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Need? Nobody needs a billionaire who dresses in leather and enjoys close combat with mentally ill people.
Could’ve just stopped after billionaire.
Billionaire vigilante who thinks and is above the law due to his wealth and power mostly accumulated through generational white wealth.*
Have you just googled billionaire?
I dunno, Exile On Main Street was pretty good.
How about better mental health services besides an asylum that radicalizes them further?
It all starts to make sense if you view the story as satire
It’s kind of like American Psycho and Marvel had a fugly baby.
I mean Harley was Joker’s therapist at one point so…
Yeah. Gotham’s brand of crazy is strong.
It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The irony being that Superman was first penned by people looking for a hero and Batman is kind of a reactionary answer to him. Community building was never in the lexicon here. And that is why, I think I realise, I really dislike most classic comics. It feels like a response to a collective trauma. Something something simple answers to complex problems.
(Edited for confusion on origin.)
Superman was penned in response to 1930’s anti-semitism by two Jewish artists and is literally an adopted refugee baby.
Oh that’s right! It’s been a long time. I think I switched up some history!
Bruce has tried to do this a few times actually but the court of owls is pretty much the in universe explanation for why Gotham never gets better. Just like the real world, it’s wealthy elites conspiring to make their lives better and the lower classes worse.
I expected this take in the xweet
This is the overarching premise of many of the modern stories. Systemic issues cannot be solved by a barely sane, generationally wealthy MMA fighter perpetually drowning beneath waves of survivor’s guilt.
Never heard a more succinct premise of Batman lol
In unrelated news Wayne industries blames “harmful and unreasonable” government regulations, threatens to move to Metropolis.
I want a batman movie where the moral is we shouldn’t rely on some billionaire to clean up the streets. But rather we should ensure Bruce Wayne is taxed enough so that there’s enough money for public services to support Gotham and it’s residents that crime doesn’t happen in the first place.
Jesus Christ Batman is just some rich Elon Musk type asshole isn’t he?
Black Adam was so close to hitting the point where Super Heroes protect the elite class and don’t care about the people
Then they just backed away from it and I was so disappointed
In many depictions he does fund social programs and whatnot, but it doesn’t fix Gotham being Silicon Valley for supervillains. Half his rogues gallery have doctorates.
I mean… Joker is as close as you can get to some moral like that? It’s basically a pure critique of this neoliberal and unsocial society.
So I’ve not really read the comic books, but I’ve seen every movie and TV series and the one thing that sticks out in those to me is that almost every villain could have been stopped by Bruce Wayne (not Batman) if he stopped dressing up like a bat to beat up low-level thugs and took some time seriously examining his own companies. Either safety issues created mutants, or the oppressive culture drove former employees insane/radicalized them. The only person within the DC universe that sees this is Alfred, and Bruce never fucking listens to him.
I feel like “why doesn’t Bruce Wayne improve Gotham” is the comic book equivalent of “why didn’t they use they take the eagles to Mordor”.
Even a bit less than that, “eagles” aren’t affiliated with the war and it’s own neural third party. Whereas Wayne is in the same conflicts as Buttman. The most logical conclusion is that it’s just a hobby of a billionaire, an activity that does not involve reaching some goals, like less crime or helping people. Perhaps there is some sort of (rubber?) kink in there too.
(The above is mostly a situational joke that evolves from comic books early era - they needed a themed costume & a personal identity. And physically fighting crime was at the time seen like a “good solution”, and being super rich was romantic/good/attractive. Im also aware how much with how little to initially go on the later comics expanded on these issues & made them more realistic/Bruce a good person. Imho the best argumented reason for Batman & Bruce to exists within their universes are supervillains with superpowers, ‘patrolling the streets’ is just weird.)
I mean, yeah. It’s certainly more fun to see him dress as a bat and beat people up. Imagine reading a graphic novel of just business meetings and shit. lol
Superman - Peace On Earth.
I think in some of the comics Gotham is literally cursed so it’s not his fault.
Should have learned magic with his giga-brain then.
Bruce actually does know some magic, but he doesn’t trust it to not backfire somehow. Basically, he knows enough about magic to know he shouldn’t fuck with it.
Needs some lessons from Dr. Strange.
The best he can get is Zatanna and John Constantine. Which while Zatanna is fine Constantine is well Constantine.
There’s curses, evil “leaking” from a evil bat god contained under the city, the semi illuminati of the court of owls, the lazarus pit undoubtedly leeching into the water supply and crazying folks up a bit, and the asylum likely being haunted.
Gotham is quite literally cursed to be a shithole. I think theres even a joke at one point that according to all statistics it should be doing better than Metropolis but isnt.
But then what would he do as batman
[slightly off topic]
The director of Star Trek II was unfamiliar with the show when he was hired. One of the things he did to make the Enterprise more realistic was to add “No Smoking” and other safety signs to the sets.
Which Roddenberry immediately had removed, as he felt that humanity of the future wouldn’t have addictions and bad habits thereby rendering the signs superfluous
I respect Roddenberry, but humanity will always have its vices. Even at our best we will always have our worst be present.
I’m sure a good social security net along with free housing would be a good prevention as well
I forget where I heard it but someone said batman is pretty much what you’d get from a libertarian version of defund the police, I’m not sure I’d rather the normal cops have access to his stuff honestly I think I would be better for him to keep it or only like a swat like team(getting swatted by them could more funny if you got frozen solid by a gizmo or something)
Reginald D Hunter had a similar take: https://youtu.be/8l1PMVvfjDM?si=_d41X4hwUlunvVVG
Bruce Wayne “should I setup mental health and income support for the people like my father, or buy new toys for myself and some cosplay and cause them I life changing injuries”
porque no los dos
It’s not like he didn’t have the money to create the organization. Gotham City is just firefighter arson to Bruce Wayne.
More OSHA means less money for Mr Batman’s alert ego.
And that is a line batman will not cross.
It’s not what Gotham needs but it’s what it deserves!
Batman could solve more crime by domating some of his vast wealth to support the impoverished in Gotham than he ever does by beating up criminals.
Isn’t it canon that he does that a lot already?
It’s just that it’s like filling a sieve with a tap. Unless you block the holes, you’re never going to get anywhere.
Yep. Batman deals with immediate problems, like someone being mugged, and Bruce deals with long term problems, like governmental corruption. And Bruce actually is fairly consistently depicted as having made progress there. Supervillains and the Court of Owls continue to be problems, but he’s usually dismantled the local mafias and cut down on police corruption inside of a few years.
Yeah this conversation pops up at least once a week, and Batman is so prolific that I feel people not understanding this is a literacy problem.
It’s also part of the ‘wealthy people bad’ circlejerk. I mean, I get it, but fucking hell, people. Does it really have to be every fucking thread in the fediverse?
This was a common discussion on Reddit as well
It feels significantly more omnipresent over here, though.
I think it’s because of Lemmy’s stronger left lean, especially amongst those around before the Reddit API fiasco.
My favorite depiction of Batman is the Harley Quinn TV show, where he (third season spoilers):
spoiler
Gets detained by Joker, who has turned into Gotham’s left-wing populist mayor, for evading taxes.
Love this season 1 scene: https://youtu.be/jI23PjBjQKM?si=skQMmXGhaTP0FISl
Why is nearly every top level comment with obvious spelling errors?
Weird how Batman is a billionaire & yet there’s always enough crime & problems to keep people Thankful for His Heroic Deeds 🤔
IIRC “The Batman” was about him figuring out he needs to do money things in addition to punching dudes.
Fewer. Not ‘less’.
Yeah that one always tweaks me too. I think it’s a listing battle.
“Fewer” for things that are countable.
I know language changes etc etc but it’s a hill I’m prepared to die on.
I could care fewer about it
It’s kinda funny, the hills people choose. I’m over here, stuck defending the original meaning of literally. Best of luck to you, fellow curmudgeon. :-)
Oh I’ve got your back in that too. Plus: unique and jealous / envious.
