Time to take a meme on the internet too seriously! :D
There are two things that bug me about the weirdly frequent discourse on Batman.
Firstly, there’s no one version of Batman. You can find bastard fascist Batman, and you can find actual justice Batman. Hell, you can find both by Frank Miller, depending on the point in his career. My favorite version is from The Animated Series, and you’ll find tons of examples of Batman using kindness and compassion to affect meaningful change, instead of reveling in violence as though it solves anything. Heck, he’s nicer to working-class folks, even sympathetic criminals, than to his fellow rich people.
Secondly, I think it’s a talking point with bad optics. Batman rules. Why let the fascists have him? If there are loads of ways to look at and interpret the character, I’d rather focus on the one that makes him the good kind of class traitor, anti-fascist, anti-cop, and fighting for economic and social justice.
Several versions also have him channeling huge amounts of money to charities as Bruce. Also trying to influence local politics with his company or hiring petty criminals he runs into as Batman to work at Wayne Enterprises so they have legitimate income. Batman is working on things that are happening right this second, but Bruce is trying to fix systemic issues so that Batman eventually won’t be needed.
Couldn’t he use his batman persona to intimidate the rich to affect social change? Like Bruce Wayne can do so much if he had a dude in the night breaking into other billionaires houses in Gotham and telling them to raise wages or stop influencing politicians to not raise taxes and let healthcare for all go through
I like TAS Batman A LOT especailly since he gave his villains every shot at redemeption, many of them were simply too damaged to live a normal life… Heck, for Harley Quinn all it took for her to start being evil again was a single PTSD attack, and it was induced by a mall cop, implying her trauma was started by police brutality
Yeah, that’s one of the episodes that immediately came to mind.
Harley: There’s one thing I’ve gotta know: why’d you stay with me all day, risking your butt for someone who’s never given you anything but trouble?
Batman: I know what it’s like to try and rebuild a life. I had a bad day, too, once.
It was absolutely a rehabilitative vision of justice. The same thing happens with The Ventriloquist, where Batman is extremely supportive, and goes to great lengths to talk him down after he was manipulated into returning to crime. Heck, there’s even a villain, Lock-Up, who personifies a cruel, punitive form of justice. He even reveals the guard’s abuse, through a clever ploy, as Bruce Wayne, in a hearing about Arkham.