The Dark Knight in Wonderland: Batman and... Rabbits?

The Dark Knight in Wonderland: Batman and... Rabbits?

"'what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'" Alice from Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland

I've been re-reading the Frank Miller Batman stories that have become known as 'The Dark Knight Universe' (Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder) in order to formulate an essay on the overall narrative cycle. In doing so I've noticed an animal that's popped up in the books and which seems somewhat out of place - the fluffy white rabbit. As a figure, the Rabbit in these Dark Knight stories isn't a strong motif, yet its appearance heralds an interesting portrayal of sexuality.

In The Dark Knight Returns (TDKR) Bruce Wayne dreams of an incident in his childhood where he chases a rabbit down a hole bringing to mind similarities with Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. When Alice chases the rabbit she finds -

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

Similarly Bruce's rabbit chase sees him fall into what will later become his Batcave and his first encounter with bats. In Batman Begins (Chris Nolan, dir.) young Bruce falls down an actual well which leads to the Batcave-to-be.

But the similarities between Alice and Bruce don't end in this superficiality. On his webpage The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares Terry Windling writes -

In many mythic traditions, these animals were archetypal symbols of femininity, associated with the lunar cycle, fertility, longevity, and rebirth. But if we dig a little deeper into their stories we find that they are also contradictory, paradoxical creatures: symbols of both cleverness and foolishness, of femininity and androgyny, of cowardice and courage, of rampant sexuality and virginal purity.

Both Bruce and Alice are children on the verge of breaking into adolescence and the accompanying emergence of sexuality. Both are virgins and thus branded 'pure'.

When chasing the rabbit Bruce is warned, 'Don't go in that hole' (Miller 1996:17). Although the speaker of this warning is not in the panel we must assume it Bruce's father as the speech bubble points to him in the previous panel. Bruce of course ignores the warning and falls in. The warning is important coming from the father. Bruce is the Wayne's only child and is designated to take over the "masculine dealings" of the Wayne business estate. Symbolically Bruce is chasing his femininity which is being dominated by his father. Bruce's father, psychoanalytically speaking, sees the danger of a reconnection with the feminine which he as the father has worked hard to erase by asserting himself as 'the law'. This reconnection with the feminine will confuse Bruce dividing his allegiance due to the inability of the child to permanently go back to the womb, to be one again with the mother. As Barbara Creed writes in The Monstrous Feminine the inability for the mother and child, especially the female child, to fully separate through the Oedipal cycle produces monstrosity. In this case Batman has negotiated the Oedipal struggle yet his desire to return to the mother only to find he can't produces another kind of traumatic monster - the Bat-Man.

Not long after Bruce's parents are murdered in an alley after seeing the film The Mask of Zorro (again we could use cinema and film as representations of going into a dark cave to be find another world), and Bruce is forever divided thereafter.

Bruce awakes from the dream sequence of falling into the Batcave-to-be to find he has sleepwalked to the batcave, and is completely naked. Symbolically Bruce is reborn, returning to the place that Batman was 'created'; he has returned to the 'womb'. The feminine-associated figure of the rabbit in TDKR propels Bruce toward a fertile, feminine space/place: the Batcave.

The Batcave is where Batman keeps all his "toys"; his inventions, the feminine space underneath the masculine rigid structure of Wayne Manor, built by Bruce's father; a product of his massively successful business empire. The Batcave 'doesn't end... It just doesn't end... The cave goes on forever... And it's just getting started... It's building itself' (Miller xx) and is 'endless' (Miller 1996:199). It is here, to this maternal space that Bruce brings his SOBs (Sons of Batman) and Robin (Carrie Kelley) at the end of TDKR, a place where 'it begins' (Miller 1996: 199), to build an army, to proliferate. Interestingly, at this point Batman is supposed to be dead, but it is the Batcave Bruce Wayne returns to start a new 'good life' (Miller 1996:199), the third of Bruce Wayne's rebirths in TDKR.

But as Windling writes the rabbit also represents 'rampant sexuality and virginal purity'. An example of this can be seen in All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (ASBRBW). In contrast to the clearly political themes in TDKR and The Dark Knight Strikes Again (TDKSA), ASBRBW seethes with sexual energy as a thirty-two year old Batman, now reveling in his 'terrorist' role, cuts a swathe through Gotham's body of crime.

Specifically in one scene, a rabbit, which seems completely out of place, bounds out of the way of a barreling Batmobile. If we wanted to push the point, then perhaps Batman is again chasing the Rabbit, leading him again to the Batcave. At this point in ASBRBW Dick Grayson (who will become Robin) is a passenger in the Batmobile. His parents murdered only hours before, Batman has 'drafted' twelve year old Dick 'into a war'(Miller 2008:xx), and Miller repeatedly lets us know that he is twelve, and yes, Dick Grayson is therefore a boy.

Essentially ASBRBW is the story of how Batman gets Robin as his sidekick. The rabbit? It represents two things - Batman's rampant sexuality and Dick Grayson's twelve year old virginal purity. But like the rabbit running for it's life Dick Grayson is also running for his. Lucky to be alive after his parents murder, Batman rescues him and transfers him to the Batcave, that place of feminine fertility where he will incubate and emerge reborn as Robin, the Boy Wonder. Batman tells him to choose a name and costume. Dick proclaims himself 'Hood' after the mythical Robin Hood. Batman disapproves, 'You're Robin.' (Miller 2008:xx) he says, and in naming him thus becomes his surrogate father in Robin's genesis.

Of course Batman stories themselves have bred like rabbits over the last seventy years and there looks like there's no stopping them any time soon.

Reference

Miller, F. (w). Lee, J.(p), and Williams, S.(i) (2008). All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, Volume 1. New York:DC Comics.[Collecting All-Star Batman and Robin #1-9, 2005-08].

Miller, F.(w,a) and Varley, L.(i) (1996). The Dark Knight Returns. 10th Anniversary Edition. New York:DC Comics.[Collecting The Dark Knight Returns #1-4, 1985]

Windling, T. (2005). The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares. at http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrRabbits.html