Abishai100
Civilian
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2014
- Messages
- 148
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I've always been intrigued by DC Comics' Gotham City (a brooding city of great commerce and traffic but also crime where the eccentric but passionate urban masked vigilante Batman works to fight the criminally-insane!) and how the city symbolizes modern fears.
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Batman (Bruce Wayne) was in his bat-cave looking at the newest crime-reports supplied to him by Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. Batman was thinking about all the crimes he had solved in his long career of crime-fighting, and how he'd finally come to a peace with his pupils Robin/Nightwing and Batgirl taking over the reins in a much more stable Gotham than the one he 'inherited' when he first became a vigilante! Batman was dealing with one more case --- the Scarecrow.
Scarecrow was a chemist named Dr. Jonathan Crane who worked part-time as a criminal-psychologist, administering drugs to Arkham Asylum inmates/patients, but then he turned rogue and donned a scarecrow-costume and began wielding fear-toxins to terrorize Gotham City. Batman was looking at Scarecrow's file while looking at the crime-reports Commissioner Gordon gave him, trying to see if any of the crimes matched Scarecrow's fingerprints. Batman had a theory that Scarecrow was on a secret mission to 'attack' all vulnerabilities regarding modernism/urbanization itself.
The 'city' was not a 'modern' phenomenon, since urban-like 'landscapes' were also seen during the Roman Empire and British Empire, however, the American city after WWII (1939-1945) was much more traffic-conscious, immigration-challenged, and underworld crime ridden. Perhaps the burgeoning of capitalism (and ensuing piracy!) was to blame. Batman believed Scarecrow's 'anti-modernism' message concerned how/why Wall Street sharks, for example, made laymen feel somewhat overwhelmed by the intellectual burdens of modern commerce (e.g., NASDAQ, European Union, Wal-Mart, etc., etc.).
Batman remembered his readings from the Christian Bible and the teaching of Jesus that said calling someone a 'fool' put a soul in danger of hellfire. Modernism requires much 'acuteness' to traffic and technology, so calling someone a 'fool' in the modern world really really was a hurtful insult! Scarecrow, Batman reasoned, was determined to make Gotham citizens feel purely paranoid about the confounding 'waves' of the modern American city. Scarecrow was most likely going to poison the Gotham water-reservoir with a dangerous hallucinogen, so Gothamites would go insane with fear while watching television (and news-reports of crime!).
Gotham was everything to Batman, so before Batman set out to tackle Scarecrow and put him down once and for all, he decided to write a special diary-entry about the complexities of Gotham:
"Everyone feels nervous about the modern demands of capitalism citizenship despite the glaring 'conveniences' of consumerism which make people feel naturally lazy/complacent. Scarecrow's mission to create panic about capitalism complications only reinforces my belief that Gotham City is a microcosm of all the modern challenges associated with high-traffic, consumer behaviour changes, Wall Street corruption, NATO troubles, etc., etc. No one can really deal with the deep problems of criminal-insanity, so I don't pretend to have the 'ultimate cure' to Scarecrow's symbolic anti-social malaise, but I do think that living in Gotham (happily) requires serious meditation on the tangible vulnerabilities regarding commerce-yoga!"
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Batman (Bruce Wayne) was in his bat-cave looking at the newest crime-reports supplied to him by Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. Batman was thinking about all the crimes he had solved in his long career of crime-fighting, and how he'd finally come to a peace with his pupils Robin/Nightwing and Batgirl taking over the reins in a much more stable Gotham than the one he 'inherited' when he first became a vigilante! Batman was dealing with one more case --- the Scarecrow.
Scarecrow was a chemist named Dr. Jonathan Crane who worked part-time as a criminal-psychologist, administering drugs to Arkham Asylum inmates/patients, but then he turned rogue and donned a scarecrow-costume and began wielding fear-toxins to terrorize Gotham City. Batman was looking at Scarecrow's file while looking at the crime-reports Commissioner Gordon gave him, trying to see if any of the crimes matched Scarecrow's fingerprints. Batman had a theory that Scarecrow was on a secret mission to 'attack' all vulnerabilities regarding modernism/urbanization itself.
The 'city' was not a 'modern' phenomenon, since urban-like 'landscapes' were also seen during the Roman Empire and British Empire, however, the American city after WWII (1939-1945) was much more traffic-conscious, immigration-challenged, and underworld crime ridden. Perhaps the burgeoning of capitalism (and ensuing piracy!) was to blame. Batman believed Scarecrow's 'anti-modernism' message concerned how/why Wall Street sharks, for example, made laymen feel somewhat overwhelmed by the intellectual burdens of modern commerce (e.g., NASDAQ, European Union, Wal-Mart, etc., etc.).
Batman remembered his readings from the Christian Bible and the teaching of Jesus that said calling someone a 'fool' put a soul in danger of hellfire. Modernism requires much 'acuteness' to traffic and technology, so calling someone a 'fool' in the modern world really really was a hurtful insult! Scarecrow, Batman reasoned, was determined to make Gotham citizens feel purely paranoid about the confounding 'waves' of the modern American city. Scarecrow was most likely going to poison the Gotham water-reservoir with a dangerous hallucinogen, so Gothamites would go insane with fear while watching television (and news-reports of crime!).
Gotham was everything to Batman, so before Batman set out to tackle Scarecrow and put him down once and for all, he decided to write a special diary-entry about the complexities of Gotham:
"Everyone feels nervous about the modern demands of capitalism citizenship despite the glaring 'conveniences' of consumerism which make people feel naturally lazy/complacent. Scarecrow's mission to create panic about capitalism complications only reinforces my belief that Gotham City is a microcosm of all the modern challenges associated with high-traffic, consumer behaviour changes, Wall Street corruption, NATO troubles, etc., etc. No one can really deal with the deep problems of criminal-insanity, so I don't pretend to have the 'ultimate cure' to Scarecrow's symbolic anti-social malaise, but I do think that living in Gotham (happily) requires serious meditation on the tangible vulnerabilities regarding commerce-yoga!"
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