House of Eratosthenes

As cool as “I’m the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now” is, it never really made any sense to me. Why does Gotham deserve Batman as a hero? Because it’s fundamentally good? Just because no one wanted to personally blow up the other ferry doesn’t mean those people are good. I mean, they voted to blow the other ferry up! That makes them immoral cowards, not good people.

The people of Gotham elect a governmental infrastructure that is at its core corrupt and ineffective. They are willing to vote away the lives of “innocent” people to save their own. Many tried to kill a completely innocent person (Reese) for selfish reasons. Rachel Dawes says in the first movie that there are good people in Gotham. Really? Who? The only good people left are Gordon and Fox. Everyone else are either corrupt, incompetent, criminal or dead. The fact that being DA is practically a death sentence shows how sick the city is.

The hero it DESERVES is one who, like in Watchmen, can be summed up with the quote, “The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save us!’… and I’ll look down and whisper ‘No.'”

Bruce Wayne fits that perfectly. After all, he was trained by Ra’s Al Ghul, and some of that deep hatred of Gotham is seeping into every one of his actions. He knows it needs to be flushed, broken, and restarted. (Kind of like when I argue with you on how the US is fundamentally broken, and we should just let it collapse and rebuild from the ashes.) However, he is, at the heart, a good Gotham boy, and he knows that what it NEEDS is the one who will continue to fight, continue to do what’s needed to clean up the city. That’s the hero it needs. (That would be you in our little tiffs.)

So, very clearly, he’s the hero Gotham DESERVES, but not the one it NEEDS. It’s a subtle distinction, and it rings true – if you look at it from his perspective.
- muttley | 01/23/2013 @ 17:50
Yeah. They voted to blow up…. a ship full of convicted muggers, rapists and killers.
Rather than let a ship full of law abiding people– including their own wives and children– die.

Such horrid, horrid people.

Wait, what? These people are “evil” because they didn’t want to let a bunch of violent criminals kill them? HELLO? I think you need to recalibrate your moral compass just a little bit there.

But even then, they didn’t do it. And neither did the ship full of Gotham’s worst.

Let us consider: The vote is held up as the highest virtue– Democracy in action! But in truth it is just as often a tool for absolving oneself of individual responsibility. But in the end they did not use it to absolve themselves. They refused.

So yeah. Maybe the people of Gotham are worth saving.

Or maybe salvation isn’t just for those that “deserve” it.
- rhjunior | 01/24/2013 @ 03:05

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Why Does Gotham Deserve Batman?Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Why Does Gotham Deserve Batman?
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013