Philosophical readings of Batman's political and ideological position

Abstract

Although the characters (super heroes) of comic book fictions and other audiovisual products such as movies, cartoons and video games, among others, are designed -in theory- for a young audience, this does not mean that they are neutral or devoid of a defined political and ideological position that is susceptible to philosophical study, in order to reveal their essence, characteristic attributes and, in short, their true being. Considering that the impact of these characters of Anglo-Saxon popular culture has been significant in global social representations in general, the aim of the article was to carry out a philosophical re-reading of Batman's political and ideological position. Methodologically speaking, semiotic hermeneutics and Socratic maieutics were employed to reveal the crucial aspects of the discourse of Gotham's main superhero. Everything allows concluding that, in his being and doing, the so-called "bat-man" is an anarchist, in the predominant form of Anglo-Saxon type anarcho-capitalism, who distrusts the capacity of the institutions of justice of his fictional world to defeat crime and to create, in addition, true spaces of justice in the intersubjective relations of the community.