Episode Notes

Batman. He's the most complicated of super-figures. He's got dead parents, a conscience-wielding butler, and a boat load of cash.

Maybe not so complicated, I guess. Anyhow, we hop into the 78 minute animated movie and pseudo-detective-flick Batman: the Mask of the Phantasm. Released in 1993 as a longform attachment to the Batman: Animated Series. The film follows Batman as he remembers his fondest relationship to a beautiful, sassy woman named Andrea Beaumont - daughter of a mobbed-up lawyer and financier. The two share a common love for their parents, three of the four being deceased, and the film makes a lot of it to be sure.

Though marketed to kids, the movie - as well as the animated television show - are incredibly twisted and dark. The villain (the Phantasm) commits at least two very chilling - if not explicitly gory - murders on screen. There are obvious parallels between the paths of the non-violence (eh, that's not really the word) of Batman and the Phantasm's allegiance to bloody revenge. A beautifully told story within a universe that doesn't feel the need to conform to it's meta, this movie takes you through emotions of fond nostalgia and horrible despair for the loss of what could have been.

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Phil and Kyle would also like to give a shout out to those of us still in the streets fighting for the rights of Palestinians and those fighting for justice and abolition of the American police state. The best way to show solidarity with those struggling against the American empire is to struggle against the empire at home.

https://free-palestine.carrd.co/#donations

https://www.phillybailfund.org/

https://bailproject.org/