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

by Langley, Travis

  Adam, on the other hand, developed an in-depth character analysis while preparing for his role. He consulted with Bob Kane and immersed himself in the comic books, old Batman movie serials, The Shadow pulp fiction, The Adventures of Superman pilot episode, and dual-identity novels like The Scarlet Pimpernel. Together with the idea of the costume as a liberating factor and cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s observation that Batman’s a bit full of himself,2 Adam shaped his performance by identifying six recurring features (abbreviated and semi-paraphrased here):

  1. Batman risks his life for the underdog freely and without hesitation.

  2. His adventures, especially the early ones, are set in the urban jungle, often among the downtrodden, which gives many of the tales a Dickensian flavor.

  3. Batman is as plausible as a superhero can be, and that carries responsibilities. Batman knows there are kids out there who think they can grow up to be like him, so he’s always on his best behavior.

  4. He’s a creature of the night, at home in the shadows, a bit of the vampire in him. Batman believes he’s frightening.

  5. Like Sherlock Holmes, he’s a detective. He’s always thinking and analyzing, maybe at the expense of his good health.

  6. Batman’s blessed (or cursed) with the most memorable rogues gallery this side of Dick Tracy. There’s always someone flamboyant for him to play off. As a result, he must stay low-key to achieve a balance.3

  To this day, people debate the value of their 1966–1968 TV series’ campy humor. The show has its fans, old and new, and it also has its detractors, old and new. Batman can be fun, but not everyone wants him to be funny. A future filmmaker, adolescent Michael Uslan bemoaning the ignominy one night in 1966 after seeing too many whams and pows flash across the screen, swore an oath that would define his life much like the one that drives Bruce Wayne:

  Someday, somehow, I would eliminate these three little words from the collective consciousness of the world culture: Pow! Zap! and Wham! I would restore Batman to his true and rightful identity as the Dark Knight … a creature of the night stalking criminals from the shadows as he was originally intended to be by his creators, Bob Kane and Bill Finger … and thanks to many people who believed in that cause, when Batman and years later Batman Begins and The Dark Knight arrived in theaters, I believed I had done just that. 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises would be the icing on the cake.4

  Notice which movies he named there, the most serious Batman films—not that Uslan shuns fun with superheroes. “There’s an important lesson to be learned from The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, not everyone in Hollywood gets it,” he said with a sigh in his autobiography.5 “The movie’s stunning success does NOT mean that all comic book superhero films must be dark, gritty, and violent and set in contemporary times. But that’s exactly what the industry people are claiming. If that’s the case, duck and cover, because it may just spawn movies like ‘Casper the Unfriendly Ghost!’ But Iron Man, a huge success, which I saw three times in the first week, is just plain FUN! Aha! There’s room for many tones in our superheroes.” Again, there’s that distinction of fun versus funny.

  “Are we supposed to take this one seriously or not?” viewers ask of every comic book adaptation. Batman Returns and Batman Forever had a few inconsistencies when answering that question, and Batman & Robin failed because, unlike the 1960s TV series, which was strictly camp, or Nolan’s movies, which strictly are not, those movies mixed camp into a film series that had not set out to be campy. The bat-symbol credit card Batman whips out to outbid Robin at a charity auction in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin spits on Uslan’s adolescent vow. Self-conscious camp takes us outside the situation. “What got lost in Batman & Robin is the emotions aren’t real,” screenwriter Akiva Goldsman admitted. “The worst thing to do with a serious comic book is make it a cartoon.”6 Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige called it possibly the most important comic book movie ever made, “so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things. It created the opportunity to do X-Men and Spider-Man, adaptations that respected the source material and adaptations that were not campy.” Iron Man, X-Men, and Spider-Man have their moments of humor within the context of specific situations, humor meant to play naturally off the characters’ personalities or take jabs at some of the insanities of life, not by demeaning the characters and the importance of their lives. What humor we find in Nolan’s Batman movies grows organically out of the characterization, much of it humanizing Bruce’s relationship with Alfred (“Accomplice? I’m gonna tell them the whole thing was your idea”), along with some morbid humor from villains (think Joker + pencil or Two-Face + seatbelt, “Your driver”). Too many dramatic stories’ authors populate their worlds entirely with characters who have no sense of humor, but in real life, no matter what horrible thing happens, someone will need to cope through humor. Many a funeral is followed by graveside moments when mourners laugh through their tears while sharing moments from the lost loved one’s life. Some humor celebrates life, some mocks it. Humor and drama can mix, depending on the nature of each.

  “Now Mister Uslan has his Dark Knight. I, of course, am the Bright Knight,” Adam West said, sitting beside Uslan before our packed Comic-Con audience the day they finally met in person. “We had a different take.”b Even those who could enjoy both Uslan’s Dark Knight and West’s Bright Knight sometimes had problems with the odd humor that infected the Burton/Schumacher films, only a little bit in the first one, but then it kept spreading through them like a virus that eventually killed that four-movie series. Director Joel Schumacher, a man capable of making serious, intelligent films (Flatliners, A Time to Kill), gave the studio in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin the films he’d felt they wanted. Warner Bros. studio heads had desired something more upbeat than Batman Returns. Schumacher would have preferred to shoot Batman: Year One, but the studio had no reason to reboot a successful series after only the first two.d Eight years had to pass between 1997’s Batman & Robin and 2005’s Batman Begins, more than long enough to declare the Burton/Schumacher series legally dead the way Wayne Enterprises’ CEO has Bruce Wayne declared dead in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s variation on Batman: Year One. Batman had to wander away, die, and come back reborn.

  Humor is a vital coping mechanism. It’s subjective, quixotic, and tough to pin down. It can be dry or absurd, good-natured or mean. What’s funny now won’t be funny later. What’s hilarious to you might bore me. If you map out comedic formulas, humorists overuse them and they grow less effective. Humor relies on many of the same elements of incongruity7 and surprise that horror doles out. Humor can swing like a weapon, drawing deep,8 and we may get defensive when it jabs at our heroes. An insult that belittles our heroes insults us for looking up to them. Adaptive styles of humor build people up, whether through affiliative humor, which enhances our perceptions of others, or self-enhancing humor, which promotes us. Maladaptive styles of humor, on the other hand, tear people down. That includes those weapons of attack (aggressive humor) meant to objectify, ridicule, or humiliate others and impediments to ourselves (self-defeating humor).9 Because humor is an evaluative response appraising funny versus unfunny, emotionally we’re ready to evaluate humor in other ways as well. Our basic adaptive inclinations have readied us to react to humor like we’d size up potential allies and enemies, which then primes individuals who have aggressive natures or poor self-esteem to see offense where none was intended, not that intent always matters. An office employee who cracks a sexually suggestive joke oblivious to how co-workers feel can nevertheless create a negative work environment,10 just as those who make fun of our heroes, our costumes, our collections, our movies, our toys stab at us whether they know it or not. We can’t assume they know it. Some people are just that dumb. Some people, however, know that others bond and strengthen one another through mutual kidding around.

  People with gelatophobia, the overwhelming fear of getting laughed at, do not experience humor and laughter as shared enjoyment but rather as a threat. Gelatophobes are less
cheerful and use more maladaptive than adaptive humor, not that they recognize humor as much of a coping mechanism in the first place.11 Maybe those who tease you or mock your heroes are trying to attack. Then again, maybe they’re trying to connect with you or to help build your defenses against humor others truly mean to be cruel. Sensitivity has its place, and so does insensitivity. We need some of both to get through this life. Cynical gallows humor, one of the most popular coping methods among emergency service professionals like firefighters, paramedics, and police, helps them vent feelings, elicit social support, and distance themselves from situations enough to ensure that they can act effectively.12 That doesn’t mean they never care.

  Entertainment is emotional. Even the most cognitively oriented activity is entertainment to those who like it, maybe also to those who dislike the activity but enjoy griping about it. A complicated math problem entertains those who enjoy the challenge. Batman stories have entertained the world since 1939 and keep going strong. When DC Comics relaunched all their titles with new #1 issues in 2011, resetting character histories, erasing stories that didn’t work, and cleaning up the burdensome continuity to blow a giant breath of fresh air through their whole comic book line, they decided that Batman’s history needed the least tweaking and that they should stick with what was working, leave his titles largely unchanged.c The character’s humanity, above all else, keeps us invested. The stories keep us thinking and keep evoking our emotions. Batman’s still fun.

  The success of Frank Miller’s comic book series (or four-part graphic novel, whichever you prefer to call it), The Dark Knight Returns, revealed an audience ready for a darker take on Batman and helped pave the way for Tim’s Burton film adaptation. While Frank was working on that, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created Watchmen—similar to The Dark Knight Returns in that it, too, deconstructed the superhero and neither story took place in mainstream superhero canon. Both Miller and Moore have bemoaned the fact that deconstruction should have preceded reconstruction, not imitators who just kept tearing up the fabric of their heroes in the mainstream canon.

  “The gritty, deconstructivist postmodern superhero comic, as exemplified by Watchmen, also became a genre. It was never meant to. It was meant to be one work on its own…. The apocalyptic bleakness of comics over the past 15 years sometimes seems odd to me, because it’s like that was a bad mood that I was in 15 years ago.”

  —Alan Moore, interviewed by Robinson (2001)

  “I’ve seen all these characters of my childhood fall into disarray. They’ve become neither fish nor fowl. Those of us who wanted to test the boundaries of what a superhero comic book could do unfortunately broke those boundaries and the results have not all been very good. We pushed against the old walls, and they fell—but nothing much has been built to replace them. And now the roof is leaking and the sewer’s backing up.”

  —Frank Miller, interviewed by Brownstein (2000)

  The year after Frank said that, the 9/11 attacks came along, and America needed heroes. Hollywood started filling the screens with superheroes. Comic book stories Miller considered the most cynical (Jason Todd’s death by phone vote, Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s transformation into a mass murderer)13 got fixed. Jason and Hal both return from the dead, and it turns out retroactively that Hal was never really a mass murderer after all.14 The need for hope and heroes didn’t stop comic books from exploring new darkness and many shades of gray. Both Identity Crisis at DC Comics15 and then Civil War at Marvel16 put superheroes at odds with one another over issues of security: How far will you go to feel safe? What rules will you break or impose to protect the people who matter to you? Each in its own way explored a central theme from Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel and Nolan’s The Dark Knight films, what psychologist Erich Fromm considered the basic human dilemma driving us throughout our lives, freedom versus security.17 Identity Crisis and Civil War each damaged relationships between superheroes, as when Batman’s fury toward other heroes for violating his and other people’s rights boiled forth, but each story turned out to be a case of “darkest before the dawn.” Each reinvigorated storylines throughout its respective company for a time and stories felt like they mattered, like they made real differences in characters’ lives as they worked through the aftermath to find new ways of relating to one another over time so they could again unite for the common good. “We’re sick to death of heroes who are not heroes, we’re sick to death of darkness,” comic book writer Mark Waid said when discussing the more heroic character depictions that would follow DC’s Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. “Not that there’s no room, not that Batman should act like Adam West, but that won’t be the overall feeling…. No more ‘we screwed each other over and now we must pay the consequences.’ No, we’re super-heroes and that’s what we do.”18

  Admittedly, every dawn and every day come before more darkness, and then another dawn should follow. Unending publication demands it.

  “The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.”

  —Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), The Dark Knight (2008 motion picture)

  Notes

  1. Burt Ward, personal communication, after a darn nice introduction from Adam West (November 14, 2010).

  2. Feiffer (1977).

  3. West & Rovin (1994).

  4. Uslan (2011), 62.

  5. Uslan (2011), 231.

  6. Boucher (2009).

  7. Samson & Hempelmann (2011).

  8. Weinstein, Hodgins, & Ostvik-White (2011).

  9. Kuiper & Leite (2010).

  10. Berdahl & Aquino (2009).

  11. Ruch, Beermann, & Proyer (2009).

  12. Rowe & Regehr (2010).

  13. Zero Hour (1994).

  14. Green Lantern: Rebirth #4 (2005).

  15. Identity Crisis #1–7 (2004–2005).

  16. Civil War #1–7 (2006–2007).

  17. Fromm (1941); Langley (2010).

  18. Kistler (2005).

  aBecause it is.

  bFor more on that historic meeting, see Uslan’s autobiography, The Boy Who Loved Batman, chapter 6.

  cDebatable, I know. The New 52’s Catwoman can learn Batman’s identity all over again someday and the Riddler can grow his hair out (or send his question-mark Mohawk to the Eighties) more easily than the Joker’s face can grow back, but Damian should thank his lucky stars, considering how many DC Universe kids found themselves erased from history, having never been born, Selina Kyle’s daughter among them (Catwoman #5, 2012).

  d“There was no desire to do [Year One] the first time around, and there was definitely no desire to do that the second time around.”—Schumacher (2005).

  14

  The Assessment

  Bats in His Belfry?

  “People think it’s an obsession. A compulsion. As if there were an irresistible impulse to act. It’s never been like that. I chose this life. I know what I’m doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn’t that day. And tomorrow won’t be either.”

  —Batman, Identity Crisis #4 (2004)

  Time’s up. Does Bruce Wayne have bats in his belfry?

  Is he psychotic, homicidal, suicidal, or gravely disabled? No. Does he have posttraumatic stress disorder? Even though he shows some symptoms, no. Does he have multiple personality disorder? Even if that were the correct name for the disorder, no, that one’s so far off target it’s ridiculous. He’s one man who plays several roles and brings different characteristics to different situations with full awareness and memory of what he’s doing. How about some sort of obsessive condition? No, no more so than the most driven athletes, artists, or activists who make great sacrifices to fulfill their callings in life. If he were compulsive, he’d have too little control over his actions to function so effectively and for so long. People can have problems and personality shortcomings without fitting a psychiatric diagnosis. Admittedly, though, whether or not he qualifies as suffering any specific mental disorder by the DSM criteria
the American Psychiatric Association sets forth kind of sterilizes the basic issue: Is Batman crazy?

  Adam West (actor who minored in psychology): I hate to use a common word like this, but Batman’s as crazy as Joker. You guys know that. I mean, fighting crime 24/7 in a funny suit.

  Travis Langley: Says the man who wore the suit.

  Adam West: What was I thinking? (laughs)1