At some stage in the next few days I'll hopefully find time to blog about the last three productions I've seen over the last week: Bell Shakespeare's Hamlet, Matthew Bourne's 'dance-ical' Edward Scissorhands, and Yana Alana and the Paranas in Bite Me Harder.
Today though, my brain in mush, so instead, I'm going to point you towards a fascinating essay on Batman's gay past.
A Batman who continued to live in 1945 was an economic liability in 1955. He was a threat to the family and to the bottom-line. Batman's "gayness," then, was a flash point for a larger set of social anxieties. Just as elites worked aggressively to purge society and government of homosexuality, so too did DC purge Batman of any social deficiency which could be interpreted or construed as "gay."
Was it enough? To satisfy the most vocal critics, yes. But, ironically, the move to surrealism and fantasy also pushed Batman into the territory of high camp, in which Batman's ostensibly heterosexual romances were suspiciously unbelievable.
Enjoy!
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