Batman and Philosophy #...7(?): Batman's Promise

[Razor]

Batman made a promise. No, not that "I'll always protect Gotham" promise. The other one. More to himself, really.

And I paraphrase:

I will never kill.

Ah. Now, this isn't just Batman's attempt to be more Christian than your average Christian that still condones the Death Penalty. This is Batman's attempt to make a buffer between himself and the criminals of Gotham. The criminals who killed his parents and something like 3 of the Robins. No, 2. I don't remember. Let's go with 2.

For you see, Batman spends his every night fighting blow for blow with these criminals. And he's driven by the same thing they are: A driving compulsion. Joker has a driving compulsion to create Chaos in Batman's generated Order. Two-Face has a compulsion to live by chance. Clayface has a compulsion to fix his condition, or doom the rest of Gotham to his own fate. The Riddler has a compulsion to create riddles that test the Dark Knight's mental reasoning, with the bait of a few hundred innocent civilians a mere coincidental outcome.

Batman's driving compulsion? To save Gotham from the evil that has grown like a cancer throughout it.

To avoid being consumed by this cancer of sorts, if you'll allow me the extended metaphor, Batman has developed a simple promise. He will not kill.

Some would say that that is a great place to draw the line. If he doesn't kill, he can always claim that moral superiority over the super villains, and therefore still proclaim himself worthy of superhero...dom.

This has gone as far as to SPOILER ALERT:

Spoiler

end Batman's life. As I repeated post after post in the Battle Arena Tournament, Batman killed the New God Darkseid with a God killing bullet. As he fired the bullet (and, more importantly, killed the bad guy) Batman was consumed by the Omega Sanction and killed. Outright, Superman carried his body out of the bunker killed. Like, no more Bruce Wayne. Don't worry. Robin picked up the mantle at the end of the next story arc.

However, did Batman really help anything with that promise?

One Death in the Name of Many Argument:

"Hey Batman! Killing Joker that one time would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives! C'mon!"

"Batman killing Joker would make Batman into a murderer. No better, no worse."

That's about it, really.

That Whole Killing Thing is a Major Weakness

How many times has this scenario played out?

Joker: Hey Batman! You can catch me or save the one baby I put on this conveyor belt that leads to molten hot magma!"

Batman: D'oh. Curse you Joker! You have escaped me this day!

I mean, really. Huge weakness there.

Every other superhero has this weakness. They won't kill anyone. It's the moral superiority of it all.

Other scenario ( paraphrased from the Killing Joke):

Joker: Hey Batman. I just shot your sidekick, Batgirl, in the back and left her half-naked on purpose in an attempt to drive your other buddy Commissioner Gordon insane. Oh, and I sent him on a Joker-made Tunnel of Love naked in an attempt to drive him even crazier. Then, I spent the rest of my time fucking with your mind. Wanna kill me yet?

This promise, to not kill his enemies, is a constant point of contention. Joker regularly toys with Batman to get him to kill him. And in case you get confused, Tim Burton's Batman doesn't count in this equation. Tim Burton's Batman was super cool, no doubt, but he wasn't inline with the whole "Batman morality" thing.

So, in the end, Batman's morality is a constant weakness to him. But he lives with that weakness and continues to fight crime while on the precipice of insanity because of it. The real question is, is Batman's morality compromised by this promise? Is his goal of safety for Gotham (and when he's Justice Leagued up, the world) sacrificed for this promise?

Stake your claim.

 

[Twiztid Rodimus]

I see you've read the ''Batman and Philosophy'' novel.I read this as well a while back. As well as the Matrix one,and the House one.

They were very interesting reads to say the least.It made me think SO much about Bats and his reasoning, The ideas that he stood for, and the reasonings for needing a Robin.

If I could go on and on, I would about the book itself, but you took some of the best points, RIGHT out of the book, so I dont need too.

 

[The Mark of Zur-En-Arrh]

The criminals who killed his parents and something like 3 of the Robins. No, 2. I don't remember. Let's go with 2.

Actually it was only one. Joker beat Jason's brains out with a crowbar and then blew him up in 'Death In The Family'. Black Mask tortured Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler and 4th Robin in 'War Games' but she didn't actually die. Batman's childhood friend Leslie Thompkins made Stephanie appear to be dead, and even told Bruce that she was dead, but she's alive and kicking as the current Batgirl.

Incidentally, Batman was pretty damn intent on murdering the Joker after he killed Jason, but he gained diplomatic immunity from the Ayotollah (yeah, that's how old that story is), and the US government ordered Superman to stop Batman from killing the Joker.

Later on in 'Hush' the villains orchestrate the pretend murder of Thomas Elliot by the Joker, and when Bats sees Joker stood over a bloody Elliot holding a smoking gun, Bats goes apeshit and bashes Joker senseless. Joker tells him repeatedly that the bullets in his gun are blanks but Bats doesn't even stop to check. The entire investigation process that Bats is so famous for is thrown out the window as soon as he sees another close friend murdered at the hands of the C.P.O.C. and Batman is thinking to himself that he's finally going to do it. He's finally going to put an end to the Joker's horror and it's only when Jim Gordon puts a gun to Bats head that he stops.

For you see, Batman spends his every night fighting blow for blow with these criminals. And he's driven by the same thing they are: A driving compulsion. Joker has a driving compulsion to create Chaos in Batman's generated Order. Two-Face has a compulsion to live by chance. Clayface has a compulsion to fix his condition, or doom the rest of Gotham to his own fate. The Riddler has a compulsion to create riddles that test the Dark Knight's mental reasoning, with the bait of a few hundred innocent civilians a mere coincidental outcome.

Batman's driving compulsion? To save Gotham from the evil that has grown like a cancer throughout it.

It's part of the age old superhero argument. Do they protect the people from psychos or do they attract the psychos because they protect the people?

Bats started out taking down mob bosses and spreading justice to the streets through fear. With some notable exceptions, the majority of Bats rogue gallery had no problem with him until he became involved in their business first.

Ok, so Bane, Ra's al Guhl, Hush and a few others exist purely to fuck with Bats, or in Bane's case, his sole intention in his debut arc was to break the Bat.

But Catwoman would have always been a thief. Scarecrow would still have been fired from Gotham U. Mr Freeze would still have had his accident and his wife would still be dying. Jason Woodrue would have still tried to kill Pamela Isley and she'd still have become Poison Ivy. And Sal Maroni would probably have still thrown acid in Harvey Dent's face turning him into Two Face.

Although, there definitely wouldn't be a Joker (he jumped in the vat of chemicals to escape Bats) and therefore no Harley Quinn or resurrected Jason Todd, and Riddler would probably have been content just to rip people off instead of messing with an entire city just to prove his intellectual superiority over one man.

To avoid being consumed by this cancer of sorts, if you'll allow me the extended metaphor, Batman has developed a simple promise. He will not kill.

He's got no problem letting people die though. In 'Batman Begins' he left Ra's to get killed by the train crash when he could have saved him.

There's an episode of Batman TAS where Mr Freeze intends to drop a reverse fusion bomb on Gotham in order to freeze the entire city, so Bats manages to take control of the helicopter, and attaches Freeze to the bomb and drops it in the ocean, attempting to seal Freeze in a glacier forever. Ok, Freeze wouldn't have died but his life would have effectively been over.

And in 'Pushback' Joker and Hush fight each other as Bats is watching, and Bats walks off, happy to let them kill each other.

This has gone as far as to SPOILER ALERT:

Spoiler

end Batman's life. As I repeated post after post in the Battle Arena Tournament, Batman killed the New God Darkseid with a God killing bullet. As he fired the bullet (and, more importantly, killed the bad guy) Batman was consumed by the Omega Sanction and killed. Outright, Superman carried his body out of the bunker killed. Like, no more Bruce Wayne. Don't worry. Robin picked up the mantle at the end of the next story arc.

Um, that's not quite accurate Razor.

Spoiler

While yes, Bats does shoot Darkseid, that isn't what killed him. The Radeon bullet Bats fired forces Darkseid to leave Dan Turpin's body, but his essence remains. It's Superman who whistles, causing Darkseid essence to shatter, because he can't stand music. (Stupid i know, but Grant Morrison's like that sometimes. The way Final Crisis turned out was ridiculously confusing and sometimes shockingly stupid.) Anyway, Bats didn't kill Darkseid, and Darkseid didn't kill Bats either. The corpse Supes comes out with is in fact a clone.

However, did Batman really help anything with that promise?

Well he'd help a lot less if he did, because the JLA and GCPD would hunt him down and imprison him (assuming they could) as soon as he killed someone. So yeah ok, he's not really stopping the Arkham lot for long, but if he killed the Joker for instance, he'd never stop any of them again.

Wonder Woman killed Maxwell Lord so he couldn't mind control Superman into killing everyone, and what happened? She was ousted from the JLA and hunted by the US government to the point that Themyscira went to war with the US. So she killed one man to protect thousands, only to have thousands put in harms way anyway.

In 'Countdown to Final Crisis', Kyle Rayner, Donna Troy and Jason Todd travel to a parallel universe where they meet a Batman who did kill the Joker after he murdered Jason. While yes he's still working out of the Batcave, he's been completely cut off from the other super heroes and is completely cut off from the rest of the superhero community. In fact he went to war with all the supervillains and the superhero community is near enough completely out of action, which bites them all in the ass, because the Monarch's Multiversal army invades that universe soon after and wipes out the entire universe because the superheroes are all slow and out of practice, and even alternate Bats himself gets killed by Ultraman of Earth 3..... or it might have been Superwoman.... anyway, because Bats wiped out crime, his Earth was wiped out by an invading army.

This promise, to not kill his enemies, is a constant point of contention. Joker regularly toys with Batman to get him to kill him. And in case you get confused, Tim Burton's Batman doesn't count in this equation. Tim Burton's Batman was super cool, no doubt, but he wasn't inline with the whole "Batman morality" thing.

Hmmm, well if they hadn't changed the story to say Joker killed his parents, there'd have been absolutely no need for Bats to get Joker killed. Then again, who said that's what Bats was trying to do? Maybe he just wanted to ensure he didn't get away but didn't realise that the gargoyle was in such a state of decay. Who knows? I don't even remember what killed Penguin in 'Returns'.

So, in the end, Batman's morality is a constant weakness to him. But he lives with that weakness and continues to fight crime while on the precipice of insanity because of it. The real question is, is Batman's morality compromised by this promise? Is his goal of safety for Gotham (and when he's Justice Leagued up, the world) sacrificed for this promise?

Morailty is Superman's weakness not Batman's. Bats will happily steal, torture and lie to achieve his goals but killing is never an option no matter what. As long as Batman is in control of his mind and emotions, he won't kill.

But take this into account. When Jason Todd first returned from the grave, he asked Batman why he didn't kill the Joker for what he did. Why is it so hard for the heroes to kill the sickest, most twisted monsters in the world.

And Bats tells him that he wants nothing more in his life, than to kill the Joker. He's spent hours contemplating how he'd do it and visualising the Joker dying by his hands. And he says it wouldn't be too hard to kill him, it'd be too easy.

So Batman is not a moral person at all, but he does live up to his promises.