Well, the man ain't wrong, and I have been looking for a reason to get back into school...
In a recent interview with io9, award-winning poet Steven Leyva talked a bit about why he is teaching a course called “The Evolution of Batman,” this August at the University of Baltimore, which will be based on Glen Weldon’s book, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture which is a terrible title but an interesting premise. Students will obviously also be going over comics that range from 1933 till now, and also drawing on media, like cartoons and the live-action films and shows. Check out some of the interview below, which covers the Joker making deals with Iran, Jason Todd being the first Robin to die, and more.
And hey, maybe think about enrolling; the subject matter is certainly interesting enough.
io9: My first question is why teach this course about Batman, as opposed to Superman, Captain America, or other superheroes who’ve been around for decades?
Steven Levya: Well, this is the question that everybody asks, you know? And perhaps it’s the fan in me, but Batman is just cool. Batman is a cool character.
The class owes a great debt to Glen Weldon and his research in The Caped Crusade, the book he wrote. [What] Glen Weldon puts forward, is that Batman is like a Rorschach test. We can easily project onto him multiple anxieties, like what Walt Whitman describes when he says, “I contain multitudes.” Well, he could have been talking about Batman, because we seem to be able to project almost any version of humanity onto him.
So, for example, right, you can have these cycles of, you know, hyper-masculine, testosterone-filled, almost-fascist versions of Batman like you see in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but you can also have, in the same character, the hyper-pop 1960s Adam West character. You know, dancing in go-go clubs, etc. I would argue there are very few characters that can hold within their space such a spectrum.
Take, for example, Spider-Man. Here’s a character where we’ve got lots of movies, lots of media, you know, cartoons, video games. But he’s always presented in the same way. They share some similarity. in fact, they’re both orphans. Obviously, Peter Parker’s not rich, but the way you see Spider-Man is always as a guilt-ridden teenager or young adult. And yeah, it’s just very different for Batman. He seems to have greater boundaries. So part of the reason of why to teach the class, is because here’s a figure who seems to be able to say something and comment on society, but also reflect society in a recursive relationship. He also has a very broad aesthetic, so we can talk about many [artistic] disciplines and different kinds of social concerns and what media does with them within a single course.
It gives us room to debate, to discuss, and in some ways, mute that sort of thing that fanboys and fan-girls and fan people get into about this obsession with authenticity. What’s the real Batman? Right? What’s the real character? What’re the real roots? And that’s very nebulous, you know? Because of how many different ways Batman can be presented. And so, I hear something like that, right? And I think of all the times, just to make it personal, that in my youth, someone said to me something like, “Well, the way you’re behaving is acting white.” And I’m like, “But, you know...” Or, “You’re not black enough.” Anything a black person does is black! So how is it someone could lay that charge on you? I am someone so invested in being obsessed with what is authentic. And so, you know, some of it is wanting to explore some of those things through the lens of the character.
The last thing I’ll say about that is, it’s very important to me—I teach at an urban, small university in Baltimore. Our population reflects the demographics of the city, which is to say we’re about 60 percent African American. I don’t think that only institutions with much broader funding and endowments should be the only place where this type of class should be taught. I think students who grew up the way that I grew up—relatively poor, but curious—they should have the space to say, “The things that I am interested in, people might marginalize me and say, ‘those are just hobbies.” Those can be areas of deep, academic study and, you know, frankly people can make jobs out of them. Right? I mean, you probably know this writing for Rise of the Black Panther as well. So, that’s some of the thinking there.
io9: Were these kinds of class being taught elsewhere part of the impetus to mount this course in the first place?
Levya: I mean, I would say initially I was initially just curious and interested about the things I was reading in Weldon’s book, the things I was reading in the current issues of Batman written by Tom King. So you know, we’re about to have this Batman/Catwoman wedding this summer, supposedly. And I think we’ll see to the degree to which a character that is, as you said, approaching 80 years old can continue to be relevant, can continue to be adapted.
Many people have argued about comic book heroes, Superman, Batman, etc. being a kind of American mythos. You know, they are Greek gods, etc. That’s pretty boilerplate at this point. But it’s also interesting to me to think about what it is about the character that allows for longevity? What keeps us coming back to it? When there have been a host of other characters, you know? And other pop figures that have fallen away. There’s a great thing that Weldon’s book talks about, saying Batman is basically a rip off of the Shadow, which I find to be very true. We’re not constantly making Shadow movies. So why is that? What are the things that sustain Batman for us? So for me, it’s the same idea that says it’s important to study certain literature over and over again. Right? Why is it that we still read Zora Neale Hurston? Things from that era? Why does it stay relevant?
Just because superhero comics might have once been a marginalized genre—rising out of the pulp genre and geared towards kids—doesn’t mean that they’re not worth study. They are, because we, as a nation, have grown up with them. All the technological change and social change of the 20th century coincides with Batman growing up. So he’s a cypher in that way, and perhaps an important cultural touchstone, in much the same way we look at Bas-Relief and other sorts of iconography from the Renaissance. So, initially, I was just interested in it.
I want my students to be able to code-switch in a variety of ways and I tell my students don’t ignore your interests. There’s going to be enough people telling you to get a job, and how are you going to make money with this? Make space for yourself—particularly when you’re in undergrad or grad school—to explore the things you become deeply curious about. Because it can be sustaining for you. And you can figure out a way to make money with it, or make it relevant.
Yeah, so, it wasn’t an explicit critique of elitist institutions, but I think that’s a benefit. And hey, no one should presume what kind of classes are going to be taught at the University of Baltimore, which is best known for its law school.
Fair enough! Let’s talk about the syllabus and readings.
Levya: Some of those things are a little bit nascent, they’re still being developed. I was talking with the reference librarian here at the university, and we were brainstorming how we could possibly make use of the Library of Congress, which just received a big donation from Steve Geppi and the Geppi Entertainment Museum. That might be a great opportunity to look at some artifacts, right? There will be things that we wouldn’t normally be able to see outside of digital reproductions, or some panel reproductions in Weldon’s book. Like I said, we’re still figuring this stuff out.
The class is really a media genres class; it’s an English III. The way that class has been taught in other instances has been really flexible class. In the past, it could either be taught through a single director of films, like the Coen Brothers’ films as directors. Sometimes, it’s been through a particular genre like neo-noir, or Western, or environmental horror, like one colleague of mine taught recently. So I thought, here is a figure in Batman that has several permutations in media and in different mediums. So we have a chance to explore how his presentations evolve and change, etc. As a foundational text, we’re going to use Weldon’s book, we’re going to look at The Dark Knight Returns, but we’re also going to look at Death in the Family and part of the reason—this is when Jason Todd gets it…
io9: In the first issue of that storyline, they’re fighting terrorists...
Levya: Yeah, it’s so crazy! Because the Joker makes a deal with Iran, you know. It’s a bizarre plot point but it reflects the 1980s, you know, and in some ways the beginning of this intense Islamophobia/xenophobia that we’ve been seeing rising like a hydra right now. I think that’s an interesting point to have this discussion, but one of the real reasons I want to look at Death in the Family is its an example of crowd-sourcing.
Anecdotally, I can’t find another instance where something like this happens. Normally, it doesn’t make sense. It’s counterintuitive. You kill a character. You kill a money-making opportunity. You kill an asset in the company. So why hand over that editorial power to fans?
For the full interview, check it out here.
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