Tom Breedveld, S1407368

Dr. P.W.J. Verstraten

Contemporary Theories Of Film

01-04-2019

Batman and the Case of the Missing Suture: Discussing Žižek and McGowan in Nolan’s mythos

When Batman, after saving love interest Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins (2005), is asked what his

name is, he answers by using Dawes’ own words against her: ‘It’s not who I am underneath, but

what I do that defines me.’ In this way, Batman tries to prove that his designated identity as

billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is not the sum total of his existence. The irony is, of course, that by

stating this philosophy, Rachel realizes she is talking to Bruce, as she gave him this advice in private

at an earlier point in the film.

On closer inspection, however, it is realized that Rachel is confronted with two conflicting

narratives that, in their intermixing, are understood by both her and the movie audience to be two

separated sides of the same coin. Batman is apparently Bruce Wayne, or else he wouldn’t have said

what he did, but whilst wearing the cowl he rejects this identity and enters the world as Batman. If

he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to keep his identity a secret and his friends and family safe, and he

wouldn’t be able to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies as a winged avenger. Yet, without

Bruce Wayne’s traumatic background and acquired skills, there is no Batman to speak of in the first

place. There is a dichotomy at play with regards to these two identities, that both become fueled by

the existence of the other – Batman is only a man, and therefore has weakness, while Bruce Wayne

hides an incredible strength and motivation. In this almost paradoxical existence, it becomes clear

that the two are both inextricably linked and mutually exclusive.

The identity of Batman is sutured to the person being him, but at the same time is always at

odds with the existence of this person. In this way, Batman’s identity can be seen as a
representation of the effect of suture in cinema, as described by Slavoj Žižek in his book The Fright

of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory (2001). In the chapter “Back to

the Suture”, Žižek discusses the idea of suture as a sort of soothing that is necessary to keep sated

the audience’s expectations. He starts his discussion by explaining the contrast that starts to form in

the moviegoer’s mind when faced with an important shot:

Reappropriated by cinema theory, the elementary logic of suture consists of three

steps. Firstly, the spectator is confronted with a shot, finds pleasure in it in an

immediate, imaginary way, and is absorbed by it. Then, this full immersion is

undermined by the awareness of the frame as such: what I see is only a part, and I

do not master what I see. I am in a passive position, the show is run by the Absent

One (or rather, Other) who manipulates images behind my back. (32)

Žižek then goes on to explain the way a counter-shot allows for an interpretation of this

notion, and the effects that a film holds when it starts manipulating this mode of cinema. This essay

hopes to discuss these notions by establishing the identity of the Batman, and the ways in which this

is revealed to other characters to be Bruce Wayne, as a representation of the notion of suture. If

Batman is the shot that a moviegoer is confronted with, then Bruce Wayne is the countershot that

gives the idea of the Batman meaning and humanity. Since Batman and Bruce Wayne are one and

split at the same time, this leads to the interesting case study of a character never ‘fully’ being in the

shot, and being dependent on his environment for meaning.

The last films to show us a Batman were part of the DC Extended Universe, and built on their

predecessors in their decision not to focus on Batman’s well known origin story. Therefore, if we

want to discuss the moments (if there are truly any) where Batman and Bruce Wayne become one,

we must go back to the film trilogy of Christopher Nolan, consisting of Batman Begins (2005), The

Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Before this, there were the films of Tim Burton
and Joel Schumacher, but apart from some overarching themes and plot points, there wasn’t

necessarily any running plot to speak of that connected the films. Nolan’s trilogy begins with the rise

of the Caped Crusader and ends with his seeming demise, and it is this cordoned narrative that

makes it possible for us to see the dichotomous personality of the Bat as a viable access point for

theory.

In Batman Begins (2005), it takes over an hour for Batman (played by Christian Bale) to

finally make an appearance in person. After dispatching several henchmen from the shadows

working for crime boss Carmine Falcone (played by Tom Wilkinson), Batman pulls him out of his car,

and declares ‘I’m Batman’, before flying off with the criminal. It would seem, therefore, that this is

the important shot that kicks off Žižek’s theory.

However, there are two counterarguments to this point. In the first place, Batman may only

make his first appearance after an hour, but his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, is a man we have been

following from the start. Not only this, but Bruce Wayne is honing his skills in preparation for

becoming ‘something bigger’. It is when he meets his mentor and future nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul

(played by Liam Neeson), that the idea for Batman starts to emerge. Ra’s Al Ghul fuels the concept

when he explains ‘…if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal,

and if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely. A legend.’ It would seem that

the Batman that we know as a man who wears bat-shaped armor is only a specific shape of this

ideal, formed this way because of Bruce Wayne’s explicit wish to ‘turn fear against those who prey

on the fearful.’

In the second place, in keeping with his oeuvre, Christopher Nolan’s film is decidedly a-

chronological. Where the movie starts with Bruce Wayne’s training by the League of Shadows, it

skips back to the traumatic event that formed his quest for vengeance – the death of his parents - ,

and the confrontation with his parent’s killer that made him take on his training. In muddying the

temporal line that created the Batman, Nolan allows for the implication that Batman’s entire
existence is not predicated on a single linear sequence of events, but is rather a complete

understanding of all events that came before it. It is even established that Falcone himself gave

Batman the knowledge of needing a mask to protect his loved ones – an ironic touch when it is

Falcone who gets to see the mask first.

Yet, Batman’s first appearance is what the viewer has been waiting for. After this moment,

which is a climactic moment in the scene itself, the film stays mostly chronological, barring some

small flashbacks. Every fight Bruce Wayne finds himself in will be fought as the Caped Crusader.

Batman is shown on the poster, the DVD cover, on all promotional material. Clearly, Batman is the

hero of this story and the culmination of Bruce Wayne’s history. Therefore, this shot is still the

anchoring point for the audience, the shot that must be explained. As Žižek explains it:

What then follows is a complementary shot which renders the place from which the

Absent One is looking, allocating this place to its fictional owner, one of the

protagonists. In short, one passes thereby from imaginary to symbolic, to a sign: the

second shot does not simply follow the first one, it is signified by it. So, in order to

suture the decentring gap, the shot which I perceived as objective is, in the next

shot, reinscribed/reappropriated as the point-of-view shot of a person within the

diegetic space. (32)

And this explanation is given. When we first get a real look at Batman, we are informed that

what we are seeing is actually the view of a lone hobo, who happens to be nearby. The audience,

and Batman, recognize the man as the same hobo who was given a fancy coat by Bruce Wayne,

before he decided to leave to start his training. Batman, noticing the hobo and recognizing him,

comments that he has a ‘nice coat’. In this way, it is Batman talking, but Bruce Wayne dispersing the

information, as it was Bruce Wayne who had his first interaction with the hobo. The hobo is unaware

that he is being reminded of a common past, and is simply flabbergasted that this winged creature

deems to comment on his choice of attire. As in so many films by Hitchcock or Godard, the suture of
narrative is being interrupted. It is both Bruce Wayne and Batman speaking, but the character of the

hobo hears neither, unaware as he is of the meaning of the message and who is speaking to him

thusly.

So what does this mean for the interpretation of the Batman-character by the audience?

Žižek’s text does not seem to offer a satisfactory explanation. In a later paragraph, Žižek talks about

the free-floating gaze as a spanner in the works regarding the workable idea of suture:

In short, the ultimate threat is not that of an objective shot which will not be

'subjectivised', allocated to some protagonist within the space of diegetic fiction, but

that of a point-of-view shot which will not be clearly allocated as the point of view of

some protagonist, and which will thus evoke the spectre of a free-floating Gaze

without a determinate subject to whom it belongs. (33)

This free-floating gaze does not seem to solve the issue of what is being shown when we are

shown Batman. We know, to stick with Batman’s introduction, that we see a hobo looking at

Batman, and we know that both Batman and Bruce Wayne are looking back. But because we cannot

choose, and we see that both identities are allowed to control the narrative, it is unclear who exactly

is speaking. The gaze is not free-floating, however, as we are confronted with multiple identities, not

none. We know the situation as it stands; it is simply multi-interpretable.

We can apply Žižek’s interface-theory to elucidate what is going on regarding the narrative

of Batman’s identity. When comparing shot/countershots, Žižek brings up the notion of a

countershot being reflected in its respective shot:

Is this not the ultimate (reversal of the) shot which contains its own counter-shot? It

is no longer (diegetic) reality which contains its suture-spectre; it is reality itself

which is reduced to a spectre appearing within the eye's frame.

 Interface thus operates at a more radical level than the standard suture procedure:

it takes place when suturing no longer works - at this point, the interface-screen

field enters as the direct stand-in for the 'absent one’… (52)

Batman himself becomes a reflection of the countershot that is Bruce Wayne. For while

Batman is covered head to toe in thick, black armor that makes him seem like a frightening spectre

and which offers him an advantage in battle, there is still his chin sticking out of his cowl. This part of

his masculine physique, perfectly sculpted, yet vulnerable and completely out in the open, seems

almost like an oversight in Batman’s design (and indeed, more science-fiction oriented Batman

stories, such as the animated series Batman Beyond (1999-2001), and the comic DC One Million

(1998), give Batman a mask that covers his entire head). 1 In this way, Batman always reflects the

person that has created him, the person whose ideals and morals guide him.

There is a visually interesting scene in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), where Bruce

Wayne and Selina Kyle (better known as Catwoman) are the only ones at a masquerade party not to

wear a mask, hinting towards the fact that their identities as socialite Wayne and trophy girl Kyle are

the false identities, and their alter egos function as their true expressions. In Batman Begins, Bruce

Wayne is celebrating his birthday when his nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul reappears, who Bruce thought

killed, and who proves himself to be Liam Neeson, instead of the patsy portrayed by Ken Watanabe

initially thought to be the criminal mastermind. In an interesting contrast, both are hiding their true

identities, and both know of the other who they are. But Ra’s Al Ghul, once exposed, has no more

false identities to hide behind, and truly is the villain he purports to be. Bruce Wayne/Batman, being

a living dichotomy, still exists in both forms, no matter what suit he wears. As Bruce Wayne he is still

a trained martial artist; as Batman he still has many expensive gadgets at his disposal.

1
In Brian Azzarello’s one shot Joker (2008), an exasperated Joker demands to know why Batman allows for
‘that perfect chin’ to remain unprotected, ‘showing criminals that you’re really just a man underneath it all’.
Batman’s retort implies that he feels no fear from anybody, not even Joker, as he answers, ‘to mock you’.
 Ra’s Al Ghul is a representative of the fiction of the Lacanian ‘Big Other’, in that he must

accept his title before he can be outed as the master villain of the narrative. His Arabic name literally

meaning ‘head of the demon’, Ra’s Al Ghul is merely a lackey in disguise until he shows his true

colors. As long as he doesn’t, there is no reason to see him as the leader of anything. Batman,

however, is not beholden to this form of interpretation, as an absence of definition still leaves him

with a history and a personality. The Batsuit is not a necessity towards being Batman – it simply

makes the job safer.

Christopher Nolan’s atemporality, previously discussed, is an argument towards this

interpretation. Batman becomes a psychological interpretation of feelings of vengeance,

abandonment, grief, etc. By showing the first hour of the film, in which Batman is created,

atemporally, Nolan shows the timelessness of Batman and the feelings that created him. Only when

Batman appears on the screen to fulfill a mission, does the film become narratologically temporal.

Todd McGowan explains the reasons behind modern atemporal films in his book Out Of Time: Desire

in Atemporal Cinema (2011):

Despite their generic and thematic diversity, the distortion of chronological time in

these films has a shared motivation: in each case, they distort time not simply

because of the exigencies of plot but in order to reveal the circular logic of what

psychoanalysis calls the drive. Contemporary atemporal cinema is a cinema of the

drive, in which narrative is oriented around a foundational moment of traumatic

loss. (10)

This drive, which differs from desire in that it focuses characters not on a goal, but on the

unreachability of that goal as the mode of progress itself, is shown in Bruce Wayne as the need to

accept his history, to overcome his grief, and to bring justice to the corrupt city that cost him his

innocence. Personifying this drive in the form of Batman, Bruce Wayne aims to become one with his
alter ego, but though they are inextricably linked, they are still two different entities, like two sides

of the same coin.

‘From the perspective of the drive,’ writes McGowan, ‘the goal or object that it seeks is nothing but a

tool for facilitating repetition, which is where enjoyment actually lies’ (11). Bruce Wayne has been

Batman in narratives for 80 years now, and the atemporality of his ‘birth’ into his alter ego

represents the idea that these notions will always be a part of Batman, will always drive him, will

always force him to continue fighting a trauma that can never be fixed. When reunited with his love

Rachel at the end of Batman Begins, she informs him that the man she loved – Bruce Wayne –

though standing right in front of her, left a long time ago, and hasn’t yet returned. ‘Perhaps he might

come back someday’, she posits, and with that leaves the man who is Batman behind.

Taking Žižek’s text as a starting point, the notion of suture in cinematic narrative has been

discussed, taking the idea of Batman and Bruce Wayne being countershots of each other as a case

study. Realizing that the Batman-persona and its alter ego Bruce Wayne form an interface, an

interesting contrast with Žižek’s text is found when it is realized that there is not necessarily a free-

floating gaze at play when framing Batman – rather, Batman is a multitude of gazes in one.

Christopher Nolan’s penchant for atemporality turns out to be a fitting way to represent this

‘insuturability’ of Batman’s character, as his psyche is formed by what Todd McGowan explains is the

psychoanalytical drive, which makes it so any apotheosis within Batman’s character can never truly

be reached.
Bibliography

Žižek, Slavoj, “Introduction: The Strange Case of the Missing Lacanians.” The Fright of Real Tears:

Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory. London: BFI, 2001. 1–19. Print.

---. “Back to the Suture.” The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-

Theory. London: BFI, 2001. 31–54. Print.

McGowan, Todd. “Introduction: The Origins of the Atemporal Film.” Out of Time: Desire in

Atemporal Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 1-34. Print.

Morrison, Grant. DC: One Million. Washington: DC Comics, 1998. Print.

Burton, Tim, director. Batman Returns. Warner Bros., 1992.

Nolan, Christopher, director. Batman Begins. Warner Bros., 2005.

Nolan, Christopher, director. The Dark Knight. Warner Bros., 2008.

Nolan, Christopher, director. The Dark Knight Rises. Warner Bros., 2012.

Timm, Bruce, Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, creators. Batman Beyond. Kids’ WB, 1999-2001.