Batmania! Tracing the Dark Knight's campy origins on screen

“Kapow!!” “Boff!!” The letters explode on the screen in psychedelic all-caps as Batman rains sucker punches with choreographed precision on the villains. A bad guy falls with a “Crash!” sound effect, and the word, replete with multiple exclamation marks, is duly pasted on screen with psychedelic artwork. That’s Batman the TV series of 1966, where on-screen Batmania truly started, an unapologetic celebration of camp that would seem far removed from the superhero’s noir-driven dark adventures in recent times. 12 January is always a special date for Batman fans. It is the date when Adam West made his debut as Batman/ Bruce Wayne in the 1966 live action television series. Its overnight popularity ensured the show would run for three seasons totalling 120 episodes till March 14, 1968. Importantly, the show helped erase memories of a 1943 attempt to bring Batman to the screen as a 15-chapter serial film starring Lewis Wilson, which had failed to create much impact. The big bang for the series would happen in March 1966, when Life magazine put West’s Batman on its cover headlined “Mad New World” with a strap that read, “Batman makes a mighty leap into national popularity”. Executive producer of the show, William Dozier, was quick to get the box office drift. He rushed to ready a Batman feature film for release in July the same year, starring the lead cast of the series. Variously dubbed as a “technicolor POW!” and a “deadpan farce” by critics, the soaring ratings that Batman’s tongue-in-cheek gags fetched for the show surprised all. The slapstick-stunts–superhero cocktail served its purpose as Dozier had described it: A situational comedy without the background laugh tracks. That was a very different Batman era, when Batman was a fun solution to Gotham’s evils. The Joker or the Riddle were goofy as the baddies, too, with outrageous costumes done in primary colours that practically defined the tone of the show. Depth in understanding the socio-politics of law and lawlessness or crime and punishment was not a prerogative of comicbook cinema, which was decades away from the dark realism that Christopher Nolan would introduce in his seminal Dark Knight films of the 2000s. The 1966 series, as well as the film that came in its wake, soaked Batman in silly slapstick and over-the-top stunts with a reason. When artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger first created “The Batman” for a March 1939 issue of Detective Comics — or DC, as the brand is popular today — the new superhero was meant to provide variety to genre addicts who had already made Superman a sensation. Superman was an image of perfection, hence the need was to envision a superhero who would be radically different and yet be a hero of the people. So, Batman, unlike Superman, was given no special powers. While Superman’s motive to fight crime lay in providing justice to society, Batman was originally driven by the spirit of revenge to eliminate all evil in Gotham City. As Bruce Wayne, Batman was a rich playboy rooted in Americanism, as opposed to Superman’s alien origins. For a crimebuster, Batman was, ironically, a product of Kane being inspired by a 1926 silent film titled The Bat, about a burglar in a bat mask and cape. In this context, Batman was originally visualised as a masked vigilante in a cape while the idea to turn him into a detective with gadgets would kick in later. The television series not surprisingly focussed on Batman’s preliminary calling as a vigilante because it was meant to cater animated adventure for family television viewing rather than the sort of detective suspense drama that would form the core of the 2022 film reboot starring Robert Pattinson. Sure, West flaunted Batman’s basic gadgets — notably, a flashy batmobile and a bright red (obviously plastic) phone that served as Commissioner Gordon’s hotline to Batman’s lair. But such gadgets were necessary accessories. Batman preferred using his fists and kicks to get better of the villains. Furthermore, the ditzy execution of stunts and humour was also meant to be in sync with the tone of irreverence Kane and Finger had created in the early comics. An interesting aspect that sets apart the series from the new-age Batman films is the importance of Robin in every episode. Although titled Batman, the series was as much about the caped crusader as his sidekick Robin/Dick Grayson, played by Burt Ward. Robin, in fact, is present with Batman in almost every frame of the show, especially the fight sequences. The series stuck to the template set by the early comicbooks, in its decision to present Robin as a parallel hero to Batman. In his book The Steranko History Of Comics, Jim Steranko quotes Batman writer Bill Finger to explain why equal footage to Robin was important in TV series world of Batman: “…(Sherlock) Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn’t have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That’s how Robin came to be.” The only recent attempt at positioning Robin as a parallel hero in a Batman film happened over 25 years ago, in Joel Schumacher’s 1997 directorial Batman & Robin. The film, starring George Clooney as Batman alongside Chris O’Donnell’s Robin, is widely remembered as a psychedelic mess that unsuccessfully tried reloading the vintage campy vibes of the 1966 series, apart from its highlight casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the arch villain Mr Freeze. The reason why Robin has become redundant in Batman’s world of the new films, perhaps, lies in Finger’s quote. If the character’s primary significance lay in being “a Watson to talk to” for Batman, the new-age Batman played by Christian Bale or Robert Pattinson has mostly been a picture of reserved disposition. He does not necessarily need anyone to talk to, for his audience loves to see him brood as he goes about consistently reimagining DC as ‘Dark Comics’.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter and Instagram