Vigilantes

 

Boss Man

Big boss man!
Won't you hear me when I call?
Yeah, you ain't so big bossman
You just tall that's all!

Just because you are big doesn’t make you right.

Batman is a vigilante.  He believes that his code of Justice is correct.  Criminals who do not believe in his code of Justice must be insane, which is why they are confined to Arkham Asylum and not the Gotham Jail. Batman administers Justice not the Law.  But it is his Justice.  There is a  scene in the Untold Tales of the Batman miniseries where the phrase “It’s not Justice, it’s the Law” is uttered to explain why Bruce Wayne did not become a lawyer or a policeman.

Batman’s popularity grew at the same time that other vigilantes became popular:  The Punisher, Wolverine, etc.  Vigilantes were also embraced in general popular culture: e.g. Death Wish.  Wolverine and the Punisher were first introduced as villains: Wolverine as a villain for the Hulk, the Punisher as a villain for Spiderman. 

Comic book heroes up to that point had a System Optimal perspective.  “Fair Play”; “Live by the Golden Rule”; “Might for Right”; “With great power comes great responsibility”. They captured  criminals and turned them over to the police, society, for the administration of Justice.  Batman in the 1980s, as well as Wolverine and the Punisher, had a User Optimal perspective.  They administered Justice as they saw it. “ My way or the highway”; “ He who has the Gold makes the rules”; “Might makes Right”. Yes, their Justice was also what society promoted as its ideal, but it was still their Justice. There is a difference between administering Justice, and delivering criminals to society for Justice.

The danger of embracing vigilantes is that their belief in what is right may not be the belief shared by the system.  Vigilantes by definition live outside of the system, society. 

We may have reached the logical conclusion to vigilantism.  If you can decide if your wife’s honor has been violated, then you, not the system, can apply a slap.  If you can decide that Weapons of Mass Destruction should be eliminated or DeNazification should be undertaken then you, not the system, can impose your might.  

The objection to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was that Superman would not administer Justice on his own.  Superman would deliver wrong-doers TO the System, but he would not determine that he was empowered to administer Justice FOR the System.  Superman v. Batman should not be just “Might versus Might”, but  “Might FOR Right” versus “Might IS Right”, System Optimization versus User Optimization.