My brother in Christ, Batman is a billionaire CEO.
If Batman were real today, he'd go after the CEOs of companies, not gangsters.
Submitted 4 months ago by WarmSoda@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 4 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Batman was a CEO of a company.
pyre@lemmy.world 4 months ago
not to mention he’s a psycho himself. instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons while letting the biggest maniacs and the ones leading these gangs run away every time.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 months ago
instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons
Some of the better Batman comics introduce him as skilled detective, rather than a superhero whose power is infinite money.
Like any good crime thriller, his work starts with some innocuous crime or tragedy that gets swiftly covered up by corrupt police. Batman steps in as a noir vigilante, listening to the witnesses everyone else ignored and tracing the crime back to the low-level thugs who serve as pawns in a much bigger game. He extorts them for information in order to move on to bigger fish - the crime boss who runs the docks or the sleazy businessman who thought he could pay to make a problem go away - and uncovers a deeper systematic corruption. He runs into various freaks and geeks - your two-faced DA or your web-fingered club owner - who facilitate the city-spanning crime. And, in the climax, he discovers the whole system is rotten, even to the point where his own Wayne Enterprises is complicit in these cruelties.
He discovers the limits of vigilantism, its not just a question of biting into a few bad apples, but tearing the rotten tree out of the earth root-and-branch. And he realizes its too much for one man to change. So he goes back to that first original witness/victim, and he brings him back to his cave. And he sets himself to training this survivor of a broken system how to fight crime like he does.
The best Batman stories aren’t the ones where he punches a Clown Prince out of a factory window. Its ones in which he pulls another scared child out of the wreckage of his parents’ home and gives him a second chance at life.
SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
I don’t mean to direct this at only you, but I hate this take. There are plenty of comics that dive into this, him using his wealth to help Gotham, the city just had too many problems. Court of Owls for instance, the group that is always watching Gotham and influencing it state and its key figures.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Well he did have his parents murdered in front of him as a child.
That shit twists people.
III@lemmy.world 4 months ago
instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change
Do we know this? I don’t follow the comics at all but do they ever go into the things Bruce Wayne does as CEO of Wayne Enterprises? I can’t fathom we have gone decades without someone touching on this.
Sabata11792@ani.social 4 months ago
They don’t fight their own kind.
criitz@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Batman WAS the CEO of companies
xantoxis@lemmy.world 4 months ago
And there’s no solidarity like class solidarity. Remember Ellen Degeneres hanging out with Bush? Bruce Wayne would’ve been in that skybox too.
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
“Dark Knight Rises” plot is basically “Bane starts a revolution of the people, and a billionaire must stop him”.
expatriado@lemmy.world 4 months ago
self punch then?
Montagge@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Yes the billionaire that spent a shit ton on money on gadgets to beat up poor people would definitely be a champion of the people
WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 4 months ago
He also beats up rich people, like the Penguin.thr Joker and Riddler and all those guys get their crazy gadgets and hordes of minions somehow. They must be rich af
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Upper middle class. They’ve got the kind of money Al Capone had, not the kind of money Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.
Batman generally leaves Lex Luthor, who does have that kind of money, alone.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
But all those are poor people who got rich via crime since they didn’t really have other avenues.
The Batman lore has a lot of hidden messages about social class and hierarchy which doesn’t translate well to today.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 4 months ago
That’s what happens if you take all your knowledge from memes. Good luck.
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Are we going to pretend that Wayne Enterprises isn’t likely 1 of those 100?
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
I think that’s kinda the point of the comic…
Artyom@lemm.ee 4 months ago
In most Batman lore, I’d expect Wayne Enterprises to be #1 out of those 100.
Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No he won’t, batman fulfills every billionaires fantasy of dressing up in a costume and beating up poor people.
AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yes. Not one really questions why Gotham has such a high crime rate, but where there’s poverty there’s crime. I think we need a working man’s batman.
Someone whose super power isn’t having infinite resources.
Zorque@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That’s the internet pop-psychologist interpretation, but the people actually writing him often have him doing his best to better the Gotham around him. A lot of the petty thugs he catches are given chances to redeem themselves via Wayne based welfare programs.
nednobbins@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The former richest man in the world gave away much of his fortune and continues to do so. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Wealth_and_p…
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He’s in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.
emax_gomax@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You’re aware he is a CEO of a company?
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I thought Lucius Fox was the CEO. Bruce Wayne is chair of the board.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 4 months ago
Depends on the particular telling I think. DC has IIRC gone both ways with that.
emax_gomax@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Huh, maybe. Although my point was more batman is part of that class (albeit begrudgingly) so expecting batman in a position of great power and influence to actively take that from other people is just very hypocritical. Not that he shouldn’t (or someone shouldn’t). Just a very weird position.
Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
Batman is a CEO, right?
He just goes after the ones he can beat without much backlash from the public/system.
Imagine if he takes down a CEO. He’d not be able to play batman. Gordon and batman sympathisers would be affected, so Batman’s human connection in the police would be lost. He can hack stuff, but might not always be enough.
He can do other stuff, but he can only do it gradually and much more tactfully.
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
He did take down Lau in the dark knight tho.
Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
Lau laundered money for the mob and also was Chinese.
I don’t think the public/mainstream would have issues there, where he goes after the non-native guy who laundered money for the mob.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You’ve got Batman mixed up with the Punisher, OP.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Or Green Arrow, really.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That would work too.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Isn’t Queen also a billionaire CEO…?
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 months ago
No, Poison Ivy.
Stern@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Like Lex Luthor, who hes fought on several occasions? Or more like the Court of Owls, one of his recurring set of villains?
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Also the Penguin
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Penguin is a mobster first and wealthy second, as a result of being a successful mobster.
IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Why do you people make up such obviously false head cannon. This is degenerate shit lol.
AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 months ago
In sans serif fonts, it can be hard to distinguish capital i from lowercase L.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 months ago
Yes!
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
I think more Superman.
He is just a working class guy, both his wife and his own job are probably getting replaced by AI, his mother pension keeps getting lower and his dad died because he couldn’t afford proper healthcare.
Also his arch nemesis is already a Billionaire.
kandoh@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Martha and Pa both got hooked on Oxy in the 00s, nothing Superman can do about it. He tries writing a big expose as Clark Kent but the Planet kills the story because Perdue buys a lot of ad space with them.
Public got too weird about Supergirl, forcing her to retire as incels kept jumping off of buildings so they could grope her when she saved them.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Bruce is a billionaire. He’s on their side.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
And remember, there’s no ethical billionaires, no matter how much philanthropy they do. Their billions are out there exploiting people.
BugKilla@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Philanthropy is just the wealthy justifying their tax avoidance by wanking publically about how giving they are. If they were genuine about their concerns for giving back, they would pay their fucking taxes and at a higher rate. Tax avoidance and financial shit fuckery like corporate bailouts, share buy backs and COVID payments accelerate wealth acruell and drive up inflation and wage stagnation. Fuck. Them. All.
thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
this. here’s proof x.com/PeoplesMomentum/status/1194221297603088386?…
masquenox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
If Batman was real today, he’d be Donald Trump.
That’s what these (alleged) “super heroes” really are… idealized, ubermensch-esque metaphors for the actual power wielded by the rich and privileged.
In fact, I’d say that Batman is the ultimate Objectivist wet dream - he perfectly personifies the fascist (as Batman) and the capitalist (as Bruce Wayne) in one person. Even Ayn Rand’s creepazoid ancap sugar-daddy “heroes” didn’t manage that.
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
Captain America is an artificial warrior created by a Jewish scientist to fight the Nazis, and Superman is a baby sent away in a basket to be raised by not-dead parents who chose to use his privilege to help people.
Zack Snyder is an Objectivist and that’s why his Superman movies stink. He doesn’t understand the core themes of superheroes, he only understands the spectacle and surface theatrics.
Zahille7@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I like Superman Returns, and I don’t care who knows it. Brandon Routh did a fine job imo.
I know it’s unrelated but your comment made me think of it.
masquenox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
I mean… c’mon. Captain America is low-hanging fruit - the correlation between Captain America and actual US behavior in the world essentially writes itself.
Superman is a far more sophisticated representation of US-style liberalism - but, just like liberalism itself, that doesn’t make Super Cheese any less of a reactionary.
However… we can talk about the individual politics of these characters all day long - and we’d be missing the entire point of the metaphor in it’s entirety.
The problem with the “super hero” genre is not the individual politics of the characters concerned - it’s with how they normalize and justify the concentration of power in the hands of these exalted individuals.
In other words - the problem is fundamental.
He doesn’t understand the core themes of superheroes,
I think he understand them perfectly, because…
Zack Snyder is an Objectivist
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Superman was already going after CEOs when Baam was first created. Batman was always a hero for the right wing.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Is this a ThinBlueLine x Punisher crossover episode?
queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
CEOs of companies existed in 1939, and did before. 1939 would have been the time of the great depression, World War 2, fascism, and Batman didn’t go after them, he went after the people who needed work and took the last chance they had.
Bruce Wayne is just a form of Bill Gates. Donates millions to charity, good causes, hospitals, fighting diseases, but he still has lots of more money than when he did before all this “charity”. The difference is that Gates doesn’t put on a mask and go punch the poor of Seattle.
If Batman was real, he’d be a dickhead, worse than Musk or Bezos.
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Yeah because when I think of the working class I think lunatics dressed like clowns arming chemical weapon dispersing explosives on the orders of a guy who caught a chemical burn induced skin condition and decided everyone was gonna die suffocating over it.
Batman is a detective, a detective! 99% of what he does has nothing to do with fighting, you just don’t hate read the detective work because Batman going out of his way to find the murderer of some nobody with nobody to care enough to ask it be done doesn’t feed this bizarre obsession some folks have with making Batman the worst thing ever because he has money as a plot convenience to explain where all his insane tech comes from.
Also, he does constantly do work addressing wealth inequality by backing community efforts to relieve the effects of poverty and by championing community leaders standing up to corruption. Why doesn’t it work? Because there’s a literal criminal conspiracy of the wealthiest of Gotham dating back centuries that most recent versions of Batman has been at war with since near the outset of his investigative career. Again, read any of the comic books published in the last like 20 years and this would all be entry level stuff.
Also, Gotham’s gangs are not normal gangs, like I exampled above, but also consider the sheer level of advanced education or ability to outsmart most folks who have one Gotham’s criminal leaders have. Even Joker is heavily implied to have retained advanced chemical engineering training from before he went psycho.
If the idea that even one rich person has genuinely good intentions and does genuine work addressing the causes of criminal activity at every level is that hard for people to grasp, maybe just put the comics down and find another topic because man are you all gonna struggle with basically everything else you’re gonna find in the genre.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Why doesn’t it work? Because there’s a literal criminal conspiracy of the wealthiest of Gotham dating back centuries that most recent versions of Batman has been at war with since near the outset of his investigative career.
Also, Gotham is literally cursed
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I had an upvote on your comment until the last paragraph. But that’s a bad last paragraph.
Batman is a good person and that’s why it’s fiction.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Batman is a detective, a detective! 99% of what he does has nothing to do with fighting
Wayne’s a deranged lunatic. 99% of what he does has everything to do with failing to cope with childhood trauma (and a bad case of affluenza), and very little to do with any real events happening around him.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Watch The Boys
Foni@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I once read that Superman was a humble man who faces big exploitative businessmen, while Batman is a big exploitative businessman who stands up to homeless people. The implications of Batman being more popular than Superman today and what this says about our society is enough for a complete essay.
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Or Batman’s more popular because he’s a more interesting character. Superman can only experience kryptonite so many times before you start to suspect he never actually left the planet Krypton.
Foni@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Maybe, or maybe they have bad writers because they are not able to imagine credible stories in which Superman’s strength is useless in the face of the corruption of the system and the businessmen who abuse their power, no one would believe stories like that, you need to add kryptonite to make it realistic
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 months ago
You’re thinking of Poison Ivy.
Delusional@lemmy.world 4 months ago
And politicians. Clearly corrupt republican politicians who are trying to destroy democracy for some reason.
assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No he won’t. Batman wasn’t the good guy
XiozTzu@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Who you want is Rorschach as others have pointed out Batman is part of the problem. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_(character)
Enkrod@feddit.org 4 months ago
FUCK NO!
Rorschach is a fascist, he only works in absolutes and while the Batman tries not to kill, Rorschach has no such regard for human life. He detests the junky as much as the murderer, for him there is only pureness and evil, every little bit of amoral behavior will be punished and at the same time he considers his own vigilantism as above the law.
He’s a misogynist who thinks that the Comedian raping Silk Spectre was just a “moral lapse”. He holds even for his time outdated socially conservative views and strongly opposes what we would call (gender and sexual) minority rights.
Rorschach is unbending and uncompromising, he is beholden only to his conservative rigid views of black and white morality with no room for shades of grey. That might not sound so bad at first, but if you think about it, that is definitely not someone who you want as a judge of people.
On top of that he’s a far-right believer, he’s not a government man in the same way the alt-right are not. His thinking is deeply conspiratorial and paranoid with a huge dollop of delusion. He’s better described as an Ayn Rand paleolibertarian.
Thinking about it he definitely would fit right in with today’s alt-right with the only difference that (if - and only if - he would not buy into their conspiracy theories - and he’s very much likely to do so) he would detest Trump for his lying.
But Rorschach is definitely the kinda guy who’d shoot up a pizza place looking for tortured kids in the basement.
SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
Aye. Anyone who idolizes Rorschach is the same person who idolizes Tyler Durden — they’ve missed the entire point of the character in the story.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Didn’t the whole TV sequel be about how the Rorschach fanboys became a bunch of nazi terrorists?
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Rorschach is Batman but worse in every single way. All the childhood trauma and mental illness without any of the money, good manners, or training, and with several extra doses of far right conspiranoia.
If you read Rorschach as the good guy in Watchmen, you completely misinterpreted what Moore was trying to say. If there’s any good guys in Watchmen (or at least not bad guys), and that’s a big if, it’s the folks around the newsstand, obviously not counting Kovacs.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“They’re the same picture.”
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Pretty sure theres a lot of batman media that confirms that people hate him because he basically just protects the rich. They even call him a billionaire playboy.
kandoh@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Yeah I was thinking about this in regards to superhero relevance.
A relevant Spider-Man story today would be one in which Spider-Man is saving people from the NYPD. Webbing up cops doing stop and frisk, terrorizing a racist cop, fucking with the mayor who shut down libraries on Sundays.
nieceandtows@programming.dev 4 months ago
So, seppuku then?
Emmy@lemmy.nz 4 months ago
Like Bruce never engaged in union busting. He’s literally one of the billionaire class.
He regularly aligns himself with other upper class people to take over the city.
Hell, he has his own gang.
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
This is why I’m so excited for Batman Azteca. Aztec warrior Batman killing colonisers like the insane conquistadore Two-Face
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Inb4 the flood of people who get all their batman knowledge from the Nolan trilogy and the stupid one liners they added to Injustice to try and whataboutism him against superman literally murdering people and installing a fascist autocracy.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
No. Unequivocally no. This might make sense on its face but it misunderstands Batman at a fundamental level- Batman is a hero who cannot make sense. He is severely mentally ill and craves change physically and instantly wrought by his own two hands.
If a CEO were doing something outlandishly and visibly evil then they might find themselves on Batman’s radar, but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about. Would it make sense for Batman to do something about it? Yes. Absolutely. Would the crazy 100 kg gymnast dressed like a giant bat, who has made a nightly ritual of shattering the spines of impoverished criminal dockworkers do that? No.
Now daredevil, daredevil might find himself beating the ass off a shady Manhattan CEO. But daredevil is sane, reasonable, and goal oriented and Batman is just not.
ch00f@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yeah, doesn’t the dude consider Batman his true identity and Bruce Wayne the costume?
projectmoon@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Depends on the continuity and who’s writing it, but often yes. He was notably portrayed this way in the Justice League cartoon.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
In most versions, yes. He’s just survivor’s guilt held together by a ceaseless run of violent distractions and related obsessions. Not the one to call on your union busting boss.
Carighan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
In fact, being a mega-rich himself, he’s probably best buddies with those CEOs so long as they don’t do something so outlandishly evil that he has to go after them for publicity reasons.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Yeah, dude’s the night, not the IRS or the better business bureau.