The '60s-Era Batman Series: Reflections

Earlier this year H & I has started rerunning a number of older series, with its Sunday afternoon line-up now dominated by action-adventure shows of the '90s--Sheena, Relic Hunter, Beastmaster, Mutant X, and the one that in many ways started it all, Highlander: The Series. They also rerun a pair of episodes of the '60s era Batman as part of the package.

I had seen a good many episodes of the show back in childhood, but had only the vaguest recollections of them before happening on these reruns--which proved to be a pleasant surprise. The episodes certainly have their pleasures--not least a lightness of tone I find a relief from our inundation by pretention and edgelordism in these days of "peak TV." They are dealing with what was undeniably silly source material, and rather than trying to convince us it is not silly, embracing that silliness and having fun with it without going flippantly, smugly postmodernist on us. The scripts can be surprisingly literate and witty, and often satisfyingly satirical. (Batman's run for mayor against the Penguin, which the Washington Post's Phillip Bump found rather relevant in 2016, cleverly skewers the vulgarity and vapidity of our electoral rituals.) And the cast was remarkable--with the villains in particular a parade of Hollywood legends (Mr. Freeze alone was played by George Sanders, Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach).

For his part, Adam West made the Batman role his own in a way I can only compare with William Shatner's contemporaneous accomplishment with the character of James T. Kirk--perfectly playing a very different conception of the character than we are used to today. Rather than the mad vigilante stalking the streets by night looking for trouble, this Batman was practically a police consultant, generally heading off on some adventure only when getting a call from Commissioner Gordon--like some costumed Sherlock Holmes. When confronting villains it was typically they and not he who first resorted to violence--and he struck back only as much as he had to. And whether in his persona as Batman, or Bruce Wayne, if there was anything questionable about the order he was upholding or the way in which he upheld it, Wayne/Batman came off as consistently displaying a high regard for the rule of law, due process, democracy and human beings generally, always ready to believe that people could change themselves for the better and reform if given a proper chance--so much so that I was struck by the sheer number of episodes that closed with Wayne using his resources to assist those who had made "mistakes" in the past in rehabilitating themselves.

Indeed, rather than a raving reactionary he came off as naive--but for all that, an idealist and a man of virtually unfailing integrity and humanity.

In fact, it all made me rethink the character--and what our conception of him has meant.

Back in the '80s the conclusion increasingly drawn was that anyone who did what Batman did had to be a mad fascist. My thought earlier was that the view of Batman-as-wacko, Batman-as-fascist was a worthwhile, even important, insight. But it now seems that I have to qualify that as having meaning only if we treat this story of a super-rich vigilante who dresses as an anthropomorphic bat as more than it was ever meant to be (this all too obvious fancy never meant to withstand psychological or sociological scrutiny), while the "insight" said more about how our culture was changing. Writers like Frank Miller set forth the idea critically (well, once upon a time), but later on the filmmakers and even the actors seem to have reveled in the fascist vision. Christopher Nolan, certainly, made his sympathies clear by the regrettable last of his three Batman films, while the portrayal of the figure by Ben Affleck, from whom something else might have been hoped, was clearer on this from the start as his growling, graying, visibly deranged incarnation of the figure set about trying to bring Superman down.

It was not the case that Batman had to be a fascist. Rather it was the case that the mainstream of political and cultural commentary was moving toward the misanthropic vision of fascism that caused Batman to increasingly be conceived in such terms--a trend of which those who like to throw about phrases like "It's a reflection of our times" in response to anything someone else says tend to be rather uncritical.

Those decrying the turn politics has taken in recent decades, however, should not take that lightly.