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non-licet-bovi · 2 years

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Why (I personally believe that) the Riddler is white supremacist coded

I’ve seen some back and forth over whether or not the Riddler as a character can be interpreted as a white supremacist in The Batman (2022), so I figured I’d expand a bit on why I personally came away with that assessment in my viewing of the film. This is a bit of a character study ramble, because I feel like I need to touch on what I believe the core of Riddler’s persona is to really explain why I believe he’s a supremacist terrorist.

Obviously a lot of this is based on subtext and imagery as well as my own ruminations on the film’s themes, not direct quotes from any member of the cast or crew, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. Regardless, I think the structure of the Riddler character is pretty overt, especially when paired with Reeves’ and Dano’s words about him.

I really enjoy this take on the Riddler because it is so different from what we’re used to in other Batman media, for the most part. I think Reeves & Dano tooled his character in a way to really benefit the structure of this story and to reflect on societal problems that are prevalent in our modern lives. This character is so effective, I feel, because he is a familiar figure of fear in our culture that we see so often: a passionate extremist with a hateful, selfish motive he twists into a dogmatic ideology that radicalizes others into violence online.

While Riddler has a sympathetic backstory and is absolutely an example of how the lack of social programs causes undue suffering, he’s purposefully an extremist. He employs fear to exact his personal form of justice and it makes him a textbook example of a terrorist. His spree of murders coupled with an entire media campaign would be enough to designate him as such, but his purposeful use of bombs and a small army of enthralled followers fashioned in his own image hammers the point home.

Nashton uses the same tactics we’ve seen from white male terrorists for decades, from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Christchurch Mosque Massacre. Not only were those terrorists motivated by racism and supremacist ideology, they were also stridently anti-establishment just like Nashton. It was hard for me to view the attempted assassination of a Black female political leader by a crew of masked white men in military surplus gear and not draw connections to real world terrorist attacks.

The only other people we know he associates with are his followers, who are apart of a small, radicalize group that watch his social media videos. That structure is so important, I think. Like, yes, the Riddler drew a ton of inspiration from Heath’s depiction of the Joker in the Dark Knight, but there are a lot more connotations to a guy yelling his criminal aspirations into a camera in 2022 than there were in 2008. These days, it's impossible not to watch those scenes and think of the myriad of extremists who used their streaming platforms, social media and/or youtube accounts to publish their hate-filled rants to a forum of sycophantic bigots. The Riddler’s scenes pretty overtly harken to extremists that have been ubiquitous in American news, including incels and alt-right zealots. His final video seems to me to be a direct allegory to the manifestos of killers posted on 4chan. I don’t think a film so purposeful in its aesthetic, themes and character building would have presented those scenes in such a way without recognizing what they would suggest to the viewer.

Let’s not forget either that the character is heavily inspired by the Zodiac Killer, a killer that famously used a cross through a circle – a symbol long appropriated by white nationalists in America as far back as the KKK (once again, a white male extremist in a hooded disguise is always going to have certain connotations in an American film) – as his signature. It may not be the killer’s only motivation for picking the symbol, we probably won’t ever know for sure, but it’s still a connection that’s difficult to ignore. While the Zodiac, like most other serial killers, stuck to his own racial group for his choice of victims (there’s a lot of reasons for this, usually, but I’m not gonna go off on a tangent lmao), he also uses the n-word in one of his letters and mentions how he’s turning his victims into “slaves in the afterlife” several times.

All that, along with the context of his time period in 1960’s San Francisco, makes Zodiac an influence you cannot completely remove from racism. Zodiac may not be as strident an example of a racist criminal as, say, Charles Manson, but I don’t think these details were lost on the crew of The Batman. In fact, I think the theme continues through their use of the neck bomb in DA Colson’s murder.

Nashton’s use of the neck bomb device is directly lifted from a crime that occured in 2003, where a Pennsylvania man -- Brian Wells -- was allegedly a co-conspirator in the bank robbery he committed and was double-crossed by the perpetrators when he realized the bomb wasn’t fake like he’d been lead to believe (that retelling is my take away from the event, fyi, as it is debated whether or not Wells was a duped conspirator or an innocent and unwilling participant). Just like with Colson, the bomb couldn’t be removed from Wells’ neck without activating a fail safe that would cut off his head. Also like Colson, Wells was given detailed instructions on how to get the code to unlock the collar, but authorities failed to remove the bomb before it detonated.

Why is this relevant to my point? While I think The Batman uses this device mostly because it is a shocking, fascinating murder weapon, there’s a detail about the crime that sticks out to me: Wells originally blamed the collar and the bank plot on Black men, to intentionally divert suspicion from the real conspirators he knew were all white. The alleged mastermind of the crime, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, also suggested blaming Black people in pre-crime meetings (which Wells may or may not have attended, it isn’t confirmed). The purposeful racist choices of murderers that help make up the inspiration for Nashton’s character absolutely color my interpretation of any underlying biases he may or may not have. Obviously this interpretation isn’t confirmed by any sense of the word, but I think it is reasonable to believe that the Riddler’s persona being inspired by real world racists encourages the audience to assume he may very well be one as well.

Racism isn’t the only tenant of white supremacy, though, and there’s more to the Riddler’s ideology and actions that seem to align with that form of extremist thought. I think his personal conflict as well as his indiscriminate victims both add to why there’s cause to label him a supremacist.

A huge point, I feel, is how Riddler views and depicts Martha Wayne. His expose on the Waynes isn’t just a condemnation of Thomas, but of Martha as well. His loathing of her carries into his snide tone and word choice. Even the retelling of her parents' murder-suicide disregards her trauma. Martha was mentally ill and struggled with her condition, which Riddler assumably believes to be deplorable. The reporter who intends to publish her medical history is called "crusading", like his purpose in exposing her as a mental patient is valiant. Nashton recounts her experience like it is a salacious, dirty thing that is unsuitable for society, just as much a horrific secret as Thomas getting a the reporter killed. He doesn’t outright state that she is lesser for being mentally ill, but his rhetoric and weaponization of her circumstances alludes to ableist eugenics-based ideology that is absolutely championed by white supremacists.

Similarly, Riddler has no regard for Annika’s personhood nor safety when publishing her image. She’s completely unimportant beyond the fact that she is a confirmation of Mayor Mitchell’s poor moral choices and duplicity. She’s just another clue at the connection between Mitchell and Falcone, not a downtrodden person who deserves justice as much as Nashton does. The man is a forensic accountant, a job that is detail-oriented and meticulous, and it reflects in the specificity and planning of his crimes. It certainly must have occurred to Nashton what might happen to the beaten sex worker he exposed, he just didn’t care. Her murder is unremarkable to him.

Riddler is unconcerned with other people in general, since he’s willing to kill hundreds of innocents well after he’s exposed the truth about the Renewal Fund and knocked off all but one of his primary targets. The flood and the attempted massacre show his true purpose is shock, awe and total fear. Gotham’s corruption was just a fine excuse to create something powerful out of himself, so he’d never be ignored or forgotten again.

Sure, he sees and loathes the stark inequality of Gotham’s system. He rages against it. But, in all honesty, I believe it is only because he happened to be one of the people who didn’t get to benefit from that unfair status quo in the way he wanted. He’s not an advocate for the marginalized – in fact he actively harms them – just resentfully fixated on the circumstances he suffered from and obsessed with comparing that experience to the object of his disdain: Bruce Wayne. He delved into the corruption of the city not necessarily because he was investigating the reasons why his orphanage was left to rot, but because he had a chance meeting with the Waynes. He saw a little kid that was essentially just like him – white, male, able-bodied – but when Bruce is orphaned, suddenly only the reasons they’re not alike affect their difference in treatment. Bruce is rich and prestigious, Nashton is not. Those qualities give Bruce power Nashton does not possess, so they are the qualities Nashton demonizes.

If there was no Bruce, Nashton would have still been a neglected orphan, but he likely wouldn’t have had the personal vindictive drive to discover the Renewal Fund’s secrets. Every target of his may be a loathsome, corrupt power figure, but they are all connected to his hatred for Bruce. They're all pinned to his wall, but Bruce dominates the entire center. His mission is personal, based in his private hates and inadequacies, not a bourgeoise uprising. If he cared about anything resembling leftist ideals, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen to bomb the sea walls, as the ones who suffer the worst from such disasters are always the poor and disadvantaged. If he cared about the structural failures behind his suffering, he maybe would do more than turn the old Wayne Orphanage into a private theater occupied by drug-addled, destitute orphans. He doesn't care about orphans, he cares that he is one.

To him, justice isn’t forcing Gotham to change. Justice is forcing Gotham to acknowledge his individual pain to his satisfaction, which means everyone else should feel the pain and fear he’s shouldered since childhood. It doesn’t matter how many die, so long as he is vindicated and legitimized. It’s peak terrorism.

His selfishness, I think, is a key pillar of who he is and why he makes the choices he makes. Dano, in an interview, talks about how Riddler was fixated on questioning “Why Me?” as he lamented his lot in life. He’s a tortured individual focused on his own misfortune, who ends up blaming Gotham’s powerful for his individual situation. He’s a loner, like Bruce and unlike Selina. He doesn’t have a community he’s concerned about uplifting, he wants retribution for himself. Nashton’s only motivations are getting the revenge he feels he deserves, finding his individual power through instilling fear, being “remembered” in a way he never was as a child, and earning the attention/approval from the figure he most admires (Batman).

“Why me?” becomes “Now they will spend their last moments wondering, ‘why them?’”

I see that selfishness in the manifestos of recent terrorists and in the hateful ideology that demands the white man always be given exactly what he proclaims he deserves, everyone else be damned. For me, the way the film frames Riddler’s disregard for others can be read as bigotry. Riddler’s idealization of Batman as a figure he assumes to be just as detached from reality as he read as a particularly white male power fantasy he constructed for himself (this is a subversion of the Batman power fantasy trope that I enjoyed, tbh. The Batman depicts making a fearsome, vengeful god out of Batman is a bad thing). His personality and actions seemed to hint at white nationalist extremism without needing to lampshade it. I love the script for getting so much more across than just what was said overtly.

As a last tangent, I really like the set up in the film of forcing Batman to reckon with himself through the lenses of other characters. Riddler is one of the mirrors held up to reflect Batman back at Bruce, the other being Selina. They both recognize aspects of themselves in Batman and actively seek to engage with those aspects. They’re both inspired by Batman and his power because they’ve been forced to be powerless their whole lives. They both commit crime. They both have murderous intent. However, the things that make them different are why Nashton is repugnant to Bruce and Selina is alluring.

Nashton is a direct contrast to Selina in key ways: he isolates himself and only interacts with others online while she is dedicated to her friend and willing to upend her entire life for her safety, he relishes in the anonymity of his mask and disregards who Batman is without the cowl while she constantly sheds her disguise and ponders just who Bruce might be, his family is never mentioned and never matter while her parents are hugely impactful to her characterization and actions, he gleefully uses murder to exact his revenge while she realizes she doesn’t need to kill to reckon with her personal trauma, his vengeance is destroying Gotham while her vengeance is being able to survive in spite of Gotham.

Selina’s story arc shows just how much Nashton perverts his suffering into a self-righteous excuse to do harm, which in turn allows Bruce to realize how he was unwittingly doing the same. The Batman critiques some of the most frustrating representations of Batman -- as an infallible super soldier, who is so resolute and powerful that he can function as an unstoppable, unquestionable force of his own violent will, beholden to no one -- by giving the Riddler the ultimate revenge fantasy and showing it's inherently destructive.

By the by, I don’t think it’s inconsequential that these two contrasting characters so important to Batman’s development are played by a white man and a biracial Black woman. Media still struggles to circumvent our cultural norms of assuming that every sad, traumatized white guy deserves the best possible interpretation of his choices, no matter how horrific they may be, and that every sad, traumatized Black woman must be unyieldingly strong yet ethically pristine in her actions to be worth empathizing with. Does The Batman have a perfect depiction of its characters and perfect awareness of how race factors into those depictions? Not necessarily, no, but the effort is there.

Ultimately, Riddler is a modern American terrorist archetype. The modern American terrorist is, in his most concise and expected form, a white supremacist.

(Quick sidebar: I doubt it's lost on y'all how differently a 2022 "realistic, gritty" Batman film depicts a terrorist villain compared to, say, a 2012 "realistic, gritty" Batman film did. I do love the Nolan trilogy to pieces, but the change of Bane's entire character into a vaguely Middle Eastern former member of the League of Shadows -- all the while still white-washing the entire League, Jesus Christ -- was a very pointed choice. A decade ago, American prejudice equated terrorism with the Middle East and it isn't surprising that the perception reflected in our media, where we had Talia Al Ghul trying to literally nuke Gotham off the map. Media always takes public anxiety and uses it for horror, as it assumes the audience will already feel intimidated by your villain/monster. Ten years after The Dark Knight Rises, the fear of homegrown American terrorism is much more predominant than it used to be -- even though white extremist violence was always more common place than anti-Muslim bigotry might have some believe -- and we're getting references to that fear in our current Batman antagonist.)

I think that archetype came across very strong in the film’s presentation and it makes him an all the more effective villain, especially for a grounded, realistic Batman film. We recognize the Riddler in the people and movements that scare us in daily life. He’s not an unbelievable, otherworldly monster. He’s sympathetic to a point and his descent into terror mistaken as justice is uncomfortably familiar. To me, it makes him a lot more compelling in a media landscape where we’re used to comic book films featuring superpowered aliens with designs to destroy entire planets rather than reckon with structural inequality and corruption.

Anyway, I hope this overlong drivel helps illuminate why I – and maybe others – consider Riddler to be an unspoken white supremacist character. Even if one might disagree, I think I laid out my thought process where one might at least allow that the interpretation is reasonable enough.

#meta #The Batman #Batman #The Riddler #Edward Nashton #Selina Kyle #Bruce Wayne #white supremacy #racism #terrorism #character analysis #discussion of real life crime #it is so weird experiencing online fandom when you talk with all ur friends irl about batman all the time #i fr thought EVERYONE thought the riddler was a 4chan racist lmao #like i may be over thinking every little detail but damn the batman got DETAILS #i get one run away thought and suddenly ive written a 3k word essay jfc #this riddler scary its a damn good performance claps for mr dano

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