Punch Line

By Mark Bittmann

Have you ever seen that old movie "The Bad Seed"? For the uninitiated, it is a tale of a seemingly innocent little girl who possesses a knack for getting what she wants, even if she has to kill someone to get it, all the while maintaining the facade of a polite, albeit precocious child.

That kind of sense of entitlement mixed with a certain sociopathic bent, the movie argues, can lead one to horrific deeds and is an example of behavior that isn't learned but is something one is born with. Raised in what appears to be a perfectly normal, loving home, nothing comes between the girl and what she feels she needs - be it a mere bauble or the death of an accuser. She flits through life, causing all manner of havoc around her like Salma Hayek crossing the intersection in Desperado - only with a willful intent to leave a trail of dead bodies in her wake instead of dented lowriders. She sees what she wants and feels it is not only her right, but her destiny to have things her way and the world reacts to the chaos she creates. Although fully aware of the difference between what society accepts is morally right and wrong, if something or someone gets in the way of her fulfilling her agenda and sense of what she feels she needs right then and there, she will find a way to eliminate it or them. She operates on her awareness of her innocent appearance and her assurance that even the most scrupulous eye cannot penetrate her façade. She believes that others believe she's just another little girl that likes hopscotch, jacks and dolls. It's her way, or the highway and she always gets what she wants because as she sees it, the world revolves around her. If she wasn't just a character in a script, I'd swear I dated her as an adult. My ability to see through the innocent act of a pretty girl is about as sharp as Plastic Man's elbow. But I digress.

Now, aside from the whole death angle, her sense of entitlement really isn't all that different from the level of the obsession for vengeance that possessed Bruce Wayne to travel the globe in pursuit of molding his body, mind an spirit into the perfect crime-fighting machine. He underwent tutelage in deductive reasoning at no less a detecting institution than Scotland Yard, mastered all manner of exotic fighting techniques in countries as varied as there are styles of self-defense and offense. An Olympic level gymnast possessed of world class speed, reflexes and hand-eye coordination, Batman is essentially the world's greatest all-around athlete. As Batman, Bruce Wayne embodies a competitive, opponent dominating philosophy and grit that makes Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan and other dominators of their chosen sport look like rookie chumps. As a world-class practitioner of forensic science, Batman is in complete command of every aspect of any investigation he takes on, and as a private citizen he actually has more rights than a police officer when it comes to rights of entry and investigation and uses that and his mastery of stealth to his already distinct advantage.

Add to that the fact that his brain operates somewhere around the genius level, he is a master of industrial, mechanical and aeronautic design and one can understand how he summoned the gray matter to grasp the nuances and refine the arts of intimidation and interrogation along the way. The man is an obsessive to the point of detriment to his relationships, his reputation as a businessman and force in the community and his membership in triple-A. Nothing gets in the way of his will and he knows his world, Gotham city, will be a better place if he forces it to...or he'll be damned. Make no bones about it, when Batman tells a criminal that it's scum like them that are ruining his city, he means it. It's HIS city. Batman doesn't live with the people in Gotham, they live with him. He's like a domesticated cat in that way. It's probably why he can't hold a conversation with Catwoman without evident frustration and a constant internal fight against the urge to rip her clothes off and ravage her (they need to just get a room and get it over with or he's gonna put someone's eye out with that thing).

So anyway, I'm wondering if young Bruce Wayne wasn't already predisposed to obsessive behavior as he must have been to athletics? Maybe he was born that way to begin with and the fate of falling to his knees in a splash of blood-soaked pearls in streetlight merely focused it at an earlier age and intensity far beyond his years. Perhaps when he felt the warm life draining out of his parents and into the gutter of that cold downtown sidewalk he realized that he had a destiny, a destiny he had the raw talents to fulfill and wherewithal to recognize. Destiny after all, is just that. Not a lot of choices involved in destiny. Oh, sure, he got to decide to become a costumed vigilante, but who he gets to go up against is up to the Gods. As much as it is rare that a great protagonist lives on without a proper antagonist, it is highly unlikely Batman ever imagined his would come in the form of a sociopathic murderer like the Joker.

Thor and Loki, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, Nixon and non-Anglo, non-white people (OK so Nixon wasn't that discriminating; make it Nixon and everybody else), everybody has their counterpart, their evil twin, the Yin to their Yang. That's the thing about self-righteous destiny, there's always an equal and opposite reaction to the cause one takes up in the applied physics of faith.
In both a literary and philosophical sense, Batman cannot exist without the Joker. During his travels overseas, part of the classical and specialized curriculum young Bruce Wayne enjoyed surely must have included the classics of literature and a solid dose of world history? He knew all the while that he was working to be not just a vigilante, but a force of civil justice as well as an urban legend if he was to instill the proper fear and maintain his personal anonymity and that of his operation. In a world inhabited by flying caped aliens with a scrubbed, Boy Scout air about them, such a role in a city begins to take on mythic proportions after a while. As a mythic do-gooder, it is likely that your arch-nemesis will make himself known in due time.

Which brings me once again back to the not even remotely original "chicken or the egg" theory I touched upon a couple of weeks ago. By choosing to follow what he perceived to be his destiny in taking the path that led to his becoming Batman, did Bruce Wayne in some spiritual as well as mythological and literary sense (fine line, I know) assure the role the Joker would play as a mass-murderer of innocents? By some funky cosmic manipulation (hey, it is comics), did the choice to become protector of Gotham lead to the inevitable faltering of the Red Hood on the catwalk at the Ace Chemical Plant and his subsequent rebirth as the Joker? When one applies classical antagonist/protagonist narrative structure to the proceedings in the Batverse, it becomes almost a given that Batman cannot exist without the Joker and vice versa. They are bound in an endless struggle as the symbols of good vs. evil, feeding off one another’s pathos. The Joker needs Batman to give his world meaning. Batman is the one true force the Joker cannot overcome through pre-meditated or spontaneous homicide. Batman is the calm eye of his violent storm. He needs Batman like a top needs centrifugal force. And make no mistake, Batman needs the Joker every bit as much as the Joker needs him, maybe more. Otherwise he would have crossed the line in dealing with him long ago.

How many of Batman and Bruce Wayne's friends, colleagues and acquaintances does the have to maim or slay before the Dark Knight gets medieval on his ass? Even when he's not currently terrorizing the Gotham citizenry, the Joker is there, in the back of Batman's mind and Batman needs that. He feeds on it. It drives him, because the Joker is the closest thing alive to embodying the horror that young Bruce Wayne witnessed unleashed on his parents and Batman never brought to justice. He is both the loss of Bruce Wayne's innocence and the birth of his destiny wrapped up in a knowing, sociopathic Cheshire grin. The Joker continues to live because Batman lets him, yet Batman lives because the Joker as allegorical killer of his youth drives him in his quest for vengeance. As long as the Joker is alive, Batman will have motivation. Given that the Joker pretty much gets free reign in indulging his exotic ideas of fun (when he's free anyway) and Batman is constantly having to shut him down, it is an active and reactive relationship they enjoy. The Joker offs a couple dozen people for sport and Batman brings him in. It's a vicious circle dictated by the whim of the Joker. In the end people are dead and the Joker goes back to Arkham Asylum (like he hasn't escaped from there many times before). Some time passes, he escapes again and more people die without any real justice being served. When one thinks about it, it appears Batman is the Joker's bitch. No wonder he hasn't busted a move on Catwoman and his "ward" left to pursue a solo career in spandex.

No wonder Bruce Wayne doesn't sleep well at night. If I let some skinny punk (I'm rationalizing from Batman's perspective here) like the Joker run me around like a nerd sharpening pencils for a cheerleader, I wouldn't exactly be tending a herd of dream sheep either. What a wimp. Kill him already. Are you going to play this silly game of cat and mouse to its inevitable conclusion sooner or later? Considering the latter means more people die, what's the big decision? The big decision is that Bruce Wayne can't choose to kill the Joker because he would also be metaphorically killing that which centers him and gives the Batman's life meaning - assuming he doesn't die in the process.
Which brings me back to The Bad Seed. In the Batverse, did the bad seed grow up selfishly and selflessly driven, focused and committed to making his world in to what he thinks it can be, or was he just a stand-up comedian who made a poor decision on a bad day for all the right reasons and surrendered to the madness that lay buried within us all and no hope of sanity's return? Is it the always serious obsessive or the man who tells the joke?

And the joke's on you, Batman. Ahahahahahahaha!

BANG!

Copyright 2002 Mark A. Bittmann