The Batman Principle, or: How Students Can Learn From Anything

 

If one were to assess the content of many of my student blogs ( and the often alarming rate in which I discuss comic books ), you might not be too far off the beaten path to assume the obvious – I am a comic nerd and proud of it.

I have been blessed to have been able to apply by critical learning skills as an English major to everything from Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice ( with and without Zombies ), and the myths of King Arthur. One of the best lessons I have learned from my time as an English Major is that ‘how’ we perceive the world is not always fully dependent on the forms of  the things we wish to learn from. Just because I look at an apple, it doesn't mean I must only have to talk about. I can talk about other fruits, the color red, the biblical implications, etc...

I'd like to apply those aforementioned lessons  to one of the biggest movie releases of the summer, a release that I am sure just about every geek or semi-geeky person on the UT Tyler student and faculty index will be seeing. I am naturally talking about the release of The Dark Knight Rises. People might be seeing it tonight, they might have already been in the theater for the local Batman Marathon, or they may see it over the coming week. This films release is a huge entertainment event in Tyler and I hope everybody gets to see the film at some point soon!

As an English Major and a wanna-be-Professor someday, how would I approach the Nolan Batman film trilogy to students? What could they get from this series and how might I teach them? How might you, either as a teacher, an educator, or just a fan, discuss this movie series with others?

The following are some unique points worth starting dialogue over, ones I think are key aspects of not only Batman’s literary mythology, but many other famous works as well.

Point #1 - GOTHAM CITY

Batman is a denizen of the Gotham, a city heavily modeled after New York City and Chicago in the Nolan Films. Gotham  is one of the rare times I will say that a place has as much character as the people who live there. Arkham Asylum, the theater where the Waynes were murdered, Gotham Tower, Wayne Enterprises, the Batcave, etc... These locations are iconic landmarks in the series, and almost all of them share very similar stylistic traits to how buildings were used in literature. One could make a case for Wayne Manor with its secret chambers is like the residence of the Rochester Manor House from Jane Eyre; Arkham Asylum has certain qualities like the asylum from the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest ( Dr. Crane and Nurse Ratched are certainly villainous authority figures ); etc...

Even the term "Gotham" can be expanded upon to encompass a number of Gothic traits in literature, from the dark and stoic skylines to the seedy and mysterious Narrows. The whole city is almost haunted, like something from a ghost story, thus it also shares some traits with how Dickens wrote his London cityscapes.

Point #2 – Bruce Wane & Byron

I mentioned the Rochester Mansion as something very uniquely Gothic. The house is famous in the novel of Jane Eyre because of its master, Lord Rochester. Rochester is a character who is defined as a 'Byronic Hero' in literature. This term comes from the qualities and character of Lord Byron, a man about as close to Bruce Wayne as any other in literature - both are wealthy, both have extravagant tastes in women, and both keep dark secrets. Further, both men also passionately fight on behalf of various fashions of Justice, with Byron having joined Greece to fight in their war against the Ottomans and Wayne who becomes Batman to fight Gotham's war on crime.

   Literary connections to characters like Bruce Wayne do not end with Byron. One of the most famous of all literary characters, Hamlet, is also much like Wayne as both suffer from parental death, both are 'princes' of their cities/countries, and both have a very hard time adjusting past their grief. Both characters in turn wind up taking drastic and theatrical measures for writing the wrongs of the world about them.

Point #3 – The Villains

This one is a more abstract concept, however I'd argue it works for presenting different worldviews and letting people go into the details about what is or isn't good and bad in our societies.

Ra's Al Ghul is presented in the Nolan films as a villain whose worldviews differ from Wayne in that they involve murder. How can Ra's' concepts of Justice be looked at in other writings, especially legal writings? Do our laws enforce justice? How would certain literary heroes be judged if they really existed?

The character of Harvey Dent/Two-Face brings up the issues of fairness and justice, but his POV is concerned with justice from the point of view of a deranged law-giver. How do these ideas ( fairness and justice ) normally get presented in Literature? Do the ends that certain characters undertake in literary epics get to be counted as 'fair' actions? Is it justice when Achilles, a prince and warlord of the Greeks, demeaned and tortured Prince Hector's body, even if Hector had indeed committed the act of killing Achilles’' cousin? Was his treatment of the man's body 'fair' or 'revenge?' In the comics Batman has had many, many altercations with his foes during which he was required to evaluate if he wanted justice for his families death, or if he wanted something more balanced – justice for all of Gotham.

The Joker is perhaps the hardest to enfold into the lore of straight literature. The relationship between these two in the role of the jester ( joker ) to the king ( or, Prince of Gotham, to borrow from a recent Scott Snyder reference ) has an interesting line-up with the Fool and King Lear. In the comics Joker addresses things about and Batman that are indeed harsh truths, ones that are hard to stomach for the audience at times or the comic readers ( "you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold" ... "Don't talk like one of them, you're not ... even if you'd like to be" ). That has always been the role of the Fool in plays and in stories, to speak with undisguised truth.

   [ I could also mention Crane and Fear, or Bane and Pain. but I think I've made enough points ... ]

While this has been only a small example of the kinds of things we can extrapolate from a comics and film series like Batman, we should never underestimate the power that pop-culture has on literature, and vice-versa. In a recent interview, Nolan claimed that one of the biggest sources of inspiration for him in his final Batman film was A Tale of Two Cities.

Just some interesting things to thing about ...