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Having the Talk
Apr. 10th, 2019 10:34 pmSo, because I am the parent of a 5 year old, sometimes I end up having uncomfortable discussions with no warning. No, not the sex talk! That was a couple of days ago and went fine. No, this was the one where your kid comes home and tells you excitedly about this person called Batman who goes around punching people. And I am so torn. I really loved the corny Adam West version of the character when I was a kid, and I loved the Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer incarnations back when I was a teenager.
But now I am an adult, and all I can think about this character is that he suffered a tragedy in his childhood then chose to spend the rest of his life brooding in a cave about how he'd been wronged, armed himself with a fetishist's array of weapons, and then went out looking for people he can decide are bad, and 'deserve' to be beaten up. For all the supervillains like the Joker and the Penguin, it's a core part of the Batman narrative that he goes out at night and whales on petty criminals as a hobby - no probable cause, no trials, no evidence, no oversight, just raw angry vengeance on anyone who looks the part.
And also, I had another uncomfortable talk last week, which is based on how to talk about the Easter story when I don't actually believe in the God bit, and the relatives in the case range from a staunch atheist through to very performative Catholics. And I had a realisation that I don't actually need to believe in the God bit. Because I am culturally Christian, I have a two thousand year inheritance that makes a virtue of the qualities of humility, love, and forgiveness. I'm willing to bet that the religions I know less about have their own weight of ethics that people can draw on around the things people need to do in order to live with each other. As much as individuals can fail, and communities fail and nations fail to live up to these virtues - Western civilisation has put a name on what is golden and tells and retells stories about how they are good things and how we should keep on aspiring to them because they aren't easy, they are hard.
Anger is easy, and revenge is easy, and Batman is a fucking copout.
But now I am an adult, and all I can think about this character is that he suffered a tragedy in his childhood then chose to spend the rest of his life brooding in a cave about how he'd been wronged, armed himself with a fetishist's array of weapons, and then went out looking for people he can decide are bad, and 'deserve' to be beaten up. For all the supervillains like the Joker and the Penguin, it's a core part of the Batman narrative that he goes out at night and whales on petty criminals as a hobby - no probable cause, no trials, no evidence, no oversight, just raw angry vengeance on anyone who looks the part.
And also, I had another uncomfortable talk last week, which is based on how to talk about the Easter story when I don't actually believe in the God bit, and the relatives in the case range from a staunch atheist through to very performative Catholics. And I had a realisation that I don't actually need to believe in the God bit. Because I am culturally Christian, I have a two thousand year inheritance that makes a virtue of the qualities of humility, love, and forgiveness. I'm willing to bet that the religions I know less about have their own weight of ethics that people can draw on around the things people need to do in order to live with each other. As much as individuals can fail, and communities fail and nations fail to live up to these virtues - Western civilisation has put a name on what is golden and tells and retells stories about how they are good things and how we should keep on aspiring to them because they aren't easy, they are hard.
Anger is easy, and revenge is easy, and Batman is a fucking copout.
