Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman

by Will Brooker

Publishing on the eve of the world premiere of the third of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, The Dark Knight Rises in July 2012, Will Brooker’s new book explores Batman’s twenty-first century incarnations.
 
Will Brooker’s in depth investigation into Batman Begins and The Dark Knight uncovers the complex relationship between popular films, audiences, and producers in our age of media  convergence. He addresses a myriad of questions raised by these films: did Batman Begins end when The Dark Knight began? Does its story include Burger King’s “Dark Whopper,” the Gotham Knight DVD, or the “Why So Serious” viral marketing campaign? Is it separate from the parallel narratives of the Arkham Asylum videogame, the monthly comic books, the animated series and the graphic novels? Can the brightly campy incarnations of the Batman ever be fully repressed by The Dark Knight, or are they an intrinsic part of the character? In other words, do all of these various manifestations feed into a single Batman metanarrative?

Genres: Film, Comics, Superheroes, Batman, Pop Culture, Nonfiction, Research

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2012

About the author

Dr. Will Brooker is a writer and academic, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at Kingston University, England, and an author of several books of cultural studies dealing with elements of modern pop culture and fandom, including Batman, Star Wars and Alice in Wonderland

Reviews

[· · Rating 3 out of 5]

(6 November, 2024)

An analysis of Batman: what he is, who he is, what he means to us and how we perceive him.

Is Batman dark; camp; fearsome; silly? He is a bit of all these and much more. Brooker calls him a palimpsest, accurately describing him as the result of all his previous incarnations, rewritten over and over again – Batman as gestalt.

Starting with Nolan as author (or scriptor), his name brand versus Batman’s and the hold of previous movies on his trilogy is a smart move. Those three are, after all, the most popular. Included are reviews describing ‘The Dark Knight’ as Shakespearean drama with some discussing it in relation to Greek tragedy and others comparing it to ‘lesser’ Batman films. The chimera of keeping the source material, Batman comics, always in mind is revealed. Nolan really just kept a few stories as inspiration, with Miller’s ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Returns’ at the forefront.

Discussions on the difficulties of adapting an ever-changing character are interesting. Batman comics are still being published, where does he presently stand in society? How to portray the ‘right’ one? The weirdest aspect of all this is the question of whether Bruce is gay or not. Any reader could think Bruce’s public persona as 100% fake, all of it – including his playboy façade – and nothing would change. A gay Batman would still be Batman! Society’s nutso views of dark and tough as heterosexual and bright colours and theatricality as homosexual are insane. Enlightened persons – all 54 of us – don’t fucking care. The continued obsession with sexual orientation is non-sensical and, although arguably necessary, ceaselessly talking about it becomes, at some point, counter-productive. To all the hicks in the world: not everyone is straight, get over it!

Bruce Wayne initially developed Batman to frighten criminals and one really cool thing Brooker states is:

“Batman is, and has always been, also a figure of carnival.”

Carnivals are descendants of ancient religious festivities and one would be remiss if not reminded of Bruce’s:

“Criminals, by nature, are a cowardly and superstitious lot.”

Et toc!

The never-ending dance between Batman and Joker is mesmerising, one could write a slew of books about and it would not get old. Here, the author adds a worthy supplement.

Hunting - and finding - the Dark Knight.

[Zachary Matheson]

If you take the sentence "Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's realistic adaptation of Batman, succeeded where Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin failed,"
- Chapter 1 asks what it means to call it Christopher Nolan's, since other people were involved (with the writing, production, story concept, etc.);
- Chapter 2 asks what it means to call the movie an adaptation, since there was no single source text involved and many potential source texts were deliberately ignored;
- Chapters 3-5 ask what it means for the movie to be called realistic, the cultural and corporate pressures that favor one particular definition out of many, and why we throw Schumacher's films under the bus along the way.

I don't know enough about cultural studies to know what this book contributed to the field, but at least for myself I have a better sense of how to look for what is - and isn't - said when reviewing a piece of media.

(Also want to note that I am listed in the book's footnotes. I've since published several peer-reviewed publications during my PhD and career, but I will be forever proud that my first citation in an academic publication was for a book about Batman)

[Andrew Corsini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not just the best book on The Dark Knight I have read, but the best book on Batman that I've read. What I like the most about this book is that it captures the complexities and nuances of Batman as a character and what appeals about him; obviously, I feel like the movie that sums these qualities up the best is The Dark Knight. Of all the films in the world, I'd have to single that movie out as my favourite -- it's about the struggle between tradition (Batman) and modernity (The Joker), between discipline and anarchy. This is the book I've read that's got closest to understand that.

[Nick Jamilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

So how does one who is not trained in deconstructionism write a review of Will Brooker's book "Hunting the Dark Knight"?

Right off, it's important to state that this book is not for the casual reader. To best understand it, a university education in literary analysis and a thorough knowledge of the Batman comics all the way from the 1930's would help.

I don't have either of those, but that didn't stop me from reading Brooker's fascinating book. It gets into ideas such as authorship, fidelity, paratexts, and intertextuality, among other literary tools to examine who Batman is, and who he isn't.

Two things struck me as I was reading the book. First, Brooker uses modern tools in examining Batman because he is a modern, pop culture subject. Instead of a scholastic approach wherein one might sight other authoritative writers to prove a personal argument, Brooker looks at information in the modern world. He cites message board discussions, reviews on Amazon.com (like this one), and movie review in magazines, newspapers, and websites. It's a world where Brooker looks at ordinary people who participate in the Batman phenomenon by contributing their personally varying degrees of interest, knowledge, and expertise to the critique of Batman.

Second, I was struck by how loose the concept of Batman is in spite of corporations or directors trying to define Batman in their own way. Especially in the sections on adaptation of the Batman character, I thought that things like continuity, canon, reboots, and branding worked to keep a tight reign on who the Batman character is. Not true! And here's an example.

You know Bat-girl? Well, she was created to heterosexualize Batman because a 1954 book entitled Seduction of the Innocent asserted Batman and Robin was code for gay. But then the 1960's TV show undermined her by showing a campy Batman. Later, again, in the 1990's, Schumacher's two Batman films further reinforced that gay camp with nippled costumes and prominent codpieces. So what is the new Batman? A mean, masculine Batman who reflects a post 9/11 world where issues of terrorism reflect the public's mood.

But is that it? A dark Batman without a Robin?

Well, that's not what Brooker asserts, as Batman is continually evolving, as he always has since his creation more than 70 years ago.

So how does this review help a person decide to buy the book (or not)? Check out a sample of the book before you buy. If the first 10 pages don't make sense to you, then it won't be any easier to finish the rest of the book. The more you know about Batman lore and history, the more you'll get out of this book, as it is not a primer in any way.

If you take Batman seriously in any serious or academic fashion, then you MUST buy this book. You'll particularly be intrigued by the Pharmakon analogy that breaks down the two-part/opposite approach where word meaning can create a gray area in the literary analysis of Batman. I won't even begin to try to explain this, but it is a fascinating read that leads to a discussion on the Bush policy on terrorism.

(Originally posted on Amazon.com)

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting philosophical treatise (specifically a post-modern deconstruction using the work of Foucault and Derrida) of Batman as a cultural icon and modern myth. The author also uses journalistic and literary theory to support his premise that Batman is multifaceted, not subject to only one interpretation. The author posits that Batman is, like many other cultural icons, a reflection of and a device to explain the current socio-political climate regardless of the era. In fact, the author's conclusion is that Batman is whatever the reader wants him to be. It is the reader who choses the stories that they find important, inevitably creating THEIR Batman.
Readers who are not familiar with Foucault or Derrida's work may find a lot of this book too academic. The reader will find no comfort or understanding in the author's explanations of the more abstract concepts he uses from these philosophers. Even those who ARE familiar with the referenced material struggle to comprehend. However, this is not the fault of the author, rather the difficulty in understanding the theoretical perceptions of Foucault and Derrida.
The book really shines in its use of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy as the cultural product that represents the current era of Batman. Given the book's publishing date, the author focuses more on "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", than "The Dark Knight Rises" which is disappointing. But the author's use of the trilogy as a example of the multiple interpretations and influences of Batman creating a composite image of Batman that is identified by the public and uber-fans alike as THE definitive Batman for all time. I would recommended this book for all of my fellow Academic Batman fans.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good academic book on Batman in the age of the Nolan movies and Grant Morrison comics.