Batman is one of the most beloved superheroes of all time – just don’t think about the “reality” of Bruce Wayne too much.
Lots of people love Batman. He starred in one of the best-selling movies of all time (The Dark Knight), had one of the most highly-acclaimed games in 2009 (Arkham Asylum), and has been a fixture of comic book superheroes for decades. The only problem, though, argues Allen Varney in Issue 239 of The Escapist, is that when you start thinking about the reality of Batman and Bruce Wayne, things start to… break down:
Think of Bruce, impeccably playing the society airhead. He’s always attending swanky Gotham charity balls (never mind that super-villains have raided so many of these affairs that people would soon stop attending). He’s a male Paris Hilton – which is a genuinely brilliant disguise, by the way. Would you believe Paris Hilton fights crime?
At these parties, Bruce makes empty-headed gossip until he’s convinced everyone he’s an idiot. How does he come up with this chatter? Obviously, he has to study it. Though we’re never shown this, he must have a clipping service prepare dossiers of pop-culture events, which he skims in the limo as Alfred drives him to the party. The Darknight Detective, as part of his holy war against Gotham’s underworld, reads all about society debs and Jay Leno and American Idol. His bat-computer tracks Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Batman, sitting in the Batcave, diligently memorizing this month’s Playboy Party Jokes – you don’t want to picture that, do you?
Of course, that’s what suspension of disbelief is for, isn’t it? We may know that really, it’s kind of strange for a billionaire to be lurking in dark alleys to ambush poverty-stricken would-be-petty-thugs, but we can accept it… sort of. To read more about the inconsistencies of Batman, check out “Batmanalyzed” in Issue 239 of The Escapist.
