When Batman Was Funny

I remember when Batman was funny.  The characters were ridiculous, the sets were obviously cheap, the special effects included flashing words saying “Pow” and “Swack,” and the story lines were laughable.  In the midst of it was a wise sage whose way of speaking was no less infamous than that of Captain James T. Kirk.  Batman, while often easily duped into walking into a trap, was seldom rash, never vengeful, often patient, usually forgiving, and hopeful for rehabilitation. 

Think about it, he’s “Bat”-man.  If it hadn’t been for the history of superheroes, particularly the Dark Knight, how lame would he be?  Just thinking about it cracks me up.  “Bat”-“man.” It reminds me so much of George on Seinfeld sounding out “ma”-“nure.”  I personally think they came back and added the Dark Knight name to make him less ridiculous.  I mean, Dark Knight sounds awesome, powerful, deadly, mysterious, just plain cool.  But Batman?  Sounds like a kid made him up.  And many of our superheroes are like that. 

But here we are in the age of TVs that are so high definition you think you could just reach into the screen and touch the actors, and computer generated special effects so realistic that it’s hard to believe that it’s not reality.  Add to that a culture that has slowly digressed into a consumerism so focused on entertainment, comfort, “progress,” addiction, and an “anything goes, if you haven’t tried it don’t knock it, do what you want” mentality that it’s becoming more and more difficult to determine what is being consumed—products or people.  

And with that, we’ve adopted a willingness to be fed exactly what our basest instincts hunger for—sex, power, toys, and vengeance.   We want what titillates us, what inflames our passions, what moves us to tears or laughter, and what invokes our personal sense of justice. 

The result, BATMAN, the DARK KNIGHT of anger, darkness, vengeance and destruction.  Is he fighting for justice?  Absolutely.  But contrast this with the Batman of yesteryear.  We think our tastes have become more and more sophisticated when in reality we’ve lost track of reality itself.  Batman was originally a kid’s show.  He was a hero.  He was a role model.  He was a man of wisdom and value.  Today’s BATMAN is in his own way a villain, not because he defeats the enemy with as much force and destruction as necessary to sell movie tickets, but because he teaches us that vengeance, when it is “just,” is the sweetest dessert.  He teaches us that to be a real man you must utterly destroy your enemies. 

And what of it?  What’s the problem with vengeance?  Let me ask this: what happens when you live in a postmodern world that operates on moral relativism—where what I believe is what I believe and what you believe is what you believe and what I believe can’t override what you believe and vice versa?  What happens when we’ve so blurred the vision of what is “Just” that what one man deems justified is morally reprehensible to the next person?  What happens when one man’s “justice” is an entire country’s tragedy? 

In this context what does vengeance become?  Does it not become one man’s eye-for-an-eye while it becomes a nation’s act of terrorism or mass shooting?  

Vengeance.  The problem is that we’ve become addicted to it.  I can probably name a hundred movies and TV shows that have or regularly show acts of vengeance that give me a rush when the bad guy gets his comeuppance.   We all love it.  We love to see the bad guy blown away.  Somehow it makes us feel like somewhere out there justice will be served.  And it’s an addiction.  I’m addicted.  Sitting here thinking about it, I think how hard it would be for me to give up the Marvel Superheroes movies, just as an example.  What about all the dozens of TV crime shows in which the bad guys eventually end up in jail, and the hero or heroine gets to say the perfect “you’re finished” line that just gives you chills.  Could you quit cold turkey? 

Is it really so bad to be ingrained with a desire to see bad guys get what’s coming to them in a world where it doesn’t seem like that happens enough?  Not necessarily, but what is the impact on our subconscious?  Why are we feeling physical responses like chills and enjoyment when we see these things, and what is that doing to us? 

What happens is we begin to associate details from these fictitious circumstances into our own everyday lives all the while assuming we are on the side of the just.  You could say we take on the characteristics of the hero while we vilify those who are apparently our enemies.  How about that guy who just cut you off in traffic?  That girl who just vehemently disagreed with you on your comment about her post on Facebook?  That nut-job in political office that seems to go against everything you believe in or stand for?  Any one of the opposite political party who have the gall to challenge you to an argument of wits on any subject you are passionate about?  We say we want peace, but only on our terms.    

So what’s the big deal?  So what!  I sometimes get angry and frustrated at these kinds of people.  No big deal.  Maybe not, but what about that teenager or young adult who has grown up in an emotionally abusive situation or some context that makes them a little more emotionally explosive?  What happens when you put them in a culture that virtually programs them to hunger for justice while associating those who’ve wronged them (more perceived than reality) as the enemy?  What happens when this same culture challenges them to be the hero?  What happens when this same culture tells them that what’s right for you is right for you and what’s right for me is right for me, but you can’t tell me I’m wrong, and I can’t tell you you’re wrong?  What happens when you put before them heroes like The Dark Knight that encourage them to take up the mantle of violence against injustice in a big way?  Basically, you have a recipe for a bomb just waiting for the fuse to be lit. 

Now let’s add a little fuel to the fire.  Let’s build gaming systems and sell games that allow them to experience a virtual reality of mowing down innocent lives (i.e. a couple of levels in the Call of Duty series) showing them the kinds of gear that will get the job done and giving them the rush of a virtual experience.  Then let’s put them into an “educational” context that doesn’t allow for much real discipline, and is increasingly competitive, aggressive, and unfriendly to those already struggling with difficult backgrounds.  Then let’s expect them not to be crushed under the pressure and assume that no one will ever suffer such difficult trying circumstances that they would flip out and hurt others. 

Oh, and don’t forget the incomplete maturation of the individual whose areas of the brain that control impulsiveness, the ability to comprehend the long-term effects of short-term actions, and to the ability to deal with stress in a healthy productive manner have not been fully developed. 

What are the consequences?  We get a rise in hopeless lives destroying others.  We get kids killing kids, young adults killing young adults, mass shootings, mass killings, mass destruction, mass death. 

I’m not suggesting that there’s any one element to blame—it is, in actuality, a culmination of a variety of elements in one’s life, as I outlined, that come together to drive one down that road of darkness towards such sickening destruction.  It’s not just movies. If it were, we’d all be killing one another.  It’s not just video games.  If it were, we’d see a million times more incidences.  It’s not just struggling discipline at schools, and it’s not just difficult backgrounds.  Many of these cases seem to be just everyday decent kids.  It’s not just one thing, but as in chemistry, when you mix enough chemicals together you eventually get a boom. 

Make sense?  If so, what did we just do there?  We established a case study on cause and effect.  We explored the causes of these recent mass shootings and established the shooting as the effect.  You could call it a symptom caused by a disease—not the disease itself.  

Now, currently it seems people are looking for a cure for this disease, but who is really searching for the cause.  All I’ve seen, as of yet, are proposals to deal with the symptoms—gun control, legislation, and constitutional amendments.  But where is anyone really taking a serious look at the psychology and sociology of the situation?  Have we completely forgotten about the individual?  Have we forgotten or ignored that this is an issue of the heart? 

Instead, we are acting like people are just machines—let’s just cut off the tools (guns) of every machine in the country and then no one can use that tool to hurt anyone else anymore.  The problem is we aren’t machines—we are beings with physical needs, emotional needs, with social needs, with intellectual needs, with spiritual needs.  We aren’t just extensions of community (that’s socialism)—we are individuals with individual problems and individual fears and individual minds.  We think different, we act different, we live different we deal with stress different. 

These mass shooters were people too, but something turned them into monsters, and that thing or things is what we need to go after.  Imagine if we could disrupt a couple of those elements that are creating these monsters.  Imagine if we could actually bring healing to those who are struggling in the first place.  Imagine if we could address the glorification of violence in media.  Could we make this country a safer place?  What would it cost?  How would we be different?  By the way, this isn’t about legislation, this is about making better decisions as consumers.  The money trail is what finances the insanity. 

But like I said, we’d rather focus on one of the most important tenants of the constitution.  We like to use stats from other countries forgetting that we don’t live in those countries.  You cannot use a sociological cookie cutter to assume that what works in another country will work here.  Just look at how we live and our addictions to technology, gas-hogging vehicles, travel, our melting pot and racial tensions.  There is no experimental control here, so while mathematically it might make sense, when you get into the sociological variances in cultures you realize much of what you see breaks down. 

Go ahead, take away the guns, but I’ll go on record now to say that once you do, you’ll find yourself in a war zone where kids are no longer shooting a handful of students.  Instead, they’ll be bringing down entire buildings with bombs made from chemicals found in virtually everyone’s kitchens, and we’ll still be right here where we are ignoring the fact that this violence is a cultural addiction.  One that is convincing some of us that it’s ok to act on those vengeful desires as long as we think we are “just” and in the right.  While some of us use our words, and some use our fists, others go lethal with knives, guns, and bombs. 

You can point your fingers all you want, but until you’re ready to deal with your own demons and your own addictions, and you’re willing to put that finger on the cause rather than the means of acting on a symptom, then you’ve got no place telling anyone else how they should live or what kind or how many arms they have a right to bear. 

I’m not here as just another gun-nut railing on the judgments made by one side of this argument as I’m equally dissatisfied with the proposals made by those “gun-nuts.”  I’m here as a student of students, a pastor of youth, and a citizen of this country that believes “United we stand, divided we fall.”  We have to understand people to understand this problem.  We have to give attention to the psychology and sociology behind it all (i.e. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Erikson’s stages of Psychosocial development, etc.).  We have to recognize that we are complex beings with complex issues, and simple answers aren’t going to solve the problem. 

Yes, we need to be willing to do whatever it takes to end this senseless killing, but who in their right mind believes that politicians are going to get that done right?  We want to believe politicians are on our side, but I think they’ve proven over and over again they are more interested in protecting their own power.  And they seem to do that best by keeping us divided. 

We’ve got to get back to working together, taking responsibility for our own actions, holding each other accountable for each other’s actions, and using more than knee-jerk reactions to solve real problems with real answers.  Yes, we have a problem in this country, but that problem isn’t called “gun violence.”  That problem is simply called violence.  This is the problem we need to deal with.  This is the problem we need to focus on.  The rest will take care of itself.  Let’s get on it.