This guy wants to remain as hidden as possible and as in the shadows as possible and unrevealing about himself as possible, so he’s not going to eat up screen time by these big speeches and doing dancing around the Batcave.” However sound Burton’s reasoning may have been, those criticisms reflected one possible advantage that comics have over film—text, in the form of thought balloons and narration, that can let us get inside a character’s head.
Batman Forever (1995 Motion Picture)
“I’ll bring the wine. You bring your scarred psyche.”
—Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman)
When Tim Burton decided to help produce but not direct the next film, director Joel Schumacher arrived with a lighter, brighter vision of a grand Batman movie filled with spectacle and flash, although it did have its edge. The film explores Batman’s origin in more detail than did the previous films. Batman Forever is partly “a retelling of the origin story in a way that attempts to take a little bit closer look at the psychology of Bruce Wayne and how he became older Bruce Wayne,” according to screenwriter Akiva Goldsman.20 Witnessing the murder of Dick Grayson’s acrobat family makes Bruce reflect on his own beginning.
Bruce (Val Kilmer): Just like my parents. It’s happening again. A monster comes out of the night, a scream, two shots. I killed them.
Alfred (Michael Gough): What did you say?
Bruce: He killed them. Two-Face, he slaughtered that boy’s parents.
Alfred: No. No, you said, “I.” “I killed them.”
Bruce, having consulted with criminal psychologist Chase Meridian about the mysterious stalker leaving riddles at Wayne Manor, tells her he has never remembered much about the events surrounding his parents’ deaths, that what he remembers comes to him mostly in dreams. However, since the Graysons’ similar deaths, the memories have started haunting him while awake: Finding his father’s journal after his parents’ wake, young Bruce realized the crushing fact that his father would never write in it again. Chase says he’s describing a repressed memory, “images of a forgotten pain that’s trying to surface.” With repression, which Freud considered the most important defense mechanism21 even though modern empirical evidence now suggests it might occur rarely if at all,22 the unconscious mind locks away feelings, desires, and experiences that the conscious ego cannot bear. Why would Bruce repress something so simple? And why would that memory’s retrieval matter so much? Goldsman later explained:
In the screenplay and in the movie that we shot, there is a very different center of the movie, where he opens up the book and the last entry is “Martha and I want to stay home tonight, but Bruce insists on going to see a movie.” [Bruce] had repressed his fantasy that this was all his fault, that if he just hadn’t made them go see a movie that night, they would never have been out and they would never have been killed. And so the whole movie was actually built around this kind of psychological reckoning. That’s why the love interest is a psychologist.23
The film, despite editing out the repressed guilt that Bruce needs to resolve before he can accept Dick Grayson as a crime-fighting partner, retained issues important in many a Batman story: duality and obsession. Two-Face, the film’s secondary villain, embodies both. Literally split down the center—his right side handsome, his left side acid-scarred—former District Attorney Harvey Dent compulsively tosses a coin to let fate make his decisions. Chase and Batman refer to him as having “multiple personalities” and yet, aside from his referring to himself in the plural, the film shows no signs that he has that condition. This Two-Face never acts torn between right and wrong. He always wants to do wrong. Leaving his decisions to a coin toss merely absolves him of responsibility for his actions. When the toss goes against his wishes, he shows disappointment, going so far as to toss it repeatedly until it lets him do the thing he desires. Although the trauma that scarred half his face brought out his dark side, we see no evidence that he switches between selves, no sign of any gaps in memory between good Harvey and bad.
Edward Nygma,b who is the film’s central villain, the Riddler, appears to have borderline personality disorder, an unstable, incomplete identity characterized by chaos in one’s thoughts, moods, actions, and self-concept, “one of the most frustrating psychiatric conditions to live with and to treat.”24 Edward’s specific symptoms include splitting, categorizing people in positive and negative extremes, switching abruptly between idealizing and demonizing the same individual as indicated by his vacillating views toward Bruce Wayne. “You’re my idol,” he tells Bruce at their first meeting, when Edward initially impresses Bruce with his inventive ideas only to press too hard and botch his chance to get the multimillionaire to fund his research. Hero worship inverts into dangerous obsession. Eddie stalks Bruce, anonymously leaving him riddles with sinister overtones. “He’s obsessed with you,” Chase cautions Bruce. “His only escape may be to purge the fixation,” referring to “potential homicidal tendencies.”
Psychologist Chase and borderline Edward each spend the movie attracted, in different ways, to Bruce Wayne and each trying to get inside Batman’s mind—in Edward’s case, literally. Chase wants to be with Bruce and Edward wants to be like him. Chase attends a party with Bruce; host Edward wears a fake mole to match one on Bruce’s (Val Kilmer’s) face. Cha
se builds a file studying Batman; Edward builds his brainwave manipulator to steal information from people’s heads, including Bruce Wayne’s secrets. Edward’s need for association with a more complete human being grows from idolizing and imitating Bruce to integrating into himself bits of information and intelligence from all who attach Nygmatech’s 3-D boxes to their TVs. The machine overloads Edward’s brain, leaving him disconnected and confused in Arkham Asylum, under the delusion that he himself is Batman.
Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (Wiley Psychology & Pop Culture) Page 3
