I have to nod in agreement to Sarah Gailey’s fictional essay on why you can’t trust Batman:
“We live our lives, and he lives his life,” he says. “He throws parties, and we work. He sleeps with whatever new lady catches his fancy, we clean up rubble.” He shrugs, continues cutting in a sharp edge of paint near the ceiling. “He’s never had a job, kid. What he gets up to is nothing that we’ll ever be a part of.”
Why is this billionaire playboy still a billionaire? It doesn’t seem right to you. Doesn’t seem fair. He funded your orphanage… but when you think about it, it’s pretty weird that the city needs such a large orphanage.
People typically respond to this sort of thing with something like, But if that was the case we wouldn’t have a story. (Or the story would be a dull political drama.) Yes. So? That doesn’t mean we can’t point out problems with the mechanisms used to set the story in motion. We tend to be defensive when it concerns something we enjoy, but we’re quick to criticise a problematic premise when we’re also critical of the story that follows.
I think this alternative perspective of Batman is really interesting. We consider him a hero and enjoy his heroics. We can’t help but cheer for someone who fights and kills people we know are bad because we all have (or think we have) these types of people affecting our daily lives. We know most of them are going to get away with it. The police, the courts and the politicians can’t or won’t do the right thing the way Batman can.
But yeah, a billionaire … The very fact that billionaires can exist is an injustice. And It’s not like Batman is helping society in the only way he can. He has enough resources to provide affordable quality education and healthcare, alleviate poverty, empower law enforcement, etc. Instead, he spends his time training and uses his money to enable him to do the major crime fighting himself. He’s not so much a hero as he is a control freak who can’t see beyond his own wealth.
Violin in a Void 