Batman: Mask of the Phantasm: Arrested Development, Egocentrism, and Facing your Shadow

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Brittany Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're
all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for
entertainment purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms.
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't your
therapist. If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a local
mental health provider. Welcome to episode four of season seven of Popcorn Psychology.
Today we will be covering the best Batman movie that has ever come out,
The Mass of the Phantasm, which is a spinoff from the animated show Batman,
the animated series from the nineties. Today's topics we're going to cover arrested
development, ego centrism, and shadow integration, and then cover our normal treatment
and final thoughts. So, what do we think about the Mask of the
Phantasm and arrested development. How do we see Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont demonstrating
arrested development in this film. Oh well, we have said many in our
episodes about Bruce Wayne and how he is definitely stuck at the age in which
wait for it, did you guys know that his parents died? I didn't
know in front of him. I forgot leaving the theater. Oh, the
pearls, pearls. She has the pearls on in the painting. She does
have the pearls on in the painting, But they didn't do the death scene
in this one, thank god, I mean, first time ever. No,
but Bruce Wayne definitely is stuck mentally. It seems at the age like
how old was he twelve? Eight? It depends on which version we see,
but generally somewhere between eight and ten. Yeah, And I don't know,
he just feels like not even just that he's stuck at the age because
that's what how old he was when his parents died in front of him,
which is awful and tragic. Yes, but also he seems to be a
very socially isolated person. Yes, and so it does make me wonder is
this something that started with the grief and the trauma, and then he never
really moved past it, got out of it, grew out of it because
he's just been sitting in his dead parents' house by himself, no peers.
The only person he's regular interactions with is a paid servant who's about eight hundred
years old. Absolutely, and he just sits in that armchair and stares at
the portrait of his dead parents, and then he goes out to the cemetery
and talks to the tombs on of his dead parents. Unless he's pretend to
be Bruce Wayne, you don't see him with people. You don't see him
engage in the world really. Yeah, Like even when he's hanging out with
Andrea, they're not going out and doing things. Really. I'm sure that's
not a part that was important in the film because it's so short, but
it does feel like he can only hang out at his house or next to
the battle or next to the bath hole or surprise, surprise, the bath
hole. The bathole, that is what we will rename it anytime Hannah and
Brittany are around. But it is a notable thing about especially the animated version
of Bruce Wayne, which is the best version voiced by Kevin Conroy period end
of story that watching Bruce interact with humans is notably absent outside of Alfred,
at least when he's being authentic, when he's putting on the mask of Bruce
out in the world. Sometimes he's successful socially, but the animated series really
did a pretty good job of making it quite clear that he is not effective
as an adult amongst adults. He acts like a teenager. Oh and we
saw it, even a jackass. It does act like a jackass often.
He is short tempered, he's impatient, and he has a very fragile ego
because we're seeing him project a sense of self out into the world that he
knows as a mask, and it takes a lot of energy for him to
keep that up. And if anybody knocks him off his game, his mass
is viable to crack. And we saw that with the councilman in the film
when he was ribbing him about how he let Andrea go oh yeah, and
then he the shoulder checks him like pouts yep, which is not something a
grown man would do when he's going to reasonably assume he's in his mid thirties.
I was going to ask you how old. How old he's supposed to
be in the present time. I think in the present time he's in his
mid thirties or so, so when he was the flashbacks are maybe in his
twenties then yeah, okay, because he said it's been ten years. Oh
okay, so he's still young. That's a Year one of Batman is basically
what's happening we're seeing this is from inspired by the Year one Batman comic,
at least part of it, and seeing Batman without a suit kind of fresh
out of college and back to Gotham, discovering Andrea and falling in love with
her all seems to happen from a very teenage spot in his life, Like
his mindset and mentality is very teenage, and that exists even in the ten
years later present time scenes. Yeah, the version of Bruce Wayne he's doing
in public is very young. Like it's very two dimensional the way he's the
only real scene we see him as that version of himself. He's hanging off
of those two women are like on either side of him, and then another
woman walks up and she's like he's a slut and like throws her wine in
his face or whatever. She says that also isn't a way like if I
saw a thirty some year old man doing that. I'm sure they do,
but in that also in a place where you'd wear evening where yeah, and
it's like a fancy fundraiser or opera or whatever it was, it'd be like,
that's not grown up behavior either. It's like Peter Pan stuff, you
know. So it's like he can't even he can't even find the right age
to act like, you know, which I think says a lot. It's
like he is a little kid like big, like movie Big. It's like
he's a little kid doing an adult, yes, doing the role of an
adult instead of actually acting like an adult. It is a common phenomenon you
can see with people when they've had serious life altering traumas and also with serious
substance abuse that starts. Young people can kind of get stuck in the developmental
stage at which they had to start dissociating for one reason or another, and
they struggle to progress into adulthood with their whole self. They can develop parts
that can show up. Is just what we see at these parties. Bruce
is demonstrating a part of himself that the twelve year old. He's kind of
stuck at mentally inside in his core self is projecting an adult playboy should be
by bringing models to a party and showing people things. But the women that
come up to him, it was at least two that get mad at him,
is they're telling the other people, Oh, yeah, he'll tell you
the world, and he'll tell you that you can be all these things right
up until the time it's time to commit, and then he'll lose your phone
number. There's two of them that came up and did that and kind of
called him out on his immature behavior that he couldn't commit, couldn't connect.
And I know that's also like his point, right, Like that's the image
he's trying to put off because he wants to keep. He wants a reputation,
he wants to be placed in reputation. At least that's what I have
always been led to believe that he is a playboy. I mean we see
that in Christopher and Noland's version of Batman. Yeah, he does that version
of Bruce Wayne does the same thing of having like showing up on a helicopter
and having two models on either side. It's yeah, I'm pretty sure he
was shot for shot kind of imitating this scene. Yeah, yeah, I
could definitely see that. And we know that trauma impacts everything, and so
we know that it can when we experience something really young, that it can
stop us from growing. Our brain and our body just get trapped in that.
And I think that's what happened to Bruce, even though I hate his
guts, and it's just really curious to me in terms of his relationship with
Daddy Butler, that he it's just really wild to me that and I know
that he's isolated, but it's really wild to me that even with his Daddy
Butler, he is not pushing him in any kind of way to be anything
more than he is and is accepting his behavior. And sure he's a servant
whatever, but it seems odd that there isn't any That part doesn't make sense
to me. It also doesn't make sense to me how concise he is and
how like how he's in front of that big computer and he's doing all of
these things and he can be really thoughtful and he has to really think like
a detective, so like, how is he It's just interesting to me,
like those two parts don't match up for me. Well, I will say,
you saying that makes me think of people who are really smart, because
technically my specialty degree is in gifted kids, even though I haven't really used
that. And how when you take those courses and things like that, they'll
talk about how emotional obviously intelligence is broken up, and sometimes the smarter you
are in one area of your brain, it's almost like you only have so
much intelligence points. And if you're really intellectually intelligent, it almost like eats
from your emotional intelligence or your social intelligence. And so it could be the
case like you're talking about, where he could really naturally gifted intellectually, yes,
and the other parts of him are just not as intelligent innately yeah.
And so he's able to have these pockets where he's really confident and probably parts
has been would I'm sure put it yep, But these other parts just aren't
developed. I don't know. It makes me curious how much he holds his
parents responsible for telling him who he is, because what I mean by that
is it seems like where he really struggles is to find his sense of self
himself, to find his sense of self outside of his parents. Like a
major recurring scene in this movie was him going to his parents via tombstone,
via portrait and talking to them, pleading with them, beggar talking as if
he's expecting a response. Absolutely, not just like monologueing in front of them
or thinking out loud around them, or the way that sometimes you'll see people
talking to dead relatives but plead with them as if he is expecting them to
tell him who he is. So it makes me curious if he assumes that
everybody else gets something from their parents in terms of who they are that he
didn't get he did, and so he's still looking for that from them,
right, And it makes me think of when I work with people who have
been in foster care or adopted or never met one of their parents, and
how they can sometimes idealize the version of them that would exist if their parents
were around, sure, or if their parents had been different absolutely, and
how because the times gets so stuck in that idea, they won't take the
time to look inward or look somewhere else. And that's also where he feels
really stuck. It's like he's waiting for his parents to come back so he
can figure out who he is and what he can do next, and until
he gets an answer, from them. He can't get married and have kids
and live a life. And he bought the ring and he threw it at
her, so you know, he can't marry in my battle, my final
once the way he proposed to her. He can't release himself from the oath,
which also he took right to himself. Correct. But that's that child
part that got frozen, that didn't grow with the rest of him. It
fractured off of his psyche and got stuck. And that's the part that's the
loudest and has the most control because it's the part that hurts the most.
The part of him that got fractured off, frozen, and that he guards
and protects because it needs the most protecting is that child part. And that
part doesn't understand how to actualize, differentiate whichever word we'd like to use from
whichever developmental theory. But we don't see him grow into his own person.
He's trying to live up to the ideals that his parents would have given him
at ten years old. That he understands from the mind of a ten year
old, the adult version of him that is capable of understanding things and being
a detective and synthesizing thing and understanding what that string of words about a polymer
he used to describe the gas cloud that Andrea uses as the phantasm and be
so confidently aware of the chemical compounds he's naming. Is not a ten year
old, and that part doesn't need protecting. It's a mask that he created
to protect the ten year old. That child part of him needs the parents
because it didn't get the encouragement the growth periods because they died, so they
couldn't encourage him to be someone unique. He was trying to figure out who
he was as a Wayne, as a child of the Waynes. Some part
of him is deeply stuck there, yeah, in his grief, and it
doesn't help that it seems like he never gets any replacement guardians except for Alfred,
and then it doesn't seem like he gets any socialization. And so I
don't know how he doesn't become this as an adult. If you put somebody
in the same situation, they probably could end up in the same way that
he is without how I mean that social isolation piece is so big for him,
is such a big that just indicates so much more. It's a real
loss of social skills when you're not around peers. Yes, who are your
age? And I'm kind of I gotta say, I'm starting to get mad
at Alfred. Well, the Alfred in this version is very submissive, very
a servant, yes, sir, no, sir, kind of kissing his
ass the whole time. Yeah, but the model of sanity, so police,
not even what you trying to get a bonus this year at Christmas kissing.
I mean, I feel like Bruce should have been sent to school.
Maybe he should have sent sent to a sporting school. Maybe he was I
don't know his whole story, but depends on which version usually Yes, Yeah,
like he could have benefited from getting out of that house, getting out
of the mausoleum that is the Wayne manor basically it's like a living to whom
he lives in. Yeah, and being among kids his own age, being
in I don't know, God forbid a support group with other kids who've also
lost parents. Yeah, that he's not the only one, that it doesn't
have to be his whole identity. Yes, and helping him move through that.
I mean, he just feels like someone who never got the opportunity to
process his grief because no one asked. And he's rich enough that I mean,
I think we talked about with the Batman movie. Because of his privilege,
he kind of just full under the radar. Yeah, people look at
him and he's fine, and he's not. And then it's clear because then
when Andrea shows up, Andrea, which of course he knows how to get
in with because they're both talking at their dead parents in the Oh my god,
and so he's like, whoa, you also talked to your dead parents
in the cemetery? Did we just become best friends? And then they do
karate in the garage? Oh my god. No, he does karate at
her, like Sterling arch What does Sterling Archer say? Karate is the Dane
cook of martial arts? But he said it was jiu jitsu, So don't
correct me, nerds. Yeah. Also the way, well, what I
will say is all right, calm down. I mean, I gotta say,
if she's looking at him with love with hard eyes, we got other
problems to talk about because he's a mess. Well, calm down. Here's
what I was gonna say. Yeah, is that you can also see with
how quickly he attaches to Andrea, that also says a lot about he's finally
hitting adolescent preteen adolescents with her right, Like how quickly he goes from strangers
to dry humping on the lawn to dating to like, I don't know what
I want to do parents to proposing, you know what I mean? Like,
it seems to go very quickly. And also it doesn't seem like he
needs to know anything else about her besides the fact that they have this shared
grief, which is also how kids will fall into it with each other.
Of like with little kids, you only really need to have one yep to
be and also when you're teenagers too, like, oh we have this deep
connected drama. Well, we must be soulmates. We both like the same
music that's popular and sells millions of records. We are destined for love forever.
I think it's more like we both have depression. Yeah, let's hold
hands in the dark, yeah, and act like we invented being mentally ill.
The therapist in me is going to ignore that comment. I think it's
clear that Versus delayed, that the core part of him, the most protected
part, the most authentic part of him, never grew up. It never
got over and had a chance to process the loss of his parents, the
loss of his guidance and everything that happened since is run through that filter.
When he's at home by himself in his truest form, yeah, like he
never talks to anybody, Like he never runs anything past anyone. Nope,
but his dead parents and the person he pays, you know, who's just
getting him very clipped, like of course answers like he's got to be.
He's so lonely, Like he is listening to his own thoughts and then what
he's projecting his parents' thoughts are and it's a it's like a feedback loop in
his brain. It's getting more and more distorted. And then where is he
in the middle, He's you know where he is putting on a fucking back
costume. Yeah, exactly, and he's going out into the night. That's
also a very young perspective of like I just have to get revenge. I
just have to write this wrong. That person's bad and that person's good.
That's also very young perspective, Like when I work with teenagers, yes,
a lot of sometimes my work would be like trying to get them to appreciate
and accept nuance about things. He's got a lot of that too. Seems
very important to him to do that and I get that too, because it's
very action oriented, which is better, I guess, quote unquote than just
being passively crying in your living room and your foyer. I mean, I
don't think he can get to his vulnerable feelings at all. Sure, I
mean he has no practice. He had no practice. And also he has
protectors that are something that that's talked about in ifs is that you have these
protectors and the idea of them is that they are going to save you.
They have to save you, and they'll do that. However they have to
do that, and sometimes it's to the detriment of the person who they're trying
to save, but that the protectors are always trying to take care of the
vulnerable parts of our personalities. Yeah, the protector was the part of him
that threw that ring at her and was like, you know what a proposal
is, Yeah, here you go, Jesus. That felt very self sabotage,
it did, and also very like nonchalant, which I feel like since
we're talking so much about him being maybe like a preteen before when his parents
died, that it would make a lot of sense that you don't want to
seem like you're really interested in a girl. Yeah, so don't want to
you also don't want to be rejected. I know, I'm like proposing and
stuff, but like it's not even that serious. I barely like you.
Yeah, I don't even know your last name. Yeah, Buford right,
right? And how that would make a lot of sense that that's how he
proposed. I mean I would have punched him in the face and thrown his
ring, you know, over the cliff. But I feel like that makes
a lot more sense to me about why he's so nonchalant in that scene with
her. Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense, which echoes the women
who were calling him on his inability to be emotionally close. Yeah, earlier
on the scene, like that was foreshadowing of where he's at or where he
I guess had been. That he hasn't grown from there. I think that's
the point of showing this. I think this movie, in this representation of
Bruce is almost always like that throughout the whole series, that they routinely highlight
how impaired he is by his grief and more importantly, by the shame and
guilt that keeps him stuck. One of the things that's the most powerful grief
traps that people have is when shame keeps you stuck in your I guess limited
narrative that you have somehow at fault and don't deserve to heal. And this
oath that he takes to avenge the wrongs that happen to them is his way
of trying to give himself an out from that feeling of shame and guilt that
won't let him move beyond it. And something that I've learned, and again
this is going back to IFS, which I know Ben talks about a lot,
but I'm in the process of learning about it and using it. And
one of the things that people seem to really be interested by when I'm reading
them this book about IFS is that memories are stored in chains. Chains are
often linked or connected by shame, guilt discussed like they are strong, yeah,
strong negative feelings. So kind of what happens then is that when you
have a memory and all the chain all opens at once, that's when we
get overwhelmed. Correct And so instead of just remembering the one time that you
felt shame, it piles on the next time that you felt shame and the
next time that you felt shame. Because now that you have a file for
it. It's keeping it in that file. It's keeping it linked to those
memories that are all connected by the theme of shame, which the biological point
of that is to keep us adherent to social norms, because human beings are
not hermits. We are not solitary creatures. We are pack animals, and
our survival depends on being around and accepted by other humans because in the wild,
stragglers get eaten. Right. So through the ifs lens a cana is
talking about is the word that they use for that as exiled parts. They
are exiled, and protectors show up to block those exiles from coming into the
consciousness and taking the behavior out of the social norm again because they're afraid that
the person will get overwhelm Right, That's what the protector is trying to avoid.
They don't want you to get overwhelmed by the vulnerable feelings that you have,
because you'll be in danger again. So he gets rejected by the first
girl. He opens his heart too, and he's like, I'm never fucking
doing that again, never doing that again. But again going back to the
idea of him being young. That's black and white thinking. That makes a
lot of sense. Yeah, I mean all that kind of comes together with
this idea of then why he does this avoidant attachment stuff. So let's take
a break here. It seems like our conversation is naturally flowing to egocentrism,
which is also a bane and protection of the young mind. That young folks
don't have the cognitive ability to see outside of their own worldview. Yeah,
and adults often struggle to remember that and remember how they felt when they were
sixteen. Like parents warn kids all the time, Hey, people in cars
all the time. Okay, and know where you were going with that pause?
I didn't know either, And that's what I picked. Sounds good.
Go ahead, Sorry for interrupting. It's all good. It could be any
one of any hundreds of things that parents tell kids. It doesn't matter what
placeholder. But we'll use cars. People die in cars all the time.
Oh, but like, we won't die because we know what we're doing.
And the invincibility kind of stuff, well, they think they're invincible. They
think because they think something, it's true. They just do not possess the
cognitive ability to understand that consequences can apply to them too. Just because you
don't want them to or think they won't doesn't protect you in any way,
shape or form. And it's really important to understand how pervasive eco centrism is
in youth when we think about especially someone like Bruce Wayne, and look at
why is this man who has enough money to buy an island and live wherever
he wants with everything, condemning himself to get his ass beat with bats and
chains by biker gangs and trying to be some kind of martial arts superhero kicking
the shit out of people with ninja stars when he has more money than God.
He was using ninja stars, he sure was. I will never respect
him. I'm sorry either. I mean this makes like again, like it
makes it all makes sense. But I really like to point out to people
when I talk to them about their past drama, and I talk about how
they get these sometimes they get overwhelming feelings, and how when they get those
feelings, they're very black and white feelings. It's very all or nothing.
And I talk to them a lot about how that's because it's coming from a
younger part, a younger part, they're the most important thing. Correct They
can't see outside of themselves. They literally don't have the capability, so when
we have parts that are that young, which he definitely has and we all
do. Yeah. Yeah, some people have more protectors, some people have
more parts than others. I mean, it's just a natural part of being,
of our experience as humans in a lot of different ways. But I
feel like the egocentrism makes so much sense with Bruce because he is almost impossible
for him to think about other people. It feels like like when he met
Andrew and the Graver, he was like, oh, some other people can
have dead parents. Yeah, whoa, Yeah, have you heard about those
guys? Yeah? And also I just found my soul mate. Yeah,
that's how specific he thinks that is to his experience that when he meets her
he's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. But yeah, it's
it's the same thing where like little kids think that the day starts when they
wake up, and like when teenagers act like they invented being heartbroken, you
know, is that a very egocentricy egocentric thing. And yeah, he definitely
just the way he grieves actively, it's like no one has been in pain
like he has been because they haven't he can't see it. Yeah, it's
not that other people don't and haven't been in pain And I don't know about
the comics, but this version of Alfred is the first one to reveal himself
as a former sas operative that I know of, because that's how it got
introduced me, because really Batman came into my world like the sixties TV show
would be on you know, the Kid's Nick or whatever, Nick at Night.
It was on a naked night. Yeah, it was on Nick at
Night and I would watch that, but it didn't that was even I thought
that was corny. This Batman was the first one to bring kind of like
the darkness that exists in a lot of the comics that have emerged after we
got out of the Silver Age of comics where things were kind of campy and
corny. And we're gonna save America, as Batman in Robin, because America
is the best. Where this Batman took a dark turn in the eighties with
Frank Miller and a lot of the other writers who took him in to a
more grounded approach that we got more familiar with from Keaton's Batman. From this
and we saw in the Dark Knight trilogy, whereas they Schumacher Ones kind of
went a little backwards in time to that corniness in the most nineties terriffic horribleness
that could exist when we see this version of a more obviously tortured person who's
stuck, and they take great care to show that that he's a tragic figure.
He's not the ideal billionaire out fighting crime. That there's a cost on
him, and part of that cost is he is so stuck in a childlike
mindset where he has to be the one. He has to do it.
It has to be him because he swore this oath that that matters more than
anything, and it is such a simplistic, childlike understanding of what that would
mean that his life would be. And the scene where he's pleading with his
parents during the thunderstorm, I didn't know when I swore that oath, I
could be happy. I wasn't counting on being happy, I think, is
what he's saying. Yeah, right, you couldn't see outside of it.
And that's what a part's argument happen feels like inside of your head when you
feel different parts of you tapping in, like the part of him that wants
to grow, that wants to develop, that wants to form a life with
this woman who's making him feel happy. That protected exiled child part is saying,
but you sed tore this oath. You can't have that. You can't
have this life and that one. And there's several scenes where he has that
argument with himself, you can't have this life in that life, and Alfred
kind of steps in as the I mean you can. I think they'd want
you to be happy, but it's not coming from them, so that egocentric
part can't hear it. And it's a perfect trap because he's never going to
hear his parents say anything different because they're dead. Yeah, So it's this
perfect loophole he's created that doesn't exist. It does not. It's something that's
really important to remember when working with kids that the frontal lobe of our brain,
the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for our ability to have logic, isn't
even online until we're nine or ten. And watching how emotionally driven this version
of Bruce's, it's really important to understand when he's in that part, when
that part is the active, dominant voice inside of his head, it doesn't
have a developed brain to draw from, it doesn't have the experiences of the
rest of them. It's walled off from the rest of his brain because he
hasn't done the trauma work that allows him to have the adult side of him
reach into time and create a portal that that pained child can see. Your
life is not always going to be as bad as it was in your worst
moments. You will have opportunities to do other things. You will grow strong,
you will grow big, you will be able to defend yourself, you'll
be able to defend people you love. And he doesn't get to do that
work, and so that part stays stuck with that egocentric voice that can't accept
anything beyond what it already knew when he went through that horrible tragedy. What
also makes me think of when I work with adults who experienced childhood trauma and
they'll say I should have done this, and I should have done that,
and it was my fault that I didn't stand up to that person or my
parent, and I'm like, well, you were eight, you were a
kid. And then you kind of have to do that thought experiment where you're
like, if you were watching an eight year old in the situation, would
you hold them accountable for not standing up or saying the right thing, and
you're right in that. Even though when I talk to these adults they have
the perspective now as an adult, in a lot of ways, when it
comes to themselves and these memories, they are still stuck in that very childlike
idea that they should have been able to do something different, that they they're
holding so much responsibility for the situation, and that never really shakes loose until
someone like me is encouraging that flexibility. But it'll still take time and time
and time and time and many times talking about that and maybe even something like
IFS or EMDR before they can fully accept or be flexible enough, and they're
thinking to be like, oh, it wasn't my fault that that happened,
or that I didn't protect my sibling or my mom or whatever. Correct.
There are lots of treatments that can help create that. It doesn't have to
be just one of those, but something that targets where that experience is neurologically
stored, that allows both the experience and safety to present, safety to be
online at the same time and being perceived at the same time, that that
experience is no longer being called up in the body by the chains that Hannah
mentioned. The different trauma therapies have different words of explaining it, but it's
all the same concept that Hannah was describing, that they're linked and they call
each other up, which then demands that the body respond to it. Because
it's a dissociation from the present. You're now afraid that all of those things
are happening, and all of the fear that was stored with those moments is
now active, and your body is afraid it's happening again, and it's trying
to defend against it, which takes you out of the moment enough you don't
have a firm grasp on what's happening. And these trauma therapies are specifically designed
to help target where those things are stored and help get those defenses online and
turned back off simultaneously so you can perceive I am safe now. I am
an adult. Now, I am not ten. I am not trapped in
an alley with a bad guy pointing a gun at my mom and dad.
I am a twenty or thirty something year old man who has built my body
into a peak performance weapon, and I have the ability to protect myself now
or whatever normal thing like that's Batman. But for for the rest of us
is I have the power to take care of myself. I don't depend on
other people who can't care for me. I don't need that. Yeah,
it's the control aspect also that shows up with this, where the ego pops
up of like I have to be the one that is in control. I
can't, like you're saying, I can't rely on anyone else to protect me.
I have to. I have to. I have to correct. And
knowing what social messaging we give to boys, Bruce probably heard from a great
many people that he's the man of the house. Now, he's the the
last of the waynes. He has to protect the legacy and all these things
that are gonna form protectors to hold on and keep him stuck. They probably
got the message from a bunch of like weird adults. That's what I was
just saying to know him who are probably like on the board with his parents,
you know, correct and just saying like idioms at him. Something that
I've been again using internal family systems is what IFS stands for. I don't
think I said that out loud yet, but one of the pieces that has
been helpful for people is saying to themselves, I am afraid but not in
danger. Oh yeah, and help them to kind of again bring yourself kind
of back online is allowing yourself to accept that you feel afraid but that you're
not actually in danger. Sure, it's like emotional reasoning, that cognitive distortion,
where because I feel a type of way, that must mean it's true,
exactly feeling such facts and yeah, I'm trying to separate those two things,
well dialectical like I feel this and I am this or this is true?
Yeah, Which dialectical is two opposing ideas that are both true and then
creating space for that no matter what language you use for that. The core
idea is creating a perception that you are safe now, regardless of how unsafe
you were then, and that it's okay you're afraid to feel that way again,
and that your system is now confused on where it is and what it
should be doing to keep you safe because you never want to feel that bad
ever again. Yeah. Also perceiving that right now there is nothing in the
present that will require you to because the press is not the past, and
concretely grounding the body in that helps people develop that resilience because they've already performed
it, because everything they've survived since the traumatic event happened are everything they've been
through, they've survived, so they therefore have skills and they know that you,
as the therapists, have to help them feel that. It doesn't do
an ounce of good to help them think that because the part of them that
is stuck is not stuck in the thinking brain. It is stuck on the
feeling side. It's helpful to have the thoughts as the resource that they can
tap into, but you must convince the feeling body. Because our safety and
protection system is based on perception and perception only. You never have had to
ask yourself if someone was going to be a danger to you. You felt
it. You never had to ask if someone was going to be mean or
scary. You felt it. You may not have been had power in the
past to defend against it. But when you remind people that right now in
my office, no one is here and that is going to hurt you,
and you don't need that system active. And I want you to perceive that
while you're aware that your body systems are trying to deploy that because it's not
sure where it is. When you reground it to where it is now,
you will perceive automatically that person who was dangerous to me and hurt me is
not here, and that is a concrete fact that cannot be negotiated with.
And helping people, especially young ones, break out of that or people who
are traumatized when they're young. More relevant to the bruce we see is that
when all that's active and he's confused of what part of him he needs to
deploy, when he gets grounded back to adulthood, he looks pretty functional,
it can do quite a bit of things, but he looks like a broken
child again every time he's stuck in that past mode. And that's where that
egocentrism becomes dangerous. That it has to be me. I can't only me.
It has to be this oath that I swore to myself at a point
in time where I had nothing else. This was the thing that I had
that got me through. This is my strength, This is all that I
have left. I must protect this at all odds, and all the part
to developed around that become very loud. Do we have anything else we want
to say on egocentrism? All right, let's take a break here and we'll
talk about the union concept of the shadow, which I am not very familiar
with. Sam. I feel like I learn about this every time you bring
it up. That's been and then my brain dumps it out, not on
purpose, it just doesn't stay in there. But from what I understand here,
this is learning corner guys. So your shadow is kind of how it
sounds, which is the parts of you that are like dark and haunting and
maybe shameful. Is that right? That's part of it? Okay, nailed
it. Yeah, it's a significant part of it. It can also be
the dangerous parts to you, the parts that can do the things that aren't
acceptable. Your deep wants id your imagination. It wants to kill the people
that hurt you. Where that becomes such a powerful role in this story is
Andrea is a man of festation of Bruce's shadow self. Bruce's shadow self wants
to do what the phantasm does. It is a constant struggle that Bruce swears
an oath to himself that he won't kill. Well, I don't know if
I believe that after all this talking, I don't even know if I believe
the Bruce wants to be doing any of it. And so maybe the killing
is just a step too far for him. But Andrea is like, I'm
ready to party. I got my fog machine, it is drapped to my
chest and I'm ready to go. Andrea's losses also happened when she was much
older. I don't know when her mom died, but her dad dying is
what sparked the development of the phantasm. Yeah, because that was only not
too long after she dumped Bruce, right, That's why she dumped Bruce.
But then they went to Europe, they ran away her and her dad and
then arthured I sold him out. But what really happened is her dad.
Yeah, her dad got killed. Yeah, her dad got killed somewhere we
can say five to eight years after they left. Yeah, because the councilman
was running for his campaign and he apparently had stayed in contact and not told
the mobsters where he was. You hate a snitch, and then when he
refused to contribute to his campaign, then he sold them out and Joker killed
him. Snitches good stitches. That's the first time Joker shows up in this
story, is to enforce that idea of snitches good stitches. It's I'm thrown
into ditches or in this case given hysteria through laughing gas. Yeah, that
was really disturbing. I will give the movie that I didn't like the laughing
he was doing. It was making me feel uncomfortable, like that kind of
laughing when you can't stop and it hurts. But I was like, this
feels really authentic and it bothers me, which is the other reason why it
felt like it was made for adults. That was creepy and scary when he
was doing that. Mm hmm. I mean, I know it's meant to
be, but like, yes, what comic book companies thought was appropriate to
market to kids, we can definitely take some issue with looking back on things,
looking at what we see in these cartoons. These are these are really
adult concepts for kids movie. When you look at the differences between Bruce,
who formed Batman probably in his younger years, he just didn't know who Batman
was yet. He probably formed Batman pretty quick after losing his parents. Andrea
doesn't form it until she's an adult. Andrea kind of wild. Actually,
yeah, but if you think about it, what the differences between understandings of
the world would be between those two that a ten year old point of view
on what right and wrong. Is is something that is so black and white
versus Andrea, who can understand the nuances of the world. Sure, it's
like where they are at ethically developmentally, Whereas when you're a kid, like
killing would be wild correct, and as an adult you're like, eh,
like I'm doing the world a favor by taking out these It's like the punisher,
and she is bad. She is all those people sucked. Yeah,
Batman is an antihero, and she is far deeper into the anti hero rote
than Batman. Batman tries to maintain a heroic presence by not killing, but
she goes full bore antihero. I will do bad things for a good reason.
Yeah. And she's also not worried about the identity reputation part. I
don't think that Bruce is right. She's not trying to save a part of
herself. She's going full rampage. She's going full Scooby Doo villain. Maybe
I mean more like for herself. Even like she's not she's giving herself over
to the idea she does. And Bruce is like, eh, I still
want to be a good guy in my brain, which is why she's the
shadow. She is the darkness that Bruce rejects from himself, the part of
him that if you release your shadow, you can do dark things, you
can kill, you can give in to your impulses. People's shadow self can
be what they tap into if they are going to have an affair and they
know they're not supposed to do that, but somehow their needs take over and
they go, well, I'm going to find her wayson. I can justify
doing this thing I'm not supposed to do, and their shadow can do that,
whereas their ego can't. At least that would be under union theory and
looking at how this shadow self represents itself. Andrea can do all the things
Bruce can't. She can haunt and scare and complete the kill. She does
not have to rely on someone else to deliver the justice. Batman's role is
to turn the bad guys over to the good guys. Damning thing of that
where the ego syndrome comes in is Batman can't kill because he can't get out
of the black and white thinking. And Andrea can. She can kill.
She can deliver the true justice as she sees fit to meet her perceived need,
and she has no hesitation. Bruce has constant hesitation on what he can
and can't do, and must constantly grapple with the decisions of what a hero
does. When he throws someone off a building to scare them, he pulls
them back up with his grapnel gun. I guarantee would not do that.
So the point of this story, what shadow integration work is is being able
to look inward and accept that darkness within yourself and accept that it's there for
a reason, and rather than reject it and isolate it and make it an
exile that you must form protectors to block out, which is the way IFS
would put it. The work that's done in traditional psychoanalysis or union in psychoanalysis
is to help people accept that that is a part of you, that has
always been a part of you, and you may need it, and we
don't want to reject it, shame it, push it away, but we
want to maintain the balance within ourself that exists that we know we have the
ability to do whatever we might have to do to survive, but we don't
need to do that. And I think at the end of this movie where
we see Alfred and Bruce processing that Bruce's egocentrism yet again shows up and says
I couldn't save her. She essentially takes the risk of sacrifice her own life
to try to blow up Joker, the last person who's alive who's responsible for
killing her father. She will sacrifice herself to take him out, and Bruce
still cannot not blame himself for not being able to save her, and Alfred,
being a full adult, is trying to help it. I don't think
she wanted to be saved. Yeah, she was ready to sacrifice herself.
She knew that she might have to do that. That might be a part
of her experience, which is also I feel like why she went away because
she doesn't really die, right, she doesn't. You see her on We
see her going someplace else. So she's also still punishing herself, and she's
wearing the veil because she's mourning Bruce and possibly her dad. That she's finally
given her self permission to grieve because she completed her task. Yeah, but
you're right, like, even when she is not the phantasm, she's sloppy,
like she's getting drunk and she's going on dates with people she doesn't give
a shit about. I mean, she is messy. She feels like someone
who is has given up on having a life outside of their shadows desires.
She's going on dates with the councilman. Well he's kind of badgering her,
yeah, but I would say harassing her. But remember he's the one that
sold out dad. She's gonna she either knows that or was gonna find out.
So she's stalking him, and then she's watching her binoculars his bas from
across the stulars, which also is a very childlike thing, a teenage boy
thing to do, to sit in the rain and like, look at how
sad you are that your girlfriend is talking to somebody else. They bear a
full costume on a rooftop straight into the window. Nothing so you're not up
top up top, Like if they looked out the window, they could see
him, they would see you. He was them, I mean, but
it's it's dark, and he's wearing a costume that helps him blend in with
the SUITI escape. He's wearing ears, yeah, and a cape and a
cape again, what is more teenage boy? So she's on a date right
now, binoculars Alfred stuff to do. But what we see at the end
of this is we see Bruce integrating his shadow because Alfred praises him and gives
him vengeance is a black hole that every day I'm thankful you don't fall in
because it devours you. And Andrea was devoured by hers, and you haven't
let that happen. And then we see her slinking away in the darkness,
away from the party with a veil on, with someone asking you like,
oh, I'm sorry, did you want to be alone? And she just
says, I am, well, yeah, I mean she's yeah like Bruce,
and that she seems to have no social life. She seems to have
just had her dad. They're on the run together, he dies, She's
by herself, by yourself, her mom's dad. You know, you're yeah,
she's just like Bruce, but also creating the isolation that is making them
feel so only correct where they draw the contrast right in that scene that's kind
of showing what the union concept would be, is that Bruce has integrated his
darkness and given it a role without letting it take over, whereas hers took
over entirely, and now she's paying the consequence of isolation, where we see
Bruce still have his sense of self even though it's fractured and broken, like
we previously discussed the idea of that therapy is to embrace it without letting it
take control and find a way for it to be useful, which is not
a dissimilar concept from what a great many therapies teach is we don't reject our
parts. Yeah, self compassion, self compassion, self compassion. And and
what's the name of Richard Swartz's the guy who created ifs most famous book,
No Bad Parts. It's actually his newer book, is it? That's his
new wist book? Actually, no Bad Parts, No bad Parts. Yeah.
So when I, yeah, when I do this work to clients,
we the same idea, which is right, that's still a part of you.
Can you show compassion to that part of you? What purpose is it
serving to continue to shit on that part of you? Also, it makes
that part of you defensive, So that part of you is serving a purpose?
Can we show gratitude for that part of you? Is like probably the
protector stuff you're talking about, like is serving a purpose. And that because
I think a lot of times in therapy people will think I have to kill
parts of myself to be healthy. Yeah, And so what I will tell
them is that's not what I'm asking for. That's not what I'm asking of
you. So can those parts of you chill out, because I'm not this
enemy that's coming in to like snipe them for the benefit of like the core
person in front of me. And so part of this work of like the
integration you're talking about, Ben, is that like is can we show love
and compassion and gratitude for all the parts of ourselves. And if we can
do that, then that part of you, that shadow part of you,
doesn't have to be sold loud, doesn't have to be sort of control,
doesn't have to be so dominated by fear and all that kind of stuff.
Right, And we see how the three contrasting levels of character that exist in
the climax of the film, with Batman, Andrea, and Joker living in
three separate spots where Bruce has been revealed but is still wearing his mask as
Batman, Andrea gets unmasked and then is quite comfortable executing her mission in the
open, and Joker has been comfortable in his mask for a long time that
has fully enabled his shadow self. And you see these three straddling different sides
of it. Bruce is trying to contain his and is winning, and it
is kind of integrating it so he can do the scary things he needs to
do with it and be a contained monster. Andrea is losing the battle and
eventually loses it. Joker never tried. Carl Jung really liked to study stories
and archetypes of characters, which archetypes were representations of the different characters we see
throughout stories across cultures. So you have the wise old man, the hero,
the trickster, the shadow, the dark father. These are some of
the characters you can see across all stories that archetype stories. Star Wars is
the most famous example of archetype stories where you have all of these. You
have the hero in Luke, you have the wise old man in obi Wan,
you have the trickster or the rogue in Han Solo, the princess,
and Lea, who fills multiple roles because Lea is not a damsel in distress.
She is a badass. But then you see Darth Vader as Luke's shadow,
and then in Return of the Jedi, Luke is wearing all black.
The point of the scenes where the Emperor is tempting him is Luke confronting his
shadow. And it's not until the end where Luke rejects and throws his lightsaber
that his jacket opens. His tunic whatever it is, opens to reveal white
on the inside of it. Otherwise, Luca is in all black, confronting
actively his own darkness. And Luke does shadow integration when he rejects the Emperor's
attempts to pull him into the dark side and make him so angry that he
fights and kills his father, and he rejects. So it's a very very
old concept that gets represented in media. And part of the way that Jung
would create these things and go through his writings was to look at how prevalent
these things are in what he would call the collective unconscious, which scientists now
would probably refer to as our genetic learning, things that get passed through the
DNA, that this kind of learning exists in humans regardless of cultural barriers.
We understand who these characters are and tell them in a way that's relevant to
the cultures we know, but it's still the same character at its core,
which is what makes it an archetype. Andrea is the shadow archetype. And
I thought this movie did a brilliant job of showing how Bruce had to reckon
with and in order to become the Batman that he becomes after this kind of
year two of being Batman, that he has to be constantly mindful and never
ever give into that or this is what he becomes. Let's take a break
here and we'll go to treatment. I guess I can go first. So
if I were to see Bruce Wayne, he feels like he has a codependent
relationship with his dead parents, yep. And I think if he were to
come to me and he were like, I really want to be happy,
I guess like kind of when he was like, what am I still doing
this for? Like I don't feel good? I think so much of that
can link back to that sense of self stuff, right, like I don't
know who I am without this. I don't know who I am beyond this
trauma and my parents and being batman blah blah blah. And so I honestly
would not ban him, but I would probably say, like, can we
take a break from going to the cemetery and can we maybe let's say,
if he's going there every other day, I don't know if that's true,
but say like, can we go a week without going there? And in
the moments when you're wanting to talk to them. Can you journal? Can
you talk to yourself? Can you talk to me? Sort of replacing this
power full entity that is his parents in his sense of self with getting to
know himself. He doesn't know himself. He's always doing his outward introspection as
always towards his non existent parents, And so I would want him to start
practicing going inward and then examining within himself, how did that feel to not
go there? You know, That's why I would start little bits. Let's
just go like a week or le let's skip the in between visit. Let's
go Monday through Thursday without going. So let's just not go once and see
how that feels. And then that also allows him to if I were to
teach other coping skills for the feelings that come up, it gives him opportunities
to practice that. You know, I think it would be a lot of
replacing the entity that is his parents, the coping mechanism that is parents with
these other things. And part of when you do codependent work is you have
to do that entangling work and you have to start asking yourself for permission.
He really can't ask himself for permission. Se asking his parents for permission and
feeling trapped by that, And so I would really want to build up his
sense of self, even just basic stuff like what makes you feel good?
Do you know what makes you feel good? Do you know what it feels
like to feel good? Maybe even having him keep a journal of like his
feeling, like doing like mood check ins with himself. He feels like someone
who needs to start from the ground up in terms of feelings, identification,
self regulation, coping skills. And like I said, you wouldn't want to
just say you have to stop all that stuff you're already doing, because that
would be too much to ask. And people do worry with therapy that if
they go to therapy and their aunts with therapist therapy is gonna like you can't
stop. Like even when I work with clients who engage in self harm behaviors
like cutting, I don't say you have to stop if they're not ready to
stop. It becomes more like, can we practice these other skills that maybe
we can replace the cutting with, And then next time you want to cut,
can we set a timer for ten minutes and see if we can go
ten minutes without doing it? You know, learning how to ride the wave
of that feeling, learning to just like disentangle your emotional state with that behavior,
because I do think in a lot of ways what he does is batman.
I would argue is self harm. He is getting hurt, like he's
getting really physically hurt, He's in pain. I mean, he just feels
like someone who's like in deep pain and confusion about himself. And so if
he would be gained to do it, but I think he would be This
is like a world in which he decides to go to therapy, which I
don't know if that world exists, but I think if he came in my
office like and genuinely was like I'm not happy, came to my office in
like surrender mode, like I'm ready to surrender to the process of therapy,
I would do baby steps with him and almost also like do some like developmental
psychoed about what is a appropriate level of attachment to his parents too, And
that's where I would maybe encourage him to go to a group like a support
group, make friends like I think the socializolation piece would be big too,
because I think he just is He's in a vacuum all the time and he
needs more voices in his head, including his own, and he needs to
expose himself to other things, and it could be like, I know,
he's famous, so it could be like, can you find a support group
in like another town or if it was current day, like on zoom or
online, and just get some normalization to around his feelings, the stuff that
I would want him to have done when he was young, which I probably
have talked about another episode where we talked about Batman of like God Damn,
I wish when his parents had died, that someone had put him into therapy
for fuck's sake, and that he had like a proper guardian his parents,
who they knew they were so richy rich, and that they were in a
dangerous city. They didn't have a plan for him should something happen to them.
They don't have a li like a will that said, hey, you
can live with Aunt Petunia or whatever, yeah, you know, and get
therapy. That also always felt weird to me about the Waysmody just kind of
going off, but that they didn't have a contingency plan for him that was
more mentally healthy. They just kind of were like, I mean, they
were just lucky that that Alfred stuck around. So that's kind of where I
would go and treat with mister Wayne. Okay, I can go next.
Mine is going to be a little bit different because, as the resident marriage
and family therapist on this podcast, the only relationship that we really see is
Bruce and Andrea, and their relationship is not good and they're both lying to
each other on the rags. So this would not be a relationship that I
would be open to. They would again, like I know, I talk
about this a lot, but they would both come in, both tell me
they had secrets, both tell me that they didn't want to share their secrets.
I wouldn't be able to do therapy with them. So what I thought
I would do is follow up from our last episode and just clarify. I
know that I talked about a communication skill called the Couple's Dialogue, and I
just wanted to reiterate some of the pieces that I feel like I didn't get
a chance to say last week. I want to make sure that people have
access to this kind of information, So this is something that I would definitely
have taught to Andrea and Batman have they been in my office. Kind Of
going back to the Couple's Dialogue, which is mirroring, which is saying I
hear you saying or it sounds like this is what you're saying. When you
do that, you're waiting for the other person to say yes or no,
and then they clarify, and then you go back and reiterate and re mirror
them until and you also ask. Another part of the mirroring is also asking
is there more? Is there more? Such a big part of the communication
skill, because sometimes we have more than one feeling about things, so we're
going to have a couple of different ways that we need to be heard.
Then you go to validate, which is the second step, which is just
saying I can understand that. You don't have to say I can understand that,
because that's where people get into trouble. You just have to say,
I can understand that. We know that. Validating is not agreeing or disagreeing.
It's just saying that you understand what your partner is saying to you and
mean it and mean it. The last step is empathizing, which is where
you pick two feelings that you feel like your partner might be feeling and saying
it sounds like that could feel like this, It sounds like something like that,
and so those are kind of just going back over a couple's dialogue and
then the other quick other pieces about this are you have to take turns.
When you do mirroring, you have to take turns. You have to get
through all three steps with one partner and then the other partner goes and you
get through the steps with them. This is not a I'm gonna just do
this at you and you don't get a turn. Both people have to have
urns. Both people have to feel, and you have to when you say
I understand that, you should actually understand it. If you don't check in
and ask for more clarification. And lastly, if you try to do the
couple's dialogue when you are mad or sad or what the fuck ever, it
is going to blow up in your face more than you ever thought something possible.
So you have to be You have to start out the way that you
start out a couple's dialogue is hey, I need to talk. Is this
a good time? Yep? You cannot do good communication when you're both pissed.
When one of you is pissed or whatever the fuck. If you're going
to you want to scream at each other, you can do that without using
a couple's dialogue, don't do it resentfully, it will go bad down.
Yeah, And this kind of structure would be good for Bruce because as we
noticed with the proposal and stuff, this motherfucker gonna talk about you can't talk
about it anything. So I think what would be good with this is it
gives you so much structure and framework like you can follow, like literally like
a template for how to respond to your partner you're supposed to He would benefit
from something like this where he just he knows what he's supposed to do absolutely
and he just has to practice sitting in it and not running away from the
feelings that are coming at him from his partner. Right. And what's super
important about that couple's dialogue is it creates a way to interrupt the process of
people preparing a defense and only listening to part of what the other person is
saying. I always tell couples there are two things a hurt person wants to
know, and only two, and if you fail either one of them,
you have failed the communication. Thing one, what my feelings are, what
has hurt me is being heard and understood. Thing two. There is a
reasonable chance that that will not hurt me anymore. That's it. I want
it to stop. I want it to stop now, not when you fucking
feel like it, not anything. I want it to stop now. And
it draws direct lines to one conversation at a time, which is very important
because couples will come in and just launch into seventeen fights at once, at
which neither they nor you can keep track of, and then they're dissociating and
they're not listening to each other. And that's the point of this. And
I don't let people yell in my office. If you're gonna yell, you
can go home and do that. You're wasting my time, yep. And
also staying in the same pattern of behavior. You can't just expect that you're
all of a sudden going to start communicating better if you're not doing something different.
You can't just keep doing the same shit and expect a different outcome.
That is absolutely not going to happen. And you can't let your parts that
want to fight and are forefighting, be online when you want to connect,
yeah, because it doesn't work. That's not what they're for. Your fight
part wants to fucking slay the enemy. It's batman, all right. So
I guess that leaves me, Oh, yeah, I've done a treatment.
So I'm actually going to pick Andrea because I think we've talked about Bruce enough.
I think Andrea is going on God, we have that on record.
I deserve that We're still going to talk about Batman every episode, just a
little bit, just because. But why I'm gonna pick Andreas because I think
she's going to be a person that needs the most work, because now she
has given into her shadow, and I think what we see from her,
he's probably going to slink into a life of shame and isolation, where she's
going to not feel the satisfaction that she thought she would from this myth of
retribution and vengeance that people think is real. They think they will feel relief
from the pain, but really they just feel more grief because now, in
addition to losing the person that they love, they have also lost themself,
and they have sacrificed their own moral boundaries, their own ability to live a
normal life, their own social standings, everything about who they thought they were
and what their limits were are now gone. And Andrea is going to need
a lot of help to grapple with what she's done and not be stuck in
a shame spiral where she feels terrible forever, and her protective parts that she
will form might mask that they have no empathy for what they did, that
these were bad people that needed to be exterminated. That isn't real. It's
not going to be real. Her superego is to put it. The part
of her psyche that exists to be in touch with morals and to have the
perception of what it takes to survive in society is going to remind her that
she did something not right, and she's going to have that voice inside of
her, even if she tries her hardest to squelch that out and form parts
to protect her from the pain that that internal voice of telling her you are
just like them, and now you don't deserve to be part of society,
or and you have to exile yourself, and it looks like exactly what she's
about to go do. She's going to go live on the Mediterranean coast by
herself, deny herself normal human contact, normal human needs, and likely live
alone. And where she's going to need help is understanding that it is understandable
that a part of you that that was that angry that it was that hurt
that lived in that much fear for so long emerged. It doesn't make what
you did okay. But as a therapist, it's not my job to be
an investigator. It's not my job to assign things to policing or justice.
It's my job to care for her person sitting across from me, and regardless
of what she has done, it would be the job of a therapist to
help her through the trauma of all the things she hasn't been able to process
for all the years of activation and fear she lost herself. At let's say
twenty two, she had a whole life in front of her and no way
to process. She was about to marry the richest man in Gotham and have
all her dreams come true. So she thought that this prince, this actual
real life prince, would see her, choose her, and they could go
be happy and see each other through their pain because the lies that they were
telling each other were not exposed yet. Her thirty two, thirty five year
old self knows that those lives are there and would need help integrating with that
twenty two year old self that is isolated because it had loss and the part
of her that lost her mom, and whatever of her life she was or
wasn't able to grieve then would need help having a pathway to acceptance and meaning
making from the loss. I think it would be a multimodal trauma approach with
her, a trauma informed approach. There would be IFS work or any kind
of parts work. There would be AMDR work and trauma focused CBT work,
and probably expressive work. Honestly, but I think her having a pathway to
feel accepted and seen as a person that she can reckon with herself would be
vital to her having any chance of psychological health. And let's take our last
break there, and we'll go into final thoughts. And I feel like you
should go first. We should go in order of most to least hateful sounds
good. I hate Batman. I hate that he's a rich white man who
can't get a shit together, even though he has all the resources in the
world, even though I know we just talked about why he's like that.
Like whatever, I thought, this was fine. I'm never gonna watch it
again. I was surprised when it was done. I was like, I
guess the story's over now. I'm not interested anymore. I don't have respect
Batman. I hate him, I hate his guts, and I'm sick of
talking about him. And I don't like this movie because it's about him and
I don't like him. So that's how I feel about it. Okay,
I'll take him from there. I this movie isn't for me, which is
fine, some things aren't. Animation style is not really for me. I
didn't watch this kind of animation even when I was a kid, and I
was at the right time, at the right age for it nineties kid.
I was about a lot of the movie being like, what age demographic is
this for? Because they're like fucking onlines and like having boozy dinner dates where
there's like the insinuation of going to bed with each other like her and the
author Arthur Guy. But at the same time it's like full scooby Doo wackadoo
stuff. So that was kind of throwing me. I think similar to what
you were saying, Hannah, is that I have talked about Bruce Wayne aka
Batman so much on this podcasts, like I've really had to take him seriously
because of this podcast. You're welcome that. I I think it's ruined Batman
for me. Like at first, I was like I'd watched the Batman movies
like Christopher Noland, like he ha ha, fun popcorn movies, you know,
stylistically done pretty well. And now that I've really had to like read
this man up and down and sideways, Bruce Wayne, I'm just like this
fucking joker, no pun intended. This guy who's dressing like a bat and
showing up places and spying on girls, who's binoculars and acts like stual weirdo
and like, I don't know. It's like, so I will never watch
this again. I don't really have a reason ever watched this again. It's
not like my Like I said, it's not my style, it's not for
me. I don't have a nostalgic relationship to it. I can understand why
it probably feels really close to how the comic books feel. And I'm also
not a comic book person. So yeah, I think I'm good as well.
On Bruce Wayne, he just needs to go to therapy. I'm begging
on my knees, Bruce Wayne, just go to therapy, babe, Please
please please, Somebody write a comic phone comic book where he goes goes to
therapy, and he uses all of his money and he gives it to other
people. That's what I want to start. A social service program, starts
something. You've so much money. You have so much when you're pleading,
and you were pleading at your parents' tombs. So and you're like, should
I just donate money? Yes, create a social service program? Please please
stop beating up people dressed like a giant flying throat. All right, So
that's my final thoughts, Benjamin. So it's okay that you are both wrong,
and we'll start with that. But this movie is the best Batman movie
that has ever been made, and is done by the best Batman voice that
has ever been done in Kevin Conroy and the best Joker through Mark Hamill.
Even though the Joker not a super significant part of this story, he's just
kind of the final antagonist. I think this is a quintessential depiction of the
tortured human that is Batman, as opposed to the clownish cartoon version that existed
in different eras. I think this shows a more human struggle that exists that
makes Batman such an enduring character throughout media and makes it so such an adaptable
story that you can see the real human pain, the real human struggles,
and that even though he does have all these resources and can do all these
things and can defeat all these enemies with all these skills, the one thing
he can't defeat is his own trauma. And I think a lot of people
resonate with that because their own traumas feel insurmountable and too difficult, and they
would rather do literally anything else than face that pain. But they also want
to be free from it. And I think watching this movie, it ties
in these deeper themes of watching what it feels like to see a mirror held
up to yourself, of who you could become if you slip one ounce further
into your own darkness. And she, Andrea calls him on that when he's
like, what are you doing? You can't do this, You can't be
trapped in his vengeance, and she just turns in, who are you to
tell me? Oh my god? When he said the only one here being
controlled by their parents is you, I wrote, yes, eat him up,
bitch, Yes exactly. I mean he deserved that. But I think
I think that does that hit him? I think that hit him? And
I think that not hard enough. You all have made clear your bias,
so there's no no hard enough for the two of you. So it's you
maybe watch Saltburn, so I have no mercy. The beauty of this story
is that it covers the struggle and the darkness without glorifying what Batman has to
go through. It's not like looking at some of the other characters that exist
in superhero media, we go like, oh, look, it's some guy
who just trains up all the skills and beats the shit out of all bad
guys and gets everything that they want. He never gets everything that he wants,
and he has to struggle with that and try to find a way through,
and it continues to be an issue for him, and I think that
makes him enduring and humanizes it. And this story, despite being allegedly made
for kids, is such the essential depiction of what so many people of our
generation think of as Batman that I think this story deserves a place in everybody's
rewatchable bin, except Hannah since she'll never watch it again and me and Brittany.
Brittany will also never watch it again. We'll see. But I think
it's interesting to hear you talk about why you like it, and I think
it helps me understand why I don't because I don't see myself in Batman,
not saying like I don't connect with him. I don't see myself represented him
at all. And maybe that's why I can't get into him as like a
character, even like aspirationally. And so hearing you say that makes more sense
to me about why I don't get it the way that you get it and
other people get it. Yeah, some people have struggled more with their darkness
in a way that resonates with them, and or that their darkness feels different
than maybe this does. And it makes sense. Different people find a reflection
of their version of their story in different kinds of media, and that's always
okay. But I think about how beloved this movie is is because this animated
series is widely regarded as the best depiction of Batman ever, and the only
thing that ever came close to it was the first two Nolan movies. I
will say, though, now that I've seen this, it makes me appreciate
Lego Batman more because I can see where they were ripping. Oh yeah,
okay, Lego Batman. Lego Batman is my favorite Batman. And then Robert
Pattinson's Batman. Yeah, yeah, I mean and Lego Batman definitely lampoons on
like the broodingness of this Bruce and the sadness as opposed to like the sixties
Batman. Adam West is just so corny. He seemed like he was the
only one having a good time. He did seem like he was having fun,
bopping with his ward. Yeah, and you know he's doing his little
dances and throwing his little cartoon bombs and like vibeing with this the Villains of
the City. Yeah, but it is. It does definitely seem to be
that way. Ben this movie. The couple of people in my life who
are comic book readers as soon as I said what it was, and I
thought I'd have to explain it because I didn't know what the fuck it was.
Yeah, and they were both like, oh, yeah, I remember
that being my favorite Batman movie as a kid. So yeah, like again,
like I hear where you're coming from. And I still hate his guts,
but and it's okay. It is and the art deco neess of it,
like that the thirties forties vibe it holds on to where it does maintain
the simplicity of like the gangsters look like gangsters, the bad guys look like
bad guys and act like bad guys, and then watching Batman struggle with the
alleged good guys and the inept police force. One of the things that's necessary
for a Batman story is in a neptor corrupt police force. It's a necessary
component of a Batman story to have that the police force or whatever social justice
thing that's established as the good guys routinely fails him so he can't trust it
enough that he can put down the Batman. I caught the bad guy.
I caught the joker. The joker is going to get out because whatever reason,
it's important that that's a part of the story, that the system's going
to fail him. I love this movie. I have loved it ever since
it came out. I love the animated series, and I routinely rewatch it
because it's the best. Right. Well, on that note, holy social
media, Batman. You can follow us at Instagram, Facebook, TikTok a,
Popcorn Psychology X at Popcorn Underscore psych You can email us at popcornpsychologygmail dot
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and that also helps sponsor us as well as always, you know, fight
your shadow self y'all and go to therapy instead of dressing up in a costume.
Plea uh, I won't leave us a review. Thank you,