Batman has a <\/em>long, long history. In the 1960s he was mostly known as a campy television star, but in the \u201880s, the comics took a decidedly darker slant. In Frank Miller\u2019s The Dark Knight Returns<\/em>, Batman is a bloodthirsty cynic on the warpath. He wears an armored suit, refers to Robin as his \u201csoldier,\u201d and beats people senseless. If this sounds familiar, it\u2019s because this pivotal comic – and much of Frank Miller\u2019s work on the character – has been the reference point for most recent Batman screen adaptations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Batman: The Animated Series<\/em> stands apart, existing in the shadow of the \u201880s comics and ignoring them in favor of other influences. There\u2019s the influence of Tim Burton\u2019s Batman films. The theme song – a variation on the Danny Elfman theme – promises moodiness and excitement, and in that, there\u2019s a path that leads to the series\u2019 other cinematic influences. The show was scored mostly by Shirley Walker, who\u2019d worked with Danny Elfman on Burton\u2019s 1989 Batman<\/em>. Walker\u2019s work on the score doesn\u2019t just riff on the gothic tones set by Elfman; it also branches out into other directions, with organs and piano, stringed instruments and dark, majestic brass all bringing to mind alleyways, smokey rooms and car chases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each episode had its own score, which was unusual at the time, and points towards the showrunners\u2019 goal of having every episode be a \u201cmini-movie.\u201d Some are dark comedies, others are mysteries, others tragedies. Head writer Paul Dini referenced Hitchcock and film noir, and aimed to have each mini-movie work within a three-act structure. The cinematic foundation – in the writing, the music, and the art – provides the series with an emotional core that allows its characterization of Bruce to stand apart in our collective memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gotham City exists outside of time. Architecture, technology, and fashion are a mash-up of the \u201830s, \u201840s, and \u201890s. Art Deco buildings loom over black and red horizons, invoking the art of Hugh Ferriss. The moon is stark white, glowing with just enough light to make out a masked face. The walls of the cave, painted on black and shaded in blues and greys, are fantastically large. It looks lonely. Less like a superhero\u2019s headquarters, and more like a place for a ghost to haunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Act 1: A Man<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The show is largely contained to the streets and alleys of Gotham, so Batman isn\u2019t watching over the world like an all-seeing god. The smaller scale means the character can function on a more human-to-human level. This version of Bruce is a father, and he laughs, sometimes. Here is Batman – a specter of hope and fear, lingering in alleyways and between street lamps. Here is Bruce Wayne, friend, father, child, man, abstraction. Existing as best he can. Voiced by Kevin Conroy, Bruce is sarcastic and lighthearted, while Batman is calm and intimidating. Both sides of him can be warm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The show is not preoccupied with Bruce Wayne\u2019s wealth or gadgets, but rather with the connections that he forms. While Nolan\u2019s Batman films have scenes showing off the militaristic \u201ctumbler,\u201d the animated series has an episode dedicated to Batman protecting the mechanics who designed his car. And instead of a traitorous femme fatale, or a cold-blooded detective leading the narrative, there\u2019s just Bruce and the people he wants to protect. He\u2019s not made into a hero because of his technology, but because of his ability to endure, his talent for compassion, and his unfaltering determination. Strip the character of his gadgetry, and he is just a man who gives a shit. It\u2019s the platonic ideal of Batman, a character who has morphed a hundred times over in the past eighty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BTAS<\/em> is home to the platonic ideal of a lot of characters; people who have remolded themselves in hurt. There\u2019s Harley Quinn, who is changed by toxic love rather than toxic waste; Arleen Sorkin\u2019s performance evokes Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950), instantly bringing to mind Billie\u2019s wit and her suffocating relationship with an abusive gangster. Harley is lovably daffy and ultra-violent, a psychiatrist turned moll turned supervillain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s Harvey Dent (Richard Moll), whose transformation is rooted in his anger \u2014 something that he fears and wants to hide. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with getting help,\u201d Bruce tells him when he reveals that he sees a therapist. But Harvey hates himself too much, fears his anger to the point it took on a life of its own, and Bruce is left as one of the only people who sees that, and cares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no investment in the idea of criminality here. Batman doesn\u2019t think of each episode\u2019s villain as enemies to obliterate because they commit crimes. Batman: The Animated Series<\/em> is concerned with two things: identity and compassion. Episodes are studded with Batman\u2019s common refrain of \u201cWhy?\u201d Who are we, and why? How can we come to understand each other, recognize pain, and extend a hand towards one another? Bruce spends hours in his cave poring over textbooks and journals, looking for a way to help Two Face turn back into Harvey Dent. An episode is spent on Harley Quinn\u2019s release from Arkham Asylum, on which Batman congratulates her. He wants people to heal, in the ways he thinks he can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bruce is concerned with who he is now, and who he wants to become. When Scarecrow manages to send him into a state of panic, it isn\u2019t that night in the alleyway that he thinks of. Instead he thinks of his father and imagines that he would be disappointed in him. It\u2019s enough to make him cower until a burst of self-certainty pulls through. To himself, he says, \u201cI am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman!\u201d You would think he\u2019d bellow it, an intimidating threat for anyone around to hear it. Instead, he says it quietly. He has to tell himself who he is, and who he\u2019s decided to become. He doesn\u2019t mourn who he was anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Act 2: Justice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The man who killed Bruce\u2019s parents is never seen in the animated series. He\u2019s never even spoken of. There is no episode dedicated to Batman\u2019s origin, no reference to an alleyway, or The Mark of Zorro<\/em>, or pearls. What matters most is that we understand that at some point, something happened to Bruce. Something that made him transform himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His parents\u2019 murderer is not who motivates him. Bruce is not turned into Batman by one man with a gun. It\u2019s a self-motivated transformation, an exorcism of fear and pain that makes him into Batman. Bruce, in several instances across the Batman canon, will often speak of criminals as a whole class of people upon whom he has declared war, starting with his parents\u2019 killer. But in BTAS<\/em>, he doesn\u2019t become Batman to hunt down anyone \u2013 he becomes Batman to stop other vulnerable people from getting hurt, often including the so-called villains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He is determined to protect. Rather than a violent sadist, this version of Batman is optimistic to a fault. He trusts Harley Quinn when he probably shouldn\u2019t, and roots for Harvey Dent\u2019s recovery. It is never punishment that he desires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this show\u2019s world, justice comes from helping and protecting others. Is it not just, to protect others the way you wish you\u2019d been protected? Is it not just, to believe in second chances for ourselves? A lack of justice is a lack of understanding, and lack of protection; a lack of kindness for those who have been hurt. Bruce doesn\u2019t hate and mistrust the world, he hates the pain he suffered, hates the pain he can\u2019t stop seeing everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One character, Lock-Up (Bruce Weitz), is an abusive Arkham warden who is fired and reinvents himself as a vigilante jailer. In a nod to the colossal impact of Frank Miller\u2019s work, Lock-Up is written the way Bruce was in the 80s \u2014 a fascist, wanna-be cop. Watching the news, Lock-Up seethes, \u201cIt all starts with the permissive, liberal media.\u201d He is written in the show as Batman\u2019s antithesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As he and the Caped Crusader fight, Batman\u2019s voice is searing. \u201cI was born to fight your brand of order,\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ve seen how you treat your prisoners. Forgotten, and scared. Without hope or compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lock-Up laments, \u201cCan it be you actually care for those creatures?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, he does. That\u2019s the whole point of Batman in this series. Somebody cares. He puts on the cloak and the mask, and he places a comforting hand on the shoulder of the scared and the hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Act 3: The Night<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Emmy award-winning episodes \u201cRobin\u2019s Reckoning Part I\u201d and \u201cPart II\u201d, Bruce\u2019s desire for vengeance boils over. It coats his mouth, coats every word he says. The episodes\u2019 narrative is framed by flashbacks, switching from a present-day Gotham City guarded by Batman and his college-aged Robin (Loren Lester), to a past where Robin did not yet exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In these flashbacks, Dick Grayson (Joey Simmrin), child acrobat, is orphaned during a circus performance. A mobster cuts the trapeze ropes and he watches as his parents fall to their deaths. On-screen, the trapeze swings across the screen, his parents’ shadows floating by. Then, the audience erupts into gasps. A torn rope swings back into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bruce Wayne is in the audience and offers to take the boy in, unknowingly kickstarting the development of Robin the vigilante sidekick. Robin in BTAS <\/em> isn\u2019t just a silly second banana, as in the 1960s show, or non-existent, as in most Batman films. Thematically, he is the reflection of Bruce\u2019s trauma. Narratively, he becomes Bruce\u2019s son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dick moves into Bruce\u2019s childhood room. The bed is huge but is still swallowed up in the enormity of the bedroom, painted in slate gray and blue. A giant portrait of Bruce\u2019s parents hangs over the fireplace. Dick sits on his too-big bed, alone. He eats dinner at a mile-long table, alone. Bruce is enraged, consumed with the desire to find Tony Zucco, the mobster who killed the Graysons over petty protection money. It\u2019s as if he has regressed, emotionally sent back in time to when his own parents\u2019 death was still fresh. He spends every waking moment hunting the man down, thinking this will cure Dick\u2019s sadness. Then he\u2019s reminded that for a little boy, a family means more than vengeance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Batman\u2019s great accomplishment in these episodes isn\u2019t the apprehension of Tony Zucco. His achievement is giving up chasing Zucco to protect and care for the boy he\u2019d just taken in, raising him into a young man who is happier than he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one flashback, young Dick Grayson, newly orphaned and adopted, asks Bruce about his parents\u2019 death. \u201cDoes the hurt ever go away?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wish I could say it does. But it will get better with time, for you. That I promise,\u201d Bruce replies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stories, no matter how sad, always seem impossibly threaded with hope. Kevin Conroy voices his character with so much warmth and certainty that it makes you sure that things will be okay. Even when Bruce admits in \u201cRobin\u2019s Reckoning\u201d that things didn\u2019t get better for him, his assurances feel sincere. He\u2019s made it this far, and so will you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Batman is a symbol of survival. Batman\u2019s a power fantasy. For some, he can be a specific kind of power fantasy \u2014 the kind of power that means hurting others to feel good about yourself; a symbol of control over others, a tyrant rather than a protector. For others, he\u2019s a power fantasy about wealth, a man with bottomless pockets to fund every technological whimsy one could have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in the animated series, he\u2019s a fantasy of resilience. To take control of your life, to snatch it back from whoever dared to interfere. It\u2019s a fantasy on the micro-level. He is vengeance, he is the night.<\/em> It speaks to the desire to rip the night straight out of the hands of whoever made it terrifying for us. To not just be unafraid, but to be comfortable in our fears, and let them cloak us. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/batman2-1024x576.jpg\")
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