How many times have you seen someone with a Batman bumper sticker? T-shirt? Hat? Video game? Movie? A million billion times I’m sure. Batman is a quintessentially American creation, born in 1939, making him now officially 80 years old. As far as I can tell, his popularity has barely faltered for an instant since he was first created. And I’m sure he is much more popular now than when he first appeared. I am interested to know: what is the secret of his unwavering popularity and steadfast position in the annals of pop culture, mainstream media, and the sociological imagination in general? I have several theories…

The first of which is, Batman is, at heart, a detective and, for some reason, something about the idea of the lonely hard-boiled detective is central to American folklore and American ideology. The age-old idea of the rugged individual is personified nowhere as clearly and purely than by the private detective. America has had, in fact, I believe, a kind of love affair with private detectives for as long as the moniker has existed. There is something about private detectives which signify the pursuit of liberty and truth more than perhaps any other job in the world. The entire reason for their existence is to investigate people and situations which, for some reason or other, lead certain people to believe that something is amiss, that the truth has been concealed, that liberty has been threatened. The seeking of the “missing link” if you will hits upon another thing Americans can’t get enough of: the opportunity to interrupt (and set aside) the everyday continuum of ordinary experience which so frustrates the American mind. The American mind which so strongly wishes to reject the ordinary as “something the rest of the world has to deal with, not us.” Detectives embody this rejection of normative values and common, repetitive, everyday experience. Their run-ins, their encounters with people during the course of their job typically depict them in an adversarial position to people who turn and grease the wheels of the ordinary, average, everyday grind. They tend not to be aligned with or attached to things which most people would think of as mainstream, normal, status quo, ordinary, or well-to-do.

What is the classic lead-in to a detective story? A down-and-out guy on his last dime getting thrown some big case by a wealthy socialite who suspects some deep dark secret is being kept from him/her. This idea as well is close to the heart of all god-fearing Americans: that a person’s luck or life situation if you will can all turn around in an instant if that person is wiling to keep their nose to the grindstone once opportunity comes their way and never back down from adversity when it crops up.

Secondly, Batman’s alter ego is a millionaire playboy and, as far as I know, money and fame will never go out of style. So… simply by virtue of his alter-ego, Batman (Bruce Wayne) personifies the American dream. And through his crime-fighting, he preserves his right, in some sense, to be rich. Deep down, I think every American wants to be rich but hates the rich people that already exist and sees them as unworthy of their money, regardless of how they acquired it. Batman seems to straddle both sides of the fence in this respect: he is rich in his alter-ego (making him a target of ire from the masses for having money) but he is a champion of justice and the oppressed in his superhero persona (making him the object of public adoration from those he saves and those who read about his endeavors).

Thirdly, Batman knows how to take care of himself like no other human being on earth. His fame and notoriety stem from the fact that nobody can mess with him and get away with it. He is self-sufficient, tough, ruthless, and a skilled fighter. Rugged individualism at its best. America loves a guy who can fight, win, and take care of himself with minimal help from the Police, other people, or superhuman powers (of which Batman has none).

Fourthly, Batman is the paradigm of a man who (successfully) refuses to capitulate to monotony (or perhaps society). In my opinion, America has, now more than ever, a boredom problem: its kind of like there’s nothing to do now that the frontier has disappeared, jobs have been outsourced to places overseas, and no new revolutions seems to be looming on the horizon (like agricultural, industrial, scientific, etc). Batman offers a completely unique take on a way of dealing with the new American ennui, which his creators may or may not have realized. Somehow, Batman, it seems to me, offers some sort of perfect solution to the overwhelming amount of leisure we all have these days: he adapts a great deal of technology to his own purposes and goes out (anonymously) and fights battles in his hometown, a sort of grass-roots approach to a war on crime. It is, in my opinion, this (almost superhuman) ability of Batman’s to deal with the idea that “there is nothing to do” in a way which is intensely interesting to others which makes him so consistently popular and omnipresent in the sociological imagination. Perhpas it’s not that Bruce Wayne has nothing to do, its simply that when the world tells him “This is what you do, this is your life, there’s no getting around that, you’re just like everybody else so get used to it,” he says (or rather his actions say), “I don’t accept that. I won’t surrender to society and how it expects me to conform.”

Lastly, Batman was created in the same year that WWII began. This was, furthermore and in my opinion, a point at which, America was seething with vigor, youth (as a country), and prosperity. Batman was, unequivocally, a product of his time, a time at which, America was possessed of a million great ideals. A character creation like Batman simply could not come from the America of today: an America in turmoil, great civil unrest, and uncertainty about its role as a country in the world of the 21st century. Who knows? Maybe in 20 years, at 2039, a new kind of Batman will emerge, a Batman with 21st century sensibilities rather than WWII era ones. But for now, let’s put this to bed.

One last thing: Batman is under no obligation to be Batman as it were. For Bruce Wayne, being Batman is entirely voluntary. Not for Superman and many other Superheroes: they have certain things(qualities, powers) that distinguish them from other people. Batman is, fundamentally, unexceptional. So the fact that he chooses to be Batman is a choice he makes, its not something he was born into or something that was thrust upon him. This might be just one more reason he is still so popular. The fact that he takes something upon himself totally of his own volition. People identify with that (even if they don’t exactly do the same thing themselves): they identify with people who shoulder some responsibility that isn’t exactly theirs in the name of something bigger than themselves. Because Batman consciously and willingly engages in his crime-fighting as a person who is under no orders to make the world a better place and does not HAVE to do so, his aura of mystery and bravery and awe-inspiration is increased.

In conclusion, Batman is so enormously popular and omnipresent in the American Sociological imagination because: 1) he is a detective and America has always loved detectives, 2) he’s rich, 3) he can take care of himself, 4) he has some kind of magical power over boredom, 5) he came from America at a time when America’s confidence in itself was at an all-time high, 6) and finally, he chooses to be a superhero of his own free will. These are my thoughts and theories on Batman. Feel free to leave a comment.