Get real, Batman – Rob has always been gay

Contents:

• BATMAN’S LONG TIME SIKICK ROB COM OUT AS GAY
• GET REAL, BATMAN – ROB HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY
• BATMAN AND ROB WERE NEVER GAY, ACRDG TO DIRECTOR JOEL SCHUMACHER
• FEAR OF A GAY BATMAN BROUGHT BATWOMAN TO LIFE
• WA, WAS ROB GAY IN BATMAN & ROB? HERE'S WHAT CHRIS O'DONNELL SAID
• DELVE TO BATMAN AND ROB GAY CHARACTERS ONLE
• BATMAN & ROB IS A GAY MOVIE, BUT IS IT GAY LIKE HAPPY, OR...?
• JOEL SCHUMACHER ON BATMAN & ROB: "I NEVER THOUGHT IT WAS AN IMPORTANT MOMENT GAY CEMA, BUT I’LL TAKE IT"

BATMAN’S LONG TIME SIKICK ROB COM OUT AS GAY

Former Batman ic wrer Grant Morrison even told Playboy magaze that “gayns is built to Batman. In March, Marvel unveiled their first gay Capta Ameri character — a queer youth advote named Aaron Fischer — to be clud the upg “Uned Stat of Capta Ameri” ic book miseri.

Unpackg the gay subtext of Rob, the Boy Wonr. Gay subtext managed to suate self to the Dynamic Duo’s dyad om the very start.

GET REAL, BATMAN – ROB HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY

Let’s get one thg absolutely clear: Rob isn’t gay. So have wrers like Frank Miller, Denny O’Neil, Alan Grant, and Dev Grayson—though Grayson admted that she uld “unrstand the gay readgs.

After all, if a character isn’t wrten as gay, then that character n’t possibly be gay, right? Gayns is built to Batman. Batman is VERY, very gay.

… but the whole basis of the ncept is utterly gay. But gay subtext managed to suate self to the Dynamic Duo’s dyad om the very start.

BATMAN AND ROB WERE NEVER GAY, ACRDG TO DIRECTOR JOEL SCHUMACHER

“It is like a wish-dream, ” he famoly wrote, “of two homosexuals livg together.

This is the issue wh gay readgs. Any given bond between mal n be homosocial whout beg homoerotic, and even the most explicly homoerotic bond n exist whout ever bbg up agast homosexual sire.

FEAR OF A GAY BATMAN BROUGHT BATWOMAN TO LIFE

Intentn don’t matter when to gay subtext. This is why, as a visual medium filled wh silent cu like body language and background tail, superhero ics have proven a particularly fertile vector for gay readgs over the years.

That panel of a be-toweled Bce and Dick loungg together their solarium, for example, would not rry the potent homoerotic charge do, were the same scene simply scribed borg ol’ prose. But gay subtext, like rmatn, longs to be ee, and the universe doggedly nspired to keep droppg advertently hilar panels like this one, om a 1966 Jtice League of Ameri ic, to Bat-non:. Although the show beme extribly associated wh the notn of mp, s pop-art sensibily never me off as particularly gay spe the prence of gut villas played by such fierce divas as Tallulah Bankhead and Liberace.

WA, WAS ROB GAY IN BATMAN & ROB? HERE'S WHAT CHRIS O'DONNELL SAID

They shuffled Dick Grayson off to llege 1970, effectively endg the Bce–Dick partnership that had grown so weighted wh gay meta-meangs over the s. Which, really, was all took for heteronormativy to reassert self, bee while separately Batman and Rob me hardwired wh vague gay associatns (the fear of one’s secret inty beg exposed, for example), was only ever their stat as a bond male–male pair that had tly raised eyebrows.

In recent s, certaly seems as if his wrers have grown more self-aware about untend gay readgs and hence more circumspect. Batman has self-policed himself, and his optics, much more thoroughly sce Dick left; ’s que rare to see any subtextual gay elements bubblg up to the surface.

What Schumacher produced wasn’t gay subtext; was gay domtext. But while the Schumacher Bat-films seem like outliers among the kds of Batman stori that reign the prent day, they f squarely wh a long and storied legacy of homosocial, homoerotic, and homosexual ronanc the Bce–Dick partnership.

DELVE TO BATMAN AND ROB GAY CHARACTERS ONLE

More than 80 years sce he was first troduced to rears, and after s of homoerotic subtext wh his pann Batman, ics’ most tsty sikick Rob has nonilly e out as a cliffhanger endg to DC’s latt issue of Batman: Urban Legends, the current eratn of the Boy Wonr, Tim Drake, is shown acceptg a date vatn om his iend Bernard, havg jt rcued him om a villa while disguise as Rob. DC Comics has cid to reveal that Tim Drake, the third male Rob, is gay … not bisexual.

”For years, people have speculated that one of the Robs was gay — nstantly qutng the relatnship between the olr Batman and the young sikick. This is an age-old and dangero stereotype lked to the Roman stutn of Perasty and horribly patg healthy-md gay men as pedophil and perverts. Also, spe some reports, Drake is gay and not bisexual.

BATMAN & ROB IS A GAY MOVIE, BUT IS IT GAY LIKE HAPPY, OR...?

Bee the character did not know he was gay when he was his off-and-on relatnship wh Stephanie Brown. Out of ntext, “Rob Com Out as Bisexual DC Comics Seri” (as the entertament webse TMZ put ) uld only be surprisg to those of who assumed he was the most obvly gay fictnal character the universe. In Joel Schumacher's films, Chris O'Connell (r) played Rob to a Batman whom Gee Clooney (c) said he 'ma gay'.

The psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, his bt-known book Sctn of the Innocent (1954), already had the pair bang-to-rights, argug that “Batman stori are psychologilly homosexual”.

He meant this, fact, as sremongerg, gog on to assert that “only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex n fail to realise a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervas the adventur of the mature Batman and his young iend Rob.

JOEL SCHUMACHER ON BATMAN & ROB: "I NEVER THOUGHT IT WAS AN IMPORTANT MOMENT GAY CEMA, BUT I’LL TAKE IT"

Wrers on the ics and TV/film anchis have gone back and forth on the subject – sometim Batman is stnchly fend as not gay at all, or havg no sex life to speak of – but they tend to stay a b quieter on the Rob qutn, as well they we reached the films by the late Joel Schumacher… well. Then, the palpable disfort of Val Kilmer wh the entire tone was smirkily removed by Gee Clooney, who stepped as Batman wh a much more nfint, if almost reer-g, pot of view: “I ma him gay. ” Schumacher’s flagrant outg of not jt Rob but both characters as a leather-clad BDSM fetish uple was greeted wh gasps of homophobic ridicule, s before the MCU started to drop hts that LGBTQ+ characters might beg to perlate through Phase 63, or whatever.

The list of superhero accintally or liberately d as queer who have never nonilly been brought out of the closet bee of homophobia is long and prsg. But wa, I n hear the ments already: So now Tim is jt The Rob Who Is Gay? Tim Drake’s story speaks to what advot for diversy n fet and homophob would rather ignore: There are legimate reasons to give a long-standg straight character a g-out story beyond “more diversy is more.