The Homoerotic Adventures of Batman and Robin

Following is a third and final excerpt from Vittorio Lingiardi’s insightful book Men in Love: Male Homosexualities from Ganymede to Batman.

For the first excerpt from Lingiardi’s book, click here. For the second, click here.

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Zeus and Ganymede as a couple are an image of the coniunctio appositorum, opposite psychic polarities brought together into a state of balanced tension. In this couple, we became acquainted with the erotic, though not necessarily sexual, valence of the puer-et-senex constellation that so frequently runs through relationships between men. In Greek mythology, one can find many similar homosexual examples of such “initiatory” relationships, such as Heracles who is taken to heaven and promoted to the status of a god following his death or Hyacinth, the extremely handsome mortal youth whom Apollo, protector of boys, fell in love with and made divine, a story likewise used to explain the origins of love between men. Mythic parallels appear in other cultural contexts, among the ancient Germanic people, as well as the people of Melanesia, New Guinea, and medieval Japan. These common motifs of heavenly abduction, mystical flight, and eagles as spirit-animal regularly appear in dreams, stories, and the legends of shamanic initiation throughout the world.

Even in the modern imagination of comic books we find a male couple with the characteristics of this coniunctio, this union in flight: Batman/Bruce Wayne and Robin/Dick Grayson (Winick 1992). Creatures of the air flutter about in their very names, and the allusion to the penis (robin, pecker, dick) is, I venture to say, not mere happenstance. Indeed, in his attack against comic books entitled The Seduction of the Innocent, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham denounces the friendship between Batman and Robin as too reminiscent of “a Zeus-Ganymede type of love relationship . . . the wish-dream of two homosexuals,” and to this condemnatory end, he adduces the following “proofs” for this thesis: they are two unmarried men living together in a house filled with flowers; they are served by a butler, Alfred; they care a great deal for one another and are often drawn sitting close together, dressed informally, their hands or arms touching. “Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize the subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature Batman and his young friend Robin” (Wertham 1954, p. 190).

Against these insinuations by Wertham, one can take another sort of psychological attitude by acknowledging that, as imaginary characters, the secret relationship between Bruce and Dick may be whatever the reader may wish to read into it: Robin can be Batman’s ward (the official version), his son (a benign interpretation), or his lover (a forbidden fantasy). As one of Wertham’s own patients says, “As the age of ten I found my liking, my sexual desires, in comic books. I think I put myself in the position of Robin. I did want to have relations with Batman . . . I remember the first time I came across the page mentioning the ‘secret batcave.’ The thought of Batman and Robin living together and possibly having sex relations came to my mind” (Wertham 1954, p. 192).



Andy Medhurst (1991) emphasizes how, despite a lack of explicit indications in the text, many people associate Batman and other comic-book superheroes with homosexuality by virtue of the absence of any important heterosexual relationships (Batwoman and Batgirl only make their appearance much later), and the tight-fitting bodysuits and pronounced masculinity of these characters are very obvious indications of the gay/camp sensibility behind these illustrations. A rap song a few years ago dedicated to Superman [who is called Nembo Kid (“Cloud Boy”) in Italian], had the following lyrics: “He’s a fairy, I suppose, flyin’ through the air in his pantyhose.”

. . . What is salient in all these myths about the origin of male homosexuality is the initiatory function such relationships serve. “Initiation myths” is the term used by scholars to refer to myths concerning “rituals which guarantee a successful passage from a ‘tender’ age group to a later and more manly age, with all its attendant powers and pleasures” (Dumezil 1984, p. vii). The aim of same-sex initiation” is to provide a space, gap, break, or transition between the feminine world of mother and the masculine world of father in the course of a young boy’s psychic development, an act of transition from youth to maturity that has had a central place in many cultures for a very long time. Ethnological studies conducted throughout this century have revealed the existence of initiatory institutions very different from the current models of initiation in Western civilization – namely, the existence of socially obligatory homosexual relationships between a teacher and his initiates.



And this, in turn, casts a central image of Western culture, masculinity, into a very different perspective, as it can no longer be held as necessarily coincident with exclusive heterosexuality. Indeed, there are cultures in which a man’s social superiority as a warrior, a chief, a shaman is in fact defined by way of homosexual behavior and involves helping a younger man achieve similar social status through such behavior. Homosexual relationships were the very heart of many pedagogical, training, and initiatory institutions.


Recommended Off-site Links:
When Batman was Gay - Tyrion Lannister (The Bilerico Project, July 24, 2008).
The Truth About Batman and His Tight Leather Suit - BigO (July 25, 2008).