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I responded to something today by pretty much going off on a tangent, but an interesting tangent to me, at least. I objected to the idea that Batman the character is, at heart, a revenge fantasy.
Now, yes, the word "avenge" (a similar but not the same word as revenge, at least in modern usage) is right there at the start of the story. Young Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered in front of him when he was a kid. He vowed "by the spirits of [his] parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of [his] life warring on all criminals." Does this mean that Bruce is at heart a revenge fantasy?
For me, that's problematic. I think Batman was always intended to be a hero, and a guy getting revenge is limited in how much of a hero he can be. Also while I understand choosing the larger target of "criminals" if you have anger issues rather than just targeting the guy who personally murdered your family, it seems like an odd choice to not have Bruce more motivated to find the guy who actually killed his family if it's about revenge. The satisfaction comes from the personal in a revenge story, so it makes sense to hit things in a personal way.
In a revenge fantasy, something was taken from the person and they are getting payback. The satisfaction for the viewer is in seeing that. They identify first with the feeling of having something taken and then the satisfaction of getting something back for it. To look at a classic revenge story, take Count of Monte Cristo. The reader suffers with Edmond as he's falsely accused and thrown into prison. Then we enjoy him using his treasure to get back at the people who did it to him--they deserve it, etc.
But someone fueled by revenge quickly drops off the hero scale, because they're just grabbing payment for their own trauma over and over. In the CoMC Edmond turns away from revenge, finally, at the point where his plan would probably lose him the sympathy of a lot of readers. He comes to a crossroads, iirc: does he follow through on his plan to its conclusion, getting payback that's poetically just from a person who hurt him (in this case unintentionally)? Or does he pull back and choose another way, forgiving the person and building a new life instead of punishing others for the one he lost? He could go either way, but only one lets him stay the hero he was at the beginning of the story. Before that his actions are all carefully planned as personal payback.
An adult who's just lost his/her spouse, home, child, has a formed personality that has now been shattered and remade out of those fresh emotions. With a kid, they're not formed yet. Often they barely had a personality in the story before their parents were murdered. Thus the trauma becomes part of who they are rather than a change.
This is the case with Bruce. Nearly the only thing we know for sure about him before he was orphaned was that he was rich and loved. Beyond that, writers have gone different ways. More than one, has made him bratty and entitled. Personally, I tend to think bratty+entitled+revenge would = even more bratty and entitled. Bruce Wayne is a multi-billionaire, but the one thing he doesn't have is parents so he punishes people for that. I just honestly don't think that idea would get us Batman. I also frankly wonder if it would get us Bruce Wayne the philanthropist who's very pro-rehabilitation for criminals.
In canon, from the beginning, I think we more often get the suggestion that Bruce is a greater man due to losing his parents. Far from making him more focused on himself by giving him an obsession with revenge, it gave him a purpose that was about other people. Less Charles Bronson in Death Wish and more Siddhartha awoken to a world of suffering. Bruce himself plays the character of Bruce Wayne, the guy who isn't Batman, as a shallow, fun-loving playboy. I'm not so sure that's who he really would have been if his parents had lived, but it sometimes seems to be his fear. This, too, makes me see Bruce's origin as more about finding a purpose than consuming him with revenge. Rather than seeing Bruce as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to payback, I see him as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to saving others from the same fate.
Finally, I think the Batfamily also points away from a revenge narrative. Revenge, as illustrated in CoMC is about the past. Sidekicks, adopted children and young apprentices are about the future. People often joke about how for a lone hero Bruce is surrounded by kids—and that’s a pretty early development. More recent Bat books often show Bruce pushing people away, but it seems like he’s always clearly shown to be pushing them away out of a commitment to the mission if they’re civilians and the fear of losing them like he lost his first family if they’re family. Given the choice between revenge and something else it seems like Bruce easily chooses something else.
Bruce's protégés aren't about revenge—even Dick, who lost his parents similarly to the way Bruce did. They don't look to Bruce to teach them how to get revenge. The people of Gotham don’t seem to see Batman as a sort of Godfather figure who could get them payback. By contrast, Bruce not being able to turn these kids away is more proof of his impulse to protect the innocent being the driving force of his character.
Plus, it seems hard to sustain a revenge fantasy while also giving the character back the thing they're supposed to be avenging: family. If the idea is that Dick Grayson changed Bruce’s raison d’être that fundamentally, why did Bruce remain so focused on his mission? Seems like it’s easy to get into a Doylist/Watsonian dilemma there: If we’re taking the Doylist view, Batman was on his own for under a year before Robin, to whom readers reacted positively, which would imply that revenge-driven Batman is maybe more like gun-toting!Batman, just a kink that got worked out of the narrative early on and not an important part of his character. If we’re taking the Watsonian view, do the stories where Bruce takes Dick show a man exchanging revenge for something else? I have never gotten that impression. That ought to have caused quite a crisis in Bruce if it’s the basis of his mission, after all. Dick is almost always shown to change Bruce’s outlook, but why take Dick in at all in that scenario? (ASBAR’s explanation noticeably contradicts all canon to create a reason.)
Basically, I guess for me it comes to the simple idea that while a well-executed plan of revenge can be fun to watch and satisfying to experience an entire life devoted to revenge (and Batman is Bruce's life, just about) is a life unlived and I don’t think Batman was ever created to be that. While he may be an avenger, he is not a revenger. The two words began as synonyms, but now have very different connotations. They both imply punishment for harm, but avenge is associated with justice where revenge is associated with retaliation for personal wrongs. Justice can and often does get in the way of revenge. Often so does Bruce.
Now, yes, the word "avenge" (a similar but not the same word as revenge, at least in modern usage) is right there at the start of the story. Young Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered in front of him when he was a kid. He vowed "by the spirits of [his] parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of [his] life warring on all criminals." Does this mean that Bruce is at heart a revenge fantasy?
For me, that's problematic. I think Batman was always intended to be a hero, and a guy getting revenge is limited in how much of a hero he can be. Also while I understand choosing the larger target of "criminals" if you have anger issues rather than just targeting the guy who personally murdered your family, it seems like an odd choice to not have Bruce more motivated to find the guy who actually killed his family if it's about revenge. The satisfaction comes from the personal in a revenge story, so it makes sense to hit things in a personal way.
In a revenge fantasy, something was taken from the person and they are getting payback. The satisfaction for the viewer is in seeing that. They identify first with the feeling of having something taken and then the satisfaction of getting something back for it. To look at a classic revenge story, take Count of Monte Cristo. The reader suffers with Edmond as he's falsely accused and thrown into prison. Then we enjoy him using his treasure to get back at the people who did it to him--they deserve it, etc.
But someone fueled by revenge quickly drops off the hero scale, because they're just grabbing payment for their own trauma over and over. In the CoMC Edmond turns away from revenge, finally, at the point where his plan would probably lose him the sympathy of a lot of readers. He comes to a crossroads, iirc: does he follow through on his plan to its conclusion, getting payback that's poetically just from a person who hurt him (in this case unintentionally)? Or does he pull back and choose another way, forgiving the person and building a new life instead of punishing others for the one he lost? He could go either way, but only one lets him stay the hero he was at the beginning of the story. Before that his actions are all carefully planned as personal payback.
An adult who's just lost his/her spouse, home, child, has a formed personality that has now been shattered and remade out of those fresh emotions. With a kid, they're not formed yet. Often they barely had a personality in the story before their parents were murdered. Thus the trauma becomes part of who they are rather than a change.
This is the case with Bruce. Nearly the only thing we know for sure about him before he was orphaned was that he was rich and loved. Beyond that, writers have gone different ways. More than one, has made him bratty and entitled. Personally, I tend to think bratty+entitled+revenge would = even more bratty and entitled. Bruce Wayne is a multi-billionaire, but the one thing he doesn't have is parents so he punishes people for that. I just honestly don't think that idea would get us Batman. I also frankly wonder if it would get us Bruce Wayne the philanthropist who's very pro-rehabilitation for criminals.
In canon, from the beginning, I think we more often get the suggestion that Bruce is a greater man due to losing his parents. Far from making him more focused on himself by giving him an obsession with revenge, it gave him a purpose that was about other people. Less Charles Bronson in Death Wish and more Siddhartha awoken to a world of suffering. Bruce himself plays the character of Bruce Wayne, the guy who isn't Batman, as a shallow, fun-loving playboy. I'm not so sure that's who he really would have been if his parents had lived, but it sometimes seems to be his fear. This, too, makes me see Bruce's origin as more about finding a purpose than consuming him with revenge. Rather than seeing Bruce as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to payback, I see him as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to saving others from the same fate.
Finally, I think the Batfamily also points away from a revenge narrative. Revenge, as illustrated in CoMC is about the past. Sidekicks, adopted children and young apprentices are about the future. People often joke about how for a lone hero Bruce is surrounded by kids—and that’s a pretty early development. More recent Bat books often show Bruce pushing people away, but it seems like he’s always clearly shown to be pushing them away out of a commitment to the mission if they’re civilians and the fear of losing them like he lost his first family if they’re family. Given the choice between revenge and something else it seems like Bruce easily chooses something else.
Bruce's protégés aren't about revenge—even Dick, who lost his parents similarly to the way Bruce did. They don't look to Bruce to teach them how to get revenge. The people of Gotham don’t seem to see Batman as a sort of Godfather figure who could get them payback. By contrast, Bruce not being able to turn these kids away is more proof of his impulse to protect the innocent being the driving force of his character.
Plus, it seems hard to sustain a revenge fantasy while also giving the character back the thing they're supposed to be avenging: family. If the idea is that Dick Grayson changed Bruce’s raison d’être that fundamentally, why did Bruce remain so focused on his mission? Seems like it’s easy to get into a Doylist/Watsonian dilemma there: If we’re taking the Doylist view, Batman was on his own for under a year before Robin, to whom readers reacted positively, which would imply that revenge-driven Batman is maybe more like gun-toting!Batman, just a kink that got worked out of the narrative early on and not an important part of his character. If we’re taking the Watsonian view, do the stories where Bruce takes Dick show a man exchanging revenge for something else? I have never gotten that impression. That ought to have caused quite a crisis in Bruce if it’s the basis of his mission, after all. Dick is almost always shown to change Bruce’s outlook, but why take Dick in at all in that scenario? (ASBAR’s explanation noticeably contradicts all canon to create a reason.)
Basically, I guess for me it comes to the simple idea that while a well-executed plan of revenge can be fun to watch and satisfying to experience an entire life devoted to revenge (and Batman is Bruce's life, just about) is a life unlived and I don’t think Batman was ever created to be that. While he may be an avenger, he is not a revenger. The two words began as synonyms, but now have very different connotations. They both imply punishment for harm, but avenge is associated with justice where revenge is associated with retaliation for personal wrongs. Justice can and often does get in the way of revenge. Often so does Bruce.
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I especially liked this and I think Less Charles Bronson in Death Wish and more Siddhartha awoken to a world of suffering. is brilliant.
In canon, from the beginning, I think we more often get the suggestion that Bruce is a greater man due to losing his parents. Far from making him more focused on himself by giving him an obsession with revenge, it gave him a purpose that was about other people. Less Charles Bronson in Death Wish and more Siddhartha awoken to a world of suffering. Bruce himself plays the character of Bruce Wayne, the guy who isn't Batman, as a shallow, fun-loving playboy. I'm not so sure that's who he really would have been if his parents had lived, but it sometimes seems to be his fear. This, too, makes me see Bruce's origin as more about finding a purpose than consuming him with revenge. Rather than seeing Bruce as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to payback, I see him as a guy who was wronged and devoted himself to saving others from the same fate.
Yes! And VERY good point about how--the whole things been rewritten just lately by this attitude that Dick, as the first Robin, brought this huge change to Batman. When... he didn't, in canon. He just didn't. The stories that show Bruce taking Dick in don't show a man exchanging a revenge fantasy because of Robin, and they also show, right from the very beginning, very popular beginning--show a hero.
I agree that as soon as you take away the heroism from a character, as you show with the Count of Monte Cristo, you lose reader commitment to the character. We want heroes! We just do. Readers do want heroes, and Batman is not a revenge fantasy. I actually think that seeing him AS a revenge fantasy is really kind of odd, as it doesn't match what we see in canon. He's been written as a hero for 71 years.
And very good point about Bruce taking in these kids, and not teaching his protégés about revenge at all. Plus, as you say, nobody in Gotham thinks of Batman as some guy who gets payback. They do see him as a guy that takes down criminals.
I also like the point about his work as Bruce Wayne (and to a pretty big extent, even canonically, as Batman) to rehabilitate criminals. I can think of so many stories right off the top of my head where he tries to rehabilitate generic criminals and low-level thugs as well as where he tries to rehabilitate and/or convince Harvey Dent or the Joker or Catwoman or Poison Ivy or Maxie Zeus to change for good. That's a big, big part of his story--Bruce or Batman working for and pretty desperately wanting criminals to turn their lives around for the better. (We've seen his disappointment and inner pain when they don't, too.) There's no way that meshes with a revenge fantasy.
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I guess for me, probably because I've always been so Robin-centric, it just always seemed like a big part of his personality. Not that he had him, but that he would take him in to begin with. I guess I always thought it had to be an extension of his mission to want to care for a kid in that position, even if also he was getting something from that. There's just a lot of ways to get it. But being in fandom and seeing a lot of different takes on the guy I start to know that there's a lot of different views of him, especially when it comes to his mission and others etc.
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I said I think he definitely started out as a little boy's revenge fantasy, but when Bruce came to understand that he was not targetting 'this criminal' or 'this family' and instead the more amaphorous 'Crime' and 'injustice' (much more so the former, however), then it became a perpetualized mission. Vengeance (avenging or revenging) has a specific, attainable goal. Missions have less specific goals, more in the 'you'll know it when you get there' sort of range.
So in short, I agreed with you both. It also really depends on the Batman story you're reading/watching. 'Begins' is definitely a vengeance tale in the beginning, but by the end he's a man who has found his mission.
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Like, I would assume that in the years between the murders and Bruce's becoming Batman he probably went through lots of different stages including revenge. That's how I imagine it, but that's me filling in.
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Have you seen Kick-Ass? There's a pretty prominent revenge fantasy story in that (that's the good part of the movie and it was completely awesome).
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