Rant #1: Shallow
by The Old Maid
August 16th, 2002
Did you ever watch BATMAN : THE ANIMATED SERIES? Silly question.
B:TAS had it all : complex characters exploring psychological and
moral issues. Suspense. Mystery. Just enough humor. The writing
sparkled, and the animation looked more like liquid paintings than
anything that might have sprung from a pen. Even at its worst B:TAS
outclassed the competition at its best. Unfortunately this sometimes
includes its successors.
TNBA traded some of the depth of B:TAS for action/adventure. Its
characters rarely explored the consequences or morality of their
decisions. An example is "You Scratch My Back," an episode which
stops just short of wife-swapping. Selina/Catwoman calls Batman
Nightwing's father but complains she'll never be his stepmother
because Batman won't trust her. Meanwhile Barbara/Batgirl is unhappy
to see that Nightwing has put their picture (and by extension their
relationship) in a box to be packed away. (He rejects her four times
in this story.) What both women conveniently forget is that they've
given their respective men reason to distrust them. And so in a snit,
each woman tries out the other one's man for a while -- the man who
doesn't know what she's really capable of, and who doesn't impose
pesky rules on her. Rules like, "Don't lie to me. Don't use me. Oh,
and if you want to be with me, you have to quit."
Having gone to some lengths to create parallels between Catwoman and
Batgirl ... the premise dies. Premises die a lot in TNBA, and later
in BATMAN BEYOND. Instead of character development we get gimmicks :
an idle experimentation with the characters, just to see how
bad "bad" can get. The two series share another flaw : a situation-
ethics mentality in which Good is when characters get what they want,
and Bad is when they are deprived. Batman has spent much of his
career trying to prove that those are not his beliefs or motivations.
So when we don't see an emotional or moral consequence, we miss it.
BEYOND ended on an especially low note with "Unmasked." Terry
McGinnis unmasks to soothe a frightened child in a disaster zone.
Words fail as to just how dumb "Batman" must be to do this. (Goodness
knows Kobra's men can't be the only villains who watch the six
o'clock news.) Max Gibson makes the same erroneous assumptions,
resulting in her blithe, "It wasn't a problem ; now let's go tell
Dana." (The odds that Dana Tan will greet their announcement with joy
or relief are remote. Far more likely that she'd run down Terry and
Max in her two-ton sedan, ignoring their screams of "we only lied
because we care about you!") The final nail in this episode's coffin
is that Robin/Tim Drake handled the same situation so much better in
TNBA's "Growing Pains." Here Robin saves a young girl who's
inexplicably terrified of him. He concludes that his mask frightens
her, but rather than remove it he rescues her first and befriends her
afterwards. In fact he does it twice. It's embarassing when a 13-year-
old sidekick who's been on the job for less than six months is
smarter than the Batman of the future and his Oracle wannabe, both of
whom turned pro 2-3 years ago.
Neither TNBA nor BATMAN BEYOND were actually terrible. They still
trounced the competition in ratings and outshone almost everything
else on television. It's just that their mistakes are more glaring
because we have B:TAS for comparison. Maybe the TNBA Batgirl would
still have earned the nickname "Valley Girl" or her sexual escapades
still irked people even if a better version of Barbara had never
existed. Maybe her weak characterization in BATMAN BEYOND (she shoots
stuff a lot ; she's always blaming someone for something ; she had an
affair with Bruce and everyone suffers for it but her) would have
been just as weak. Maybe the self-absorbed, gum-snapping teenagers of
BEYOND would've been just as tiresome. It's just that these shallower
interpretations of Batman seem more unforgiveable when we recall the
solid morality play that introduced him.
Let's shift gears to Superman. (Trust me, this is going somewhere.)
Fredric Wertham, the gifted doctor who frittered away his time and
reputation trying to clean the Augean stables of popular media,
absolutely loathed Superman. Among the doctor's complaints were that
Superman's comics never shut up about his superior race. Once you
start talking like that, there's a danger of assigning roles to
people based on their race. And so Wertham argued that Superman's
presence encouraged passive, pet-like behavior in mere humans. He
cited a comic-book example in which a dapper pedestrian observes an
apartment building on fire. People are hanging out the windows,
crying, pleading for their lives. Yet instead of hustling his sorry
behind to a pay phone to summon the firemen, and then running next
door to fetch ladders, mattresses, sheets, other people, or anything
else that might prove useful, the man shakes his head and
says, "Superman'd better do something about that." Drove Wertham
bonkers.
In the beginning Superman was just an alien who passed by Earth as an
adult, saw a lady in a harbor called Mother of Exiles, and took her
up on her offer that "all homeless honest persons can live here." It
was years before Superman was rewritten to be the adopted son of Eben
and Martha Kent. This gave him both depth and moral authority. The
simple, timeless values of the Kents served Clark well in a city with
so many hidden evils. The S:TAS series portrayed the character, his
values and his challenges beautifully. It demonstrated both sides of
Superman's reputation : how the villains regard him suspiciously as
too good to be true, while Clark sometimes asks himself if he has
been good enough.
The modern Superman has also paid more attention to the argument that
a superhero absolves ordinary earthlings from their responsibilities.
This is touched on in SUPERMAN II. Then S:TAS took the accusation and
crushed it : Dan Turpin defies a tyrant ("Apokolips Now!") and pays
for it with his life. Others then take his place. As Superman mourns
by Dan's grave, he observes, "In the end the world didn't need a
SUPER man, just a brave one." Well done.
As good as S:TAS was, it did have a few small areas that could be
better. Ursula K. LeGuin once wrote, "One alien is a curiosity, two
an invasion." When Superman was the only known alien on earth he
could stand or fall on his own merits. But when more aliens arrived --
almost all of them bad -- he came to be held accountable for the
behavior of all of them. It's called prejudice. The series portrayed
its examples ambiguously, which made it possible to explain the topic
away. The most egregious offenders (Lex Luthor and General
Hardcastle) are control freaks who, presumably, would fear and hate
Superman even if he'd been of the human race. Then we see "Legacy."
Darkseid plans to shatter Earth so thoroughly that it can't be
rebuilt without his help. It never happens. Why? Because of Luthor
and Hardcastle's prejudice. They automatically assume the worst about
Superman and Supergirl solely because they hate aliens. So what's the
worst that CAN be assumed? That the two are plotting with other
aliens. And since all aliens are bad ... No, Luthor and Hardcastle
are ready for alien invasions. This is the reason -- in fact it's the
only reason -- that Earth's forces defeat Darkseid's people.
There are other examples scattered throughout the series, but at no
time does S:TAS seriously wrestle with what it would be like for
humans to discover they're not alone in the universe. They simply
seem content to have a token alien, best demonstrated in "Stolen
Memories." (What better ambassador to an alien race than our own
alien? You know, what with them all being interchangeable so they
must think alike. Uh-huh.) "Legacy" shows the flip side of this
pleasant fantasy. Superman gets one strike and he's out. No second
chances for him ; second chances are for our own kind.
Which brings us to JUSTICE LEAGUE : THE ANIMATED SERIES. The JL
carpetbagged its way through S:TAS and BB before it found a home of
its own. BATMAN BEYOND probably would have been the worst place in
the world to put it : BB had done a lousy job of developing the
supporting characters it had already got. Where would it find room
for ten to twenty more? Viewers complain enough as it is that Batman
dominates JL:TAS, and he's not even in every episode! How much worse
to put a League (two Leagues, actually) into an already troubled
Batman series.
Now in a perfect world the Justice League would have grown
organically through the continuing series S:TAS. Traditionally
Superman has organized and led the League as an extension of his
beliefs and personality. (Every Boy Scout Leader needs a troup.) When
S:TAS was cancelled, "Legacy" became the last word on that version of
Superman. Oh, Supes still appears in JL:TAS, stoically punching a
time clock and doing his duty methodically and silently. (As one fan
put it, "He's not exactly having a good time.") Naturally fans ask,
has Superman been given a post-Legacy personality without actually
exploring the ramifications of the previous series? Could Superman
have built a League with his damaged reputation? Or did the others
build the JL and bring him into it to keep an eye on him? Tantalizing
possibilities, never developed.
Instead the Justice League forms as a function of an external threat
(the Martian civil war spilling over to its neighbors) rather than as
a function of Superman's character. That makes it an action series
first. Developing seven heroes, plus uncounted villains, becomes a
major undertaking. The result may be that this series explores
concepts and ideals using characters to embody those ideals. File it
under the category, "wish it were better ; glad it's not worse." Does
it bother me that Green Lantern was chosen for his race? Not really.
Superman had his chance to explore prejudice in S:TAS and never did.
Does it bother me that Hawkgirl was introduced because she's a woman?
No. It's nice to have a woman on the team who didn't have to get a
boyfriend to get a script (always the Achilles' Heel of the Bat-
females), and who doesn't think men are scum.
Let's face it. Jim "Dick Grayson" Harvey warned us two years ago
(rant, "EXPECTATIONS") that this would happen. B:TAS has simply
spoiled us for anything else Batman, and S:TAS may have spoiled us
for anything else Superman. Truth is, JL:TAS would be a hard series
to write for all by itself, without having to live up to S:TAS too.
And analyzing the series and offering suggestions would be hard
enough without people boo-hooing each other's opinions simply because
they don't agree with your own. Don't make it personal. The series,
and our fellow viewers, are not shallow simply because they're
different. If JL:TAS turns out to be shallow, it'll earn that on its
own. Comparisons to the past make it hurt worse, but they don't
actually create a series' problems.
JL:TAS will make mistakes never made on earlier DC shows. It will
also have triumphs not seen on earlier shows. It's simply unlike
anything that's gone before. If you want to see the deeply personal
intensity of B:TAS, campaign for a Nightwing series. That's the only
undeveloped major property capable of delivering it. But JL:TAS is
aiming for dreams rather than specific dreamers. Let's give it a
chance to follow those dreams.
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