The animated film The Killing Joke has been mired in controversy since its inception. That stems largely from the fact that in the original comic Joker shot Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, in the spine and took explicit photos of her to drive her father insane. Feminist critics took issue with the scene because it used a female character to further the plot of a male one.
To assuage those concerns, the film adaptation added a Batgirl-dominated prologue, to give the character more depth and add context to her controversial maiming. But when it premiered at Comic Con, the new prologue only exacerbated the feminist rage.
Mainly because Batman and Batgirl have sex.
“You have talked about how you wanted to give Barbara more story … and yet the story you gave her ended up being about the men in her life. Why?” A fan asked screenwriter Brian Azzarello.
Azzarello responded by saying Barbara was “stronger than the men in her life” and “she controls the men in her life in this story.”
Apparently this response triggered Bleeding Cool reporter Jeremy Konrad.
“Yeah, by using sex and then pining for Bruce,” he heckled from the audience.
“Wanna say that again? Pussy?” Azzarello responded, after apparently not hearing him.
No, I called someone a pussy when they unintelligibly yelled from the back of the room, then wouldn't repeat it https://t.co/15GNyna64F
— Brian Azzarello (@brianazzarello) July 23, 2016
Other criticism of the scene include that Batman and Batgirl have a “father-daughter” type relationship and the sex scene is out of character.
But this is not the first Bruce-Barbara lovemaking ever to hit the franchise. In Batman Beyond 2.0, it was revealed that Bruce got Barbara pregnant while she was dating Robin.
The executive producer of The Killing Joke, Bruce Timm, further explained the decision. “I actually like that in that opening story both Batman and Batgirl make a series of mistakes and then it kind of escalates, because Batman kind of overreacts and then she overreacts to his overreaction.”
“There’s clearly an unstated attraction between the two of the characters from the very beginning and I think it’s there in the comics. If you go back and look at the Adam West show, it’s there in the Adam West show.”
Despite the defense, the reaction online was not great.
It seems like the found a way to take the most degrading story about Barbara Gordon and make it even worse. Yay.
— Ashley Lynch (@ashleylynch) July 24, 2016
Wow. Babs begs Batman for sex. Enjoys being objectified by bad guy and Batman corrects her. Is found naked.
— Laura Sneddon (@thalestral) July 24, 2016
The negative reaction to the scene is not exclusive to feminists and culture critics. Other Batman fans take issue with the scene for being out of character, and kind of creepy.
Bottom line: The Barbara Gordon subplot is not the most seamless case of politically correct pandering, as the writer managed to create a controversy worse than the one he was trying to mitigate.
