Only One Batman Villain Deserves the “Joker” Treatment

Only One Batman Villain Deserves the “Joker” Treatment

Lady Shiva’s publication history is bogged down by racial stereotypes, and she deserves to be explored in the vein of the 2019 Joker film.

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Only One Batman Villain Deserves the “Joker” Treatment

If a hero is only as good as their rogues gallery, then there’s no question that Batman- is one of the greatest heroes from DC Comics. Unlike many other villains in DC Comics, Batman’s villains tend to be non-powered humans who possess enormous belief in their particular cause. Given how the Joker in particular has transcended beyond the Batman mythos to take on a life of his own, evident in the success of the 2019 film, Joker, Batman has a level of psychological depth to his villains that make them compelling, standalone characters. And while the Joker remains a prime example of this, there is one villain that deserves this same type of exploration: Lady Shiva.

Lady Shiva is character who has struggled to become more than a problematic vehicle for Batman’s heroism. Created in 1975 by Dennis O’Neil and Ric Estrada, Lady Shiva is emblematic of a troubling theme in Batman comics, where Asian people are used to elucidate Batman’s morals and attitudes towards violence. Even though Batman himself uses violence in Gotham City, the expert martial arts performed by Lady Shiva, Talia al Ghul, and Ra’s al Ghul are all meant to be seen as evil, because they use lethal force. And while killing people is never a good thing, Lady Shiva’s comics often conflate her use of deadly force with her race and gender, instilling uncomfortable undertones to her conflict with Batman.

Even though the bulk of Lady Shiva’s publication history is mired in racial stereotypes, she deserves the opportunity to be critically re-examined in a way that mirrors the psychological exploration of the Joker film. Recently, DC Comics has done a fantastic job with supporting characters from underrepresented groups in its The Other History of the DC Universe series, where writer John Ridley gives voice to characters like Black Lightning, Katana, Thunder, Renée Montoya, and Bumblebee as they narrate key moments throughout their publication histories. Beyond providing a superbly-written look back on DC history, The Other History of the DC Universe provides a blueprint for how decades-old comics publishers can address their problematic past work, without glossing over the details.

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Only One Batman Villain Deserves the “Joker” Treatment

In this way, a deep dive into Lady Shiva’s thoughts would take her beyond the flat, one-dimensional characterization that fans are largely familiar with, and imbue her with a perspective that fans were never originally supposed to get. Shiva has been failed by writers in the past because she was not characterized as a person, but as a vessel for stereotypes about Asians. She lacks interiority because she was never intended to be an individual in the first place. So while investigations into the Joker’s psychology remains the dominant mode of insight into Batman’s rogues gallery, Lady Shiva presents an alternative that could truly propel the Batman mythos forward.

In looking back at her older comics, it is clear that Shiva was let down by a double standard when it came to violence. While there is plenty of room for her to have her own rich inner life, Lady Shiva exists only to help elucidate Batman’s morals as a hero. While Batman’s violence is largely meant to be understood as admirable and necessary, Shiva’s is cold, cruel, and merciless, characterized by specific terms that accentuate her Asian background. And while there isn’t anything inherently wrong with portraying an Asian female character as a stone cold assassin, Shiva’s character has been represented through a specific lens that plays into racial stereotypes.

In a Robin miniseries from 1991, Tim Drake teams up with Lady Shiva in Hong Kong, where she trains him in martial arts. As they prepare to go up against some of the worst criminals in Asia in issue number four, Tim picks out a bo staff as his weapon to specifically avoid using lethal force against his enemies (written by Chuck Dixon, pencils by Tom Lyle, inks by Bob Smith, letters by Tim Harkins). He tells Shiva, “I’ve taken a pledge to my mentor and myself that I won’t kill. Even to save a life.” In response, Lady Shiva says, “How Christian of you. How white of you.”

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This moment summarizes all the reasons why Lady Shiva is deserving of a deeper exploration into her character. Her response to Tim says absolutely nothing about her from a personal standpoint–it simply reiterates the fact that Shiva is from the East and Tim is from the West. This is information that the reader is already aware of, and it also demonstrates the process by which readers have been made to see her as an object of difference. Her dialogue reminds readers that she is “different” from the hero of the story, both culturally and morally, and this further creates a sense of distance between the reader and her character. Moreover, she speaks in enormous generalizations that portray Asian martial arts as an inherently lethal form of combat–a fact made even more bizarre by the fact that Batman uses martial arts as an alternative to American gun violence.

Lady Shiva has suffered from the fact that her character has never been explored from an individual point of view. In this way, she has been presented more as an idea–portraying the East as a deadly, violent place full of people who can’t be trusted. And while she has been contrasted with Batman and his beliefs in the same way that the Joker has been used to elucidate the Dark Knight’s values, Lady Shiva hasn’t yet been granted the chance to be seen as more than an ideological foil.

Given how old DC Comics is, it isn’t surprising that there are characters who were born out of dated stereotypes. And while stereotypes clearly are a moral issue, they also present a narrative problem because they don’t invite readers to think beyond a narrow framework. In this way, Lady Shiva provides DC with an opportunity to not only give her character the closer look that she has always deserved, but also expand meaningfully on the contradictions behind Batman’s heroism. And while Lady Shiva may not be Batman’s most famous villain, she still deserves every opportunity that the Joker has been afforded.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/lady-shiva-deserves-better-batman-villain-joker-movie/

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