The history of the gay subtext of Batman and Rob.

Contents:

• BATMAN’S LONG TIME SIKICK ROB COM OUT AS GAY
• WA, WAS ROB GAY IN BATMAN & ROB? HERE'S WHAT CHRIS O'DONNELL SAID
• #LGBTQ: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THAT AMBIGUOLY GAY DUO, BATMAN & ROB
• BATMAN AND ROB WERE NEVER GAY, ACRDG TO DIRECTOR JOEL SCHUMACHER
• FEAR OF A GAY BATMAN BROUGHT BATWOMAN TO LIFE
• GAY BATMAN HOLDG A BANANA
• S E I J I — SUPPORT YOUR LOL GAY SUPERHERO

BATMAN’S LONG TIME SIKICK ROB COM OUT AS GAY

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.

Let’s get one thg absolutely clear: Rob isn’t gay.

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

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.

#LGBTQ: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THAT AMBIGUOLY GAY DUO, BATMAN & ROB

But gay subtext managed to suate self to the Dynamic Duo’s dyad om the very start. “It is like a wish-dream, ” he famoly wrote, “of two homosexuals livg together. This is the issue wh gay readgs.

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

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. 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. 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.

FEAR OF A GAY BATMAN BROUGHT BATWOMAN TO LIFE

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.

GAY BATMAN HOLDG A BANANA

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.

On the subject of The Caped Csa, ’s probably worth sharg this article by Glen Weldon (The thor of that book, and a gay man himself) on the subject of Batman/Rob subtext.

To be clear– Glen Weldon is not argug that Batman and Rob are gay or should be a uple.

S E I J I — SUPPORT YOUR LOL GAY SUPERHERO

“In Sctn of the Innocent, Wertham tells of one “young homosexual” who showed him a py of Detective Comics that featured ‘“a picture of ‘The Home of Bce and Dick, ’ a hoe so betifully landsped, warmly lighted and showg the voted pair si by si, lookg out of a picture wdow…. It is only the rart of precly self-actualized gay kid who ever gets as far as imagg himself gettg his eaky pubcent relatns on wh the Caped Csar. But for most gay kids, pecially this era of Amerin history, any nfg attractn they may have felt toward Batman stayed exactly that– an tert that seemed to well up om some ep place below the stomach, a blunt, preverbal ache.

Schumacher’s two dienc, however, were spl not by age but sensibily: 1) gay men and 2) everyone the years sce the sixti televisn show had gone off the air, mp had e out of the closet. ”On the history of gay men beg drawn to Batman-“Morrison unrstands the same sential tth that Wertham did– the one that every ten-year-old gay kid worriedly unrstands as he gaz at a panel of Batman placg a iendly hand on Rob’s shoulr: Intentn don’t matter.

This gnive equilibrium produc a closed, ntuo circu of reassurance, harmony, a sense of to gay rears, those same reprentatns matter-of-factly assert a visn of the world not only which they do not belong, but which they do not exist. Gays have always looked for their reflectns media, seekg the same sense of affy and belongg, but until very recently, they’ve failed to see them: the circu of reassurance is broken.

Every exchange, every glance, every touch, is hungrily parsed for somethg they regnize, for fleetg glimps of themselv, their sir, and the world they is an oblique, allive procs; ’s not like Batman ics are liberately encrypted by their makers wh y msag– ias which gay men historilly fd affi: the nstant threat of a secret self’s exposure, the cloak of night, a mcular physily, a homosocial iendship– and, y, okay, fe, a flair for terr sign that clus some pretty rockg velvet drap that are actually, now that we’re lookg at them unr better light, not dky emerald but more of a fort is an kblot; we see him what we want to– even if we aren’t ready to adm to ourselv. ”As a bon, I would add this article by Andrew Wheeler, another gay Batman wrer, who Glen Weldon actually quot the book-THE GAYNESS OF BATMAN: A BRIEF HISTORY “The ncept of Batman may be open to endls reventn, but any effort to make him ls gay only adds layers upon layers to his gayns. He is both mp and butch; reprsed and sexualized; erotilly fetishistic and homoerotilly is not gay.

But when there were no explicly gay characters to intify wh 70 years ago, the bachelor hero wh the boy sikick stepped to the vacuum, and gay rears were not the only on who saw , and now his gayns is than 70 years after his but, Batman has emerged as the bt known patient of Dr. Batman will always have his gayns, however straight they wre him. 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. Bee the character did not know he was gay when he was his off-and-on relatnship wh Stephanie Brown. @gffa let’s be real here: they’re never gog to portray Dick as Rob aga for the wir dience (ie live-actn movi) bee they’re too aaid of gay jok or groomer cracks.

It's got bat nippl and nearly endls ice puns but one of the big thgs dienc took after seeg Batman & Rob was that that the dynamic duo were probably gay. There’s certaly a level of homoerotic tensn to be glimpsed the film, om the general mps of the movie to some peculiar stume sign choic. In an terview wh Barbara Walters, Gee Clooney - who played Batman that film – revealed that he played his character as gay.