A big thank you goes out to Serum Lake for contributing his voice and feedback on this video! th-cam.com/channels/0yFOXbX98P3qz-IvT7uRQQ.html Introduction - 0:00:00 PART I: The Nature of Crime - 0:06:16 PART II: The Love of Money - 0:19:51 PART III: A World of Injustice - 0:36:13 PART IV: Salvation of Sinners - 0:52:38 Conclusion - 1:04:41 If you want to do even more to help support me and videos like this, I'm now accepting one-time donations on Ko-fi as well as monthly donations on Patreon. $1 on Patreon = your name in the credits, early video previews, and access to monthly "Impressions" videos, where you can suggest media for me to look at and respond to! www.patreon.com/SnakeEyeDreams ko-fi.com/snakeeyedreams
it’s so neat to go back and look at the media we consumed so much of as kids. i think it’s easy to throw a show on to get your kid to shut up for a while, but this stuff can profoundly affect the way we end up viewing the world.
As a cartoon for kids, the thing about Batman TAS is that we know all of this. We have a basic knowledge as a society that people in positions of power will abuse that power. We know those in need will abandon morality and do crime to survive. All of this can even be considered cliché, and Batman or any character on the show has no good solution for the large scale problems as we as a society don't, either. But it isn't just empty escapism, the show takes on these problems and struggles with them. Cool video, nice way to be reminded what a great show BTAS is.
"[Success] didn't come from the product... it came from the attitude, the board room, the deal..." Man, that hits hard given the state of video game layoffs, studio closures, and the like. When 20k-30k+ people in video games alone (nevermind comparable numbers elsewhere in tech and entertainment) have lost their job in the last year and a half, only for/so that those companies stock prices and profits 'increase'...
I always saw batman/bruce as a sort of brige between the high class and the lower class He may be ritch but his closest friends and family aren't and he gets his hands dirty never leting others do what he thinks he should
1:04:28 Ironic given Croc these days plays into his broken sense of fatalism, that because of his mutation, he was always doomed to be who he is. One comic had Croc met with a kid named Gator, who suffered from the same mutation as him.. Croc gave up all of his criminal winnings, just to give Gator the chances Croc never got... and Gator becomes a cop killer... Croc is disgusted at someone falling into the same trap... he puts Gator down. As for Joker, the Tim Burton Joker was a unrepentant murderer for hire long before becoming Joker. Compared to the Joker of Killing Joke, who believes everything is meaningless, and thus, everything is permitted.
Interested in hearing your thoughts on Beyond. A recent rewatch of the series made it feel incredibly dated to the 2000’s, but an interesting time capsule of new Millenium ideas of what counterculture looks like, the idea of what being cool was, but also continuing the storylines of how corporate greed is never ending and hurts everyone.
The video's interesting and it's in my "Finish Later" list, just one thing that made my ears twitch. "Management or working/labor class" and "elite, middle, or lower class" are two pretty much opposite ways of talking about peoples' lives. Upper, middle, or lower class pretty much only says how much money you have coming in, and Management vs labor class actually describes how you get the money.
I don't think it was about the writer's "having their cake and eating it too", when it came to the Terrible Trio. Remember, those three robbed & almost killed someone within their social circle so, it's not surprising that there were other rich people have lawyers too. Hench, how those guys were sent to prison.
While I definitely understand and even agree with most of these points, there is one main thing I want to bring up. I noticed that a lot of the critics with the show's writing lacked context (at least, in the video itself). While these are valid, it is to be remembered that this is a kids' show. I don't bring this up as an excuse, but rather for context, Fox Kids was notorious for it's censorship on BTAS and a lot of things had to be removed or replaced. For instance, ever wonder why The Terrible Trio didn't get away with it? The network wouldn't allow it, early show bible pitches mentioned things like corruption within the bureaucracy and while stuff like it is brought up (see the episode, Shadow of The Bat and it's main antagonist, corrupt GCPD member Gil Mason) it is tend to be viewed as the exception. In fact, two characters in particular adapted from the show deviate entirely from their comic origins. Rupert Thorne was presented as one of Gotham's biggest mob bosses in BTAS, in his original comic appearances however, he was a corrupt councilman. Similar case with Mayor Hamilton Hill, who despite being an incompetent politician in BTAS, he's full on corrupt in his original source material. The only other corrupt politician I can think of in the DCAU that was allowed to exist was councilman Arthur Reeves in Masks of The Phantasm and that was due to different rules for films. Somewhat related but I suspect this is also why political corruption is also not really a theme in Batman Beyond. However, I do also believe that this is the recent a lot of corrupt businessmen exist in BTAS, they are the replacements for political corruption.
37:30 With all of his money, he could hire countless reformed supervillains to change the status quo Lupin the Third and Inspector Zenigata style. Or he could hire all of them or pay money into their reformation in Arkham Asylum among other villains whom he could help with their personal desires, I mean if the guy can reform Tony of all people, he could handle a ton more of his rogues gallery. Of course, Bruce Wayne is not the most qualified person to handle this job, and unless we get a superhero who can actually handle the job, I doubt we ever will. This is why I kind of want to create a new Arkham Asylum series in which The StoryTeller, my character, gets hired as the new person in charge of Arkham Asylum along with The StoryTeller's friends, which really and honestly only consist of her younger brother, and her animations and stories as she instead attempts to sociologically change the entirety of how Arkham Asylum just feels. Just a complete and utter makeover of the sociological parts of Arkham Asylum while making sure that each of the doctors of Arkham Asylum does not end up like Harley Quinn. Here is some important key points that I want to highlight in this series 1. The StoryTeller would be telling a lot of stories and would constantly have her face, voice, and various stories that she'd found plastered all over Arkham Asylum. I want her to be utilized only when she is most needed or when her enemies drag her out of her work and into the middle of the fray. 2. The StoryTeller and Batman, despite butting heads a lot, have the same fundamental goals and methodologies, they just have very different ideas about what those goals and methodologies mean to them and how they should be executed. While The StoryTeller has a looser relationship with social norms and a tighter grip on personal morality, oftentimes being a socially awkward nerdy young lady who consistently acts like an incredibly mature kid who constantly spouts her parent's work ethic down everyone's throats and will not be afraid of criticizing others provided she at least believes herself to be in no danger. She also sees no value in money aside from being able to navigate the capitalistic system, seeing every reward at the top as nothing more than fleeting pleasures compared to her missions, duties, and tasks. 3. I want a series of ordinary Arkham Asylum Workers just like how Batman has Officer Bullock, Monroy Montoya, Commissioner Gordon, and more people. 4. I want to deeply and honestly dive into how to redeem each of the villains and give almost all of them consistent motivations that The StoryTeller slowly learns more and more about. 5. I want Amadeus Arkham to have kicked the bucket by the time that The StoryTeller arrived. Maybe there can be some supernatural nonsense that brings him back, but overall I do definitively want his ghost, or should I say his Shadow, to haunt Arkham Asylum like a plague. 6. I want this series to have a consistently inconsistent tone. In that, the tone of each episode will radically change depending on what character(s) take the spotlight, maybe even mixing together different tones and themes together. 7. The StoryTeller should have power and privilege and should have earned that power and privilege, but at the start of the show, she has no earned no respect from anyone just because of who she fundamentally is. She, at her fundamental core, is not a bad person, despite her capability and disposition to be able to do bad things given bad circumstances. She will probably chew out even her own family and sometimes not even view the people closest to her as the people closest to her if they prove themselves to desire to give into their vices more than they wish to give in to the greater good. Heck, she'll even stop everything just to give people the time and resources, and this perfectionist, idealist, and incredible sense of a work ethic is just not appreciated in Gotham. If anything else, everyone seems to be afraid of her. Everyone fears, reviles, and rebukes her, oftentimes infantilizing her or treating her like a kid, which you might think is fitting given her sometimes childish disposition and assertions along with sometimes even giving compliments to the villain's costume design, aesthetics, mannerisms, and gimmicks. So her personal character arch is to overcome all of this while still finding the best way to move forward. 8. 9. 10. I want to highlight the fact that The StoryTeller was at several moments in her life not that far off from just donning the supervillain costume and going just as crazy as everyone else, but never did mostly out of fear of God and of authority. The StoryTeller was so closely tied to her morality that she would not abandon it for a second, and throughout this entire series, we see that tested time and time again to the chagrin of all of the Arkham Inmates. They're all furious at how much of an ideological outlook The StoryTeller has on life, up until she reveals that she really doesn't, it's just that she believes that she must have this outlook because she does not like to have such a cynical and apathetic attitude towards others. She'll reflect it back in people's faces and be just like Photo-Negative Mickey, sure, but she has as many reasons for being heroic as she has for being horrific. For context, she would have ADHD, be autistic, and be transgender MtF, just like me, and would be at the time of this series be post-transition. Honestly, it is incredibly easy to slip into the mentality of the rich and powerful, no matter how passionately we may argue against it.
I always thought they should do something like that with one of the villains they never use, like I get from a meta perspective Batman stories can never make him permanently reform the Riddler or Killer Croc but someone like Polka dot man being given the help he needs and letting it stick and maybe giving them a job under Lucius Fox or something would allow all the talk of how Batman cares for rehabilitation feel far more resonant.
A big thank you goes out to Serum Lake for contributing his voice and feedback on this video!
th-cam.com/channels/0yFOXbX98P3qz-IvT7uRQQ.html
Introduction - 0:00:00
PART I: The Nature of Crime - 0:06:16
PART II: The Love of Money - 0:19:51
PART III: A World of Injustice - 0:36:13
PART IV: Salvation of Sinners - 0:52:38
Conclusion - 1:04:41
If you want to do even more to help support me and videos like this, I'm now accepting one-time donations on Ko-fi as well as monthly donations on Patreon. $1 on Patreon = your name in the credits, early video previews, and access to monthly "Impressions" videos, where you can suggest media for me to look at and respond to!
www.patreon.com/SnakeEyeDreams
ko-fi.com/snakeeyedreams
😊😊😊
Thanks for inviting me to participate, this is a great summary of how BTAS depicted the wealthy.
@conradaster3764 🫡
I love full hour videos of people overthinking kids cartoons cause it's the type of video for someone who overthinks kids cartoons (that's me btw)
it’s so neat to go back and look at the media we consumed so much of as kids. i think it’s easy to throw a show on to get your kid to shut up for a while, but this stuff can profoundly affect the way we end up viewing the world.
As a cartoon for kids, the thing about Batman TAS is that we know all of this. We have a basic knowledge as a society that people in positions of power will abuse that power. We know those in need will abandon morality and do crime to survive. All of this can even be considered cliché, and Batman or any character on the show has no good solution for the large scale problems as we as a society don't, either. But it isn't just empty escapism, the show takes on these problems and struggles with them. Cool video, nice way to be reminded what a great show BTAS is.
"[Success] didn't come from the product... it came from the attitude, the board room, the deal..."
Man, that hits hard given the state of video game layoffs, studio closures, and the like. When 20k-30k+ people in video games alone (nevermind comparable numbers elsewhere in tech and entertainment) have lost their job in the last year and a half, only for/so that those companies stock prices and profits 'increase'...
I always saw batman/bruce as a sort of brige between the high class and the lower class
He may be ritch but his closest friends and family aren't and he gets his hands dirty never leting others do what he thinks he should
1:04:28 Ironic given Croc these days plays into his broken sense of fatalism, that because of his mutation, he was always doomed to be who he is.
One comic had Croc met with a kid named Gator, who suffered from the same mutation as him.. Croc gave up all of his criminal winnings, just to give Gator the chances Croc never got... and Gator becomes a cop killer... Croc is disgusted at someone falling into the same trap... he puts Gator down.
As for Joker, the Tim Burton Joker was a unrepentant murderer for hire long before becoming Joker.
Compared to the Joker of Killing Joke, who believes everything is meaningless, and thus, everything is permitted.
Interested in hearing your thoughts on Beyond. A recent rewatch of the series made it feel incredibly dated to the 2000’s, but an interesting time capsule of new Millenium ideas of what counterculture looks like, the idea of what being cool was, but also continuing the storylines of how corporate greed is never ending and hurts everyone.
The video's interesting and it's in my "Finish Later" list, just one thing that made my ears twitch.
"Management or working/labor class" and "elite, middle, or lower class" are two pretty much opposite ways of talking about peoples' lives.
Upper, middle, or lower class pretty much only says how much money you have coming in, and Management vs labor class actually describes how you get the money.
I don't think it was about the writer's "having their cake and eating it too", when it came to the Terrible Trio. Remember, those three robbed & almost killed someone within their social circle so, it's not surprising that there were other rich people have lawyers too. Hench, how those guys were sent to prison.
While I definitely understand and even agree with most of these points, there is one main thing I want to bring up.
I noticed that a lot of the critics with the show's writing lacked context (at least, in the video itself). While these are valid, it is to be remembered that this is a kids' show. I don't bring this up as an excuse, but rather for context, Fox Kids was notorious for it's censorship on BTAS and a lot of things had to be removed or replaced.
For instance, ever wonder why The Terrible Trio didn't get away with it? The network wouldn't allow it, early show bible pitches mentioned things like corruption within the bureaucracy and while stuff like it is brought up (see the episode, Shadow of The Bat and it's main antagonist, corrupt GCPD member Gil Mason) it is tend to be viewed as the exception.
In fact, two characters in particular adapted from the show deviate entirely from their comic origins. Rupert Thorne was presented as one of Gotham's biggest mob bosses in BTAS, in his original comic appearances however, he was a corrupt councilman. Similar case with Mayor Hamilton Hill, who despite being an incompetent politician in BTAS, he's full on corrupt in his original source material.
The only other corrupt politician I can think of in the DCAU that was allowed to exist was councilman Arthur Reeves in Masks of The Phantasm and that was due to different rules for films.
Somewhat related but I suspect this is also why political corruption is also not really a theme in Batman Beyond.
However, I do also believe that this is the recent a lot of corrupt businessmen exist in BTAS, they are the replacements for political corruption.
37:30 With all of his money, he could hire countless reformed supervillains to change the status quo Lupin the Third and Inspector Zenigata style. Or he could hire all of them or pay money into their reformation in Arkham Asylum among other villains whom he could help with their personal desires, I mean if the guy can reform Tony of all people, he could handle a ton more of his rogues gallery. Of course, Bruce Wayne is not the most qualified person to handle this job, and unless we get a superhero who can actually handle the job, I doubt we ever will.
This is why I kind of want to create a new Arkham Asylum series in which The StoryTeller, my character, gets hired as the new person in charge of Arkham Asylum along with The StoryTeller's friends, which really and honestly only consist of her younger brother, and her animations and stories as she instead attempts to sociologically change the entirety of how Arkham Asylum just feels. Just a complete and utter makeover of the sociological parts of Arkham Asylum while making sure that each of the doctors of Arkham Asylum does not end up like Harley Quinn.
Here is some important key points that I want to highlight in this series
1. The StoryTeller would be telling a lot of stories and would constantly have her face, voice, and various stories that she'd found plastered all over Arkham Asylum. I want her to be utilized only when she is most needed or when her enemies drag her out of her work and into the middle of the fray.
2. The StoryTeller and Batman, despite butting heads a lot, have the same fundamental goals and methodologies, they just have very different ideas about what those goals and methodologies mean to them and how they should be executed. While The StoryTeller has a looser relationship with social norms and a tighter grip on personal morality, oftentimes being a socially awkward nerdy young lady who consistently acts like an incredibly mature kid who constantly spouts her parent's work ethic down everyone's throats and will not be afraid of criticizing others provided she at least believes herself to be in no danger. She also sees no value in money aside from being able to navigate the capitalistic system, seeing every reward at the top as nothing more than fleeting pleasures compared to her missions, duties, and tasks.
3. I want a series of ordinary Arkham Asylum Workers just like how Batman has Officer Bullock, Monroy Montoya, Commissioner Gordon, and more people.
4. I want to deeply and honestly dive into how to redeem each of the villains and give almost all of them consistent motivations that The StoryTeller slowly learns more and more about.
5. I want Amadeus Arkham to have kicked the bucket by the time that The StoryTeller arrived. Maybe there can be some supernatural nonsense that brings him back, but overall I do definitively want his ghost, or should I say his Shadow, to haunt Arkham Asylum like a plague.
6. I want this series to have a consistently inconsistent tone. In that, the tone of each episode will radically change depending on what character(s) take the spotlight, maybe even mixing together different tones and themes together.
7. The StoryTeller should have power and privilege and should have earned that power and privilege, but at the start of the show, she has no earned no respect from anyone just because of who she fundamentally is. She, at her fundamental core, is not a bad person, despite her capability and disposition to be able to do bad things given bad circumstances. She will probably chew out even her own family and sometimes not even view the people closest to her as the people closest to her if they prove themselves to desire to give into their vices more than they wish to give in to the greater good. Heck, she'll even stop everything just to give people the time and resources, and this perfectionist, idealist, and incredible sense of a work ethic is just not appreciated in Gotham. If anything else, everyone seems to be afraid of her. Everyone fears, reviles, and rebukes her, oftentimes infantilizing her or treating her like a kid, which you might think is fitting given her sometimes childish disposition and assertions along with sometimes even giving compliments to the villain's costume design, aesthetics, mannerisms, and gimmicks. So her personal character arch is to overcome all of this while still finding the best way to move forward.
8.
9.
10. I want to highlight the fact that The StoryTeller was at several moments in her life not that far off from just donning the supervillain costume and going just as crazy as everyone else, but never did mostly out of fear of God and of authority. The StoryTeller was so closely tied to her morality that she would not abandon it for a second, and throughout this entire series, we see that tested time and time again to the chagrin of all of the Arkham Inmates. They're all furious at how much of an ideological outlook The StoryTeller has on life, up until she reveals that she really doesn't, it's just that she believes that she must have this outlook because she does not like to have such a cynical and apathetic attitude towards others. She'll reflect it back in people's faces and be just like Photo-Negative Mickey, sure, but she has as many reasons for being heroic as she has for being horrific. For context, she would have ADHD, be autistic, and be transgender MtF, just like me, and would be at the time of this series be post-transition.
Honestly, it is incredibly easy to slip into the mentality of the rich and powerful, no matter how passionately we may argue against it.
I always thought they should do something like that with one of the villains they never use, like I get from a meta perspective Batman stories can never make him permanently reform the Riddler or Killer Croc but someone like Polka dot man being given the help he needs and letting it stick and maybe giving them a job under Lucius Fox or something would allow all the talk of how Batman cares for rehabilitation feel far more resonant.
Great video 😊
How long you been doin' this kind if stuff?
Your presentation is better than most people's hour-long videos on TH-cam.
Going on about 4 years now - which I didn't realize until you asked and I took a look. Wow!
And thanks for the compliment and comments. :)
@@snakeeyedreams8181 harley Quinn. Is. My. Favorite. Chacter
@@snakeeyedreams8181harley Quinn. Bubbly. Personality. Is. The. Best
Will you do a strentgh tier list like you did for Teen Titans?
I've thought about it, but no plans at this time.
Nice vid, man
Great video as always! Have you seen Spider-Man the animated series? It’s very similar in the themes you’ve covered.
LETS GOOO!
35:35 He robbed equally wealthy or WEALTHIER people. It was inevitable.
This was a cartoon for kids??? Because there are so many meaningful themes in it. Fantastic analysis - always enjoy them as usual.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like BTAS still coming out, you just have to listen to what the people in the shows say and do.
This, X-Men: TAS, and Gargoyles are quite special 90s cartoons.
39:00 You're beginning to sound like a Justice Lord.
Anybody here watch Hakim or Second thought?
There socialist scumbags. Please don't watch them.
first
Great video 😊