“Holy Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor!”: Youth Culture in Batman by Michael D. Hamersky

               When I first opened this book on my Kindle Fire I began reading through the titles in the table of contents.  As a teacher, this essay caught my eye.  Robin had always been a favorite series to read and in working with children day in and day out, l can look back and see an accurate representation of how youth try to make sense of the world around them.  Though not many students, probably none at all, don a costume and fight crime, every student has aspects of their lives that contradict other parts and each day they struggle to make sense of it all.  The comics captured this perfectly with Jason Todd attempting to fill Dick Grayson’s shoes.  The TV show fell flat however.

               According to Hamersky, the dialogue and action was written by members of an older generation that portrayed the Boy Wonder in the image of what youth should be, not the counter-culture activists that so many youth were at the time.  Dick Grayson, when not fighting the likes of the Joker, was nose deep in a text book or another educational activity that Bruce Wayne has assigned to him.  In the show, successful people finished school and the villains were drop-outs.  Dick was the prime example of what a student should be: obedient, attentive, essentially a ‘square’.  Hamersky alludes to the fact that this was a ploy by the show’s creators to try to keep America’s youth in check and to keep sanity at home.

               Thankfully, many of the digital texts that our students are engaging in are self-created.  With guidance, hopefully, they are gaining a sense of what it is to carve a niche out for themselves in this great big world.  As parents and teachers, it is our job to ensure that this is done in a safe environment that promotes success and appropriate self-sufficiency that does not place the students’ futures in jeopardy.