If Nietzsche Wrote Batman, It Would Look Like ‘Gotham’

Even the most casual fan knows that Batman became a vigilante because, when he was a boy, his parents were murdered before his eyes: It’s a scene that has been shot perhaps too many times. Why, though, did the gunman pull the trigger?

On “Tonight’s the Night”, the episode of the television show Gotham that aired earlier this week, young Bruce Wayne was literally inches away from proof of what the show has hinted since its start—that  this was no chance robbery-gone-wrong, but rather part of a sinister conspiracy. A change seemingly made as a plot thickener, this plot twist has deep implications for the Batman narrative, ones that fatally undermine the show. The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last called Christopher Nolan’s cinematic Batman “the only pulp hero worth considering on a philosophical level”; this week’s simple plot alteration prevents Gotham from living up to the same standard.

If, as earlier iterations of the Batman narrative have suggested, a panicked robber shot Bruce Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha, then Batman’s desire for revenge can develop naturally into a passion for justice. Nolan traced this moral growth in Batman Begins, and showed that while Batman was willing to go beyond the law to uphold it, his motivations and concerns were resonant with those of the soldiers, prosecutors, and police who entered their professions to serve and protect. Batman is not so much a person as a symbol, a role that could be stepped into by any person with sufficient motivation and resources, as the Batman Incorporated comic series makes clear.

But (as has been noted) by turning the murder into a conspiracy, Bruce Wayne’s focus shifts from redeeming the ordinary injustice of a flawed society towards uncovering sinister machinations and hidden plots. This breaks the continuity of Wayne’s motives and interests with his fellow-citizens and places the spotlight on the villains.

Batman—a.k.a. The Dark Knight—has always inhabited a grittier moral realm than, say, Superman or Iron Man. But Gotham has taken “realism” in its depictions of evil to an extreme, depicting actions and characters that are implausibly depraved. Eyes and hands are removed with gusto; civic leaders are kidnapped and tortured; mothers are shot and stabbed in front of their sons; patricide and matricide are practically de rigueur. Sinister European monks? Christian Grey re-imagined as a sexy S&M serial killer? Check and check.

Nolan’s Batman faced down depravity too, of course. But his enemies, the Joker and Bane, were a means for reflection on human nature in a meaningful and ultimately hopeful way. The Joker sought to prove to Batman that the average citizen would be willing to kill an innocent to save his own life, but his hostages on the ferries all risked their lives by refusing to murder.

And while Bane was successful in inciting an upheaval that resembled the early days of the French Revolution, he ultimately was defeated not just by Batman, but also by the ‘silent majority’ which found its strength and attacked his army. Each of Nolan’s villains sought to win a moral victory and crush Batman’s belief that Gotham was worth saving; each rebuttal was a defense of the moral worth of even flawed societies.

By contrast, the common man in Gotham is there only as helpless victim or possible future villain. When an escaped psychopath is stabbed to death on live TV, his maniacal dying laughter is enough to cause people all over the city to laugh and stab as well. Then there’s the noble Detective Jim Gordon. Rather than doing police work to bring down his corrupt boss, he stoops to blackmail and murder. Later, he seems not at all troubled by his moral compromises, just a bit worried that it might get out.

As thirty-second Hollywood elevator pitches go, the one for the Gotham TV series must have been a compelling one: “It’s a Batman show without ever showing Batman—the whole story is about the city’s descent and the boy’s growth.” But Batman has always been a stand-in for our culture’s efforts to understand human nature. If Gotham has a thesis about human nature, it is that we are all just a few steps away from depravity. There’s no sense of the implications for society when goodness is lost, and, ultimately, very little reason for us to care whether or not Bruce Wayne will fight for Gotham’s soul, or redeem his own.