Bane Might Have Always Been a White Guy

I'M GOING TO START this off by telling you I am 100% talking out my ass. I'm like your crazy tea-party uncle when it comes to Batman, and one day you'll see how right I am - but then it'll be too late for you and the rest.
    Putting aside any other critique of Nolan's final installment of his Batman Series THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, at least for the moment, I'd like to say that I think his and Tom Hardy's rendition of Bane was impeccable. But I plan on writing more about Nolan's series as a whole another time (a little late, I know), so what I want to focus on in this piece is the color of Bane's skin. More than enough people have considered the move to make Bane a white guy when he is typically portrayed as some form of Latin American as racist, but I'll be honest and say I personally don't think it matters. Maybe it's only because I'm white, but I think there's a valid point to be made.

   I recently read through (most of) KNIGHTFALL, the 1980s series in which the hulking master-strategist Bane was introduced and (spoiler...?) he broke Batman's back - an extremely pinnacle moment for Batman's career and overall comic book arc.
    The beginning of KNIGHTFALL is an introduction to Bane's life. We never learn his real name, we never learn his mother's name, we never learn his father's name. We never even see his father, and while the boy who will become Bane is locked up in La Pena Dura serving his father's life sentence, we don't even know the details of the crimes that father committed. But with a country that's willing to force an unborn son to serve a father's sentence his crimes could have been as boring as him stealing an orange... Or whatever fruit they grow there. The point of all of this is that when you read the comics, and you see the depiction and description of Bane... Well... It's kinda hard to argue that he doesn't look like a white dude. I mean I'm probably stereotyping, but look at him:

    Looks like a white guy with brown hair to me. He's half at best, he could certainly still be native to some Latin American island, but as I read further into it all I learned something. Bane's father's sentence came down from the courts of Santa Prisca, presumably the island that he and his wife lived on, and certainly the island from which he fled said sentence. The island is fictional, of course, but it's meant to be an autocratic Caribbean island. So I decided to look into autocratic Caribbean islands. Well, they were colonized by the Spanish first, and then later taken and colonized by British (no surprise there) and when I looked into the population of most such islands this is the piechart I found:

    

    I couldn't be sure exactly which island this piechart was for (mainly because when I went back to site the chart I couldn't find it again so maybe this whole thing is just a lie), or if it was for more than one island, but I know it's a chart for the same kind of island Bane's family is from. And the majority of population listed is former Netherlands Antilles. Former Netherlands. As in white people.

    It's possible that Bane's father was an Englishman, or some form of nordic ethnicity, and his mother could have been some form of Spanish decent. 

   Or, you know, the writers could have just been racist, because to be honest most of the inmates depicted within the prison looked just as white as Bane, and most of them had to have been, you know, not white. I think no matter what Bane was intended to be, there was definitely racism in its origins.

   Either they made a man from a Latin American island a white guy and based his suit off of a luchador costume, or when others furthered Bane as a character (like bringing him into Batman: The Animated Series, where he was first voiced) his mask reminded them of that of a luchador's and they made him more Spanish that he was meant to be.

   In the end, I'm not entirely sure how much any of it matters, and with incredible things like the Arkham video game series giving us a very "traditionally depicted" Cuban Bane, I think future film incarnations should meet somewhere in the middle. Everything is up to artist interpreting anyway. I think that his ethnicity should really come down to whoever is writing for him at the time, giving him their own spin, because he's the sort of character that you can take in a lot of directions. And I don't think there should be a finite Bane out there anyway, because him becoming more of a reoccurring, or more frequent character would be difficult considering that when Bane is true to character he's is an end-all be-all. He shows up once and he ruins everyones lives for a very, very long time. Bringing him in casually does him a disservice. 

    But in the end, I do think a lot of the villains and heroes in the Batman world should potentially get a race makeover at some point. Because, you know, again, everyone's kinda totally white.

    Frankly I just want to forget about when they put him in a gimp suit.

Why Batman is Superior

IT'S HARD NOT BEING biased - about anything, really. But I also find it difficult to try and present my opinions as facts sometimes, as I absolutely can't stand it when others do the same. But this is something I am (stubbornly) confident about. Batman is the greatest Superhero that's ever been created. If you don't agree, you are simply wrong. I've got plenty of reasons why you should see the light if you're confused.

   BATMAN HAS EVOLVED

   Yes, every superhero has changed from its original and cheesy debut, but I don't think any of them have comes as far as Batman has.
    Batman first appeared in May of 1939 in an issue of Detective Comics (later shorted to, and what we now know as, DC), and like all superheroes at the time, he was corny, two-dimensional and cartoonish (genuinely no pun intended). His alter ego was a "young socialite" named Bruce Wayne; a plaid-suited man who smoked a pipe and acted a carefree dunce. Starting out, it was boring. Very boring, like all the rest.

   The Bat-Man was a blue-gloved stalker of the night... Or day - actually, usually day. In the beginning he didn't seem to have a preference. The first Batmobile was just a red sports car, and there was no Robin. Oh, and Batman killed.

And he kind of did it a lot.

   So much for his One Rule. Batman's vow to never take a life, and his hatred for firearms, weren't a part of his creed until the following year, 1940, when Batman was given his own run, and the character Robin was introduced (and even then there were times where the rules became rather lax because I guess the writer just didn't care). Robin started out as the very thing we mock him for now: a whiney little bitch that always forgot to put on pants. Even though now there have been many Robins, and the character Dick Grayson has thoroughly improved and matured just like the rest of the Batman series, he still gets mocked. Which I don't get, because I honestly like Robin. But that isn't the point.

   As time progressed it seemed Batman would need to get campier before it would get better. The 60s brought us Adam West, and the only difference between any of the villains were their costumes. Every single one acted the same way, setting traps and leaving stupid riddles - except for the Riddler, who (as he is always under-appreciated by the writer) basically just acted like one of those popsicle sticks that you have to lick until you get the lackluster answer to the question on the handle. And the Joker, who's debut in the Batman universe was him poisoning rich folk, turned into a slapstick, pink-suited goob with a weird accent.

   But through the 70s things were starting to solidify. By the time the 80s hit, the the serious and darker era for Batman's comics was in full swing, and showed a matured juxtaposition of Bruce Wayne being a suave lady-slaying millionaire, and Batman as a callused, fear-wielding dark knight. And the Joker was killing again, which brings me to my next point.

   THE PARALLEL

   The Batman and the Joker. Half of the reason that Batman is so wildly successful as a franchise is his villains, specifically the perfection that is the rivalry of Batman vs Joker.

   While most heroes are an absolute personification of light, and purity, and their villains are nothing but straight-cut criminal evil, Batman and Joker are neither of those - they're flipped. Batman is the darkness, using fear and brute force, and technology to take down criminals, while his biggest rival is a twisted, joyous, murdering clown. Batman fights with what a lot of criminals use against the good in the world, and the Joker fights with what others use for good and happiness to kill people for fun. The good guy doesn't laugh in this series, the bad guy does - and I feel like that's a very powerful thing. It's like someone put Yin and Yang in a blender.

   There's another layer to it, as well. Where other villains are trying to kill the Batman, like in all such superhero stories, the Joker doesn't usually want Batman dead. He views their relationship as sentimental, fun, and at times a poetic romance. The two can't shake each other. Joker doesn't want to kill Batman, if anything Joker wants Batman to kill him. He wants the beauty of breaking the Batman, and he either wants to keep himself alive so he can continue to torment his one true love, or he wants Batman to take actions upon him that would destroy Batman's resolve beyond the Joker's own life. He continues to pick off those around the Batman to destroy his core, and perhaps it's even because he wants the Batman all to himself. But every time it happens, Bruce overcomes. And maybe that's the very thing that the Joker wants?

   As it was put in Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT, "This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object."

   WITHOUT SUPERNATURAL ABILITIES

   In a world of flying, super-strong, laser-gazing, wall-climbing, shape-shifting, self-healing, mind-reading heroes and villains, super-powerless Bruce Wayne still stands king of the hill, using the only gifts he was given: immense wealth, and an absolutely unbreakable resolve. Some say his resources have made him a cheater, but any rich guy can build himself a grappling gun and night-vision goggles and he'd still get his ass kicked if he ever stepped out into the streets and tried to stop a mobster with a gun.

   Bruce Wayne saw what he needed to do, and he used what he had to make himself unbreakable. Years of intense training, brain-strengthening detective skills, and gadget-engineering, actually brought him to surpassing those other heroes around him who were given gifts that naturally overpower obstacles. Where others were born into their role, or came upon it by accident, Bruce Wayne, aside from his inherited wealth, earned it. And he brought himself to a peek of a self-determined force so unstoppable that he's even faced-off against Superman several times - and won. He's had his back broken, attempts at the theft of his identity, his city taken over countless times, he's fought through the loss of partners on the field, and has nearly died more times than Ra's Al Ghul - except he doesn't have a Lazarus Pit to jump into; instead he uses his "fuck you" attitude and fights through it just to piss you off.

   There are other heroes on both sides of the isle that wield no supernatural gifts, but Batman was the first, and most of the ones that have claimed equal recognition were based on him. 

   Bruce Wayne is just a man - but he is a man that will not be broken. No matter what you throw at him, no matter what happens around him, he'll rise. There are certainly many amazing superheroes in both the Marvel and the DC universes, but when it comes down to it, Batman is just number one. Classic. Complicated. Full of dead-parent-vengeful-rage. And even if there comes a time that he does fall, and cannot get back up, those that he has inspired, those that fight for the same things he does, will pick up where he left off.

    

Introduction - About the Author

IN 1989, THREE YEARS before I was born, my parents went to a theater and saw a new kind of movie. A superhero movie that was meant to be more than just a campy children's adventure. It was Tim Burton's "BATMAN". After watching they decided that if they were going to have kids, they didn't want them to be exposed to such violence and frightening images. When I was growing up as a child I wasn't allowed to watch Power Rangers, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Pokemon. They thought the mystics, and the cartoon action were strange and a bad influence.

   But then one day, I couldn't have been older than five, my dad brought home one of the Batman movies from the video store, and I talked them into letting me watch it with them. I fell in love. The stories, the bizarre costumes and sets; the good guy using the dark against the darkness in the world. They knew they couldn't keep it from me. I still wasn't allowed to watch all the other things, but  I was allowed Batman. I watched all of the movies, the cartoons, I had more Batman action figures than I can possibly remember. The first costume my parents ever bought me was a batman cowl and cape. It was a part of me.

   There was a lull as a grew into my teens. I gave away the action figures, and I realized how corny the live action Batman movies that had been made were, and I sort of forgot about all of it for awhile. And then I saw a trailer for a new Batman movie. Batman Begins. I didn't get to see it in theaters, but when I finally saw it at home I fell in love all over again. It was so well made, it was so much exactly what I wanted Batman to be at the time. It started all over. I bought an action-model of the tumbler, I bought a Batman mask, I watched it over and over. When it was released that Nolan would be making a sequel I was absolutely ecstatic. And then the news hit: Heath Ledger, the man who be playing the role of Joker in a new Batman movie, had died. I didn't know who Heath Ledger was, and I thought it was weird that the person they were depicting (a young, attractive looking man) would play the twisted, Clown Prince of Crime. I wasn't sure what to expect at that point. Was the movie even finished? Then trailers released. The Joker's laugh gave me goosebumps. That was the longest wait I have ever experienced for the release of a movie. I remember finally standing in line for the midnight showing (the last real midnight showing I ever went to - movies start showing at 8pm even on the "premier night" these days) looking at a giant cardboard standee of Batman soaring overhead on the Batpod. The Dark Knight. The first Batman film to not have the word Batman in it. It was the first of a lot of things, really. I remember one of my friends saying "I don't think it's going to be good. Have you seen all of the trailers? They have to contain all of the action sequences already. I'm afraid we've already seen everything that's good about the movie."

   Thirty minutes into the film he leaned over and whimpered "I was so wrong."

And that was the real moment, at the end of that movie, and throughout it, when I really, truly realized how much of an absolute fanboy I am when it comes to Batman. There is no beating it. There isn't possibly a better superhero that's ever been made.

As weird as it sounds, Batman has been a literal part of almost my entire life.