And another thing!
Oct. 4th, 2006 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI've said it before, I'll say it again: the fourth volume of Batman: the Animated Series is complete crap. This was when the show was reimagined, the art changed to be more in harmony with the style used on the animated Superman series, and the subtlties of Batman's nature suddenly ceased to exist. He was no longer playful or even all that smart. He went in hitting and when that didn't work defaulted to a gadget. This is the guy who "went undercover" as...Bruce Wayne with a moustache...and wasn't recognized. Gah!
I watched the rest of the series last night while cross-stitching a baby bib for my niece-to-be, and I wanted to drive my head through a wall. Or at least let the kittens lick the skin off my face because it was so bad. Case in point: "Animal Act," an episode where the circus animals from Dick Grayson's old circus were being used to steal components for the Mad Hatter (Oh Noes! Spoiler!). Nightwing tries to fight A BEAR. Not only that, he says, "You've got to have a weak spot somewhere!"
GSKJTRIt5@*(^$&(*^$@@@!!!!!!! YOU GREW UP IN THE CIRCUS. YOU RECOGNIZED A GORILLA ON SIGHT AND YOU DON'T KNOW THAT A BEAR DOESN'T EXACTLY HAVE WEAK SPOTS!?!?!?!?!?
::headdeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddesk::
Then there's the second-rate, one-off villains, which are as provoking and revealing about the mysteries of Batman's psyche as trying to do a fortune reading with a regular pack of cards. Not every episode has to have the Joker in it (though, with Mark Hamill doing the voice work, it should), but come on! A former model getting revenge for being fired? As if Criminal Heidi Klum is really going to terrify anyone. Watch out for her cutting criticisms of your fat ass!
And, out of nowhere, BOOM! You get "Legends of the Dark Knight" and "Mad Love" and "Judgement Day," episodes that were good but consternating, cute but simplistic, and just plain good, respectively.
This episode is culled from an actual issue in which Bruce Wayne got three kids together to tell him what they thought Batman was like. At the end, he told them he was Batman and none of them really got it or believed it. To them, Batman was the thing they thought he was, and, while they could understand they might not have it right, they couldn't believe he wasn't at least partially as they saw him.
The episode was an homage to that issue, which predated any of the televised Batman franchises (though not, I think, the movies in the 40s). As such, it could update the telling with another homage to the 1960-70s Batman cartoon (and the 1960s Batman live-action with Adam West) as one segment and then an animated version of the climactic battle with the leader of the Mutants from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. On their own, both small stories recounting the Batman's escapades envisioned as a laughing, posing hero and then as an aged, tough tank (with Michael Ironside as the voice of Batman--holy shit, if he was the voice of Batman? There'd be nary a criminal in Gotham, 'cuz for reals, yo, Michael Ironside has a scary fucking voice), are excellent, touching tributes (and I read that Frank Miller loved what they did with the half from his work).
What left me conflicted was the interim filler where the three kids discussing the nature of the Batman happen to be overheard by what is supposed to be a gay character. He is definitely a he though he has long hair; he is dressing models in a store window; and when he hears the kids talking about Batman, he wraps himself in the feather boa he was putting on the model and waxes rhapsodic about how he loves Batman's outfit, and how fashionable it is, etc.
Gaydar going off yet? Because you won't get another chance. The kids dismiss the gay boy with basically a "Whatevs" that implies they believe his interpretation of Batman as an attractive, fashionista Adonis to be less worthy of belief than the one kid who doesn't think Batman is human. Pause to consider that: the gay interpretation of Batman is less credible than the alien/mutant interpretation. That's both fairly defensive ("Our Batman isn't gay, goddamnit! Look, he's getting married in a couple of episodes, all right?") and fucking insulting because the implication is, of course, that gay men are less acceptable than aliens (and, all right, if aliens all look like that hot Peacekeeper Captain from the "A Bug's Life" episode of Farscape, I'd agree, but not in that way, right?).
On the other hand, it's about as close as anything in the Bat-verse for mass consumption that I've seen has come to addressing the sizeable and historical fan speculation and admiration of Batman as a homosexual. It's brave of them to do it in what had become (by this point in the series) more of a kid's show than the adult, artistic program it was before the change in animation style. So, at least they brought it up and didn't ignore the elephant in the room (even if I bet it went right over the heads of the younger audience), but it doesn't give them a pass of implying gay Batman (and, by extension, gay men) are somehow less than human, or, worse, inferior to things that are less than human. Especially not when the message of the episode was supposed to be that all interpretations of Batman are equally valid, and all can be read into his behavior and not be wrong.
I love the Joker and Harley Quinn. Their relationship is terrible and abusive and so perfectly them that it's hard to imagine it actually being better if the two of them split off. Harley's damned dangerous on her own, as she's proven, and the Joker needs someone around to keep him stable..er, anyway.
I just take issue with Harley being so straight-laced boring that only a psychotic love and subsequent psychotic break would make her happy. The Joker messes with people's minds who aren't horribly repressed, so why Harleen Quinzel couldn't have been more well-rounded to begin with, I can't say. There's hardly any clue that she's falling in love aside from the fact she laughs at the Joker's gags and I really hate how quickly they move through that to waste time with her successfully capturing Batman and nearly killing him--that's important, too, but not at the expense of studying what makes two world-class psychos work so well together. Pity. Liked it, but it could have been more.
Will say this: Harley getting seriously weirded out by Batman laughing? Priceless. "I've never heard you laugh before. I don't think I like it!"
I'll admit that, with the Joker-love being so strong, the other rogue's gallery folk get short shrift, but perhaps none as undeservedly as Harvey Two-Face. His story never really appealed to me, and it took No Man's Land to put a, ugh, dent in that wall of willful ignorance. I had to begin again with Two-Face.
The problem with Two-Face is his one-note criminal aspect. While my favorite villains--Joker, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Riddler, probably in that order--all had their niche, they at least had some flexibility within that niche. With Joker, there's lots of things he can find funny, and given that homicide on a brutal, gorey scale is what he finds amusing, there's potential for creep and disgust and terror (or, completely 180 degrees in the other direction: stupidity, lameness and puns) in all that he does. Catwoman is cool because she just is (TV likes kitties, yes she does), and Poison Ivy is a freak who alternatively tries to have what humans have or else spurns people as less worthy than plants. Riddler is a teaser, and I have to admit I like figuring out his puzzles, even the easy ones (again, I blame the cartoon for making the love stronger by having the Riddler voiced by that magnificent bastard, John Glover).
But Two-Face? He takes the problems of his psyche and literally wears them. It's a tad disingenuous. The physical deformity being so prominent, and given the tendency of his capers to center on twos, doubles, seconds, it just seemed...flat. He's got dual personalities wooooooo. Except that he really doesn't, nine times out of ten. Harvey Dent had dual personalities. Two-Face is Big Bad Harvey taking over and subjugating Harvey Dent. There was a time, maybe, where there was conflict, where Harvey's desire for revenge might have driven him to pay attention to the Dent side rather than the Two-Face only side, but once that arc finished, he just stayed as Two-Face. Harvey was what Batman tried to appeal to, and given his spectacular failure to do so for like forever, it suggests to me that Harvey is gone.
"Judgement Day," then, is the question of "Who can be the other half against someone as formidable as Two-Face?" The answer is...Harvey Dent, but not really. Harvey Dent, his desires, his relationships, his balance--those things are gone. What's left is the cold logic and calculating counterposition to Two-Face's reliance on chance with weighted odds. That logic brings to bear the intelligence of Harvey Dent (uncompromised by Two-Face's takeover), his passion for justice (not only unaffected but adopted by Two-Face), and his unforgiving refusal to compromise (yet another weakness/strength left over and inhabited by Two-Face). Things that are Harvey Dent that have been absorbed into Two-Face are the very means of unseating him as the dominant persona within the body. It is not Harvey Dent; it cannot be Harvey Dent because Harvey Dent knows these things to be wrong, and his loss of control is the only reason he does not prevent himself from doing them (in the cartoon, Harvey sought therapy, suggesting a) he's aware of good/bad, right/wrong in all that he does, and b) that he sincerely wanted to keep from doing bad things). Harvey cannot out-Two-Face Two-Face because he is, at the heart, a moral creature that understands darkness is not absolute (and hey, who better to realize that than the Gemini twin to darkness?).
So, along comes The Judge. He is intelligent; he is just; but he is not merciful and he is not forgiving. He acts out first against easy targets, the very visible Penguin who apes a legit life while fencing stolen goods in the dark. Killer Croc, another disingenuous, physically determined character, is likewise easy prey as he is a body made for inflicting pain with an intellect and outlook not opposed to so doing. It's easy to see why people get behind him, even as he's attempting to kill these criminals: they are clearly criminals by choice and by inclination, so they can't say their mommies didn't love them enough or they were abused and that's why they done it. There is no sympathy for the unrepentant, sane criminal. None.
This is an important juxtaposition (and not just a set-up piece to establish a new Gotham-based vigilante, though it does do that) to what happens in the case of Two-Face. When the Judge comes for Two-Face, he makes no allowance for Harvey Dent being insane, the first of the Judge's victims to be so (I would have loved to see this self-righteous, merciless thing try to tackle the real crazies like Joker). There is no concept of dissociate identity disorder meaning that Harvey Dent isn't responsible for Two-Face. Two-Face needs to be punished more than Harvey Dent needs to be helped in the Judge's ruling. It is majority rule--better that Two-Face should die and spare victims to come than Harvey should be helped at the expense of innocents. The Judge is law without compassion, which is corruption in and of itself.
The Judge is, of course, physically the same man as Harvey Two-Face. It is the same body containing a third personality, the reaction to the loss of Harvey Dent, the take-over of Two-Face, and the resultant clash of morality versus insanity as this happens inside one man. The defining characteristics of the Judge reveal themselves to be the same as Two-Face's only with a different bent. Understanding that the Judge is what's left of Harvey Dent's drives acting out against the evil of Two-Face's nature, the only conclusion can be that the separation of Two-Face is merely on the surface. The reason Two-Face took over the body of Harvey Dent is because Two-Face is Harvey Dent. This seems extremely obvious to most people, I'm sure, but the point I'm making is not that Harvey became Two-Face, not even that Two-Face is something siphoned off from Harvey that built up and imploded within him. There has never been a Two-Face. There is only one man, conflicted because he is a human being, not because he has multiple personalities but because he has good and evil impulses and has lost the distinction between them and the shame that the latter ought to bring when he does them.
The Judge is a last hurrah, an schizoid break in a fractured mind, that brings Harvey about to the revelation: he is not--not as Harvey, not as Two-Face--just. He is everything he hated, injustice embodied, and he cannot ignore this any longer. The last bit of the episode shows Harvey in a straight jacket in Arkham, with the Judge speaking in his mind, saying, "In the case of the People of Gotham versus Harvey Dent, how does the defendant plead?" and Harvey in his Two-Face voice going "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty." This is Harvey Dent realizing he is a monster, and as the Judge has now informed upon his psyche so much, he, too, ascribes to the belief that he is not worth saving at the expense of others. It's chilling, and a fantastic way to end the series as whole, because, really, what the fuck could they do after that that mattered half as much?
I watched the rest of the series last night while cross-stitching a baby bib for my niece-to-be, and I wanted to drive my head through a wall. Or at least let the kittens lick the skin off my face because it was so bad. Case in point: "Animal Act," an episode where the circus animals from Dick Grayson's old circus were being used to steal components for the Mad Hatter (Oh Noes! Spoiler!). Nightwing tries to fight A BEAR. Not only that, he says, "You've got to have a weak spot somewhere!"
GSKJTRIt5@*(^$&(*^$@@@!!!!!!! YOU GREW UP IN THE CIRCUS. YOU RECOGNIZED A GORILLA ON SIGHT AND YOU DON'T KNOW THAT A BEAR DOESN'T EXACTLY HAVE WEAK SPOTS!?!?!?!?!?
::headdeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddesk::
Then there's the second-rate, one-off villains, which are as provoking and revealing about the mysteries of Batman's psyche as trying to do a fortune reading with a regular pack of cards. Not every episode has to have the Joker in it (though, with Mark Hamill doing the voice work, it should), but come on! A former model getting revenge for being fired? As if Criminal Heidi Klum is really going to terrify anyone. Watch out for her cutting criticisms of your fat ass!
And, out of nowhere, BOOM! You get "Legends of the Dark Knight" and "Mad Love" and "Judgement Day," episodes that were good but consternating, cute but simplistic, and just plain good, respectively.
This episode is culled from an actual issue in which Bruce Wayne got three kids together to tell him what they thought Batman was like. At the end, he told them he was Batman and none of them really got it or believed it. To them, Batman was the thing they thought he was, and, while they could understand they might not have it right, they couldn't believe he wasn't at least partially as they saw him.
The episode was an homage to that issue, which predated any of the televised Batman franchises (though not, I think, the movies in the 40s). As such, it could update the telling with another homage to the 1960-70s Batman cartoon (and the 1960s Batman live-action with Adam West) as one segment and then an animated version of the climactic battle with the leader of the Mutants from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. On their own, both small stories recounting the Batman's escapades envisioned as a laughing, posing hero and then as an aged, tough tank (with Michael Ironside as the voice of Batman--holy shit, if he was the voice of Batman? There'd be nary a criminal in Gotham, 'cuz for reals, yo, Michael Ironside has a scary fucking voice), are excellent, touching tributes (and I read that Frank Miller loved what they did with the half from his work).
What left me conflicted was the interim filler where the three kids discussing the nature of the Batman happen to be overheard by what is supposed to be a gay character. He is definitely a he though he has long hair; he is dressing models in a store window; and when he hears the kids talking about Batman, he wraps himself in the feather boa he was putting on the model and waxes rhapsodic about how he loves Batman's outfit, and how fashionable it is, etc.
Gaydar going off yet? Because you won't get another chance. The kids dismiss the gay boy with basically a "Whatevs" that implies they believe his interpretation of Batman as an attractive, fashionista Adonis to be less worthy of belief than the one kid who doesn't think Batman is human. Pause to consider that: the gay interpretation of Batman is less credible than the alien/mutant interpretation. That's both fairly defensive ("Our Batman isn't gay, goddamnit! Look, he's getting married in a couple of episodes, all right?") and fucking insulting because the implication is, of course, that gay men are less acceptable than aliens (and, all right, if aliens all look like that hot Peacekeeper Captain from the "A Bug's Life" episode of Farscape, I'd agree, but not in that way, right?).
On the other hand, it's about as close as anything in the Bat-verse for mass consumption that I've seen has come to addressing the sizeable and historical fan speculation and admiration of Batman as a homosexual. It's brave of them to do it in what had become (by this point in the series) more of a kid's show than the adult, artistic program it was before the change in animation style. So, at least they brought it up and didn't ignore the elephant in the room (even if I bet it went right over the heads of the younger audience), but it doesn't give them a pass of implying gay Batman (and, by extension, gay men) are somehow less than human, or, worse, inferior to things that are less than human. Especially not when the message of the episode was supposed to be that all interpretations of Batman are equally valid, and all can be read into his behavior and not be wrong.
I love the Joker and Harley Quinn. Their relationship is terrible and abusive and so perfectly them that it's hard to imagine it actually being better if the two of them split off. Harley's damned dangerous on her own, as she's proven, and the Joker needs someone around to keep him stable..er, anyway.
I just take issue with Harley being so straight-laced boring that only a psychotic love and subsequent psychotic break would make her happy. The Joker messes with people's minds who aren't horribly repressed, so why Harleen Quinzel couldn't have been more well-rounded to begin with, I can't say. There's hardly any clue that she's falling in love aside from the fact she laughs at the Joker's gags and I really hate how quickly they move through that to waste time with her successfully capturing Batman and nearly killing him--that's important, too, but not at the expense of studying what makes two world-class psychos work so well together. Pity. Liked it, but it could have been more.
Will say this: Harley getting seriously weirded out by Batman laughing? Priceless. "I've never heard you laugh before. I don't think I like it!"
I'll admit that, with the Joker-love being so strong, the other rogue's gallery folk get short shrift, but perhaps none as undeservedly as Harvey Two-Face. His story never really appealed to me, and it took No Man's Land to put a, ugh, dent in that wall of willful ignorance. I had to begin again with Two-Face.
The problem with Two-Face is his one-note criminal aspect. While my favorite villains--Joker, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Riddler, probably in that order--all had their niche, they at least had some flexibility within that niche. With Joker, there's lots of things he can find funny, and given that homicide on a brutal, gorey scale is what he finds amusing, there's potential for creep and disgust and terror (or, completely 180 degrees in the other direction: stupidity, lameness and puns) in all that he does. Catwoman is cool because she just is (TV likes kitties, yes she does), and Poison Ivy is a freak who alternatively tries to have what humans have or else spurns people as less worthy than plants. Riddler is a teaser, and I have to admit I like figuring out his puzzles, even the easy ones (again, I blame the cartoon for making the love stronger by having the Riddler voiced by that magnificent bastard, John Glover).
But Two-Face? He takes the problems of his psyche and literally wears them. It's a tad disingenuous. The physical deformity being so prominent, and given the tendency of his capers to center on twos, doubles, seconds, it just seemed...flat. He's got dual personalities wooooooo. Except that he really doesn't, nine times out of ten. Harvey Dent had dual personalities. Two-Face is Big Bad Harvey taking over and subjugating Harvey Dent. There was a time, maybe, where there was conflict, where Harvey's desire for revenge might have driven him to pay attention to the Dent side rather than the Two-Face only side, but once that arc finished, he just stayed as Two-Face. Harvey was what Batman tried to appeal to, and given his spectacular failure to do so for like forever, it suggests to me that Harvey is gone.
"Judgement Day," then, is the question of "Who can be the other half against someone as formidable as Two-Face?" The answer is...Harvey Dent, but not really. Harvey Dent, his desires, his relationships, his balance--those things are gone. What's left is the cold logic and calculating counterposition to Two-Face's reliance on chance with weighted odds. That logic brings to bear the intelligence of Harvey Dent (uncompromised by Two-Face's takeover), his passion for justice (not only unaffected but adopted by Two-Face), and his unforgiving refusal to compromise (yet another weakness/strength left over and inhabited by Two-Face). Things that are Harvey Dent that have been absorbed into Two-Face are the very means of unseating him as the dominant persona within the body. It is not Harvey Dent; it cannot be Harvey Dent because Harvey Dent knows these things to be wrong, and his loss of control is the only reason he does not prevent himself from doing them (in the cartoon, Harvey sought therapy, suggesting a) he's aware of good/bad, right/wrong in all that he does, and b) that he sincerely wanted to keep from doing bad things). Harvey cannot out-Two-Face Two-Face because he is, at the heart, a moral creature that understands darkness is not absolute (and hey, who better to realize that than the Gemini twin to darkness?).
So, along comes The Judge. He is intelligent; he is just; but he is not merciful and he is not forgiving. He acts out first against easy targets, the very visible Penguin who apes a legit life while fencing stolen goods in the dark. Killer Croc, another disingenuous, physically determined character, is likewise easy prey as he is a body made for inflicting pain with an intellect and outlook not opposed to so doing. It's easy to see why people get behind him, even as he's attempting to kill these criminals: they are clearly criminals by choice and by inclination, so they can't say their mommies didn't love them enough or they were abused and that's why they done it. There is no sympathy for the unrepentant, sane criminal. None.
This is an important juxtaposition (and not just a set-up piece to establish a new Gotham-based vigilante, though it does do that) to what happens in the case of Two-Face. When the Judge comes for Two-Face, he makes no allowance for Harvey Dent being insane, the first of the Judge's victims to be so (I would have loved to see this self-righteous, merciless thing try to tackle the real crazies like Joker). There is no concept of dissociate identity disorder meaning that Harvey Dent isn't responsible for Two-Face. Two-Face needs to be punished more than Harvey Dent needs to be helped in the Judge's ruling. It is majority rule--better that Two-Face should die and spare victims to come than Harvey should be helped at the expense of innocents. The Judge is law without compassion, which is corruption in and of itself.
The Judge is, of course, physically the same man as Harvey Two-Face. It is the same body containing a third personality, the reaction to the loss of Harvey Dent, the take-over of Two-Face, and the resultant clash of morality versus insanity as this happens inside one man. The defining characteristics of the Judge reveal themselves to be the same as Two-Face's only with a different bent. Understanding that the Judge is what's left of Harvey Dent's drives acting out against the evil of Two-Face's nature, the only conclusion can be that the separation of Two-Face is merely on the surface. The reason Two-Face took over the body of Harvey Dent is because Two-Face is Harvey Dent. This seems extremely obvious to most people, I'm sure, but the point I'm making is not that Harvey became Two-Face, not even that Two-Face is something siphoned off from Harvey that built up and imploded within him. There has never been a Two-Face. There is only one man, conflicted because he is a human being, not because he has multiple personalities but because he has good and evil impulses and has lost the distinction between them and the shame that the latter ought to bring when he does them.
The Judge is a last hurrah, an schizoid break in a fractured mind, that brings Harvey about to the revelation: he is not--not as Harvey, not as Two-Face--just. He is everything he hated, injustice embodied, and he cannot ignore this any longer. The last bit of the episode shows Harvey in a straight jacket in Arkham, with the Judge speaking in his mind, saying, "In the case of the People of Gotham versus Harvey Dent, how does the defendant plead?" and Harvey in his Two-Face voice going "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty." This is Harvey Dent realizing he is a monster, and as the Judge has now informed upon his psyche so much, he, too, ascribes to the belief that he is not worth saving at the expense of others. It's chilling, and a fantastic way to end the series as whole, because, really, what the fuck could they do after that that mattered half as much?
