Queerness and madness can be seen as dangers to the status quo, disruptive states that open up new possibilities. The question then is do you find this disruptiveness beguiling or threatening?
* * *
In Batman Forever (1995) Val Kilmer plays Batman, who battles with Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and Riddler (Jim Carrey) at the same time as he tries to form relationships with his therapist doctor Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) and Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell), who is about to become Robin. The film is largely about taking roles, wearing masks, dual natures, and tensions between performing normalcy and expressing all aspects of yourself.
I adored Batman Forever as a child. It was colorful, weird, sexual but in a slightly ridiculous way, which made it appealing and safe. The movie was also very queer – though I couldn’t articulate that back then. It had a huge impact on me, but then I grew up hearing and reading what a disgrace the film was, and that nobody in their right mind would appreciate Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies – Batman and Robin (1997) is even more hated than Forever (and it had even bigger impact on me, but that’s another story).
Why do some people enjoy Forever and why for some is it a shameful blip in the canon of Batman that is better left forgotten? I think it has something to do with the fact that the film is very campy and homoerotic, and makes connections between queerness and madness, which can cause two kinds of discomfort. There’s the queerphobic bigotry but also legitimate reservations stemming from a long history of equating queerness with sickness or mental disorder. And in cinema queerness and madness have been represented in tandem from Rope (1948) to Silence of the Lambs (1991) to Joker (2019), often in a way that is cruel to queer folks and people with mental health issues (see, e.g., Colangelo, 2021).
I want to point out some problematic aspects of Batman Forever, but I also wish to take a closer look at the features of the film that make watching it feel exciting and liberating. And I’m not alone in this experience: Forever has garnered appreciative attention from queer writers such as Kristen Yoonsoo Kim (2017), Tres Dean (2020), and Aditya Devsharma (2024).
I’m particularly interested in how the film presents two different ways to embody madness and queerness. On the one hand there is Bruce Wayne hiding his Batman side and investing a lot of energy on the performance of normalcy. Bruce gets to be part of respectable society, but he is lonely. And on the other hand, there is Edward Nygma (“enigma”) taking on the persona of Riddler and who is openly strange and over the top, which gives him freedom and joy but makes him the villain of the story.
Unrestrained: Mad and Bursting
In the last battle of Forever Riddler is dressed in a pale, skin-tight bodysuit, which is decorated with glittering green question marks and sequins. His violently red hair is coiffed like flames above his head. He also wears a mask, which of course glitters. Riddler presents his evil plan to Batman and ends it with the words: “Was that over the top? I can never tell.” Riddler is not talking about his looks, but “over the top” does characterize Riddler’s splashy outfits and hairdos as well as his outrageous demeanour.
Riddler trembling, swelling and bursting (screenshot, Batman Forever, 1:29:56).
In the film Riddler acts inappropriately – he is “too much.” In other words, he disrupts norms, specifically norms about what being straight and healthy is supposed to look like. Riddler can be interpreted to be mad and queer, but more than diagnosing him or defining his sexuality I’m curious about his visual portrayal and what aesthetic traditions it’s drawing on.
Madness and queerness are both often presented as unrestrained states. To succeed in what our culture considers normal – which excludes, for example, having mental disorders and identifying other than monogamous heterosexual – requires control and the ability to hide traits that are considered improper. Riddler is the opposite of restrained: he is loud, sparkly, and moves around with big gestures. Even before he became a flashy supervillain, he is disheveled, “overtly” emotional, and obsessed with another man as the failed inventor Edward Nygma.
La Marr Jurelle Bruce writes how madness can be interpreted as “a trembling, swelling, bursting movement that disrupts Reason’s supposedly steady order and tidy borders” (2017, 306). There is definitely something trembling, swelling, and bursting in Riddler. Queerness, not just as a sexual and/or gender identity but as a way of looking at the world, can be described like that as well. Or like Jack Halberstam (2011, 27) describes queerness as “anarchic and rebellious, out of order and out of time” when he claims that childhood is an essentially queer experience. In Queer Art of Failure Halberstam posits that growing up is about restraining children’s anarchy and disruptive tendencies.
Queerness and madness can be seen as dangers to the status quo, disruptive states that open up new possibilities. The question then is do you find this disruptiveness beguiling or threatening?
Restrained: In Control and Isolated
In Forever there is definitely an urge to keep control, which is depicted in Bruce’s struggles to hide his Batman side. Mad studies encourages people not just to look at mad characters but also the ones who are considered to be normal, well adapted, and balanced (Spandler & Barker 2016). Ideas about madness are conveyed also through the way some characters try vehemently to avoid or hide it. When we are first introduced to Edward in the film, he is right away contrasted with Bruce, who is the epitome of success and normalcy.
Normalcy is a performance, and to be defined as normal requires you to embody qualities associated with it, such as presumed whiteness and cisgender together with having permanent employment, monogamous relationship, and no visible disability or neurodivergence (Kunzel 2017, 315–317).
Next to Edward’s disheveled appearance and emotional outbursts, Bruce appears as a prototype of succeeding in life. Bruce has just the right clothes, gestures, reactions, and his presence exudes control, where not even a strand of hair is out of line – and he is aided in all this by his enormous wealth. Bruce typifies the performance of normalcy because the viewer knows he is Batman and that any second he can whisk himself away, dress up in black rubber and hang out with the most abnormal of Gotham. Because Kilmer seems so forcefully calm and bland, it becomes clear how much active work Bruce’s performance requires.
Secret identity has, of course, always been part of the character of Batman, and it’s practical but it also is probably exhausting. In Forever Bruce starts therapy because he has difficulty living as Bruce and Batman and not being able to be both in the eyes of people he wants to connect with. Therapist Chase thinks Batman is fascinating and sexually alluring, but toward Bruce she originally shows only polite interest. Dick blames Batman for the death of his family and wants to avenge them, but thinks Bruce is a boring rich guy.
The duality of Bruce’s existence can be seen in the scene where Bruce compliments Dick’s motorcycle and Dick shoots back: “Hang out at a lot of biker bars, Bruce?” Dick doesn’t know that Bruce’s life is actually filled with dangerous vehicles and outfits that would work well in a fetish club, and Kilmer has this expression that seems to say “Wellll. . . .” When Bruce wears his perfect expensive suits and acts calmly, he succeeds in appearing normal, but he is not exciting or someone you want to get to know. Instead, Batman is a sex fantasy or a suitable person to use to try to make sense of your grief and guilt.
Chase and Dick have different reactions to Bruce and Batman, and Bruce/Batman is trying to find a way to build connection with them in a way that doesn’t reveal his double identity but would let him be a whole person. Dividing Bruce and Batman in others’ eyes keeps Bruce safe but also isolated.
Batman’s Queerness
To many people the Bruce/ Batman duality has been a relatable allegory of queer experience, and it’s easy to see why. Aditya Devsharma (2024) and Danielle Ryan (2023) both see in Batman – and especially his portrayal in Forever – a possibility to read Batman as a closeted side of Bruce. Devsharma (2024) writes: “The fact that he never feels truly himself in his Bruce Wayne persona reads like a not-so-subtle closeting of the self. His comfort lies in being Batman, a kind of gendered performance to really let himself and his identity fly freely, like some sort of crime-fighting exploration of drag.”
Interestingly, in Forever it’s Edward who sees through Bruce’s performance. The scene where Bruce and Edward meet for the first time is also a scene about confusing perspectives and blurring of identity boundaries, and I think it’s relevant that Edward is there to witness this even though he doesn’t first understand what is going on.
In the scene Bruce arrives to inspect a department of his company, and when he moves from the elevator to the hall for a moment it’s difficult to understand the space and direction he is going. A group of people – Bruce among them – steps out of an elevator, which is depicted from above until the camera veers behind the group in a swoop and settles on following them. When looking from above, first we see one long shadow that is soon flanked with more shadows, which grow and blend in with a reflection of windowpanes on the floor. From the elevator a green light mixes with a red glow coming from the hall, and for a moment it seems that these people materialized from their shadows.
Dizzying perspectives (screenshot, 12:28).
The entrance of Bruce is playing with perspective in a dizzying way – a trick that is repeated several times in the film – and it’s difficult to parse what we are seeing and how to react to it. In the meeting following this, Edward is visibly smitten with Bruce, and the dynamic of the conversation is that Edward is desperately reaching out to Bruce, wanting to connect and Bruce to understand him, and Bruce keeping a distance between them. This is intensified when Bruce notices the Bat-sign in the sky: for a moment Bruce’s identity is torn, for he is no longer allowed to be just Bruce, but his Batman side is encroaching this space of normalcy for him. At the same time, he is spending time with a man who really wants to get inside Bruce’s head, to know him and share something with him.
For Bruce this blurring of lines is a reason to be even more distant and leave the situation. The Bat-sign and Edward’s insistence are threatening to make a crack in Bruce’s facade, right after a dizzying entrance where shadows, shapes, and lights blend into each other, preventing the space from being constructed as something with definite boundaries, no matter how hard Bruce would like to control his surroundings.
A hilarious example of the way Edward sees through Bruce’s performance is in a scene where Edward dresses up as Bruce, understanding that Bruce – not just Batman – is also an outfit you wear to play a role. Jim Carrey is styled to look very similar to Kilmer, and Edward keeps mimicking Bruce’s mannerism like he’s understudying him, or trying to be a mirror image of him. And Edward is obsessed with trying to figure out Bruce’s secret. As a person with a secret of his own and a facade to keep up, Edward is particularly equipped to notice that Bruce is not all that he seems.
Edward dressed up as Bruce (screenshot, 1:10:20)
Bruce dressed up as normal (Screenshot, 1:10:17)
This can feel very familiar to many queer folks, either identifying with Bruce’s desire to keep certain things hidden and enforcing a distance between themselves and others, or with Edward, who desperately wants to form a connection with a person they like and recognizes something in them.
When it comes to Batman’s queerness, the aesthetics are also significant. Batman dresses up in a kinky outfit and spends time with characters whose visuals and mannerisms are queer, like Riddler or Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) in Batman & Robin, or have references to BDSM culture like Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) in Batman Returns (1992). It’s easy to understand why Bruce/Batman would be relatable if you have qualities and preferences that feel safe to express visually in the protection of darkness.
Containing Madness and Bursting Out
In the scenes where Edward mimics Bruce, he shows that he is able to be restrained, but dramatics and chaos beckon him, perhaps because these were things that originally freed him. Edward also isn’t interested in Bruce because he is “normal” but because he can sense there is something hidden behind Bruce’s normalcy. When they meet for the first time, Edward says to Bruce that they are so alike, and perhaps he means that Bruce is as strange and outsider as he is.
Here is one of the reasons why I feel Batman Forever is not disrespectful to queer or mad folks. The film seems to admire qualities that our culture disparages, such as lack of control, unbridled expression, and being emotional – qualities that are often connected to madness and queerness. These qualities are used to make a larger-than-life character who is impossible to ignore. The same qualities that make Edward fail in normalcy and as a masculine straight guy are the ones that make Riddler gorgeous. Bruce is second-guessing and feeling afraid like the rest of us, but Riddler has abandoned attempts to fit in and embraces the chaos. He is shameless.
But it’s somewhat simplistic to believe that putting on a great look would solve anyone’s personal problems, let alone structural ones – though it can be helpful. Liberation that concentrates on looking a certain way quickly turns into consumption that is destructive to the planet. And we also have to remember that being mad can cause suffering. Having mental disorders can in itself be painful, scary, and uncomfortable to people going through them. This is easily forgotten if we concentrate on individual empowerment.
And in the film Riddler still is the villain. And he has to pay the price so that Bruce can feel whole in the end. As is often the case with movies that depict madness, it has to be somehow contained. In Forever Bruce/Batman is able to find a convergence, and he says: “I’m both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Not because I have to be. Now, because I choose to be.” But Edward/Riddler is not given this kind of opportunity. When Batman has defeated Riddler, he stands above him, and Riddler is depicted seeing a bat flying toward him. Bruce leaves this childhood trauma about bats behind, but it finds its way to Riddler’s mind.
So, Bruce/Batman gets to continue to live his life without being deemed “abnormal,” and Riddler becomes a vessel for Bruce’s madness, and in this way the madness can be contained in a nonthreatening way. I think this mirrors how sometimes stigmatized groups can end up stigmatizing others in more vulnerable positions in their fight for recognition (Kunzel 2017, 315–18).
This is pretty bleak, and even though it matters how stories are ended, with popular culture the endings are not always what we take with us from them. Yvonne Tasker (1993, 154) emphasizes that as a visual medium movies create meanings with images, and often taboo subjects are dealt with visually when they can’t be addressed directly, such as how action movies depict queer desire.
Or queerness in general. And like many queer-coded villains in popular culture, Riddler is exciting and fun. Especially when compared to Bruce, who is working so hard to appear normal, which drives him to therapy and makes it difficult for him to make connections with others. His life seems exhausting and tragic, but there are many things to aspire to in Riddler. (We could also talk about the queerness and queer desire of Dick/Robin.)
La Marr Jurelle Bruce wrote how madness can be interpreted as “a trembling, swelling, bursting movement” (2017, 306), and I saw Riddler embodying these attributes. Madness – and queerness – are needed in art to remind us that clean boundaries and steady order are not necessary. And that sometimes boundaries and order are destructive, when they are used to cut out parts of human experience in the pursuit of normalcy at the expense of truly knowing oneself and being radicalized.
Watching Batman Forever
I believe part of the hate and opposition Forevehar s ignited is due to its “over-the-topness.” For example, Devsharma (2024) and Hamish Calvert (2023) believe that Schumacher’s Batman-films make some fans uncomfortable because Batman is not allowed to be silly, campy, and queer.
Part of the film’s queerness is also the ambivalence about identity. I think it’s revealing that the impulse to categorize Forever is very prevalent: writers want to define it or its Batman as either straight or gay, or queer or not queer (e.g., Juzwiak 2020, Pfeiffer 2015). But in the film no one is neatly and definitively declared queer – though some are declared mad – which can be sinister if it’s motivated by a desire not to upset queerphobic people. But I think the reason Forever feels so exciting and alive and profoundly queer is because the film is not interested in definitive categories.
Mad studies and queer theory demonstrate that dichotomies such as mad-healthy, normal-abnormal or straight-queer are socially constructed and not natural (Spandler & Barker 2016). I think one way to challenge cis-heteronormativity and healthism is not to offer neatly defined counter-categories but to realize a way to view things that appreciates their elusiveness and fluidity. Forever is an exciting movie because it isn’t particularly interested in defining who is queer and who is not – everyone kind of is. And everyone is mad, and many characters think madness is sexy.
Unsurprisingly many who write appreciatively about Forever are queers and/or people of color (Dean 2020, Devsharma 2024, Yoonsoo Kim 2017). I’ve come across many experiences where someone saw Forever as a child and loved it but didn’t quite understand why, and later realized exactly why. And while we definitely need stories with explicitly queer characters and experiences, I do think we need stories where queerness is more in the way the world is depicted. More in the way the world feels like.
Riddler’s party, which I fantasized attending as a child (screenshot, 1:07:56)
I don’t think the movie appealed to me as a child only because of my queerness but also, as Halberstam describes, because I still possessed the anarchy of childhood and with it playfulness and over-the-topness. These are qualities I feel that as an adult I have to consciously hold on to, not something I get to inherently embody and express. As a child I was not dreaming of becoming a Bruce Wayne, a model citizen in control, or even Batman; instead I was admiring Riddler and dreaming of a life that could be exciting, fun, and visually dramatic.
* * *
Works Cited
Batman Forever. Schumacher, Joel (director) & Batchler, Lee; Scott Batchler, Janet &
Goldsman, Akiva (writer). PolyGram Pictures & Tim Burton Productions, 1995.
Bruce, La Marr Jurelle. “Mad Is a Place; or, the Slave Ship Tows the Ship of Fools.” American Quarterly, 69:2, 2017, 303–308.
Calvert, Hamish. “Celebrating The Overt Queerness of Joel Schumacher’s Batman Films.” INTO, 31 December 31, 2023, https://www.intomore.com/entertainment/film/celebrating-the-overt-queerness-of-joel-schumachers-batman-films/.
Colangelo, Harmony. “30 years in, The Silence of the Lambs’ Jame Gumb Still Deserves Better.” The A.V. Club, 15 February 2021, https://www.avclub.com/30-years-in-the-silence-of-the-lambs-jame-gumb-still-1846252158.
Dean, Tres. “Joel Schumacher’s Greatest Triumphs Were in His Films’ Gloriously Unsubtle Subtext.” SYFY WIRE, 24 June 2020, https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/joel-schumacher-batman-queer-subtext-stories.
Devsharma, Aditya. “Queerness and Batman: In Defence of Joel Schumacher.” Movieweb, 1 February 2024, https://www.movieweb.com/joel-schumacher-batman-movies-queer/.
Juzwiak, Rich. “Batman & Robin Is a Gay Movie, But Is It Gay Like Happy, Or . . . ?” Jezebel, 23 June 2020, https://www.jezebel.com/batman-robin-is-a-gay-movie-but-is-it-gay-like-happy-1844136261.
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011.
Kunzel, Regina. “Queer History, Mad History, and the Politics of Health.” American Quarterly, 69:2, 2017, 315–319.
Pfeiffer, Mike. “The Talented Mr. Nygma: Batman Forever as Gay Cinema.” Deadshirt, 12 January 2015.
Ryan, Danielle. “Batman Forever Is Gay.” /Film, 6 June 2023, https://www.slashfilm.com/1302558/batman-forever-is-gay/.
Spandler, Helen & Barker, Meg-John. “Mad and Queer Studies: Interconnections and Tensions.” Mad Studies Network, 1 July 2016.
Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. Routledge, 1993.
Yoonsoo Kim, Kristen. “Joel Schumacher on Batman & Robin: ‘I Never Thought It Was an Important Moment in Gay Cinema, But I’ll Take It’.” GQ, 20 June 2017, https://www.gq.com/story/joel-schumacher-batman-and-robin.
* * *
All images are screenshots from the film. Parts of this essay originally appeared in Finnish in Nörttitytöt, June 17, 2024.
