Batman

Introduction: Batman Begins

1 Introduction Batman Begins Dear Sir: Batman is the silliest, stupidest show on television and I love every minute of it. Yours truly, Ricky W., Chicago, Ill.1 Alittle over a month after ABC’s action-comedy series Batman debuted on January 12, 1966, Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin bemoaned that the highly rated show had been “merchandised beyond the dreams of avarice . . . shaping our televiewing for years to come” and was a “tasteless, witless . . . bore . . . born of a devout and monumental cynicism toward the television audience.”2 Champlin’s screed confirms how some critics, patrolling the border between high and low cultures , were aghast at the show’s explosive popularity. At the same time, Champlin also betrays a marked misunderstanding of the show and its audience. What he saw as a cynical manipulation of the television audience was, in fact, a turning point in the evolution of the relationship between the producers of television content and its viewers. Batman worked not because its audience was slyly duped by Hollywood tastemakers but because viewers were encouraged to be engaged participants in 2 Introduction the show’s skillful deconstruction of the tropes of television, the superhero genre, and America itself. In artfully blending a dual address to viewers—both children and adults—eager to embrace the show’s broad representations of good versus evil, Batman was the first television program to tap into the increasingly strong undercurrents of ambivalence about postwar American culture. Batman was a unique and significant series because it allowed that the audience wanted to both endorse and critique traditional American values that were intimately linked to an equally conflicted sense of personal identity—a first in the history of American television. As a national phenomenon, Batman allowed audiences the safe confines of mass culture in which to understand themselves and the nation as social constructs during a period in which social meaning was increasingly contested in America. Such work required that Batman be highly formulaic because it was within those fixed and familiar boundaries of television genre form and content that ambivalence could be safely expressed. Each episode follows a clear template: in a pre-credit sequence a dire threat to Gotham City from a nefarious villain is established. Police Commissioner James Gordon (Neil Hamilton) contacts Batman (Adam West) by way of an emergency Bat-phone that links his office with (unbeknownst to the commissioner) “stately Wayne Manor,” the home of millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, his “youthful ward” Dick Grayson (Burt Ward), and Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake), who seems to exist in a perpetual benign fog, oblivious to the superhero identities of Bruce and Dick. Bruce Wayne’s English butler Alfred (Alan Napier) takes Gordon’s call and discreetly informs Masters Bruce and Dick that their services as Batman and Robin are required. The two, usually involved in some absurdly mundane activity with Aunt Harriet, such as practicing birdcalls on the balcony, make a hasty excuse and slip into the study. There they activate a secret panel and slide down twin Bat-Poles (helpfully labeled “Bruce” and “Dick”) to the Batcave. This action cues 3 Batman Begins the credit sequence, which features a series of stiffly animated cartoon images of Batman and Robin battling a criminal cohort while the infectious theme song plays. The body of the episode then features a criminal plot that the Dynamic Duo work to thwart, allowing Batman to demonstrate his keen skills of detection and Robin his knack for solving childish riddles and interpreting bizarre clues (all the while qualifying his exclamations with “Holy!”). With an arsenal of Bat-branded equipment at their disposal, most notably the atomic-powered Batmobile, Batman and Robin pursue their criminal target. After a fight with the villain and/or his or her henchmen (complete with onomatopoeic visual effects to punctuate the kicks, punches, and belly flops), one or both of our crime fighters is caught in a seemingly inescapable trap, such as being dipped in a vat of boiling wax to be made into a giant candle. As the episode ends, a voice-over narrator (executive producer William Dozier ) breathlessly advises viewers to tune in tomorrow at the “same Bat-time, same Bat-channel” to see if our heroes make it out alive. The follow-up episode sees their successful escape and ultimate defeat of the villain, who is sent off to Gotham State Penitentiary with a stern admonition from Batman about the...