I don’t normally post much about comic book characters, because my interest in comic books lasted from about 1965 to 1975 … a very different era than most of the comic books of today (I’m sure it’s considered tantamount to a hate crime to refer to them as “comic books” by a significant number of long-time fans). Here, Devon Eriksen explains why the Batman character is a modern rendition of the Greek hero Sisyphus and his eternal punishment in the underworld:
Batman, the fictional character, does not embrace the Batman Fallacy because he is written as stupid. He’s obviously intended to be very intelligent.
But the many, many authors of this character have always agreed that he must have this one critical blind spot.
Why?
So the story can continue.
See, if Batman kills the Joker, or turns him over for execution, the story, or at least a popular villain, is over. No more Joker stories.
So the character of Batman must be created in the image of Sisyphus… always struggling against the manifestation of the problem, but never able to address the root cause.
All of Batman’s victories must be against the Joker’s latest scheme, not the Joker himself. He must forever be playing defense, making heroic efforts merely to maintain things as they are, like the Red Queen running as fast as she can just to stand still.
This is how the Joker, a man of no special resources or talents, whose sole advantage is utter disregard for law, empathy, or human life, can be a challenging foe for a billionaire genius superathlete with an endless array of technologies and skills.
He can simply generate schemes forever. He doesn’t have to win always, or even often. Because every one of his victories is real and has permanent consequences, and every one of his defeats is temporary, pending a rematch.
Batman, by his very nature, can never stop the Joker, only slow him down.
If Batman were a different character, if he were willing to, say, throw the Joker out of a helicopter over a vast body of water, then the story would eventually end, because pretty soon the setting would no longer need Batman.
And no doubt on that day, there would be a great deal of whinging over whether throwing the Joker out of a helicopter was a “human rights abuse”, as if the Joker himself were not a walking, talking human rights abuse to begin with.
But Batman can never win, and never stop fighting, because he refuses to go on the offensive and remove his enemies from play.
This post is not about Batman.
