Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bat?

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bat?

  • Submitted By: amillus
  • Date Submitted: 12/03/2013 9:07 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 990
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 1

Heroes are not supposed to do bad things; that’s what villains are for. “In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero’s not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He’s one dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.” – Marilyn Manson.
In Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman is corrupt and he operates outside of the law and he has no regard for how his actions will affect others. He is trying to help the city but in doing so he creates more problems. Batman is not the hero that he envisions himself to be, but in fact he has become one of the very villains he is trying to stop.
A hero is a person who can make the right decision, and if they have made a poor decision they can accept the consequences. Their actions benefit society; hero’s should act in a manner in which solves a problem but also their actions must inspire similar beneficial acts in others. Whereas villains use psychological torture to push their foes over the edge and they lack empathy to see their actions as cruel and vicious. A villain dedicates enormous amounts of time and effort to plotting and arranging the demise of their nemesis.

Batman takes things to the extreme while he tortures a mutant to get the information from him. There are really no other options to get information from him in a timely manner but the method in which it is carried out is a bit over the top. “It was tough work, carrying two hundred and twenty pounds of sociopath to the top of Gotham Towers—The highest spot in the city. The scream alone was worth it.” (pg. 68) I would argue that in some instances torture is a necessary evil but that doesn’t mean that the person carrying out the torture should enjoy it as much as he does. Batman appears to enjoy inflicting pain and torture a little too much. It’s almost like he doesn’t have a conscious, or at least one he listens to. Especially in his fight against the...

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