Recently I read a great article at The Big Think that advocates Batman killing the Joker. The response by Steve Watts is fantastic and one of the few that gets closer to the core of the issue at hand. But, I have yet to see someone try and fully flesh out the argument. I think the reason why is that there are two kinds of people that have tried: ethicists and Comic FanBoys (capitalized for emphasis). As such, we get either a detached and clinical view that sees Batman and Joker existing in our reality or we get the ‘BATMAN IS THE GREATEST DETECTIVE EVAR AND CANNOT BE BEATEN AND HE IS ALWAYS RIGHT.’ Steve Watts is the first person I’ve ever seen make a legit argument that works as well in our reality as the DC reality. I’d like to tackle it just to see if I can. This is mostly me rambling on the subject, but it is one I’ve thought about for a long time. I’d like to open the door a bit for a larger debate. And there are no debaters like Batman FanBoys.
First about me. I studied a little philosophy in college, have an embarrassingly large comic book collection, but have only read many of the major Batman story arcs and haven’t kept up with the character obsessively. That said, if you see something I got wrong about Batman’s background or if any of my thought experiments have been done, let me know.
Both of the articles above make very good cases for the pros and cons of killing the Joker. In the pro column, you basically have ‘Look, even if you put the Joker away, he will escape and come back and murder/maim/terrorize a huge number of people. Killing him is a preemptive strike against that.’ In the con column you have ‘Well, if Batman Kills the Joker, it is a moral slippery slope. Gotham has a bunch of other criminals that will immediately (and bloodily) seek to take his place, does Batman kill them all? Besides, doesn’t Batman’s very existence CREATE guys like the Joker?’
Now, I’m not trying to boil down the argument to these two sides, nor am I building up their arguments to create straw-men out of them. However, I think they are both predicated on the same premise and that is ‘Batman could kill the Joker if he wanted to, but chooses not to.’ Now, there are dozens of examples Batman saying as much, or at least defending his no-kill policy throughout the past three quarters of a century of Batman comics. But how can we trust what Batman says to others, or even his internal monologues? Why isn’t the argument ‘Should the Joker kill Batman? It is my contention that Batman can’t kill the Joker (and vice versa) even though from any sane outside perspective he should.
Comics (v) Reality
There is one reality that bears mentioning here and while it does break the fourth wall a bit, it has to be examined. Batman is a comic book character. As such, there are certain realities he is tied to without his knowledge but shape his character and more importantly the question at hand that are integral to the outcome of the argument.
There are three things about Batman and comics in general that complicate the argument and kind of make whether or not he should kill the Joker a moot point. First is that comic books don’t have an end. If you think about it, that is a pretty amazing philosophical standpoint to start from. Characters will have arcs and live, learn, die, come back to life dozens of times throughout their ‘lives.’ Characters don’t age in the real sense, but they do remember everything that happened to them. Batman and Joker have been fighting for over sixty years. Time can ‘accordion’ a bit, but they’ve faced off hundreds of times in dozens of comics and never had any resolution. Why would one come now? There is something amazing about these two characters facing off for eternity, well after we’re all gone but due to the genre in which they exist, the past is mostly moot when discussing what Batman should or more importantly could do.
Second is that dozens of creators have taken the reigns of Batman. They’ve all worked under the Batman rubric of course and all of them are aware of Batman’s past (all too keenly aware in some cases, Mr. Morrison). But it creates a psychological patchwork at best of Batman and often times completely re-thinks the character’s motivations and knowledge. Each new writer shades in the areas around the edges a little more until the tapestry looks much different than when it started. This is what makes comics great but it also works against trying to answer the big questions about a character. Would the Batman of the 1950’s react the same to the Batman of today? Unquestionably not, and not just because it is 60 years later: each author offers his or her ‘take’ on the character.
Last is just the reality of the comic book business. These comics keep going and going (sometimes ad nauseum) with new writers and ret-conned actions. The Joker will never be permanently killed in the comics just as a business decision. Frankly I’m surprised there hasn’t already been a half dozen ‘DEATH OF THE JOKER’ stories already, only for him to rise from the ashes and once again start terrorizing people. I know the Joker has been assumed dead, but not even the characters believed it.
While this information seems irrelevant to the issue at hand at first glance, I think this taints the issue enough that it has to be discussed. Consider this: every single comic book author that has ever written Batman knows two things are absolutely certain.
1. Batman is not going to permanently die
2. Joker is not going to permanently die
That is a pretty amazing bedrock to start from when you are writing a story. No matter WHAT, both characters are -in effect- invincible. Necessarily, this colors the debate. No writer is going to have a thought bubble over Batman’s head in the Batcave thinking ‘I’m just going to kill the son of a bitch.’ If it is there, no one will believe it anyway. So how much real philosophical debate can there be? It seems to me far more likely that the debate and details spring up from the writers hammering our new psychological niches about the characters than trying to change the status quo of their character arcs.
All that leaves us with is a bunch of what-if? questions about the characters. I’ll gladly indulge myself here.
Mission Accomplished?
I think the reason this question resonates with people is that when it is asked, people are actually answering a different question. They are thinking ‘Would I kill the Joker if I were Batman?’ In fact, most of the Batman FanBoys take it one step further and pretend to know the mind of Batman well enough to predict what Batman would do and why.
This blog post at Sci-Fi Mafia is a retort to the post at The Big think and is the entire reason I’m writing my screed. Granted, it is a blog post and as such probably written off the top of the author’s (Brandon Johnston’s) head, but it is so full of holes and bizarre reasoning that even though I agree with him in principal, I had to write about the topic. Before I say what I didn’t like, I do like Johnston’s point that Batman isn’t a hero per se. I think that speaks to something I’ll get to in a minute, but mostly he and I agree about who Batman is: a tortured anti-hero.
Aside from the somewhat condescending tone that all Batman aficionados inherently wield, Johnston drops a massive bombshell in the first paragraph: He says:
“Tauriq argues that Batman’s morality causes more harm than good. It’s a pretty common position among many; because the Joker has proven to be an unstoppable force for evil, one that cannot be rehabilitated, then his continued existence is counter-intuitive to the Dark Knight’s mission to prevent crime in the first place.” (Bold emphasis mine).
I asked ‘What is Batmans mission exactly?’ and Johnston responded ‘It's a rhetoric he uses all the time. It's basically his war on crime in Gotham.’ That is a far shot from ‘prevent[ing] crime in the first place,’ at least from a philosophical standpoint, so I’d like to examine them both.
Is Batman’s mission to prevent crime? Does Batman’s very presence at least encourage if not create enemies? This was the central idea behind the film The Dark Knight and is one of the few themes that runs through all of Batman comics. If Batman’s mission is in fact to prevent crime, his failures make The Rampart Scandal look like accepting a free donut once a month. His very existence creates the Joker in many versions of the character and enrages all of Gotham’s worst in all versions. I think this ethos is from the 1980's when police departments started using the term 'Crime Prevention' as a tactic. While there were -and are- amazing strides being made in this area, it is not the police's job to prevent crime. There are many things police can do to alleviate some crime, but there is literally no correlation between an increased police presence and decreased crime, especially violent crime. So how can Batman prevent it? Fear?
If Batman’s mission is to wage a ‘war on crime’ then Johnston and I are in complete agreement again. But, I’ll get back to that later.
Johnston then goes on to talk about how Batman ‘isn’t image conscious’ and yet he wants to ‘instill fear.’ Life as an Extreme Sport has a better retort than I could have some up with, but I think it is important to see at least three things happening here. First is that fans will defend Batman as infallible. In fact, in nearly every online poll about the best superheros, Batman wins. Second is that most people still answer the question as if they were Batman, not giving real insight to what Batman would actually do. Third -and this is what I like about Johnston’s piece- is that there is what Batman is actually doing versus what he tells everyone (and himself) what he is doing. Unfortunately, I think most folks (and Johnston in particular here) takes Batman at his word.
WWBD?
Johnston did get me thinking: what is Batman’s mission? Ask anyone and I’m sure they’ll say ‘to fight crime’ and honestly this is the best answer I can think of. But, what complicates issues is that Batman is presented as the world’s greatest detective, if not the greatest human mind in existence. Would a man of that genius, talent and drive really decide to dress as a bat and punch criminals? Grant Morrison began to address that conundrum with Batman Inc. before the re-boot at DC. To say I was excited for that is a gigantic understatement. Finally, Batman decides that the best way to fight crime is to basically do the exact opposite of what he had been doing his entire career: step into the spotlight, expand his team and dedicate the public resources of Bruce Wayne to the cause. Alas, Morrison’s idea was never fully realized due to the DC reboot, though Batman Inc is getting its own series.
Regardless, it points to the problem I have with the matter at hand and the primary reason I never kept up with Batman comic books. Isn’t there a better way to fight crime than this? The only way Batman works for me as a character is if he is now clinically insane. Hell, he started out as a bit nuts: family gets murdered, he decides to put on a costume and chase around bad guys. But you’d have to be completely off your rocker to be that intelligent about so many other things but could not see the forest for the trees. Arkham is a revolving door. All of your friends are being hurt or destroyed. Gotham is actively working against you.
So why does Batman do it? Johnston mentions his stated reasoning a bit and that part is obvious. Personally, I think that Batman realizes he is in a comic book. Not literally, of course. I don’t think we have to worry about any Deadpool-esque fourth wall breakage. But, I think he has utterly and completely resigned himself to his roll as The Batman and is unwilling or unable to truly move beyond that. Frankly, I don’t think any of his fans would want that either. Sure, a couple of one-offs and what-ifs are fun, but if you collected 900 comic books and suddenly there was a massive change in the status quo, you’d bitch. And boy, do comic book nerds know how to bitch. Just ask Donald Glover. Glover, who is black, received many racists texts, tweets and emails when someone suggested he should be the new Spider-Man.
Are there even trolleys in Gotham?
By now, nearly everyone should have at least a passing idea of what The Trolley Problem is. But, just to make sure (from Wikipedia):
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
Let’s up the ante a bit. Let’s say Batman is on a bridge and can drop the Joker on the tracks to save five people. Would he do it? Before I go any further, I know that every single Batman FanBoy is stroking their neckbeard saying ‘The Batman would never allow himself to get into that predicament.’ I get it, world’s greatest detective, blah blah blah. Hell, in The Dark Knight we see Batman extricate himself from this exact thing, which is basically the entire point of their relationship. But play along with me here. Batman can either kill the Joker and save five lives or let the Joker live and five people die.
He might find a way to save the people in the comics, but in a thought experiment, or in ‘lab conditions, I say that ten out of ten times Batman lets the train slide by and kill five people.
Batman’s entire moral system is based on one thing, and one thing alone: he fights crime. He doesn’t eradicate crime, or keep people safe, or stop crime before it happens, he just fights it. As we’ve seen in nearly every example in the United States (Prohibition, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror) these Wars are largely ineffective and are rife with unintended consequences. But, the actual players in these games (and I’ve met Federal Agents, military men and a couple of Operators) wash their hands morally of these unintended consequences and (in many cases) rightfully so. After all, a DEA Agent is just doing his job and his job isn’t to set policy. I think Batman's strict no-kill policy is his psychological foundation, the only reason he can live with himself. No matter what happens, he can say 'My direct actions never killed anyone. All deaths were caused by the actions of others.' But look back at the trolley problem. At some point, one has to examine when inaction is just as bad or worse than taking a supposedly moral action.
If you are a Batman fan that is a whole lot of reconciliation to do for a guy who is by all rights the smartest person in the world but can’t see a better way to clean things up. Ultimately, that’s why I can’t get behind the character. I feel like a child could come up with better ideas than Batman has. Why not exile the Joker to another galaxy? Why not trap him in suspended animation and store him in the Batcave? Isn’t it at least somewhat likely that the Joker would have been killed either by his own hubris and insanity or by some low-level thug trying to take his spot? Or wouldn’t another young and stupid hero try to add a notch to his belt and take him down? Instead we get: Joker has a huge, diabolical plot against Batman. Batman figures it out, Joker goes to Arkham, escapes and it starts all over.
Please be clear: this is not to say that story for story Batman is not a great read. There is a reason he is the most popular character ever, the guy is just awesome. In fact, now that I think about it, he is probably my favorite character of all time. I don't think Batman is my favorite comic book, nor is Detective Comics but this complicated psychogical patchwork is what makes him interesting. He is the only character I can think of that strikes fear into everyone (including his fellow heroes) and is the number one guy to ask 'What if?' about in comics. That doesn't mean I can't ask Why? sometimes too.
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