I'm actually a huge fan a Batman, so it pains me to say it, but I think summarily dismissing the argument ignores the way that comics and other stories use allegory.
When a creator makes a political or social point, it's based on the assumptions that are made to create his or her world. Yes, the disappearance of the Wayne family as protectors 'paralleled rising unemployment, crime, corruption, and social disruption in Gotham,' but that in and of itself is the construction of a fictional universe where a society needs what is essentially an oligarchy to maintain order. Citizens aren't actors; they can't make a difference on their own or pool their power to protect themselves. Yes, the villains in Batman are nasty folks who have immoral aims or tactics--of course they would be. But let's say you have two different villains who are both evil and kill many innocent people in pursuit of their goals. One is a Marxist revolutionary and the other is a fundamentalist Christian trying to usher in the apocalypse. Don't those say different things about the ideological bent of the writer and about what he or she thinks we should fear? What if all the villains are clearly bad, doing terrible things--and all black? Does that mean something about the author's position?
Take Ayn Rand. Clearly, she had a very specific political philosophy that she espoused through fiction. On of the things she argued against is altruism. She did this by writing a series of fictional events where altruism fails to help the intended target and is in fact only attempted for selfish reasons. The setting in a story is a way to trick the reader into not realizing that it's not real evidence--it's entirely constructed by the author. You can say anything you want in a story, but that only makes it true in the fictional universe you create and not in real life.
There are good points to be made against Padnick's claim, but I think the main juvenile argument here is that you can ignore the subtext of a story teller's choices.
When a creator makes a political or social point, it's based on the assumptions that are made to create his or her world. Yes, the disappearance of the Wayne family as protectors 'paralleled rising unemployment, crime, corruption, and social disruption in Gotham,' but that in and of itself is the construction of a fictional universe where a society needs what is essentially an oligarchy to maintain order. Citizens aren't actors; they can't make a difference on their own or pool their power to protect themselves. Yes, the villains in Batman are nasty folks who have immoral aims or tactics--of course they would be. But let's say you have two different villains who are both evil and kill many innocent people in pursuit of their goals. One is a Marxist revolutionary and the other is a fundamentalist Christian trying to usher in the apocalypse. Don't those say different things about the ideological bent of the writer and about what he or she thinks we should fear? What if all the villains are clearly bad, doing terrible things--and all black? Does that mean something about the author's position?
Take Ayn Rand. Clearly, she had a very specific political philosophy that she espoused through fiction. On of the things she argued against is altruism. She did this by writing a series of fictional events where altruism fails to help the intended target and is in fact only attempted for selfish reasons. The setting in a story is a way to trick the reader into not realizing that it's not real evidence--it's entirely constructed by the author. You can say anything you want in a story, but that only makes it true in the fictional universe you create and not in real life.
There are good points to be made against Padnick's claim, but I think the main juvenile argument here is that you can ignore the subtext of a story teller's choices.