GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JULY 7, 1995

Evenings Out

Bats in the closet

Don't ask, don't tell

the Caped Crusader's true identity

9

Batman Forever

Directed by Joel Schumacher Produced by Tim Burton

Reviewed by Tom Bishop

It has always been a crucial premise of superhero narratives that the muscle-boys and golden-girls have, somewhere in their crime-fighting psyches, a terrible secret, usually glossed as their "true identity." Why this should be necessary isn't really very clear, unless it's just that, like Princess Diana, they don't like be-

ing mobbed by the press on their days off, or photographed lifting weights in private. Or is it that the caped crusaders are somehow actually stronger, more threatening, when kept under wraps?

In the case of Batman, of course, only we and an apparently endless series of accidental confidantes know the truth: Batman is really millionaire playboy and entrepreneur Bruce Wayne. Finding this out obsesses the current crop of mega-villains in Batman Forever: who or what is, as Catwoman purred last time, "the man behind the Bat?" In that film, the answer was left partly open, and the film was actually more powerful for that. The terrible trio of Bat, Cat and Penguin was like a parade of the punctured, and the psychology was, gloriously, pop.

This time around, Hollywood's gotten more serious and wants to tell us, at last, the truth about what's really eating Bruce Wayne. But the truth that Hollywood won't tell us is framed in almost every shot of the picture (we knew it all along): Batman is queer. In the age of "Don't ask, don't tell" of course, this secret has to remain hushed up, but you don't have to be Sam Nunn to point the finger this time.

The very effort the filmmakers have gone to to keep the real truth about Batman off the screen produces the most hilarious returnsof the repressed, that is. From full-gloss, tight-framed shots of the Bat-butt in black latex, to Jim Carey's screaming camp-queen Riddler (who can't even punch out a li'l ol

bank guard), to Robin's hilarious youngboy lament to his Bat-buddy, "I don't want a friend, I want a partner," the film is absurdly easy to read from a perspective producer Tim Burton probably didn't expect.

Why is it, for instance, that the Bat keeps finding himself trapped in blind tunnels and dark underground passages? Why does the secret Bat-cave

have an alarm that cries "Intruder Alert" so plaintively and often? Yes, it really is that simple.

It's all put together as a series of twinnings, see: The Riddler wants to be (or maybe kill) Bruce Wayne, schizo Two-Face Tommy Lee Jones wants to kill (or maybe be) Batman, Robin wants to be like (and with) Batman, Batman wants to stop being Batman and be with blond straight-girl Chase Meridian (I'm not making this up, you know). All the boys want other boys, except Batman, who only wants to stop being queer and kiss the girl.

So Riddle me this, Batman: who is it that's

in

going to get really screwed in the end? Surprise, surprise: the questionable little guy the green jumpsuit, who saves his best for last, when he appears literally enthroned wearing a white sequined spandex number, only to get his brains melted by his longing to "solve the riddle of Batman"--will he go for the girl, or for his well-built batboy-buddy?

The nastiest thing in the picture is the way it punishes the Riddler for having loved Batman, frying him so he looks like some tawdry bashed drag-queen (or someone with that disease), and then locking him up in the loony bin to spin his pathetic fantasies alone. That's what you get for being out in Gotham these days!

In short, Batman Forever keeps its dynamic duo fighting only by denying the endless play of mutual desire between its male characters. Just like the U.S. military, the homoerotic is everywhere and nowhere at

Val Kilmer as Batman and Chris O'Donnell as Robin.

once, right before your eyes and completely forbidden. The campiness of Batman, since the immortal Adam West, comes out desperately sublimated and constantly flaunting the very thing it fears most-those male bodies in their oh-somoulded rubber suits. God forbid the U.S. Marines should begin to seem like the Village People! And as with the Marines, masculine anxiety manifests itself throughout as violence and misogyny, especially in the grotesque Two-Face with his twin bimbettes: culture and counter-culture are equally repressive when sutured along the scarline on Jones' twisted mug.

So if you want to know where you stand in pop culture these days, even after Go Fish and Bar Girls, go see Batman Forever and rage and rail and laugh. But not too hard. Someone may be behind you, watching.