The other day, I opened up the YouTube app on my iPad Mini and it recommended a video to me featuring a UK-based American comic called Reginald D. Hunter who, in the clip explains that Bruce Wayne is a rich white guy who beats up street criminals and how Batman is a conservative’s wet dream.
And when you stop and think about it, he’s 100% right. Bruce Wayme is a disgustingly rich guy who can afford to spend millions on the Batmobile, the Batwing, the Batcopter, an endless supply of batarangs, all the equipment in the Bat Cave, and more.
Wouldn’t those millions be better spent helping to fund schools in Gotham’s poorest neighborhoods? Schools that could provide a good education so that kids don’t grow up to be thugs like the one that killed Bruce’s parents. Hell, he could fund after school programs so that poor kids have some place to go and won’t get mixed up with the bad elements in Gotham. He could also fund a jobs program to help poor folks train to get jobs or HEY how about Wayne use those detective skills to find or even creat new jobs to hire those poor folks that are so desperate for work that they turn to illegal stuff?
Or, you know, he could dress up in a bat costume and beat on thugs. Which ever works better, I guess.
Seriously, I’m not a fan of Batman anymore because of this obvious truth: criminals largely exist because there are not enough legal opportunities for poor kids growing up and adults who grew up poor. The whole super-hero concept plays on the fantasy that violence against violence could make a difference when, obviously, it will, at best, prolong the violence, or even make it worse.
I know I sound like a bleeding-heart liberal, but do the math. Crime will always exist, but in tight communities with plenty of opportunities to make a good living, they put walls and gates up to keep people without those opportunities from getting in. So, if you think there isn’t a correlation between money/opportunities and poverty/street-crime I think you’re just plain batty.
via thepete.com http://thepete.com/why-i-dont-like-batman-as-a-character-anymore/
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