Monday, September 15, 2008

Sent to me by a friend (cause the Journalist was called Steve Murray)

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http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=654384

Can't a guy just like fetish wear?

Anti-crime suit or fetish wear. You decide.


A
nti-crime suit or fetish wear. You decide.

Friday nights are "me time." I like to curl up on the couch with a big bag of shelled nuts and watch Ghost Whisperer with my cat, Monster Truck. Once that's over I bundle all of my rage at how terrible that show is, put on my leather pants and PVC mask and head to a local club where I flog strangers with a variety of fun instruments. Jennifer Love Hewitt's face floats in front of me, like the type of ghost that whispers to her every Friday night, and I heed her call with another paddling. Now, my outfit may be outrageous, and my beating of grown men and women masochistic and my cat is actually a teenage boy, but I am not gay. And neither is Batman.

For more than 70 years, people have misconstrued Batman's living situation and exploits as evidence of homosexuality, the main trigger in this gay gun being Robin, Batman's youthful, plucky sidekick. But the introduction of Robin stemmed not from a deep-seated (ho ho!) desire to make Batman gay, but to create a relatable character for the boys reading these adventures. Making Robin a fellow orphan was the easiest way to go. Was Batman supposed to pull up to Robin's parents' house every night and honk his Bat-horn, signalling another night of danger? Preposterous. And it would be poor manners for the über-wealthy Bruce Wayne to let young Richard Grayson stay in a dingy orphanage while he sipped aged ginger ale and ate delicious candied yams in the opulence of Wayne Manor. Adopting this orphaned young man just made sense.

I will concede that Batman was not the ideal father as he was constantly putting young Dick into harm's way and spending most of his spare time ROMANCING LADIES. What? Ladies? Is it true? Oh, let's see now, there's the alluring Silver St. Cloud; Talia al Ghul, the mother of Batman's biological son, Damian; Sasha Bordeaux, Bruce Wayne's sexy former bodyguard; and the most powerful, sought-after woman in the world, a little lady known to everyone as Wonder Woman.

That's a lot of women to date just for a "cover." And really, is there any point in creating a cover with Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman? Batman's on-again-off-again love-hate S&M relationship with the feisty criminal serves no purpose except utter sexiness. If he was gay she'd either be behind bars immediately or they'd become best friends who shop at fetish fashion stores every weekend after a mimosa-enriched brunch.

Debating Batman's sexuality seems slightly ridiculous. Not because he's fictional, but because, unlike most men, straight or gay, Batman's mind isn't on sex all day long. The idea that our brains are constantly churning erotica is true, as evidenced by my fantasizing about Talia al Ghul, Catwoman and Wonder Woman since I began writing this article, but these sex-thought standards simply wouldn't apply to Batman. Why? Because he spends 90% of his waking day thinking about how to stop crime. His crusade is all-consuming and the women who filter through his life are distractions from what he really craves: beating up outlandishly dressed criminals while dressed as a bat.

He's a crimesexual and that's a fact of fiction.

National Post

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