Is Batman Leviathan?

[Abishai100]

We all know Batman (DC Comics) is the ultimate urban crusader against criminal insanity and that Batman's enemies (e.g., Scarecrow, Harley Quinn, Two-Face, etc.) cover a wide range of sins.

Batman works in a fictional urban environment called Gotham City which is seething with criminality.

There are crime syndicates (e.g., Black Mask), lone maniacs (e.g., Scarecrow), eco-terrorists (e.g., Ra's al Ghul), and rogue vigilantes (e.g., Two-Face) in Gotham City.

Gotham symbolizes the 'overflowing' potential of criminality that arises in any place that sees a lot of human traffic (i.e., the city).

Batman arguably shows us the challenges faced by enforcers of the law, officers who have to 'normalize' and 'streamline' the myriad faces of sin/crime in the city --- druglords, terrorists, tycoons, corrupt politicians, serial killers, vandals, etc.

The word 'leviathan' is a spiritual concept referring to a sea-dragon symbolizing pure chaos (and therefore uncertainty). The great philosopher-writer Thomas Hobbes suggested in his seminal politics-treatise "Leviathan" [1651] (borrowing the spiritual term for philosophy podiums) that human governance is based on a desire to create order and also a desire to 'listen' to the yearnings for rebellion and revolution.

Since Batman is a crusader who has to deal with freaks and ghouls who cover a wide range of crimes and sins, is Batman a sort of 'leviathan' (or a Grendel of sanity)?

In other words, does Batman show us the pure corruption of the human city?

How else can we 'normalize' cities which have historically hosted druglords and fascists (e.g., Tijuana, Johannesburg, Saigon, Chicago)?



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BATMAN: Is Gotham your playground?
SCARECROW: Crime is so fun!
BATMAN: You prefer destruction to creativity?
SCARECROW: Human beings are fascinated by calamity.
BATMAN: Sometimes people are forced to normalize terror.
SCARECROW: Why does Gotham cater to profiteers?
BATMAN: Human beings are both flawed and redeemable.
SCARECROW: Are you Gotham's savior?
BATMAN: I'm simply a monitor.
SCARECROW: Then hawk!

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Leviathan (Wikipedia)

 

[Breogan]

Fun analogy, suggest not that he is Leviathan, but that he counters it, fights against it, is in fact it's antithesis.

The word 'leviathan' is a spiritual concept referring to a sea-dragon symbolizing pure chaos (and therefore uncertainty)

Hence in it's most intricate form: Morrison...

Or it's campy simplicity...

To it's most primal symbol...

Your cards aren't always neatly dealt from the top.
This "chaos" is what robbed him of his parents and life he knew, while he was forced to watch without control, helpless.
So he reinvents himself builds himself as the ultimate answer to that chaos where he is now in control, prepped, ready, can predict, and has an answer for anything.

So what does he become?
In his endless task to clean up his city he's been running in the sewers so long, but also living above them, he wears two masks/faces, one to fit in, look "normal", and another he uses to bring the unpredictable: The Bat = fear/chaos as his weapon, in essence "Owning" the power that robbed him of his parents.

In his struggle to "control" it, does he become it? What is he?

The scars go deep...

"Some rodents fly"

We've been exploring this story from the go.