Men will LITERALLY construct an entire persona based around their phobias as a result of trauma over witnessing the murder of their parents during a mugging orchestrated by crime bosses and spend millions of dollars on toys and gadgets to act out revenge fantasies and calling it vigilante justice rather than go to therapy.
Doesn’t he do both?
Bruce Wayne goes to therapy, not Batman, it’s different (canonically).
So uh … his therapist must suck for not treating that borderline Personality Disorder and uncovering his dissociative identity disorder
Given that the most successful therapists in Gotham are people like Dr. Harleen Quinzel, I’m not confident they can overlook their own issues.
No it’s fine, Batman is the real person. Bruce Wayne is the fake and that’s why he needs therapy.
Batman IS the primary personality and he’s never gone to therapy, so theres really nothing the Therapist can do about it at that point.
Every time he talks to a therapist they end up becoming a villain.
“Heroes In Crisis” There’s a top secret therapist for the heroes to consult with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_in_Crisis
Batman goes to the therapist in his cowl.
I remember in some of the animated series that he would go to therapy but was not open and putting up his playboy billionaire persona. Honestly it seemed like a waste of a time for him if he wasn’t being honest, unless it was to keep up appearances. Closest I think he gets to actual therapy is talking to Alfred.
God forbid a man has hobbies
I haven’t even read Batman, but I’ve seen this same thread pop up enough times to know that:
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Gotham is literally cursed
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Gotham is extremely corrupt. Tax money wouldn’t go where it needs to
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Bruce Wayne bankrolls tons of social programs
It’s cursed because comic writers couldn’t come up with a better way to explain why the city can’t be fixed by the world’s smartest billionaire.
The city can’t be fixed because then there wouldn’t be any more stories for them to write.
Sure, but “cursed” is lazy and raises a lot of questions.
It’s a comic book, I didn’t know what makes curses “lazy”. Also the much more important factor is the deep corruption.
I say it was a process of elimination.
In a world in which heroes like Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Doctor Fate exist, your city has to be freaking cursed to keep getting all those cases of mental illness and corruption, keeping the city from really ever improving.
Organizations like the League of Assassins and the Court of Owls alone wouldn’t cut it. Detective heroes would unravel their plans. Tech heroes would root their data out. Magical heroes would counter their spells, fast and strong heroes would weed out the thugs, henchmen, and mercenaries.
Eventually, it would get more under control, like Metropolis, Star City, Central City, or Keystone City.
They would need something so ingrained in the city that nobody can really ever remove it to get to the high levels of madness and crime you get in Gotham.So at some point, a writer had to give up, throw their hands up in the air, and go “then… then… it’s freaking cursed!”
And then you watch the God/King of Cities talk with the avatar Gotham (Stormwatch #3), and it’s a freaking gargoyle talking about “the madness in me”, while Paris and Metropolis are just human-like women.
This ^^
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Gothman has syphillis?
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Now we need a Gothman comic!
Not only that, most fully realized versions of the character channel both the vigilante AND playboy personas to fight crime, using Wayne Enterprises to create welfare programs and jobs so Gothamites need not resort to crime to put food on the table.
There’s a scene where Batman pacifies a room of Black Mask goons without lifting a FINGER - he hacks the projector screen simply shows them a Wayne Foundation advertisement for better, safer jobs. One by one, every man simply drops their weapons and walks out the door as their crime boss irately yells at them to come back.
Gothman is literally cursed from head to toe to be the way it is.
It’s more like, this post is full of people describing why the only way the storyline can stay realistic is by introducing supernatural evil.
If it were not a cursed city and if Batman was really a hero who wanted to help people, he would do the social programs and investment in community, but that would be a pretty lousy monthly comic book for kids to read and buy batman merchandise.
He already does all that on top of being batman.
He does do those though?
That’s worse. You see how that’s worse, right?
The entire premise of this accursed property is “structural change is definitionally impossible and evil-natured people cannot be helped so let’s see how Batman brutally maims victims of this system to defeat the villain-of-the-day”. This is such a profoundly repulsive ideology to me. It’s not about the in-universe justifications, it’s about the horrible, awful, despicable themes of the stories that glorify hyper-individualism and completely discredit democracy, civic institutions, and community.
The in-universe explanations were just tacked on to those core reactionary ideals. The writers didn’t stumble on a cursed city, they invented a cursed city to justify their need for vigilantism and violence to be the only rational answers to society’s ills.
We are assuming that somehow if Wayn pays large sums of wealth to the government, the government wouldn’t just be their usual wasteful, corrupt, self serving self with said money. You get every current billionaire in the USA to pay a fair tax. Where do you think the money goes? Funding for food stamps or Lockeed-Martin?
Also in the DC universe, the equivalent of Lockeed-Martin is Wayne Enterprises. There’s stories where Bruce is conflicted in making weapons, but nonetheless, his fortune is built on the military industrial complex.
So Bruce Wayne is somehow worse than freaking Tony Stark?
Then again Stark is actually an inventor and comics-level genius who lacks a secret identity, so pivoting to another industry was way easier for him. Bruce Wayne probably can’t change his company too much without losing a ton of pull and drawing unwanted attention to himself, plus losing access to the gadgets he relies on.
Didn’t Stark divest from weapons manufacturing to researching clean energy instead, after he got hit by that one bomb of his?
I haven’t read the comics, just what I remember from the movies
Yeah, that’s why I said worse than Stark. He pivoted away from supporting the Military-Industrial Complex when he realized it was hurting people, whereas Batman hasn’t.
It’s just odd since Batman is supposed to have ironclad ethics, whereas Iron Man is famously a hypocritical ass (though much less so in the MCU than in the comics, from what I’ve heard).
Meanwhile, the DoD is like: “Hey, anyone else kinda wondering why these bombs, ammunition boxes, and rifles are all kinds bat-shaped. Wayne enterprises is weird”
Underfunding the government through tax cuts makes corruption more likely. The richer the rich are, the easier it is to manipulate the government for them. Why do you think so much money goes to Lockheed Martin? Who gets government contracts isn’t chosen at random, there are moneyed interests involved.
If the income tax graduations are steep enough then the billionaire class will optimize to minimize taxes by reducing their own income in favor of reinvesting in their business and employees. In theory. In reality I’m sure they’d find some way to squirrel it away while their employees apply for and get denied food stamps.
You’re assuming we’d stop at Bruce Wayne.
The same people willing go after Batman are willing to go after Lockheed-Martin and every politician they paid for.
I think pretty much every study even made has shown taxing the rich and investing in the public reduce crime rates and poverty. It’s the reason the USA had a massive middle class before Reagan and has experienced massive wealth disparity today: differences in tax policy and public investment.
Yes, but that’s not really the point. The point is that “taxing the rich” and “investing in the public” aren’t necessarily the same thing. Just cause the government is collecting money doesn’t mean it’s spending it responsibly. Especially in the (literally) comically-corrupt world of Gotham.
I have absolute faith that any government willing to tax the oligarchs is also willing to spend it responsibly.
For example, China is a shithole dystopian nightmare but even they provide food, education, and housing to the most vulnerable.
In the Batman Year 1 comic the thing that makes the police believe there really is a ‘Bat-Man’ is when he attacks a fancy dinner party and warns Gotham’s movers and shakers that justice is coming for them, too.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear Gotham was full of corruption from top to bottom, which pushed him into becoming Batman. Philanthropy would just fuel the corrupt politicians into funneling money to the crime bosses, and taking a cut. Probably if he started a soup kitchen and was on the ground getting people out of poverty, he would achieve improvement, but when the police, courts, and politicians are on the crime bosses payrolls, funding those institutions more will not solve Gotham’s problems
I vaguely remember some stories, he does do the whole non-profit thing, too. It’s still a little bit too pro-billionaire but yeah, in their setting it’s quite likely the government is too corrupt.
Also he fucking funds other superheroes, so it’s a little hard to say what actually works in that crazy universe. I can’t imagine superheroing to be profitable.
In some of the Silver Age comics, Superman has a vast fortune from old Spanish treasure ships he can find deep undersea. Yet no one ever calls Supes on being a skinflint.
[jk]
Tax wealth not work
Oh you’re saying we should tax wealth, and we should not tax work.
For a second I thought you were saying “taxing wealth does not work” like a tribal. Few word sometimes do trick.
Tax income no work
Wealthy still get more wealth
No wealthy get even less wealth
Must tax wealthy not no wealthy
Tarzan ass tax policy lmao
“Flat tax good, all pay same share”
(Flat tax not good, hurt poor more)
I should stop coming to these threads. At the end of the day, Batman is rich by day and personally fights crime at night. Everything else is just added on to make that premise work. It feels like a bit of a Thermian argument (“she’s naked because she breathes through her skin”)
Edit: there’s also something interesting to say about why “comic book” means “superheroes” in the US but “Donald Duck/Tintin/Astérix” in Western Europe
True. That is indeed very interesting. Although not limited to comic books. You can spot a similar pattern in movies too. Somehow, in America, the films to become the most popular (or most successful) mostly featured themes portraying powerful people in a positive light, directly or indirectly. While in Europe this trend never really took root.
In a classic, underdeveloped autocracy, the answer would surely be blatant censorship and prosecution of authors portraying different views. However, the American mechanisms for accomplishing the same goals are considerably more complex and intricate. That is, assuming there was or still is such a mechanism, as I’m not sure we can say that definitely. Perhaps it was all just a natural process of people preferring the easier, more convenient narratives?
It’s the neoliberal tale of individual responsibility. It translate too well into power worship.
Gotham city has a prison that is corrupt like hell. The joker stays in it just for fun. He seems to be able to leave at any time.
Next Gotham city has a crime spawner. For no reason at all crimes seem to happen.
Badman should first fight the corrupt officials and raise a new administration for the city before he fights the low criminals.
“Gotham is so corrupt all the money would be wasted.”
That’s fine. Wealth inequality on that scale is evil and corrosive to society. It would be better to do something productive with it, but setting the money on fire would still be better than letting billionaires like Wayne hoard it.
The joker was totally based with his cash pyre in Dark Knight.
♥️
‘Wayne foundation’
…
It doesn’t look like a lot of people even read the comic books before forming these opinions about his storyline.
It only works when that money goes to the right place. With all the corruption in Gotham, that money probably goes straight into the politicians bank accounts.
Im gonna say that this is why Batman Forever is my favorite Batman movie. There is this scene where the badguys rip a bank vault out of the wall, and by the end of the scene batman uses an explosive to have fly back into place. My point is, Batman needs to take place in a pulpy hyper reality, or he goes from a Doc Savage in a cool costume to a mentally insane Billionaire karate chopping poor people because as punishment.
Also, in that movie, they took pains to portray him as a “Good” ceo.
I just think this is an issue of tone and presentation.
that is why i love the gothic tone of Tim Burton, it is a Hallucinogenic reality with grotesque characters
Absolutely this. Ever since Nolan, we’ve been getting grimmer, darker, more “realistic” reboots of the character as directors try to figure out what Batman would look like in the real world. Burton and Schumacher asked the much funner question of, “What kind of crazy nonsense world worships a vigilante in a furry suit?”
Well. Part of batman mythos is that no amount of money is enough to save the city from itself.
I don’t think this person ever read batman.
This person is arguing for higher taxation of the wealthy in the real world, not necessarily engaging in detailed analysis of the fictional world of Batman
I would be surprised if they did any more studying of real government systems and economies than they did of the batman lore.
So many people going around the internet just spouting whatever superficial shit they heard in their group.
Sure, why they landed specifically on a 90 per cent marginal tax at that specific threshold isn’t really clear (though that might be from Zucman, Piketty, etc?)
Again though, the tax system is here mostly a placeholder for the political idea that society would derive more good from redistributing wealthy people’s resources for collective use than it does from their individual contributions. It’s just a main tenet for socialism, not som deep cut idea you’d have to research.
Except the idea of capitalism is, that society can benefit more from allowing people to invest their excess money into growing industry rather then having them put the money under a pillow or immediately spend them on unnecessary luxuries. More industry usually means some return on investment for the investors but also more taxes being paid (taxes being a percentage meaning they scale with industry size). So capital investment is supposed to be win-win for investors and society. Just the current (mainly US) system is so corrupt and mismanaged this does not reflect into practice due to tax loopholes and consolidation. So punishing the investors instead of fixing the system is hardly uncontroversial and informed take.
Also, with the specific batman example, if you really want to help people, doing charity and publicly beneficial work yourself will almost always be more effective than giving the money to a government to use. A government has to have strict anti corruption measures that are publicly auditable to minimise corruption (or loose a lot of money to said corruption), but these make government very inefficient. Just look at the USPS truck procurement for perfect example. You don’t have this issue when you have one owner of the money who can make unquestionable decisions (because it is his money). That is not to say we should rely on billionaire charity, absolutely not. But it just shows how underdeveloped the take in the post is.
And yet here we are.
