After years of superhero movies occupying the theaters, the question of superhero fatigue has become a valid inquiry. Some say it’s the volume of output, while others state the quality is quite poor. And Martin Scorsese says they straight up aren’t cinema! (Father, forgive him for he knows not what he says.) Yet while people debate box office numbers, script caliber, and whether or not the Russo brothers have what it takes to save the Marvel Cinematic Universe, HBO has taken another angle on the genre.
While The Penguin is technically not a show about a superhero but rather Oswald Cobblepot, it is birthed out of the dark and gritty Gotham of Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Over the years it has become a shtick to flip the narrative and reveal the villain’s perspective for a turn, giving the audience the aha moment on how someone turns that dark corner. It’s almost become industry standard to give a villain even a small backstory to show why they are the way they are or want what they want. Any movie with a flat villain is considered basic or one-dimensional at this point. We want to understand our villains. The Penguin‘s showrunner, Lauren LeFranc, herself discusses this concept when thinking about Oswald: “If he is a villain, which we’re still trying to define because we don’t want anyone to be a definitive hero or villain, we want our characters to be flawed people.” We’ve become disillusioned with the idea that people are just bad for bad’s sake. Perhaps we’ve grown in self-awareness. Or rather, we’ve all fallen short under the ideals of Captain America and realize we might be more like the Kingpins or Jokers of our story. So we humanize them, perhaps to extend grace or perhaps to appeal for mercy ourselves. Either way, The Penguin puts humanity on full display in its depiction of the rise of a “villain”.
Oswald Cobblepot loves his mother, in a practically Oedipus-like manner, and is willing to do anything to give her the life she deserves — viewers of the show will know the reason for the emphasis. He desires to bring peace to his mother’s life and by extension, himself. His entire aim is to put her in a penthouse in the sky, a goal he seems intent on achieving. And achieving peace quite often requires violent conflict, at least in Oswald’s line of work. There are mobsters to retaliate against, drugs to peddle, and manipulation to utilize.
But it isn’t just Oswald seeking peace, the entire cast of characters in The Penguin could be described as seeking after the same thing. Sofia Falcone, the daughter of a mobster family, seeks peace after being locked up for years in an insane asylum for the crime of finding out her father killed her mother. Victor Aguilar, a kid from a tough neighborhood who lost his family from the flooded waters of The Batman movie, seeks peace and stability by following Oswald’s every request. Oswald’s mother, Francis Cobblepot, attempts to make peace in her mind of the fact she facilitated the unleashing of a monster on the world. Each of these characters uses antithetical means to grasp their slice of peace which has been stolen from them.
Peace is typically seen as a virtue sought after by noble men and women. Blessed are the peacemakers, right? And yet, here, The Penguin is seemingly offering a display of disgraceful, even rather despicable, people seeking after peace. It appears the virtue is not reserved only for those of high moral status, but the pursuit is actually a sign of something about our world. Augustine dissects the virtue of peace like this:
Man’s very virtues, his best and most useful possessions, are the most solid evidences of the miseries of life, precisely because their function is to stand by him in perils and problems and pains.
Our striving for peace reveals the brokenness of the world, and in The Penguin’s case, of Gotham — for the welcome sign to the city could read: Welcome to Gotham, where perils, problems, and pain live. Augustine goes on to describe that even evil men who disrupt peace are doing so to “fashion a new peace nearer to the heart’s desire … It is not that they love peace less, but that they love their kind of peace more.”
With this lens it is easy to see how this pursuit of our own brand of peace is innate in all of us, villain or not. Day-to-day life has a way of throwing all sorts of perils, problems, and pains in our direction even if they vary on the spectrum of severity — and whether or not the disruption is our own doing or just the cards we were dealt. And thus we find whichever strategy to make peace. For some, this could look similar to the characters of The Penguin, falling deeper into debauchery and depravity. But for others, it’s constructing order with legalistic rules or hyper-focused productivity. This view sees the strung-out addict in the alleyway pursuing the same thing as the corporate ladder climber. We all want that penthouse in the sky.
Batman himself could be described as peace seeker. His peace shattered when he lost his parents, leading him to pursue the virtue by establishing his own justice in the streets of Gotham. Of course, Batman’s peace seeking is preferable considering the order he brings tends to benefit the people of the city. He’s after what we could perhaps call a righteous peace. He is the unelected Law of Gotham, reminding a lawless city that evil does have to answer to someone eventually.
The Penguin comes to a climax as Oswald has become the man he aimed to be. He trounced his opponents, profited immensely, and secured a penthouse view for his now comatose mother. As Augustine would put it, his kind of peace has been established. The final shot is a chef’s kiss to the whole show which has had the lingering question: where is Batman? Or put another way, where is the law? Crime and corruption have only been answered by further crime and corruption. But after Oswald is told that no one can stop him now, we are given the penthouse view with a Gotham City-skyline backdrop suddenly illuminated by the haunting bat signal. Contrary to the sentiment of eight episodes, the law indeed lives. (More on this infamous symbol in the sky here.)
And yet, even Batman’s attempts at establishing peace are but temporal swings at an eternal problem. For every instance of chaos put to an end, another three pop up. Such is life in Gotham (or an entertainment industry that needs new films, comics, and television shows constantly pumping out). All our efforts to establish peace amidst the perils, problems, and pains of life eventually crumble. Our towers of Babel don’t stand for long, and we once again find ourselves scattered with peace having slipped right out from our fingertips. The marriage buckles, the friendship wanes. Insults slip out and sensitivities heighten. Hearts lust and sometimes develop cancer. Children start new sleep cycles which involve 3 a.m. crying sessions (by you and the child). And in the midst of all these disruptions and strivings, we find ourselves unable to maintain our kind of peace.
So, where shall we go for peace in this Gotham-esque life? To where do we flee when our handcrafted peace collapses on top of us? Our friend Augustine points us to the heavenly city “where our virtues will no longer be at war with passion or opposition of any kind, but are to have, as the prize of victory, an eternally imperturbable peace.” And in Christ we get a taste of this city to come, this unshakable peace that passes understanding. Our great disruptor of our kind of peace. The prince of true peace who reaches into the rubble under which we lay and whispers a word of hope.
