Girl in Four Colors

“Heart of My Own”: I’ve Always Looked At Batman This Way

missvoltairine:

As being NOT a story about a driven, badass crimefighter, but a story about a sheltered, naive man who perpetuates the cycle of his own trauma on an institutional level. Gotham doesn’t need Batman; Batman needs Gotham, and he needs it to stay the way it was when his parents died - he uses his personal wealth and power in such a way that Gotham’s development stays just as arrested as his own, and it slowly, directly and indirectly, destroys or almost destroys everyone around him, particularly the people he cares about (Harvey, Selina, Gordon, etc).

[…]

Harvey is my favorite [antagonist], because he exemplifies all the ways the Bat - and all the social, legal, etc systems and institutions of the city - has failed to the detriment of Gotham and the people of Gotham.

Batman is incapable of fighting the kind of crime that Harvey grew up with (child abuse, parental alcoholism) because all of that was informed heavily by the poverty that Harvey was born into (and we’ve already discussed how Bruce Wayne facilitates such economic disparities in Gotham, both as Bruce and as Batman). And then as an adult he was embraced by Bruce and Gotham’s high society as an example of someone who bootstrapped up and was a portent of GREAT THINGS TO COME FOR GOTHAM, but his own trauma and the violent crime facilitated by Batman’s shortcomings and neglect put the lie to that in a way that ultimately led to Harvey’s most traumatic, violent, and self-destructive downfall.

Basically I love Harvey and I want to hug him, even though I do realize that when it comes to the people he loves he is fully capable of perpetuating his OWN cycles of abuse (FOR EXAMPLE, his relationship with Renee).

The Joker is the Bat’s most intense and enduring personal nemesis, but Harvey is the Bat’s most personal and enduring failure - with the exception perhaps of Jason and Stephanie’s deaths (I think the three are more or less tied) - and Bruce KNOWS IT.