There is so much joy to be found in the 1960s television
version of Batman (see my reviews of the
first season), but in this post I’ll concentrate on the labels that appear
throughout the sets. Sometimes the
labels draw our attention to things that would otherwise be marginal,
insignificant, or obscure to the narrative – and thereby highlight the
absurdity of the situations in which the characters find themselves. In other instances they crystalize the
tension of the moment in an awkward, destabilizing, and – of course – humorous
manner. For instance, we find the
loquaciously identified “Gazebo Cricket Pavilion Paralyzing Gas Gauge –
Emergency Use Only!” Not only is this
label notably wordy, but it also solidifies the panel as an object in and of
itself – a mechanism worthy of a name, as it were.
Batman moves amid a world of needlessly identified objects –
things that refuse to remain merely in the background and, in that capacity, challenge
the hegemony of characters in the
world. These label-bound things become
objects of absolute definition – no ambiguity is permitted, for viewers or characters, reinforcing the earnest reality
that is the seedbed of true camp.
Characters wear labels, too – most notably the goons and henchmen that,
it seems, can only really exist by wearing proclamations of their identity.
Curiously, the labels usually seem invisible to the
characters. Robin not only trips over
the “Death Bee Beehive Tripwire,” but fails to notice the sign as well. The campy laughs
depend upon the characters not knowing how ridiculous they are, unable to
acknowledge the absurdity of the world and its situations. Thus the labels go unseen. Likewise, characters tend to repeat things
that the narrator has already pronounced, labeling verbally with as much vehemence as the textual counterparts
demand. The written labels are so
unsubtle that they become subtle – full of mystery amidst their certainty (who
put them there?), provocative in a manner that disrupts the suspension of disbelief
but demands the activation of belief. That
is, by reading them we become complicit in the excessively defined non-drama of
the icon/joke/ text.
The world of labels pervades the fabric of the show, beyond
the parameters of props themselves. Even
the opening title reminds us that the color images we see are “In Color.” And, of course, the “POW!” “BIFF!”, etc., intrusions
in the fight scenes draw our attention to the power of our heroes while
rendering their physical violence into absurd, pop art incarnations. These cards or titles leach away the drama of
the narrative into themselves, creating metaphorical black holes of meaning and
non-meaning whose gravitational waves ripple through the existential fabric of
the series.
The existence of a Twitter account for just the labels [@BatLabels] propels such absurdity into our
digital, postmodern age. Indeed, the
catalog of labels becomes a circle of endless inter-signification constituting,
one might argue, a philosophical statement of profound significance, an
encyclopedia of the absurd that absorbs and disarms all other ventures of
meaning.
“Holy Discourse, Batman!”
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