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ACAB can SAVE The Batman Trilogy (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2023-03-15 23:30:00 +0000 UTCI wanna talk about The Batman
/The Batman is a 2022 film written and directed by Matt Reeves. Set 2 years into billionaire Bruce Wayne’s crusade against crime as the titular vigilante, he and Gotham Police Lieutenant James Gordon -- the only cop he trusts -- are teaming up to find a killer known as the Riddler, who’s been going after important figures around Gotham and prompting Batman to follow his clues in order to reveal a dark secret regarding the very city./
It shouldn’t surprise a lot of people who are aware of how huge of a Batman fan that I am, but there’s a lot about The Batman that I really enjoy.
I was never one of the individuals who was put off guard by Robet Pattinson playing the role of Bruce Wayne because I’m not a child..
The Gotham we’ve received is the best looking Gotham we’ve gotten in live-action since the Burton movies in my opinion...
/And considering how much I’ve talked about her on this channel, I believe it's safe to say that Zoe Kravitz’s depiction of Selina Kyle -- aka Catwoman -- despite not having a proper cowl, has to be one of my favorites to date./
The reason why it's one of my favorites is because of how in-depth the film goes to show a side of her that most other film adaptations don’t usually get a chance to deliver in favor of the femme fatale aspects that, while just as amusing I admit, tend to take the center stage.
While a good amount of that is still present, a lot of Selina’s passion regarding her actions over the course of the movie was in her focus on the downtrodden of Gotham.
/She cares for sex workers because her mother was one, her girlfriend Annika was one before the mafia offed her, and she realizes that nobody who’s supposed to truly cares for this level of citizen within Gotham, or anyone that isn’t considered upper class or higher in that regard./
Thanks to this depiction of Selina, it caused me to look at a lot of how the average Gothamite is depicted in The Batman because of it.
/Especially due to the Riddler’s goal to make the likes of the downtrodden and the underrepresented privy to the lies told by the rich and elite implying that they care, while Bruce Wayne thanks to pouring so much time into being a symbol of vengeance as the Batman realizing over time that thanks to his disconnect he’s actually part of the problem in multiple ways than one./
By this time, I had watched the film in theaters, streamed it the moment it hit HBO Max, and taken these feelings regarding how Selina’s character was used in order to make a video explaining how the movie had all the potential in the world to avoid going in the direction of police propaganda like the Nolan trilogy did, but still ended up starting off in the path that was eerily similar to how the process was handled in Batman Begins.
So as developments occurred regarding Matt Reeves getting the greenlight to work on The Batman: Part II scheduled to be released in 2025, the second feature length foray into this version of Gotham that he’s gone on record to say he wants to complete as a film trilogy, along with multiple shows planned to be released exclusively on HBO Max to expand on the world...
The more thought about how -- if The Batman were to receive its trilogy -- it could stand apart from the other recent and realistic Batman live-action film series, and use the building blocks it established in the 2022 film in order to apply a truth that a good amount of American citizens have a hard time accepting.
/How can The Batman, if turned into a trilogy, efficiently use the combination of its own lore and that of comic book canon to entertain the idea that the police shouldn’t just be defunded, but absolutely abolished?/
Well, it just so happens that I figured out how to do it. But before I explain how, there’s a few things you need to know about why policing is a problem in the first place.
Basic, Upstanding Citizen Types
So even though I’ve explained it in my video critiquing how both past and present Batman media spread propaganda revolving around the police in their narratives, I have no problem repeating myself on this matter in order for people to understand the bigger picture.
Especially since it appropriately leads into the existence of the acronym ACAB in 1920’s England and its initial abbreviation in the 1940’s by workers on strike, before it's appropriation in the Punk movement, its eventual resurgence with the current rise and attention of police violence, and why it’s necessary in looking at how they are in modern day.
This is because thanks to their roots, the purpose of the police as we currently know them is to keep the poor and marginalized -- including the working class and non-white citizens -- from collectively uniting against the ruling hierarchy of the town, city, state, etc., and keeping the status quo in place of them being on the losing end of economic and political arrangements.
Basically, if we are the employees of a company who collectively believe we deserve better pay, better benefits and better working conditions from our employer, the police are our managers and supervisors who answer directly to our employer, and it is their job to do everything in their power to make sure we don’t unionize or interrupt our employer’s cash flow with as little change implemented into the system said employer established as possible.
This is because policing, surprising no one with common sense, has roots in British imperialism and colonialism. In 1829, Sir Robert Peel was handling the British colonial occupation of Ireland and was brainstorming new ways of seeking social control of the people of Ireland in order to keep them from rioting, forming insurrections, and causing political uprisings against Britain, so that their dominance over the land and its people stayed unchanged.
This resulted in the “Peace Preservation Force,” the first form of policing that cost less than utilizing military units that were already spread thin because of them being needed in the Napoleonic Wars. They were the equivalent of undercover cops and plants; going into rebellious areas that were occupied by the Irish, spotting the ones in charge and then breaking up their gatherings by arresting them.
So after seeing how efficient and effective it was in keeping the Irish oppressed in British-occupied Ireland, Peel dragged and dropped the policies into the formation of the London Metropolitan Police, who were there to quell riots, stop strikes, and protect property among their own people in favor of protecting and preserving the establishment and those that represent it. Especially after the riots that broke out during the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester happened ten years prior caused said establishment to flinch.
When it came to America forming policing of their own nine years later, they asked Britain if they could borrow their homework. Britain said yes, but also to change things around so that it didn’t look like they blatantly copied anything when America turned in the assignment.
The result was America using the police to protect its establishment from massive waves of immigration and industrialization, with Boston being the first US city to utilize the adjusted policing of Peel to focus on the oppression of the working class.
Soon the effects of Boston reached New York in 1844, then to Chicago in 1855 with the election of Mayor Levi Boone and the creation of the first special police force in the nation.
And just like that, this intent for policing -- managing the poor, foreign, and nonwhite in the name of the ruling hierarchy that may threaten their power if left unregulated -- spread across the nation and has remained the core of it to this day.
It even took Peel’s practices and expanded on them to make it more “efficient.” The very first state police force was formed in Pennsylvania in order to better break up what used to be one of the most militant states for unionism in the late 19th and early 20th Century. But only after first testing out new techniques and technologies out in the Philippines under the Philippine Constabulary; very similar to how the British used the prototype of policing to keep the Irish in check.
People love the character “Walker: Texas Ranger,” but fail to realize that the Texas Rangers were initially founded in order to secure Texas for white colonists against Native Americans, the Spanish and Mexicans. Which, when you learn about Chuck Norris’ personal politics, him taking up the role of Walker makes a lot more sense in hindsight.
Nowadays, modern day cops in America still uphold keeping the poor and non-white citizens across the country from unionizing, and even working in tandem with the government in sewing discourse between them and the working class. With the federal government crashing the economy in the 1980’s as a way of combating against the working class collectively growing too powerful, African Americans were meticulously planned to be left out of its restructuring with the same Peel-inspired infiltration tactics. Now added to what Ebeneezer Scrooge would call the “Surplus Population,” policing said African American communities that have recently become impoverished became way easier to manage now that they were separated from the usually unionized whole.
This “divide and conquer” tactic has proven to be incredibly effective to the point where even among the working class, those who have skills in manual labor, custodial work, and even entry level retail and food service industry jobs are looked down on by others with jobs they believe society should favor more, saying that those in these industries don’t deserve a living wage simply because of the services they provide or that they’ve proven to be so unwilling to learn or are incapable of learning that these are the only jobs they can get, and all of this is by design.
So considering that nothing about policing has truly changed since its original conception, keeping in mind that the police are not initially meant to prevent crime as both they, the media, and both liberals and conservatives that like to ignore the institution's link to racism and colonial oppression want you to believe...
It would make sense why someone would unironically utter the phrase with their whole chest “all cops are bastards.” Especially with the acronym’s link to workers rights in 1940’s England; the ones responsible for modern day policing in the first place.
Because, yes; they are here to serve and protect. But they’re not here “to serve and protect” YOU like society has ingrained you to believe. They are here to, first and foremost, serve and protect the hierarchical bourgeoisie FROM you. Because you, me, and everyone else -- if we can successfully come together like the ants did against the Grasshoppers in A Bugs Life -- can overthrow it. And who would want to willingly work for an institution with all of that history of oppression embedded in its very existence?
Well, you’d be surprised with that outcome. Because thanks to how the United States loves to try and legitimize the use of police in the country, becoming an officer is pretty easy, like ridiculously easy.
Here in Detroit, you can qualify to be a cop simply by being 18 or older, have a valid driver's license, a high school diploma or equivalent and have no felonies on your record. You can literally graduate from high school in late spring or get your GED, and then immediately become a cop with a gun just in time for Christmas.
Using African Americans constant struggle with civil rights and systemic racism as an example for how police legitimacy is pushed on us, the one thing liberals and conservatives have in common with each other when the likes of America’s history of racism and segregation via slavery and Jim Crowe is brought up, is that they don’t want to admit it generated generational wealth for white folks while denying basic opportunities for African Americans.
So instead, they say to look to the future by focusing on remedial programs as a pacifier for us until the time is right to finally talk about the likes of reparations and whatnot, even though that day will never come if we don’t burn this mother down.
/The way our elected officials handle the complaints about the quality and us questioning the legitimacy of policing is handled the same way. But what’s used as the binky hoping it will pacify us about the problem is the concept of police reform./
It’s constantly used against us whenever more problems regarding policing rear their ugly head, and officials realize that the binky they gave us a week ago isn’t shutting us up anymore.
But by that time, the officials see what they’ve done as a win, turning into the Tuxedo Mask “my work here is done” meme while the lot of us are Sailor Moon looking at the gloating in confusion because they didn’t DO anything.
Then when they cape-swish walk away, they continue to keep the status quo for the hierarchical bourgeoisie established by providing ridiculous amounts of funding for police departments across the country in order to “manage” us better.
The NYPD and LAPD at this point is a few steps away from becoming a fascist regime if they’re not one already, thanks to the combination of government overfunding and how easy it is for every and anyone to apply to be a cop, especially those who are either impressionable enough for the establishment’s history of oppression to influence them, or are already racist and bigoted enough for said history to empower them.
And if enough pressure isn’t placed on Georgia officials from its constituents in time, this police training ground they’re trying to build is gonna help make the lives of Georgia’s black, poor and working class citizens a living hell through the same ridiculously easy and overfunded recruitment process.
And that’s not even mentioning the way policing is legitimized to a demographic that doesn’t know any better in the form of movies and television.
All the shows created by Dick Wolf, all the dramas that focus on special departments of various forms of law enforcement, all the Magnum PI’s, the Hawaii Five-O’s, all glorify police in a way that makes them feel necessary for society as we know it to function. Sometimes giving those who look at said dramas and thrillers incredibly high expectations of the force when they use said movies and shows as motivators for joining.
As you can imagine, the same can also be said regarding the fictional relationship of the concept of the superhero with the police force of the city they reside in.
And in the case of Batman and Gotham PD, one might believe because of his nature that it’s incredibly easy to divorce the mythology of Batman from the fictional police department that coincides with it in a way that allows Gotham’s police to ALSO highlight the real-life problems with policing. Whether that medium be in movies, television, or comic books.
Well, as a lifelong Batman fan who also believes that the police can no longer legitimize themselves, I can assure you that is not the case. And that’s mostly due to people and politics.
He’s With Me, Officer
Part of the reason why it’s pretty hard to divorce Batman from the police is thanks to his relationship with a very important character in his mythos, James Gordon of Gotham PD.
The majority of individuals know Jim by his official title of Commissioner Gordon, /thanks to him already being commissioner of Gotham PD when he was introduced in Detective Comics #27 along with Batman, being commissioner of Gotham PD in the Adam West series, and being commissioner in all of the Burton and Schumacher films./
To a lot of individuals who read the comics up until the late 80’s, Commissioner Gordon was the one who turned on the Bat Signal, let Batman know what was going on, and was there to arrest the supervillains when he and the rest of the Bat-Family -- which consisted of both Dick Grayson and Jason Todd iterations of Robin, and Batgirl who turned out to be his own daughter Barbara Gordon -- foiled their nefarious plots.
This was pretty much the common formula both in the Burton and Schumacher movies of the late 80’s to the mid 90’s, when Batman solidified his existence in Gotham City after the death of the Joker as a true sentinel against evil in the 1989 film...
/Gifting Commissioner Gordon and the rest of Gotham PD the Bat-Signal for them to summon him when -- to quote Harvey Dent from the same movie -- the forces of evil should rise again. This persisted in Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and even in Batman & Robin, when technology allowed direct contact between Batman and the commissioner to let him know where the trouble was on the road instead of having to arrive at the station after the beacon was lit./
The police, as I stated in my previous video about Batman films' relationship with copaganda, had a very minimal role in these specific films due to the timeframe the stories in the movies took inspiration from. Both regarding sharing an opinion about the Bat Family that didn’t frame them as an absolute treasure and necessity to the protection of Gotham City, and, from the looks of it, protecting Gotham City from crime.
Almost as if to say that the films made a habit of declaring that Gotham police -- similar to abolitionists opinions about real-life policing -- were pretty much useless.
Then in 1985, DC Comics had an event that affected the entirety of the DC Universe called Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the continuity -- including the Batman mythos -- was completely reworked. One of the things that changed, specifically regarding Batman’s relationship with Gotham police, was how active a role Gotham PD now played in the stories in comparison to the stories written in the Golden Age of comics.
Origin stories like Batman Year One were made, fleshing out Batman and Gordon developing a rapport with each other before he became commissioner. Characters from the Golden Age like Harvey Bullock were reintroduced post Crisis with their own opinions about Batman. Other named and nameless members of Gotham PD were given similar realistic approaches as time went by.
Gone were the days of every cop willingly allowing this mysterious figure to do battle with the forces of evil in their city. Now there are a wide array of cops under Gotham’s employ that have personal feelings and opinions about a vigilante running loose in the city while the commissioner barely does anything about it.
This change was also properly reflected in Batman: The Animated Series, which ran on television the same time as the movies transitioned from Burton to Schumacher.
/While Batman Forever and Batman & Robin had Gotham PD reflect the ways the police were pre-Crisis, TAS went the way of modern comics regarding lots of takes with Batman’s relationship with the police./
Thanks to writers like Frank Miller and Dennis O’Neil taking the reins, Gotham in the comics experienced organized crime and corrupt cops and officials, both before and during the official introduction to the city’s super-powered antagonists. And through both Batman’s early years and modern adventures, the new mythos established that James Gordon, both before and after he became commissioner, was the factor into Batman overall trusting not the entirety of Gotham PD but a certain portion of it.
/This is one aspect that survived the comics and transitioned into the animated series, showing us beloved takes of Batman skeptic Harvey Bullock, and Renee Montoya; the latter joining Harley Quinn as one of the only two original characters made for the animated series that transitioned into the canon of the DC Comic universe. And both the use and depiction of Gotham police had only continued to solidify from there. Both in the comics, and also in the movies./
Now that the likes of Year One, The Long Halloween trilogy, and even The Dark Knight Returns are considered essential reading for the core of the character and his world to be understood, the presence of the police in the Batman mythos is pretty much inescapable at this point.
And, surprising no one, they also have been written and handled by so many writers between Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC’s next big reboot The New 52, that both these aspects about Gotham’s police can simultaneously be true; that Gotham Police ALSO mirrors the real-life origins and problems with policing, and that its existence is constantly being legitimized as necessary, both in and out of the DC Universe.
Batman’s ethics regarding law versus justice are pretty plain as day the more you witness how he interacts with crime, versus how Gordon tries to handle things in Gotham PD, both before and during his time as commissioner.
Even after organized crime was slightly rooted out of Gotham police within the first few years of Batman’s involvement, the thing that separated Gordon was the red tape of cops being forced to enforce the law; the same law written by higher-ups that may or may not be in the best interest of the common people or even puts the common people as first priority.
/Batman doesn’t have said restrictions, him being a vigilante with his own moral code, and has delivered results so that Gordon and the other cops under his trust can continue to do their jobs under the same laws that were keeping them from acting in the interest that would properly protect and serve the people of Gotham, not the infrastructure of the hierarchical bourgeoisie./
But while this is reflected in both of the more modern film iterations of Batman -- Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, and in Matt Reeves’ The Batman more specifically -- the writers of the comics that inspired the former unintentionally pushed the propaganda that the police are necessary by showing how efficient a small handful of Gotham's finest can be for the city when they ALSO bend the law to put the people first. It also does something very interesting that I’ll talk about a little bit later.
Before people knew it as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, peeps knew the acronym MCU to represent the Major Crimes Unit. In Batman’s section of the DC Universe, this consisted entirely of cops chosen by Gordon to be trustworthy, incorruptible and willing to work with Batman.
/But because they have the same orders to investigate Batman and arrest him on sight as the rest of Gotham PD, certain falsehoods have to be made, and certain laws have to be bent in order for the cooperation to continue./
One of the comics that had an influence regarding this being how the squad in the Nolan trilogy operated is Gotham Central, which told the stories of members of the Major Crimes Unit after James Gordon retired and Michael Atkins took over as commissioner in his stead.
/Members like Renee Montoya, which canonically solidified her character being a lesbian across all of DC continuity./
This gave a Law & Order-esque perspective of Gotham crime fighting that a lot of people were interested in seeing, despite its failure to break the top 100 in comic book sales over its 3 year run.
And like Law & Order, despite it being a good book that told unrealistic stories with unrealistic characters, it also gave unrealistic depictions of how law enforcement is actually handled. Because even in the midst of a city where supervillains run amuck, it was still told in a way that over-glorified the life of a police officer. And I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the depiction also put just as many false promises of what it would be like to be an officer in some heads as anything Dick Wolf produced for NBC
But an interesting fact about Gotham’s Major Crimes Unit that is more prominent in the Gotham Central comic than it was in The Dark Knight, is that outside of this squad specifically chosen by Gordon to “interact” with Batman, they are the only squad in Gotham PD that are 100% clean.
/Because it has the likes of Gordon AND Batman in their corner, the rest of Gotham PD can’t trust them to be loyal with either being in the pockets of organized crime and supervillains like they are, or in allowing their bigotry to be influenced by the establishment's already lengthy history of oppression./
This, turns out, is one of the things about this comic that I’m glad they get correct about what it means to be a cop. Not just in the realm of the mythos of Batman, but also in real life.
Because a lot of individuals who initially joined the force across the country, learned the hard way that thanks to the roots of policing, it’s incredibly difficult for someone to both be a cop and also do the right thing. And that’s something that even James Gordon had to learn in the comics.
You Protecting This Guy, Jim?
In 2019, Ronald Greene, a 49 year old black resident of Louisiana was involved in a high-speed chase with state troopers. Said officers told his family that he died upon impact of crashing into a tree from the chase, until the Associated Press released body cam footage to the public showing officers on the scene arrest Greene after catching him while proceeding to stun, punch, and drag Greene in a display of excessive force and refusing him medical aid for over 9 minutes until he died.
Despite being caught in the lie and Greene’s family rightfully taking legal action, the state police didn’t release any footage related to the incident themselves until late May of 2021, only to then go on record to state that the use of force was -- and I quote -- awful but lawful -- and helping paint the narrative of white liberals’ fan favorite excuse of “Death via noncompliance” by saying he struggled with the officers on the way to the hospital.
Don’t worry; we’re gonna unpack that quote in a minute, I promise.
With Greene’s death now being a case of police brutality involving multiple Louisiana state troopers, this caused fellow trooper Carl Cavalier, a 33 year old black man who had been a trooper since 2014, to feel a certain type of way toward his department, as you’d expect.
Once he learned about the roles a lot of his fellow colleagues have played in Greene’s death, he went on two local news stations in order to criticize his department.
/In the interview he had with WWLTV in August of 2021, he said “I guess it created a shock to me, created like a level of disappointment that I’m still recovering from now. The fact that these guys are actively covering up a murder.”/
Like clockwork, a bit after that interview aired to the public, Cavalier was placed on paid leave. However, he had all the faith in the world that this wouldn’t stick, saying, and I quote...
/“If the justice system works like it’s supposed to, if the appeals process works like it’s supposed to, I believe I’ll have my job back.”/
Oh...Oh, honey...
Then two months later on October 8th, he shared a letter to NBC signed by the Louisiana State Superintendent Lamar A Davis stating that he was being violated for the public statements he made to said local news, being disloyal to the department, seeking publicity and performing conduct unbecoming of a police officer, all being used to justify his termination from the force within 45 days.
Now while Cavalier -- like the family of Ronald Greene -- decided to take legal action against the Louisiana State Troopers, I find it interesting that part of the reason they decided to let him go was due to lack of loyalty to the department, especially stating it so blatantly.
Like, here’s a department that has lied, been called out on the lie, and lied again after being forced to reveal the truth about the initial lie, yet they have no problem cutting one of their own loose that criticizes their actions and machinations.
And the key word here in this situation is criticize, because publicly that’s all he did. Just like the rest of us, Cavalier didn’t know what TRULY happened on the scene until AP released the initial video, which caused him to ask questions.
It’s not as if he refused to fall in line with how things are done in the department among fellow cops, or allowed his ethics to affect his decision-making process regarding doing something outside of the law. Not like Isaac Lambert, previously a Sergeant at Chicago PD that was placed back on patrol duty after having the coveted role of Detective taken away from him, because an unarmed 18 year old was shot by an off duty cop back in 2017, and he refused to sign off on the report during the investigation that would’ve made the victim come off as the perpetrator four days prior.
If I were to be so bold, one could say that this universal test of loyalty among police departments nationwide tends to be one of the main roots that keeps policing as we know it connected to its origins surrounding hierarchical imperialism and colonialism.
Because they are in such a state of power due to the police’s original intent to oppress those who would threaten said hierarchy still being a core directive after all these years, it becomes incredibly easy to allow that agency given to you by those who consciously and subconsciously answer to said hierarchy to go to your head.
So when one deviates with the intention to look at the oppressed in the same right as anyone else -- regardless of how they chose to acknowledge said humanity -- they’re immediately considered an infection. And the body -- aka the others in the police department -- either contain the infection or find a way to get the white blood cells to remove it entirely.
/“Unfortunately, right now,” Lambert explained, “I’m a perfect example of that. I’m living proof that [...] if you speak out and it’s not what the department wants you to conform to, you’ll be punished. Or they’ll take action against you, and you really have no recourse unless you’re strong enough to stand out there on the ledge. And a lot of people won’t back you. They’ll leave you out there for yourself...”/
A lot of people also forget, and I completely blame the Nolan movies for this, that this also happened to Jim Gordon
Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One is, at this point, the quintessential origin story for not just Batman, but for Gordon as well. It’s also one out of the only two Batman stories he’s written that are actually GOOD.
In it, Gordon isn’t a native of Gotham as the Dark Knight Trilogy or Batman Smallville likes to depict, but instead a transfer from -- ironically enough -- Chicago PD. Why is he a transfer?
/Because he became that infection in the midst of the body that was the Chicago PD that they collectively decided to get rid of, and could only get work in Gotham after Chicago shunned him out of his previous job for bringing down a crooked cop./
And while the situation is better fleshed out in Gordon’s own prequel story “Gordon of Gotham” written by Batman alum Dennis O’Neil...
/The animated adaptation of Batman: Year One does a great job at incorporating elements of what he had to go through before his arrival to Gotham was timed pretty much perfectly with Batman’s first outing./ (There’s a reason everyone hates Internal Affairs...When you take down another cop, they treat you like any other lowlife scumbag)
When you can plainly see that the same kind of “loyalty” among police exists in the comics as it does in real life, you know that there’s CLEARLY a problem with policing itself.
Because as Batman: Year One has gone on to show, as well as other stories that take place after Crisis on Infinite Earths and before the New 52 reboot, Gotham PD is subject to just about the same amount of systemic control as displayed by any other real-life police department in America, despite its attempts at showing that the root of the corruption is them being in bed with organized crime.
/Just in Batman: Year One alone, Gordon’s been jumped by his fellow officers during his first couple months of being in Gotham for finding ways to address the corruption outside of the spotlight. Then when he begins going about handling Gotham PD’s corruption in a way that doesn’t make him a public figure, he and his family are constantly being respectively blackmailed and threatened once he begins to crack down on then-Commissioner Loeb and his entanglement with Carmine Falcone./
/Then when he and Batman’s relationship is solidified past year one -- way before he eventually becomes Commissioner Gordon -- Batman’s ability to go where and cross the lines that he legally can’t as a cop becomes more apparent, even with him making attempts to clean up the department from the inside out after Loeb is forced to resign as commissioner./
For Batman, as I stated earlier, there’s a clear difference between upholding the law and seeking justice, and he constantly disregards the former in order to uphold the latter. Meanwhile, Gordon and other “good cops” that the mythos would introduce later on like Renee Montoya and a reformed Harvey Bullock have to operate under the latter and -- like my poor Carl Cavalier -- hope the former naturally takes place.
But as history has taught us, both in the past with Jim Crowe and currently in certain states with officials promoting the likes of fascism, just because a law exists doesn’t mean it’s just or good. And just because a law exists for the sole purpose of watching the watchmen, doesn’t mean it will be enforced.
Which, when you remember that the police are first and foremost an institution that are rooted in keeping the working class and impoverished from overthrowing the status quo currently being benefited from by the hierarchical bourgeoisie, makes you more aware of the pick-and-choose-iness of enforcing the law, when it comes to law enforcement. Both in the Batman mythos and in real life.
Take African American and ex Buffalo Police Officer Cariol Horne, for example. And yes, I am aware; I too am beginning to see a pattern here.
She was on the force for 19 years when, in November 2006, she responded to a domestic disturbance call to see her white partner Greg Kwiatkowsky repeatedly punching a handcuffed black man named Neal Mack before turning Neal around to choke him. She yelled for him to stop, and when he wouldn’t, she simply grabbed Greg’s arm from around Neal’s neck. This resulted in Greg punching her as a result, but stopped him from choking Neal Mack, more than likely saving his life.
What followed, as you can imagine, was Cariol getting fired. Despite only taking Greg’s arm off of Neal to keep from choking him, they charged her with -- and I quote -- “jumping on Kwiatkowsky’s back and/or striking him with her hands.” Even Greg, who kept his job until he was forced to retire after ANOTHER similar incident was reported, gave a sworn statement that said that wasn’t true.
Since her being fired, Cariol fought to get her pension and payback she earned for her almost 20 years on the force and didn’t receive it until 2021. However, a year before that after the death of George Floyd and the return of the Black Lives Matter movement in response, the Buffalo common council passed what became known as Cariol’s Law that would allow officers in Buffalo New York to intervene against excessive force and protect said officers from retaliation.
Out of the 6 sections in Cariol’s Law as written, 4 of them were written into law. Including intervening, holding officers who refuse to intervene accountable, protections for those who do, and restorative justice for whistleblower retaliation.
Unfortunately, while this is a great example of laws being made with the hopes of enacting justice, there are also instances in which the laws that are in place are not only not enforced, but officers are once again treated like a virus that the body that is the police have to either isolate or destroy in response.
Instances like Jay Park, an Asian American police officer for the University of Georgia who was enforcing the 9-1-1 Medical Amnesty law that was passed in 2014.
This law extends amnesty to those who need medical attention due to overdosing on illegal drugs and underaged individuals drinking alcohol, in order to persuade those to call for help in order to receive proper medical attention and avoid death without the fear of prosecution for illegal and underage substance abuse.
Two underage students of the University of Georgia fell under the protections of the 911 Medical Amnesty law via underage drinking when Park was called. When Park arrived at the scene after receiving a call from those who misinterpreted the law, he rightfully refused to arrest them and was fired for it, being called “an embarrassment to the agency” by his police chief after going -- and I quote -- “outside the chain of command.”
This is one of the deviances that comics and other media that glorify the importance of police take when compared to how it’s done in real life, and it’s kinda hippocratic in my opinion. Like I stated before, I personally haven’t seen anything similar resemble this in superhero comics since reading Gotham Central.
So sticking with Batman, thanks to Jim Gordon’s tireless crusade of ridding Gotham PD of any and all corruption after the removal of Loeb and his ex-partner Flass, he and the rest of the department have no legal choice but to be confined to any and all aspect of the law, which may or may not have been written with keeping the comfort of the hierarchical bourgeoisie in mind over poor, working class and marginalized families.
Like with the conviction of Al Capone, alternate methods still within the parameters of the law have to be taken in order for justice to be done, if said department cares about justice at all, or if you’re not friends with billionaire-turned-vigilante that operates outside the law between the hours of midnight and 4 am.
Meanwhile, in reality, multiple precincts of different police departments operate under a pick-and-choose clause regarding which laws to follow, which to give reasons for breaking-slash-not following them in press statements, and justify either letting go, or making the the lives a living hell of officers that choose to uphold the law over being loyal to the overall body. And most of the time, organized crime finding a creeping hand into law enforcement doesn’t even play a factor.
As demonstrated earlier, it can simply be the power trip of being a cop meshing so well with the original purpose of policing being to oppress marginalized people of color, the poor and the working class uniting those into a state of believably untouchable solidarity...
While others who take up the job that genuinely want to help people -- that goes double for people of color -- either eventually give in to said power like the group of black Memphis cops that did a brutality to another black man late January of 2023, are isolated from the rest of the body via racism and/or discrimination because they naively believe policing can be saved, or are removed from the body altogether by being fired at the slightest display of nonconformity.
Then, when those of us who see that modern policing hasn’t deviated that much from its origins and continue to enforce laws that maintain economic inequality and the like, and we rightfully state that policing cannot be fixed and must be abolished...
/They and their supporters want to stand unified and tell us to stop criticizing them, and remind us how much they’re necessary for society to function./
Not funding social programs like welfare and whatnot to properly provide low-income citizens and families the means to properly live without having to revert to a life of crime, because that would mess up the school-to-military and school-to-prison pipelines for their investors, but that the POLICE are necessary for society to function. The kicker here is that it’s not OUR society they’re usually talking about.
Ironic. For an organization that was founded and adjusted to break up unions, they sure do care about not breaking up theirs...
It Could Tear The Whole City Apart...
The reason why a lot of Batman films are listed as copaganda in this regard -- especially the Nolan films -- is that, as I stated in my previous video, it focuses on the concept of Carmine Falcone’s grip on organized crime creating the liberal talking point of “a few bad apples” spoiling the bunch as a way of detracting from the true roots of why policing is the way that it is...
Only to then focus on the importance of police in modern day to be the selling point once organized crime no longer has a hand in the donut box, and then discredit the socialism and communes that would arise from overthrowing the hierarchical bourgeoisie that the police protect by villainizing the revolt necessary to do so in the first place.
/Matt Reeves’ The Batman, however, despite making similar mistakes with Carmine Falcone controlling Gotham PD with Thomas Wayne’s renewal fund, still has the opportunity in Parts 2 and 3 to better address both the origins of and the problems with policing in similar avenues that certain comics have explored./
James Gordon being a black cop while also keeping his whistleblower origins in the comics intact would do a TREMENDOUS service to this adaptation of his character regarding wanting to clean up Gotham PD and create the law-bending Major Crimes Unit that would employ and protect all the infections that the police body as a whole would’ve otherwise attacked, while simultaneously exposing the nature it has in common with real life police as a result.
/They do touch a bit of this in Part 1, but not in a way that truly makes it personal to Gordon like how Selina Kyle’s bi-racial background and feelings about Gotham’s privileged plays into hers. Learning that his former partner and previous Commissioner Pete Savage was corrupt even during taking down Maroni after the Riddler killed him, knocked the hopeful wind out of Gordon for sure. But then, similar to the real-life examples, his loyalty to Gotham PD starts being questioned when they wanna unmask and lock up Batman when they bring him to the precinct after Riddler kills District Attorney Gil Colson, played by Skaarsgard #5/20. So in order to make sure that his partnership with Batman doesn’t turn him into an infection that the rest of the body either isolates or eliminates entirely thanks to the prodding of Captain Izzy over here, he puts on the performance that he does that Batman believes enough to have his heart broken a bit./
Yes, I know Captain Izzy’s not his name. But one, I don’t know the character's ACTUAL name, nor do I care enough about them to learn. And 2, which is MOST important, I only know the actor that played him from his performance as Izzy from Our Flag Means Death, and me and all my homies HATE Izzy, so that motherfucker is Captain Izzy.
Can Reeves and his writing partners for Part 2 and eventually Part 3 do better than this? Of course.
Personally, I would love to see Jeffrey Wright’s Gordon tackle being a whistleblower in Gotham PD like he was in the comics, now that it’s free from the supposed grasp of organized crime as a way of showing the audience that it was never the problem regarding why no one trusts the police.
/How would James Gordon, now that he’s a black lieutenant, react to being isolated for being disloyal when he tries to weed out the problematic aspects of policing in Gotham PD, now that he’s under a false sense of security with the elimination of Carmine Falcone? How will he react seeing OTHER black officers fall into the same power trip Gordon naively thought arresting Falcone would eliminate to make sure they don’t end up like him?/
Also, just to make the anti-woke brigade mad, what if one of said black cops he sees giving in to the power trip and tries to save from it is Harvey Bullock?
That way we can have him pull Bullock up out of the muck into the reformed character we know him to be, while also have a chance for Gordon’s newfound blackness by being played by Jeffrey Wright to properly be reflected in his character, just like Selina tapped into Zoe Kravitz’s.
Matter of fact, let’s have Bullock SPECIFICALLY be the one that kept trying to unmask Batman and got his shit punched in as a result.
/That way he already has a resentment for Batman established like in the comics and the animated series!/
Just from these changes and additions alone, we’ve established how The Batman’s Gotham PD -- just like the police in real life -- can continue to be an institution of corruption despite having no outside influence like organized crime...
And how it can better depict the isolation and elimination of individuals who initially sought police work to make a difference in the community it was initially created to ostracize, if they stray too far from the quote-unquote brotherhood that the force implements on itself...
/Thanks to Jim Gordon in The Batman having to constantly cross that tightrope in order to avoid said isolation for working with the vigilante./
However, in order to truly connect these points and show that policing as a whole is part of the larger problem in the universe Matt Reeves has created, the most important thing that must be established with policing in Gotham is that it is connected to the bigger illustration of control...
That there is, in fact, a hierarchical bourgeoisie that the foundation of Gotham police have it ingrained in their code to protect from the lesser that make up the majority of the city, even if they’re individually unaware that’s what they’re doing.
Because let’s just face it; no matter how set in reality a Batman film is going to be, the story will still be based in fantasy where realistic comparisons will always lose to fantastical allegory for the sake of not making things too blatant.
/Especially since it’s established that Matt Reeves’ Batman trilogy isn’t connected to a larger DC Universe outside of cities already associated with Batman and his eventual Bat-Family./ (Maybe Bludhaven)
Thankfully Batman’s rogues gallery allows us a perfect force to be that hierarchy specifically for Gotham, in a universe where Gotham is the primary focus. And despite its relatively new addition to the Batman mythos, it makes the most sense to include them considering what’s already been touched upon in The Batman, and how elements of the first movie can be expanded upon in the third with them in mind in order to make a full-fledged trilogy.
/This includes Bruce’s realization that Batman needs to transition from vengeance to hope for a city and a people that desperately need it, Riddler revealing that the very problem with Gotham’s infrastructure goes all the way back to its founding, and Selina being the one to show Bruce that Gotham’s rich and elite take priority while those who have less have to fend for themselves, knowing that they can’t rely on anyone else to do so./
If you are a comic fan, more specifically a DC Comics fan, then you know that said new addition to Batman’s rogues gallery that can take this place, is the Court of Owls. They were created by Scott Snyder who, coincidentally enough, wrote 52 issues of the main Batman comic as part of the New 52 reboot.
Originally meant to give Gotham its own secret illuminati-style organization -- not “Doctor Strange’s Boy Band” Illuminati, but “the conspiracy group that black conservatives like to say Beyonce’s a part of” Illuminati -- they consisted of Gotham’s elite that controlled the machinations of the city since its founding and the legacy families that founded it.
/This included the Waynes and the Arkhams, just as depicted in Matt Reeves’ The Batman./
They were also the first villain organization that Batman and the rest of the Bat Family fought against after this universal reset, creating an entire event surrounding everyone in the Batman mythos that had their own solo title. So it was a pretty huge deal.
As of the recording of this video, they’ve been featured in a good chunk of media outside of DC Comics.
They were the main antagonists of the animated movie Batman Vs Robin, which was terrible. They were an antagonistic force in the Batman Smallville show Gotham, which I think was terrible. They’re planning on being featured in the upcoming CW Batman show Gotham Knights, which looks like it's gonna be terrible. And they’re the main antagonists of the spinoff of Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham games, also named Gotham Knights, which has gone the way of Marvel’s Avengers so it’s ACTUALLY terrible.
/Like, look at this Anti-Secret Identity cowl they got default Babs in! What do they think she is, a MARVEL hero??/
While their possible involvement in a Matt Reeves Batman film might biasedly be their first adaptation from comics into another medium that’ll be actually GOOD, it can also prove to be the perfect allegory for the problem with policing.
If the police in real life were created to serve as the wall between the native people of a colonized land only to then evolve into keeping the poor, marginalized and working class occupants of said land from destroying the systems benefitted by the white and wealthy in power and responsible for said colonization and hierarchy...
Then for the isolated mythos of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Gotham and its people must be the conquered land and occupants, while members of the city’s founders -- the Waynes, the Arkhams, the Cobblepots...even the Kanes and the Elliots if Part II decides to introduce Thomas as Hush -- must grow into the Court of Owls and properly represent Gotham’s hierarchical bourgeoisie.
While the supernatural and sci fi elements revolving around the court wouldn’t be necessary in Matt Reeves’ realistic take on The Batman -- /there’s an assassin sect of the Court of Owls called the Talons that they send off to course-correct certain Gothamites whenever the court is threatened that they keep on ice across generations ala Winter Soldier -- they can still exist in a form or fashion./
More specifically as a last resort when their normal methods of control implanted across the city don’t work when prying eyes get too close to the truth.
After all, in the mythos The Batman established for itself so far, why would the efforts of such forces be necessary when those in established seats of power across the city are actively keeping the status quo in place that the court benefits from? One could even say that the way things were before Riddler entered the picture was exactly where the Court of Owls wanted things to be.
/Why allow Carmine Falcone to have so much control of the city through the Renewal fund and offer up Slavatore Maroni in order to gain it? Because it wouldn’t have hurt the Court to allow him to do so. If in the third film Reeves reveals that the Court of Owls had a hand in Martha Wayne developing her mental illnesses as the initial domino push that would end in both she and Thomas being murdered, that action could be seen as the Court of Owls involving themselves in order to make sure the status quo stays unaltered, which if Thomas Wayne survived and successfully became mayor, it would have been./
And this action wouldn’t be such a deterrent from how they operate in the comics.
/The Court of Owls had no problem sacrificing descendants of the founding families of Gotham in order to preserve themselves -- part of the parliament or otherwise./
As a matter of fact, the existence of Batman in the first film doesn’t phase them either. Not until Riddler begins making a mess of things.
/By eliminating very useful key player in making sure Gotham stays oppressed for the benefit of the Court of Owls -- the mayor, the commissioner and the DA specifically -- Riddler leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that Batman follows to Falcone being in possession of the Renewal Fund and eliminating Maroni, thus pointing him in the proper direction of where to find the Court./
/I wouldn’t be surprised if -- like my fellow YouTuber Troy over on Fanboy Reviews predicted in his first sequel pitch for The Batman -- the “el rata alada” clue would be expanded upon in either the end of the second or the third film, in order to reveal that the rat with wings isn’t a falcon but in fact a Bat, and that a discovered addition to said clue would be that one of their natural predators are owls, showing that Edward Nashton was aware of the court’s existence upon his initial psychotic break that prompted him to become the Riddler and hoped, with Batman’s help, to bring them to the light./
So that covers Riddler and Selina’s avenues regarding how far the Court of Owls’ influence affects the corruption of Gotham’s infrastructure and their overall lack of care for its poor, working class and disenfranchised citizens respectively. All that’s left is to reveal that Gotham PD were initially created as a means to keep said citizens in place so that the Court can’t be overruled by them.
/And that revelation -- that hard-to-swallow pill of truth -- has to be made by the one individual in The Batman who currently believes that policing can be changed from the inside. It has to be James Gordon./
Gordon suffered a double-whammy over the course of The Batman regarding his faith in Gotham PD and the judicial system. Not only did he learn that his old partner and previous commissioner Savage was dirty working the Maroni case thanks to Riddler’s reveal...
/But that the two of them bringing in Maroni in one of the biggest drug busts in Gotham’s history was simply a front for Falcone to assume power over all of Gotham through Thomas Wayne’s Renewal Fund as smoothly as possible./
If you add the Court of Owls setting up the downfall of the Waynes in order to allow Falcone to keep Thomas Wayne from changing Gotham’s status quo, knowing the role that Gotham PD played in order to do so, then Jim will begin to have the realization that nothing he did as a cop actually mattered.
So over the course of the next two movies, Gordon realizes that everything he and the rest of the police had been doing since that “bust” had been by the design of these seemingly invisible elite of Gotham that rely on things being a specific way for them to properly thrive.
/That the rest of the police -- at least 90% of them -- don’t bat an eye even as Falcone is out of their pockets and continue to oppress and divide the citizens of Gotham as if he were./
And even though he has the power to protect those like him on the force that want to do the right thing but might be looked at as traitors with creating his own squad consisting of the likes of Renee Montoya and Harvey Bullock, the slow and steady reveal of both the Court of Owls existence, and that they had a hand in making sure the pillar of oppression they installed within the department during its founding would last the test of time, is enough to have them question things.
Like, imagine if Gordon and every other decent person in Gotham PD found out that their entire institution was never meant to protect and to serve, but to control. That this secret organization of Gotham's wealthy and elite only created their occupation in order to keep the lowly citizens from revolting against a system the Court founded Gotham on so that it's them that benefit from it first and foremost.
Imagine if said officers realized that thanks to how it was founded and the initial purpose behind it's foundation, that even if corruption via organized crime was eliminated, the very base of what they've learned about policing was a lie.
/What would the likes of Gordon, Montoya and Bullock do if they discover that even if one has good intentions and isn't corrupt, that being an officer has actually heavily contributed to the actual problem?/ (You’re a good cop)
Conclusion
As someone who used to believe that defunding the police was enough, I can understand the difficulty and hesitance of aborting the entire concept of law enforcement as it currently exists.
It’s so ingrained in our society, our pop culture, our day-to-day life, that imagining no police at all is pretty hard for someone who doesn’t know where to begin knowing what that’s like.
Thankfully there’s plenty of reading one can do in order to see what it could be like in a universe where such a thing happens, and how it's still possible in the one we all currently reside in.
There are also plenty of people that are already putting in a tremendous amount of work to make sure the programs that make it so that police aren’t necessary for the factor of crime, stay active through either government assistance or the likes of donations and volunteer work, and they need support
But for a good amount of individuals, sometimes its a story with characters as widely recognizable as The Batman that help kickstart someone’s curiosity regarding why these opinions exist in the first place; that challenge what they currently know about how society and the like has affected them in one way or another simply by existing, and makes them wonder what could be done differently.
We’re probably never going to see Jeffrey Wright’s James Gordon in any of Matt Reeves’ Batman films throw down his badge and stand with Batman and the people of Gotham.
And even if Matt Reeves WANTED to do that, Warner Brothers execs -- despite being iffy on displaying cops in a positive light nowadays because of companies wanting to stay neutral on the subject -- would never allow such an iconic character to do something like that.
Because to them, doing so would mean to a significant amount of individuals -- most of which are dumb and part of the problem, I’m not afraid to say -- that they have chosen a side on the matter, and will influence others to choose said side.
But that’s the thing about adaptations and interpretations. They change and evolve and allow us to tell stories as layered as The Batman.
/We can take the ethical talking point that’s constantly thrown around regarding him beating his villains to a pulp expecting him to interrogate them successfully later on, and have that be explored regarding the impact he’s truly making on the city and its people and realizing he needs to not be vengeance, but hope.
/We can allow Selina Kyle to be more than just a mere cat burglar, but someone who knows what it’s like to be ignored and downtrodden alongside the rest of the citizens of a metropolitan city and does what she can for those who experienced similar hardships while also taking care of herself.
/We can have Riddler go from being a brilliant mind that got screwed over by an ex-employer and now has to make it everyone else's problem, to being the one who exposes the true nature of corruption, oppression and greed present in a city with over 400 years of baggage after experiencing what it's like to be forgotten by the system./
And if nothing is TRULY getting in the way of Matt Reeves allowing these brilliant interpretations of these timeless characters, then it says a lot that something’s in the way of him using tools provided by the very mythos of Batman itself...
/to show us that the only ethical thing one can do for their community -- their city -- as a cop, is to quit and to TRULY protect and serve the people./
