Arkham Asylum, or more formally the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, is not a pleasant place. It seems you are a nobody in Gotham City’s criminal fraternity unless you have spent some time there. Batman: Arkham Asylum draws influences from the various, often contradictory, sources of Gotham history to create a fully realised island compound, a gothic nightmare combination of penitentiary and mental hospital. It is home to facilities and practices that easily cross the line from treatment into torture, often bearing euphemistic names such as “Intensive Treatment”.
For the majority of the game Batman’s foes within Arkham are the various thugs and career criminals “shipped in from Blackgate” Gotham City’s correctional facility, aided of course by a rich cast of supervillians led (If such a term can ever be used within such an unpredictable mercenary group) by the Joker.
Among these residents of the titular Asylum are those patients who are contextualised as being mentally ill, the portrayal of these characters in the game is something that is a little worrisome. Manic, screaming and liable to pounce they have to be incapacitated quickly, usually by smashing their heads into the ground. That this act doesn’t kill them is one of the many fine lines walked by any medium depicting the actions of Batman.
My friend Travis Megill of The Autumnal City initially brought the treatment of these patients to my attention, referencing how similar it was to the manner in which people of colour are treated in Resident Evil 5. Having been enjoying my time with Arkham Asylum I instinctively came to the defense of the game noting that it’s portrayal of the mentally ill does not come with the associated cultural and historical significance of a heavily armed white male gunning down Africans; it was these allusions to the racist and colonial history of western nations in Africa that was at the heart of debate concerning race in Resident Evil 5.
Though the history of the treatment of the mentally ill has not been consistently just or humane, it does not carry the same associated cultural cachet so played upon in those initial trailers for Resident Evil 5. However Arkham Asylum does imply that it is somehow not a problem that Batman physically abuses the mentally ill, of course it’s not as clear cut as that, they are only there because they are “criminally insane” to begin with and Batman is never in a position to instigate action against these inmates as they will instantly attack him on sight. It could also be argued that Bruce Wayne is far from mentally well adjusted himself, being that he spends his nights beating up criminals dressed as a giant bat, so also suffers from at least one classifiable mental disorder. However such an argument seems to imply Arkham Asylum is the intellectual and social equivalent of bumfighting. In the end the issue is that the mentally ill are treated as just another video game villian whom it’s alright to beat up, like Zombies or Nazis have for years.
It’s a situation made more worrisome in the context of the entire game, there is no reason why Batman can’t be given a specific tool with which to subdue the freed patients in a less brutal fashion that using his fists. A tranquiliser dart would fit perfectly within the context of a Batman title, and it could likely have additional uses in other areas of the game. Even simply requiring that Batman use the Batarang to stun these patients would make more sense. In both cases it could be tied to the collection mechanic that already exists within the game, with rewards provided for humanely subduing patients instead of pummelling them into the ground (The distinction between a Batarang and fists is probably a fine one, but the visual representation is far less brutal).
I can hear the counter arguments now: “It’s just a game!” That’s true but this is one of those thin end of the wedge situations, if we accept the mentally ill as valid villains, what’s next? Beating up fat people? Euthanizing the old and the infirm?
Will any of this stop me playing Arkham Asylum? No, I accept that it is a work of fiction and that it would be extremely unwise to treat Gotham City as being representative of the real world. However it would have been better if the game didn’t make me mentally wince every time I was required to slam a screaming incoherent mental patient into the ground ostensibly for my own protection. This representation of the mentally ill and the “treatment” they require is one I had hoped had died out a century ago.
10 replies on “Institutional Care.”
Rocksteady took the easy way out with reusing the same core move set throughout the game. Beating on thugs is one thing, but the game makes a point of saying that these mentally ill patients are not in control of their actions. I agree that a tranquilizer type of takedown would be much more fitting for the character.
Comparing this imagery to Resident Evil 5, however, is a bit much. The cultural penetration of these two subjects is largely dependent on geography (the exposé on Pennhurst has stuck with me since I saw it as a child, but yet college friends from abroad have told me that the possibility of such a situation had never occurred to them). I think all societies are familiar with the idea of a race war, and Capcom was really stupid for running with the setting to begin with. This is just a poorly thought out filler to add some variance to the bestiary.
1989’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison nailed a lot of the uncomfortable aspects of the idea of an island asylum where the city can confine it’s dirty elements. Batman: Arkham Asylum seems to draw the majority of it’s influence from this book, but unfortunately it missed the overlying themes of family and health care.
I just finished my playthrough and thought about what I might argue if I end up writing about this, and what you’ve got here definitely touches on one of the biggest problems for me. I think the biggest thing that could have been done (I don’t really mind the punching them so much as how they behave in the first place) would be to make their behavior actually erratic. Some would hide in a corner, some would crawl up to you and pull at your cape, some would loll around on the ground, and maybe 10% would actually attack you.
The only way I could see their behavior as being plausible to me would be if there were a scene where the Joker fed them all laughing gas or something, but then: the way they’re designed visually and kinetically is abhorrent, based on imagery from around a hundred years ago. Good post.
Oh, and I should note, this discussion is far more vital than the RE5 discussion. Everybody learns in primary education what the Europeans and North Americans did to Africa. You only learn about mental health care and its history if you seek the information out yourself, major in sociology, etc.
You know, this piece reminded me of something in Grand Theft Childhood the authors made an interesting point about the Virginia Tech Shooting. After the FBI realized Cho almost never played video games, they tried to diagnose him with a mental illness and eventually attributed it to depression. The backlash against the mentally ill was as bad as the scrutiny awkward kids received after the Columbine Massacre.
Statistically, it’s troubling because most perpetrators of violent crimes are sane. In most cases the mentally ill are more likely to be victims than vice-versa, yet the stereotypes keep getting harped on.
If you’re interested in island asylums and their history, as well as a critique of that history, check out Foucault’s Madness and Civilization.
Batman may be a fascist, but ze does not kill people just for the fun of it. If there would be some narrative tied into Batman’s continuous decline towards insanity, mixed with zir own projected feelings towards the criminally insane residents of Arkham Asylum, then yes, it would be less hurtful and irresponsible to treat insanity it the way it is depicted in the game. It would be good to point out that insanity doesn’t create insanity though, that it is a transferable disease. Although social psychologists did understand mass-psychosis as that after the second world war… this isn’t a simple issue.
Foucault’s Madness and Civilization is a heavy read, but it really goes into the depths of antipsychiatry, pathology and the “power/knowledge” notion, even if not not explicitly.
This week I finished reading the book Asylums by Erving Goffman, if you haven’t read it already, I would recommend it and consider it a fitting accommodation to this post.
The Dark Knight very lightly explored the issue of the Joker exploiting the mentally ill, it would have been interesting if Arkham Asylum did this further as in some ways it would sidestep the stigmatizing message that AA delivers. I guess it’d be a bit like the “Sheeva is Africa therefore it’s all just” argument, but if fully explored it could have been interesting. (In the same way if RE5 focused on issues of exploitation and poverty in such areas, it might have been a more meaningful endeavor).
Also, don’t knock the “It’s just a game!” argument, some people simply don’t wish to be involved in the politics and that is equally as legitimate as being involved.
The problem with the “It’s just a game!” argument is that all it does is shut down conversation. If it’s really “just a game” to someone, they probably shouldn’t be reading criticism about said game. I promise I won’t jump in front of their television or monitor and start spouting gibberish when they’re trying to play! :-)
^in which case there is no need for Justin to mention it then, right?
I’m not advocating a minimum degree of engagement with a game, if you are not interested in a particular level of discourse that’s fine. However I have been explicitly told in so many words that I should not think of games in this way precisely because they are “just a game”, that type of thinking I cannot abide.
If you want to refrain from analysis and discussion of the social and cultural impact of games that is your right. My decision to involve myself in that discussion does not harm the game or your appreciation of it so to take a stance that such discourse is ill advised is a view I cannot support.
Additionally I suppose I don’t believe that being actively ignorant of the social impact of games is a good idea. It’s precisely that attitude that leads to such problems in the first place. You don’t have to enter the discussion but you should at the very least be willing to acknowledge that the discussion serves a purpose whether the issues at hand directly affect you or not.