Albertinho

glamaphonic:

roxanneritchi:

glamaphonic 

No, it’s not satire.

I mean. Tony Stark is disgustingly rich and his dad was disgustingly rich before him and the fundamental basis of his character is that he’s a super capitalist weapons contractor. In the films, they make him have a crisis of conscience about this and he’s super charming to boot, but the fact that the way he deals with and the narrative frames/presents his wealth is humorous, doesn’t actually make him a satirical character. You have to actually be… critiquing something to be satire. Like you’re meant to laugh at Tony for being ridiculously privileged and over the top in the expressions of that privilege, but also to be charmed at the same time. They’re not actually deconstructing his privilege in any meaningful way. They’re just going, oh this poor irresponsible billionaire who has only just realized that manufacturing super-advanced weapons and selling them hurts the little people!! ;___; WELL NOW HE WILL SAVE THOSE LITTLE PEOPLE BY KEEPING ALL HIS SUPER ADVANCED WEAPONRY FOR ONLY HIM TO USE!!1

And Batman isn’t meant to be laughed at all. You’re supposed to fully respect and sympathize with and admire (and, as you did in your original post, MORESO than people who were born with or otherwise attained superpowers) the fact that he made himself into this perfect machine of fighting and detective-ing out of his personal quest for vengeance and not think twice about the fact that this was only possible BECAUSE he’s a white, billionaire dude a level of privilege that’s basically the equivalent of having superpowers in the real world, and neither are you meant to examine that this extraordinarily privilege individual just elected himself the bringer of vigilante justice to a city that he could have used his BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to help in a multitude of ways that don’t involve beating up and feeding into the prison industrial complex a bunch of people who are exponentially less privileged than him in a variety of ways because he just hates criminals so much due a specifically, personal loss that he faced.

I mean, I bet a lot of ~scum of the earth~ who he’s put in prison’s parents are dead too at the hands of people just like the ones who killed his. They just didn’t have a massive fortune to carry them through life and give them the resources to seek out vigilante justice for it or even, ultimately, keep them from falling through the cracks.

Yes. One of the things that’s really problematic about the Batman narrative, also, is that many of the criminals are explicitly portrayed as disadvantaged or mentally ill. An unsettling number of Batman villains are “crazy,” and that’s textually why they’re evil or why they commit crimes.

Bruce Wayne does donate to charity and purportedly he invests a great deal in infrastructure, but lbr here, the comix don’t give a shit about any of that. Which is a shame, because tbh, I would deeply enjoy a Batman story that centers around his charitable work and/or efforts to visibly improve upon Gotham and/or to help the disadvantaged in a long-term way.

Mostly I just want to C&P this last paragraph of Rawles’ because it is super important and something the comix rarely if ever addresses because God forbid they ever do any actual, real critical examination of their characters:

I bet a lot of ~scum of the earth~ who he’s put in prison’s parents are dead too at the hands of people just like the ones who killed his. They just didn’t have a massive fortune to carry them through life and give them the resources to seek out vigilante justice for it or even, ultimately, keep them from falling through the cracks.

Yes, yes, YES.

I deliberately avoided starting in on how 90% of Batman’s villains are ~crazy~ because lbr I didn’t want to be here all day. (THE MAIN PLACE THAT HOLDS HIS VILLAINS IS AN ASYLUM I MEAN HONESTLY! Other heroes’ villains all end up in a federal prison or a special VAULT for superpowered people or wtfever. But, no, Batman’s? They all GET COMMITTED.)

Also, it’s funny because they’ll actually show Superman doing shit for infrastructure and charities and what have you, but for Batman it’s only ever a footnote because they’re too fixated on him being GRIMDARK and as such he’s not allowed to give positive attention to things, only negative. He’s not given leave to heal or prevent like Superman the ~boy scout~; he’s only allowed to punish.

*sigh*

Guys, I’m kind of tired of being an argumentative dick on the Internet for one day, but there are still flawed arguments here that don’t take into account the varied and long history of Batman/superheroes in general? Iono someone else that follows me who knows comix take over, it’s fucking 2:15am.

You know Australia currently has FIVE timezones!?!? How trippy is that shit?

(via korraspasm)