Batman and the body

John Quinn*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

For almost eighty years, the live-action film and television incarnations of Batman have demonstrated a shifting socio-cultural modality for the Dark Knight of the DC universe. From Lewis Wilson, the World War II era Batman, who crusaded on behalf of Uncle Sam in the cinematic serial Batman (1943); to Adam West, the batsui performing caped crusader in Batman: The Movie (1966) and the iconic swinging sixties television series Batman (1966-68); to the brooding Michael Keaton in Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), who temporarily exorcized the camp from the Defender of Gotham; to the hypermasculine Christian Bale, who battled domestic terrorism in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy: Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the body of the bat has been constantly reconfigured and recodified to amplify the socio-cultural context in which it is (re)produced.

The chapter will explore this evolution of the body of the bat via Cutchins' (2017) interpretation of Bakhtin, intertextuality, and adaptation, demonstrating how the notion of simultaneity and dialogic thought resists the formation of an absolute Batman, and instead constructs a relational dialogue through and between the different ‘batmen’. Drawing on Turner's (2008) work on the body and society, this relationship will be presented as a grotesque dialogue stuck in the act of becoming, situating the body of Batman as a site that is continually built and rebuilt in a shape and disposition related to the cultural context of his genesis. Structurally, the chapter begins with a brief overview of the changing body of Batman in the television and cinema of the 20th and 21st centuries, before moving on to concentrate on three short demonstrative case studies of Adam West, Michael Keaton, and Christian Bale, and concluding with a discussion of Robert Pattinson and the future of the franchise.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Companion to Superhero Studies
EditorsCarl Wilson, Lorna Piatti-Farnell
PublisherRoutledge Taylor & Francis Group
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 22 Sept 2024

Publication series

NameRoutledge Media and Cultural Studies Companions
PublisherRoutledge

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