Why do we like Batman?

“I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman.”

In last month’s issue of Voyage, I wrote a piece in which I argued that the mass fascination with superheroes evident in the last several years is rooted in the fundamental human desire for ultimate goodness or perfection. For it seems to me that no matter the character, superheroes are always depicted as those who wish in some way to strive to attain that perfection which we all desire.

An interesting case in this is Batman. Batman is unique because, unlike many superheroes, he has a certain demeanor or attitude—a certain ethos, one might say—that is perhaps unexpected. For, as I noted in the piece linked above, a couple of the names typically given to the ultimate goodness or perfection  we as humans all seek are “happiness” and “beatitude.” We might expect, then, that someone who has achieved this level of happiness “more” than others (whatever that might mean), would “look” happier than others. Think of the most virtuous—or, even better, happiest—person you know: someone who instinctively and habitually doesn’t indulge himself in things he shouldn’t, always appropriately gives others their due, is hardly afraid to try to overcome obstacles that stand in the way of the good, and always seems to find the most reasonable means to attain that good. I would think that the person you have in mind is someone with a generally “cheery” (for lack of a better word) attitude or disposition—or, at least, I would be surprised if you were imagining someone who was somewhat prone to anger, constantly serious, never smiles, somewhat gloomy, etc.

And yet, those features are precisely the kind found in Batman, a superhero and, thus, a character we look to as an example of achieving some level of human perfection or happiness, as argued in the article linked above. This sort of dark demeanor characteristic of Batman may or may not have been intended by his original writers and artists, but it is certainly the case now, and Batman is as popular as ever. One might then wonder: if we watch superheroes because of their level of achievement of human perfection, and that achievement is typically signified in human life by a certain disposition or charism, one that is, say, “cheery,” why do we like Batman so much, who doesn’t display that disposition at all? Does he still display the sort of virtue we typically hope to see in superheroes? If not, why are we still drawn to him? What is there in him to “look up” to?

To be clear, I am in no way implying that there is a sort of essential connection between happiness and a “cheery” attitude such that a happy person must display such an attitude or disposition. All I am pointing out is that there are certain characteristics we typically associate with happy people that are strikingly lacking in Batman. The right way to find the reason for this, I think, is to look at Batman’s purpose in relation to his city and contrast it to someone else’s which is (at least seemingly) different than his, say, Superman’s. Superman’s purpose, from what I can tell, seems to be to protect his city from evil, to preserve the common good. His motivating force as a character comes from the simple fact that he was raised by good Kansas parents who taught him to use his superpowers to assist humanity. Batman’s purpose, on the other hand, seems to be primarily to cleanse his city and purify it, and only secondarily to protect it: “While Batman is focused on cleaning up Gotham from within, Superman has fought hard battles to keep Metropolis safe from outside forces” (from Andrew Garofalo’s article, also from last month’s issue of Voyage). Indeed, one of the constants in Batman story lines, whether in comics, TV, or cinema, is that Gotham is wildly corrupt and riddled with criminality. Unlike Superman, Batman’s motivating force comes from having witnessed that evil for himself at a formative age, on account of which encounter he resolved to eliminate that evil as best he could.

Thus, I argue both Batman and Superman function as examples of achieving some level of human perfection, i.e. of what it means to do well as human, but in different ways: Batman seeks to eliminate evil from the city from within, while Superman seeks to protect the city from evil from without. One way to understand this difference is by comparing it to the three stages of the spiritual life, which I will enumerate according to Aquinas’s description (ST II-II.24.9), though it has been written about by many others. The three stages I’m referring to are in fact what Aquinas understands as the three degrees of charity. Briefly, the first degree is that in which the agent attempts to avoid sin and eliminate one’s own moral evil; the second is that in which the agent attempts to add to the charity which they have attained to strengthen it (and protect it); and the third is that in which the agent achieves union with God.

The parallel with Batman and Superman I want to draw out is that, taking “the city” (whether Metropolis or Gotham) to be symbolic of the human soul, Batman, who is primarily focused on eliminating and removing evil, seems to be more representative of the first stage of the spiritual life, whereas Superman, who is focused on protecting and preserving the good (presumably already attained), is representative of the second. (I’m reluctant to attribute the third stage to Superman’s function simply because that stage is, in a significant sense, so beyond human nature. And I’m not sure what the third stage would look like in comic book form. If there is a story line out there, whether Batman, Superman, or otherwise, that would parallel well enough to it, I would still have low expectations about its accuracy.)

I would argue, then, that what we like so much in Batman is that, while he is still an example of what we think the achievement of human perfection “looks like,” his example is of a particular aspect of that perfection; namely, I think he is an example of what our relation to evil should be (or, at least, what his writers would want it to look like, which is affirmed by the audience’s approval of it, as indicated by Batman’s popularity), i.e. a dispositional paradigm for beginners in the spiritual life. For when it comes to evil, Batman always takes it seriously. The level of corruption in Gotham demands such seriousness—Batman, or perhaps Gotham, rather, cannot afford anything less. He spends most of his time crime-fighting at night; that is, he engulfs himself in the darkness, the privation of light—one of the perennial Platonic symbols for goodness and life. While enveloped in blackness, he attacks Gotham’s sin with all of his strength and wit, restoring justice in the city, attempting to gradually return it to glory. He never shies away from evil; he always faces it head-on. He looks it dead in the eye and spares it little to no mercy (hence his “one rule,” which of course may not work very well in the idea I’m trying to spell out here, but there are other independent things about Batman’s “rule” which I think in fact reinforce my point, though that would take us too far afield).

The character of Batman thus expresses the proper attitude toward evil—not that all beginners in the spiritual life should always be or look “gloomy,” but that beginning stage demands that they cannot afford to let evil have its way even a little, as we’ve been taught: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members should perish than for your whole body to be sent to hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members should perish than that your whole body go to hell” (Matthew 5:29-30). The message is clear: there is no room for sin in our lives, no room for evil to be entertained—it will only corrupt us and bring us closer to spiritual death. There is nothing about it that can be tolerated. We must see evil the way Batman sees it in the city, or even better, as God sees it in creation, as when “he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1) and do everything we can to cast it out from our souls. We must enter into our own wilderness without fear and, with divine assistance, do everything we can to purify it.