If you love Batman, let him rest in peace

One aspect of the Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture is well known, even if only in caricatured form. We are entertained, so the logic goes, by scenes of suffering. In the world of comic book superheroes, millions are routinely killed for our viewing pleasure. Doomsday killed Superman, who was then reborn only to find that Coast City had been obliterated, leaving more than 6 million dead. The so-called Infinite Crisis resulted in the deaths of more than 2 million, and the 1980s pioneering series Crisis on Infinite Earths destroyed an almost infinite number of universes, leaving behind but a fraction of the imagined world. These are but a few examples of the mass carnage which we can find in DC’s oeuvre.

“He fills his head with culture / He gives himself an ulcer”

Yet, the argument goes much deeper than this. Adorno, Kracauer and other 1930s radicals frequently gave voice to the idea that the escape from the boredom and suffering brought about by rationalized mass production promised us by mass culture was in fact a fraudulent ticket that leads only to the house – or rather, the suburb – of pain. “How inadequate happiness sounds,” Adorno wryly noted of the Snow White fable, which ends with her following Prince Charming without so much as a hint that he understands her or her dreams. In short, when we aren’t consuming the suffering of others en masse, we are offered scenes that allow us to dream of the perfect life, which nonetheless still remains a dream for most of us.

“The dirt behind the daydream / The happy ever after is at the end of the rainbow”

All of this leads into the question at hand, does Grant Morrison hate Batman? This has been the common complaint of Bat-fans who despise what the author has done to the Caped Crusader in the recent “Batman RIP.” No one who loves the character, so the whinging goes, could produce a story in which Bruce Wayne is driven insane and ultimately relinquishes his cape and cowl. Even principled critics like Occasional Superheroine’s Valerie D’Orazio, whose judgement on all things comical I respect, see the RIP storyline as but one of the plethora of plots devoted to violence and death under the editorial regime of Dan Didio. This may in fact be why Didio agreed to publish Morrison’s RIP, but it doesn’t help us to understand what the story can tell us.

I’d like to propose a different reading, one anchored in what might be the most memorable line of Morrison’s run. It appears in one of two issues (#682 and 683) that follow the conclusion of the RIP arc, and cover the period leading up to Batman’s final appearance in Final Crisis. Captured by Evil God Granny Goodness, Batman is strapped into a machine that connects him to a creature of pure thought known as the Lump. The “pscyho-merge” process is designed by Darkseid’s minions to imprint genetically engineered soldiers with Batman’s traumatic memories: troops with such a mentality would obviously be able to process superhuman amounts of stress and, in simple terms, kick serious ass.

The story is beautifully constructed on many levels, and there’s no point in trying to convey all of this complexity here. Where Morrison’s talent shines through most vividly is in the end of the story: Batman becomes conscious of the psycho-merge process, and thwarts it by channelling all of his pain into the machine. They can have his suffering, he proclaims “if [they] can bear it all at once.” Needless to say, they can’t, causing the would-be soldiers to start clawing out their own eyes! And as he flees, Darkseid minion Mokkari gets the best line: “What kind of man can turn even his life memories into a weapon?”

That Batman can do this should not surprise anyone who is familiar with the basic events in the 20 years since the reorganization of the DC Universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, it’s likely that Bruce Wayne has experienced more trauma, witnessed more suffering than any other comic book superhero during this period. Many of these events are captured within the pages of these two issues, but a brief recap of the highlights is in order.

Simply put, Bruce Wayne’s body has been shot, stabbed and otherwise defiled more than any single human could withstand. Perhaps the most famous mutilitation was the breaking of his back by Bane during the Knightfall storyline. Seriously, he’s survived everything but AIDS, and there’s little doubt that he would have defeated that as well (as does the Batman-copy Midnighter in the pages of the Authority).

His allies, however, have not been as fortunate. Two Robins, Jason Todd and Stephanie Brown, were killed in action (with both eventually resurrected, no doubt so that they could suffer some more). Another Robin, Tim Drake, experienced the death of his mother and his father. Batgirl Barbara Gordon was shot and paralyzed by the Joker, who used her weakened condition as an occasion to take photos of her in various states of undress. Even poor Ace the Bat Hound is dead, a victim of either the catacylsmic earthquake that shook Gotham’s foundations or almost a decade of neglect, since no one’s fed the poor mutt since then. Each of these incidents (save for the latter) have left profound psychic marks on Batman. And each has been turned into an ongoing plot point: Batman does not lack for memories of his failures, and his failures are too numerous for him to ever forget.

Beyond this list of physical pain, Batman has felt betrayed by these allies, and has in turn betrayed them himself. He spied on his colleagues in the Justice League, using what others saw as bonding moments as the basis for methodical plans as to how to render helpless each of his colleagues. In Gotham itself, Jim Gordon’s decision to retire after being shot is the occasion for a falling out between the two. Even worse is Batman’s treatment of Oracle, who symbolizes the all-too-often subordinate position of women in the world of super heroes: she is both indispensible to his war against crime and treated as an appendage, her advice consistently ignored. Indeed, in the War Games story, she is obliged to put her own life in jeopardy and to destroy her home, all to free Batman from his wish to die in combat. Repeatedly over the past 10 years, creators return to the same story: Batman abuses his allies, eventually realizes the error of his ways, utters a brief apology, and all is forgiven. Until the next major storyline, when it all happens again.

What about Bruce’s lady friends? Obviously, many creators have made much of Bruce’s refusal to commit to a romantic relationship for fear that it would detract from his mission. Others have turned this into the basis for stories that exemplify the “women in refrigerators” syndrome. The Bruce Wayne: Murderer and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive stories revolve around the diabolical murder of former flame Vesper Fairchild, killed solely to ruin both Bruce Wayne and Batman. In his decision to escape from prison, he alienates all of his sidekicks, even Nightwing, who nonetheless remains devout in his assumption of Bruce’s innocence. And he needlessly causes Sasha Bordeaux, suspected of being his accomplice in Fairchild’s murder, to suffer alone in prison, without so much as a kind word. But even Fairchild’s fate pales in comparison to that of Shondra Kinsolving, responsible for his emotional healing after his breakdown in the wake of his back being broken, and who creators chose to make insane, her considerable intellect now a pale reflection of its past glory as it regresses into infantilism. Finally, what does it say about Batman that his only lasting romantic relationship has been with Talia Head, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul and a character who creators delight in writing in almost exclusively Freudian terms, wholly trapped in a never-ending cycle in which her loyalty shifts back and forth between father and lover? Even here, the pain inflicted upon Batman is intense, lest we forget that he believed for years that he and Talia had lost their chance at happiness and a family due to a miscarriage. To love is to suffer, we have seen again and again.

I’ve really just scratched the surface here. My point is not that Batman is naturally a bad person. It’s that comic book creators make him so, in order to be able to tell the same types of stories again and again. As a result, when taken as a whole, this litany of suffering is more than any individual could stand. In Infinite Crisis, Batman has the funniest line, although it’s not one that’s meant to be funny. Superboy Conner Kent has just died, and while members of the JLA stand over the body, Batman says, “It never happens again. We learn from it.” A great idea, and yet one that Batman himself has never been able to follow, because creators return him again and again to the well of loneliness and suffering.

So, without wanting to spoil the story of Batman RIP for those who haven’t read it, I think we can take from it one simple lesson. The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh is a beautifully tragic and entirely logical extension of Batman’s legacy. In poetically depicting his life-shattering breakdown, Morrison has given us a story that should force us to come to terms with the pleasure we derive from his pain.

If you love Bruce Wayne, set him free and let him rest in peace. If you’re not willing to do this, then at least ask yourself how you can be entertained by his long history of suffering, and still claim to love him.

Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley may be dream factories. But they do not merely supply categorical wish fulfilment for the girl behind the counter. She does not immediately identify herself with Ginger Rogers marrying. What does occur may be expressed as follows: when the audience at a sentimental film or sentimental music become aware of the overwhelming possibility of happiness, they dare to confess to themselves what the whole order of contemporary life ordinarily forbids them to admit, namely, that they actually have no part in happiness. What is supposed to be wish fulfilment is only the scant liberation that occurs with the realization that at last one need not deny oneself the happiness of knowing that one is unhappy and that one could be happy.

T.W. Adorno, "On Popular Music," in On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, 1941.

The more incorrectly [films] present the surface of things, the more correct they become and the more clearly they mirror the secret mechanism of society. In reality it may not often happen that a scullery maid marries the owner of a Rolls Royce. But doesn’t every Rolls Royce owner dream that scullery maids dream of rising to his stature? Stupid and unreal film fantasies are the daydreams of society, in which its actual reality comes to the fore and its otherwise repressed wishes take on form.

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies," in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, 1927.