Why Batman is a Violent, Narcissistic Villain

Everybody loves Batman. Men want to be him, people of a variety of genders and sexual identities want to date him, because quite frankly, why wouldn't they? Batman is tall, rich, got a company worth a gazillion dollars, and an English butler! He literally has it all. He is everything we hope to be, and everything we hope to obtain. The irony being, just like most of us have an inability to appreciate what we have sometimes, Batman, or Bruce Wayne rather, depressingly broods like an angsty teenager.

Sure, I would imagine it sucks to see your parents get shot. Or even have your parents die peacefully in their sleep and you never see it! I'm sure that there are tons of emotional issues that would accompany anyone who went through what Bruce did as a young lad, and this article is not to belittle him for that. That would be cruel, unusual and illogical. What I am going to belittle him for is the fact that, in crude terms, he's an asshole.

First, have we ever heard of read how Bruce's hundreds, if not thousands, of employees are given cutting edge health and dental? Huge salaries with terrific benefits? Or are they just faceless cogs in his expansive, capitalist machine? Do they exist to solely fund his crime fighting? To fund his Bat-Cave and Bat-Mobile? To fund his lavish, illegal vigilante lifestyle? We both know that they do, at least to Bruce Wayne, but we will not judge him for this, because Batman is so cool!

Which leads me to two political comparisons. Everyone knows, deep down inside, that all politicians are corrupt. However, we will ignore this corruption, and even argue against it, in politicians we like. In political figures we think are charismatic and appealing, many people, myself included (unfortunately) sometimes, defend them for no other reason than they think he/she/they is cooler than the other guy/gal/they.

Secondly, it is true that one could argue that society does a similar thing to what Bruce Wayne does with his employees. Society forces us into labor, and then taxes that labor to fund their own crime fighting enterprises. So, in that sense, Bruce Wayne at least finds himself to be on par in importance to the United States government, which is a trait people seem to despise, unless it is in Batman or Burt Gummer. It is a rather authoritative and conceited attitude, to think your own personal judgement on its own is more wise than the combined knowledge of everyone who helped create and govern the country in which you live.

However, Batman's crime fighting is ineffective. Batman's crime fighting isn't there to protect society, it is there to make Bruce Wayne feel better about what happened to his Mommy and Daddy. In fact, in a way, crime fighting is distraction Bruce created for himself in order to avoid dealing with the emotional pain that being an orphan brought him. It is why he won't kill, even though he knows sometimes a man's soul is so black, it can not be saved. But, killing would make Bruce uncomfortable, so he doesn't do it. No matter how many people he knows will die as a result, he just won't do it.

Which is proof that Bruce's campaign against criminality in Gotham City isn't for the betterment of the citizens of Gotham itself. Bruce finds it more important to preserve his own feelings than prevent the death's of the very people he is exploiting in the name of "keeping them safe". He is a charlatan, a grown man-baby with an endless supply of workers and resources to fund his self-medication of crime fighting. See, Batman doesn't care what the government, or the people, or anyone think of him. All that matters is he gets to fight men, work out his rage in a violent fashion, and then feel better about himself unleashing violent psychopaths back into the population, except this time with a chip on their shoulder and possible brain damage from being hit in the head really hard.

Try as I might, I just don't see anything heroic about Batman. Heroes make the hard decisions, they don't take the easy way out. Heroes do what is best for those around them, not what makes them feel good at any given time. Heroes save lives, not needlessly sacrifice them. A billionaire who neglects the needs of his workers to beat up, but not kill, super villains who he knows will kill again is a lot of things in my mind, but a hero is not one of them.