When the Villain Stops Being a Joke
Some days, politics feels like an episode of the old Batman television series: grand schemes, theatrical villains, and a world where every impact arrived with a giant KAPOW! , WHAMMO! , or BIFF! The show made its villains absurd on purpose. Their greed was bottomless. Their plans were ridiculous. Their contempt for ordinary people was so visible that nobody needed a panel of experts to explain what was happening. The danger wore a costume, announced itself, and waited for Batman and Robin to arrive. That was the fun of it. The villains were larger than life, and their schemes were safely contained within the bright, strange world of television. But perhaps the show wasn’t inventing the absurdity. Perhaps it was turning up the volume on impulses that have always existed: the appetite for power, the disregard for other people, the belief that being able to do something makes it acceptable. That’s the strange loop between art and life. Art imitates life by taking its contradictions ...
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