Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (Wiley Psychology & Pop Culture)

by Langley, Travis

  Once the Code drove Catwoman out of the comics for some years to come, Bob Kane and his creative team introduced a more respectable and less lust-inspiring heroine to fill the “kind of female Batman” role: the first Batwoman, Kathy Kane, a former circus acrobat with an inheritance and a dream of imitating Batman.39 Bruce’s dates with Kathy (who doesn’t know he’s Batman) and Batman’s interactions with Batwoman, introduced by a creative team eager to reassure readers of Batman’s heterosexuality,40 failed to satisfy readers. Back when the previous woman who’d interested him most had been a thief on the opposite side of the law, their romantic tension had spiced up the conflict as that line of law kept them apart. With a fellow crime-fighter, though, the flirtations seemed trite. Having no hero-versus-villainess complication in their way, why wouldn’t they pursue their passion, tear off those masks when alone, and become a real couple? “Readers looking for mystery and adventure were beginning to wonder why they should put up with such soap opera, and why Batman wasn’t out at night wrestling with Catwoman instead.”41 Claiming that Batman had renounced romance while fighting crime42 didn’t cut it.

  A smiling Batman Family portrait in a 1961 Batman Annual demonstrated how far the Dark Knight had strayed from his dark roots. With Batman and Batwoman beaming like dad and mom with Robin and Kathy’s niece Bat-Girl seated between them, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon on hand like elderly uncles, and family pet Ace the Bat-Hound at the kids’ feet (plus Bat-Mite floating in the air like a helium balloon from the family’s trip to the fair, not that most families have their own magical imp), a reader “capable of taking this seriously might have concluded the vengeful Batman of yore had at last been healed and made whole, but the less fanciful fact was that the series had somehow taken a wrong turn, switching from super heroes to situational comedy.”43 A few writers dabbled in plunking a Betty/Veronica element into the comics by pitting reporter Vicki Vale against Batwoman, both vying for Batman’s attention while Robin predicted “a big Batwoman-Vicki Vale feud in the days ahead.”44 Decreased circulation saved the day. Prompted by flagging sales, editor Julius Schwartz engineered a rescue attempt that did away with the series’ cartoony look, terminated the fantastic tales that pitted Batman against space aliens and mutated him into everything from a baby to a colossus to some kind of zebra man,45 and unceremoniously fired supporting characters associated with that period. Among them, Batwoman vanishes without mention. Fifteen years later, she returns briefly, only to get stabbed to death.46

  Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara takes over as Gotham’s strong, independent heroine, but with “absolutely no romantic interest in Batman,” as she tells Catwoman after Selina attacks her on the incorrect assumption that Batgirl wants the Caped Crusader for herself.47 (Romantic possibilities with Batman pose even less of an issue for a much later Bat-heroine, a new Batwoman who turns out to be another Kane woman, lesbian Kate Kane.)48 As far as Barbara’s concerned, Batman is a colleague of her dad’s, not boyfriend material. At that time, while Julie Newmar’s Catwoman toys with Adam West’s Batman, making him hot under the cowl on TV, Batman in the comics seems untempted by the feline felon. Batman’s love life hits rock bottom and stays in its worst slump ever until after yet another revitalization and darkening of Batman’s printed adventures.

  Along comes Talia al Ghul. As opposed to Batwoman, who lives among Gotham’s upper class and goes out to fight hoodlums, or Catwoman, who steals from the upper class and looks out for the downtrodden in Gotham’s East End, exotic Talia takes Batman out into the world. Before meeting Talia and then her father, Ra’s al Ghul, a villain fit for James Bond, Batman would more likely have visited another planet than any foreign land. Through them, he goes international. Talia falls in love with Batman. Ra’s takes an interest in Batman, uncovers his Bruce Wayne identity, and approves of Batman not only as a potential son-in-law but as his own heir.49 Ra’s repeatedly lures Batman into adventures that test his worth to al Ghul or pit him against al Ghul’s own rivals. One of his schemes gets Batwoman Kathy Kane killed, eliminating a possible competitor for Batman’s heart, perhaps unintentionally, right before Ra’s pronounces Bruce and Talia Batman and wife.50 Though the marriage dissolves, Talia years later presents Bruce with a boy, Damian, who she says is their son.

  Perhaps the most famous of Bruce Wayne’s uncostumed, non-criminal girlfriends is intrepid Gotham Gazette reporter Vicki Vale. An actress Bob Kane dated, called Norma Jean when he first met her and later famous by the name Marilyn Monroe, inspired him to add a beautiful woman to the comic book’s cast. Naming her Vicki Vale and making her a photojournalist after a character from the Batman and Robin serial, while forgetting to tell the colorist that Bob wanted a blonde,51 they introduced the redhead reporter in Batman #49. Vicki sometimes dates Bruce, always finds Batman captivating, and repeatedly suspects they’re one and the same. Since the early 1960s, she appears occasionally in the comics but rarely sticks around. In the 1989 motion picture Batman, though not obvious to all viewers, Vicki deduces Batman’s identity. Another reporter, Alexander Knox, tells her Bruce saw his parents murdered. While they study an old newspaper photo of that boy Bruce, his eyes haunted by what he witnessed, Knox wonders what that kind of thing does to a kid, and the answer hits Vicki. “She makes a connection” and “knows now but hides it,” the script confirms.52 She heads straight to Wayne Manor, where Alfred escorts her down into the cave. More than sixty years pass in our time between the comic book Vicki Vale’s first appearance and when she finally proves Batman is Bruce.53 Hurt that he never confided in her on his own, she nearly publishes an exposé until she decides Batman’s mission is more important than any Pulitzer she might win.54

  While discussing whether Selina or Talia is Batman’s true love during a Comic-Con panel,55 The Dark Knight Rises executive producer Michael Uslan offered a third choice: Silver St. Cloud, a platinum-blond event planner Bruce meets on a yacht,56 a beautiful, empowered woman sharp enough to notice details other people miss. When Silver finally gets a good look at Batman, she spots something Vicki Vale also noticed when she first hit the scene: Batman has her boyfriend Bruce’s jaw. Like Dracula watching his prey for a moment before asking permission to enter, Batman steps through a window into her room—a highly stylized, darkly romantic scene, Batman in full costume daunted by Silver in her towel. She knows he’s Batman and he knows she knows, but neither will say so.58 She trusts that this living legend must have good reasons if he chooses not to tell her. As with Vicki, he won’t admit to anything if he can avoid doing so. He does not share secrets with either of them until it’s far too late. Silver St. Cloud and Vicki Vale are too healthy to share Bruce’s life.

  Batman enters Silver St. Cloud’s room like Dracula appearing onstage.57 Steve Englehart script, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin art © DC Comics.

  Other women pass through. Bruce’s relationships with women like Julie Madison and Linda Page, who dated Bruce briefly after Julie left, are empty of the passion Batman shows Selina Kyle and Talia al Ghul. His heart isn’t in his carefree Bruce Wayne façade. Never mind all the arm candy, the models and many others he shows off at restaurants and parties, only to have him yawn and ditch them once they’re away from cameras and prying eyes. He cancels dates and runs out on the women he genuinely likes as well. Between the many women he abandons early in the evenings and the series of boys he adopts, Bruce Wayne in his world would definitely face rumors akin to the gay fantasy speculations Dr. Wertham stirred up.

  No, his heart is in his real work, Batman’s mission, and he can only give his heart to women who dwell in that world. So why doesn’t he love the heroines? During one of Catwoman’s 1970s appearances, Batman stops to “wonder for a few panels about the two women in his life, Catwoman and Talia, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. Both were on the ‘wrong’ side of the law and he couldn’t fathom his attraction to them—or what to do about it.”59

  Birds of a Feather, Bats of a Leather

  Comics scholar Peter Coogan contends that
the women Batman loves, like the enemies he hates, remind him of himself: “The women he dates are versions of Bruce Wayne, they’re society women, or versions of Batman like Catwoman, like Batwoman, and so just as he’s drawn to his life as Batman and pushed away from his life as Bruce Wayne, the women he’s really attracted to are versions of Batman. So it’s really in some ways a relationship with himself.”60

  Is Batman attracted to these women for their similarities to himself or for their differences? One saying holds that birds of a feather flock together even though another says opposites attract. Which is more powerful when it comes to making a relationship work—complementarity, the supposed tendency for people with great differences to complete what is missing in each other,61 or similarity? Despite the popularity of the “opposites attract” notion and whatever anecdotal contradictions spring into your mind, researchers have been broadly unable to support the notion. Strong inclinations for opposites to marry, mate, or even befriend one another have never been reliably demonstrated, with the exception of heterosexual pairing (i.e., the majority of people mate with the opposite sex).62 We prefer others as a function of how similar they are to ourselves. “Smart birds flock together. So do rich birds, Protestant birds, tall birds, pretty birds.”63 Differences within couples can grab our attention, creating the impression that “they’re as different as night and day,” as when liberal pundit James Carville married conservative political consultant Mary Matalin. Clearly the two had their differences, but keep in mind that, among many other similarities they share, both had been advisors to U.S. presidents and were therefore members of a tiny club sharing similar abilities, interests, activities, events, and social exchanges. Few people on earth had more life experience in common with either of them.

  Doesn’t Batman have more in common with heroines than with criminals? Well, it’s not like he goes for every voluptuous villainess he meets. Talia has noble intentions of saving the world from its people, even if that means using her father’s eco-terrorist organization to advance her goals. Natalia Knight, a.k.a. Nocturna, a thief who shares Batman’s last kiss before Crisis on Infinite Earths resets history, takes a maternal interest in his adopted son Jason, and her efforts to protect the boy apparently get her killed.64 When a love interest turns out to be truly evil, like husband-murdering con artist Jillian Maxwell, his affection flips into anger.65 Bad girls attract his interest, but evil girls incur his wrath. He might let Talia, Nocturna, and Selina get away, but not the true psychopaths. Catwoman’s depiction over the decades has been inconsistent. Writers have waved her back and forth between degrees of good and bad similarly to how they’ve kept fluctuating the size of Batman’s supporting cast. He’s a loner, he has Robin, he has a whole Bat-Family, he’s a loner. She’s a crook, she’s a heroine, she’s an antiheroine, she’s a crook. Since the 1990s, writers have settled on antiheroine, making her position within Gotham’s underworld as precarious as Batman’s with the authorities, while still varying how much that antiheroine steals and from whom.

  In terms of similarity, the simplest reason Batman goes for lawbreaking ladies like Selina and Talia instead of crime-fighting comrades like Batgirl or Wonder Woman is that superheroines are good people, “and deep down, I’m not.”66

  Intimacy Issues

  Secrets keep ruining his relationships, usually his secrets.

  Intimacy—opening up to reveal personal information, share feelings and private thoughts, and let someone else inside—is no easy feat for him. As both Batman and Bruce, he stays guarded. In Erikson’s Intimacy vs. Isolation stage, young adults seek companionship and love or let fears of rejection and disappointment isolate them from others. Sometimes an individual fails to mature beyond a specific stage, so its crisis and all the associated struggles carry on. Despite Erikson focusing on two extreme resolutions to each crisis, he recognized a wide range of outcomes and felt that most people settle somewhere in between. As Batman moves from young adulthood toward middle age, he keeps oscillating on how much companionship he wants in his tiny inner circle.

  As a relationship grows, self-disclosing partners reveal more and more, deepening the relationship. Communication is key. One of the most reliable findings in intimacy research is that disclosure begets disclosure—the disclosure reciprocity effect. We reveal more to those who have revealed to us.67 Revealing too much information or intensely personal details too soon comes across as indiscreet, unstable, and nothing special, informationally promiscuous. “Appropriate intimacy progresses like a dance: I reveal a little, you reveal a little—but not too much. You then reveal more, and I reciprocate.”68 When the other person has a monumental secret that will alter your understanding of that individual as a person but you have no such secret to share in return, you two cannot dance to the same rhythm. Learning that secret becomes a relationship milestone, dividing the relationship pre-discovery from the relationship post. Will you feel privileged to find out or hurt that the other didn’t tell you sooner? Depending on the nature of the secret and the personalities involved, for a normally reserved person to tell us that something about us made them feel like opening up and sharing personal confidences makes us feel good.69 Before the revelation, disclosure was a bit one-sided because nothing the other person revealed then compares to the big reveal, as if a big lie of omission had hung through every past conversation. Upon the big reveal, the table turns and disclosure is now one-sided from the other person because you have nothing to give in return. “I’m Batman.” “I have bunions.”

  Making the revelation can feel liberating and open the floodgate to everything else that person has withheld. Humanistic psychologist Sidney Jourard wrote that dropping our masks, letting someone else know us as we really are, nurtures love.70 For others, though, the habit of keeping secrets runs so deep that the person remains distant. Sasha Bordeaux, a bodyguard Lucius Fox hires to protect Bruce Wayne,71 learns Bruce’s secret, becomes his lover, and starts fighting crime by his side,c none of which helps her feel close to him when he’s most intent on his work. They don’t discuss the toll his campaign against crime takes on himself and others. “He never talks about that, about what he’s sacrificed, about what he’s denied himself, about the friends he’s driven away, or the isolation he feels,” Sasha muses. “He doesn’t talk about much, anyway.”72 Couples who reveal the most to each other tend to express greater relationship satisfaction and experience more enduring relationships.73 Batman does not cultivate intimacy, nor do his romantic relationships endure.

  Does Batman feel closer to Selina or Talia? Consider the history of what he shares with them and when. He unmasks himself for Selina through one version of their history after another;74 Talia whips off his mask while he lies unconscious the first time they meet. He tells Selina his secret identity;d Talia’s father discovers it and tells her himself.75 The Golden Age Batman chooses to marry Catwoman, and together they raise a daughter.76 For the modern Batman, even marrying Talia happens minus his consent. She and the League of Assassins raise Bruce’s son for eight years before she reveals the boy’s existence. Batman deliberately reveals his face, his name, his headquarters to Selina Kyle, Catwoman, not Talia al Ghul.

  Even with Selina, he keeps letting opportunities to bond slip by. Best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer’s game-changing limited series Identity Crisis revealed that several Justice League members, by means of the magician Zatanna’s enchantments, have been altering supervillains’ memories and personalities to make them less dangerous,77 along with erasing Batman’s memory of having discovered their unethical transgressions.78 After the Secret Society of Super Villains retaliates against the League for violating their minds,79 a remorseful Zatanna visits Catwoman and confesses to having altered her personality as well, turning her from villain into hero.80 After throwing Zatanna out, Selina tries to figure out who she really is. All the good she has done in the East End, all the people she has helped—who really did those things? “They were inside me, Bruce. Inside my mind,” she says after break
ing into Wayne Manor to ask him, as the person who knows her best, who she really is. “My God, Bruce, can you imagine such a thing?” A moment passes before he says only, “You’d be surprised,” without telling her they’ve done it to him too. Despite his reassurances that she’s the same woman she has always been, in control of her own mind and life, she leaves frustrated, thinking, “Bruce. He tried, but I don’t think he could really connect with my problem. Who’s going to mess with his mind?”81

  The Love Triangle

  Commitment, passion, and intimacy, three distinct components to love, in different degrees combine into seven different kinds of love in Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, primary colors mixing to make a love spectrum. Passion, an intense physical, mental, and emotional rush characterized by excitement and euphoria, generally is greatest early in a couple’s relationship, sometimes bittersweet thanks to uncertainties about commitment and intimacy, frustrating if it’s one-sided. Passionate feelings promote physical intimacy. For the relationship to grow, cognitive and emotional intimacy should flourish as well. Interpersonal commitment, feeling bonded or emotionally dedicated to someone else, develops more gradually—not to be confused with forms of constraint commitment: social pressure to stay together, material obligations like signing a lease, or feeling trapped.82 Passion shares strong emotion, intimacy shares secrets, and interpersonal commitment shares life time via extraordinary life milestones, shared responsibilities, and ordinary, everyday events: wedding, childbearing, errands, housework, evening meals, watching TV, hanging out. Lasting relationships likely see passion fade, intimacy stabilize, and commitment build, with the focus of satisfaction shifting over time from early ardor into enduring companionship based on shared experiences and values.83 In the long run, across both individualistic and collectivistic cultures, companionate love predicts greater life satisfaction than passion alone.85