Batman, surrealist

Hmmnn. Robert Anton Wilson liked Tim Burton's Batman as a work of cultural protest.

Bruce Wayne has an answer to Vicki's charge of abnormality:

"What's 'normal' in a world like this?"

And that has always been, of course, the logic of surrealism. After World War 1, the surrealists hung toilet bowls in sculpture shows and painted things like Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone precisely to force everybody to ask, "What's normal in a world like this?"

Wilson seems to miss that Batman steadfastly refuses to kill. I don't blame him; it's not underlined in the picture, which is one of the many reasons why I had mixed feelings about it. The recent Batman Begins is much closer to the sort of Batman picture I want to see. Still, Wilson has a point --- and is always a provocative read.