Prologue: Introduction and Context
Please take a minute to read this; you will appreciate Wertham's Law much more if you do.
Ah, the notorious Dr Fredric Wertham. His name will be familiar with both older-generation and hardcore Batman fans; and in most cases, it will be a name spoken with contempt and disdain.
In 1954, Dr Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent, and in doing so, he almost accomplished what either the Joker, Two-Face or Poison Ivy have never managed to do:
Destroy Batman.
Seduction of the Innocent was part of a tirade that Wertham launched in the 1950s against comic books in general; in it, he tried to convince parents that reading comics would encourage their children to become deviants, or to copy the criminal behavior of various villains. Dr Will Brooker (his PhD is in… Batman! Seriously! And he got it at Cardiff University in Wales, which is where I live – my house is about fifteen minutes from Cardiff University) defended some of Wertham's motives in his book, Batman Unmasked (deeply fascinating book, I would recommend reading it…), as Wertham did highlight some of the more unsavory things that were published in comic books at the time, mostly the pulps and horror comics – things such as intense racism against African-Americans and images of women being raped and tortured.
So Wertham did, according to Brooker, have a few good deeds on his agenda when he wrote Seduction of the Innocent.
However – and this is what may put the bad taste in your mouth – Wertham also dedicated four entire pages of his book to Batman, launching his longest-ever attack on any comic book character, claiming that Batman had homo-erotic relations with Robin.
You have to put this accusation into context; we are a lot more open-minded today. We have movies like Brokeback Mountain, TV shows like The L Word,and actors and film stars who are openly gay. People still have their hang-ups but on the whole it's a lot more acceptable to be a homosexual in this day and age.
In 1954, it was as taboo and unacceptable as you'd think possible. Men who admitted to being gay were put into mental institutions and on the whole it was seen to be an "evil, sinful practice", termed as "sex perversion" rather than "homosexuality". Wertham himself ran one of these institutions, the rather sinister-sounding "Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center" in New York, where he studied the psychotherapy of so-called "sexual difficulties". He said, in the pages of Seduction, that some individuals he had interviewed and studied often fantasized about this (BatmanxRobin) relationship, or imagined trading places with either Batman or Robin. Wertham also drew his accusations from the pages of the comics themselves, taking note of the artwork and settings. The most infamous passage from the book is;
"At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and "Dick" Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a "socialite" and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce's ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Bruce is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner… it is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." – Dr Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (1954)
Okay, well… while I'll come to some more cement ideas in a moment, it can't be denied that the above… is very bad evidence for Batman and Robin being gay. They have flowers and a butler. So what? Andy Medhurst, a rampant critic of Wertham, wrote in his essay, 'Batman, Deviance and Camp', published in The Many Lives of the Batman:
"To avoid being thought "queer" by Wertham, Bruce and Dick should have done the following: never show concern if the other is hurt, live in a shack, have only ugly flowers in small vases, never share a couch, keep your collar buttoned up, keep your jacket on and never, ever wear a dressing gown." – Andy Medhurst, 'Batman, Deviance and Camp', The Many Lives of the Batman (1991)
Although Medhurst is even a little cruel in the way in which he brands Wertham, rejoicing in gags like "Nightmare on Psychiatry Street: Freddy's Obsession", and calling him a "crazed homophobe with a project of shrill witch-hunting, whereby he points his finger at the Dynamic Duo and cries "Queer!"…", he does have a point. What did Wertham want from Bruce and Dick? For them to never speak to one another?
But there is no question; Seduction of the Innocent did open up an entire new way of reading Batman. Although his accusations did cause sales to drop drastically, Batman pulled through and Wertham's plan actually backfired; a lot of people began reading the relationship between Batman and Robin that way. If only he'd kept quiet instead of complaining about it, it might have been confined to a few sexually-confused boys at a readjustment center in New York.
Truthfully, no matter how it can be read (and if you look hard enough, you can pull "slashy" elements out of the partnership if you want), I don't think DC ever intended for homosexual undertones to be in the Batman comics. Robin was invented in 1940 to boost sales and if he hadn't worked, he probably would have been scrapped within the year; and his being male I think was probably because DC were actually bending over backwards to avoid even the suggestion of sex and accusations they might have received had Batman's partner been a young girl instead. Instead they fell into the trap that Wertham used against them; that Batman and Robin's adventures had the power to turn the children that read the comics gay.
However, it must be pointed out that Robin's role in the comics was not only that of the "sidekick", but also of the "princess" or the "prize"; he was kidnapped, and Batman would have to surrender or something to ensure his safety – mirroring the Superman narratives, in which Lois Lane was captured frequently instead.
And who is Lois Lane but Superman's… girlfriend?
Two more interesting points before we get started; Dr Will Brooker himself has actually admitted that while he defends the honor of his hero and dismisses the idea that DC deliberately intended for homo-erotic undertones to read into the comics, he thinks that, "in real-life, they would probably be gay".
Second: Burt Ward, who played Robin/Dick Grayson in the 60s ABC Batman TV series (co-starring Adam West), wrote a rather interesting passage in his autobiography, under the chapter he entitled simply, Are Batman and Robin Gay?. In it, it would appear that he has a similar view to Wertham, only more so, looking at character dynamics rather than interior design;
"A mature man, unmarried and rarely seen in the company of women, takes a naïve teenage boy under his wing. The boy isn't adopted, so there is no father/son relationship – and there has never been any such intention. They share many secrets and spend long hours alone together in remote areas – undisturbed in a massive, impenetrable cave." – Burt Ward, 'Are Batman and Robin Gay?', Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights (1995)
What Ward implies is that Batman actually corrupted Robin; in the comics, Dick Grayson was only eight years old when his parents were killed. If Bruce had truly wanted such a thing from the boy, it would have been easy for him to bring him around to his way. The boy wouldn't realize that such behavior is wrong (pedophilia, if nothing else); he simply wouldn't know any better.
The 60s TV series itself did play up the "homosexual accusations" in its camp, satirical style, so much that it has perhaps now been integrated as part of Batman's long and rich history. George Melly, in his book Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain (1970), recalls that "Over the children's heads we winked and nudged as we watched, but in the end what were we really laughing at? The fact that they didn't know that Batman had it off with Robin".
Well, believe what you will of the Batman and Robin relationship. This story… is satire. What if Wertham was right; what if Batman and Robin really were gay? What if, after months and even a few years of "living clean" with the Teen Titans, Robin returns to Wayne Manor, only to find himself returning to Bruce's arms as well?…
A long shot; but if Wertham is to be taken seriously, maybe even plausible.
Let us only be glad that Wertham is not alive in this day and age; if he could draw homosexual readings out of the 50s Batman comics, I'd hate to see what he would do with Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, in all its rubber-nippled glory…