Batman Returns’ Penguin Was Perfect In 1992 (But Would Never Work Now)

The Penguin’s plot to become Gotham’s mayor in Batman Returns worked in 1992, but it’d be quite far-fetched now. While the Penguin’s ultimate goal was to exact murderous revenge on Gotham City in response to his parents rejecting him as an infant, he spent a portion of the film running for mayor, backed by the unscrupulous Max Schreck. Batman foiled his plans in a way that perhaps fits the generational and political climate of the early 90s more than that of the late 2010s and early 2020s.

With Schreck’s help, the Penguin (born Oswald Cobblepot) posed as an altruistic outcast who’d save Gotham City from the vicious Red Triangle Gang of former circus performers (who Penguin was secretly the leader of). For a time, Cobblepot enjoyed the feeling of acceptance enough to nearly put his mass murder plot on hold, until Batman turned the people of Gotham against him. Readopting his Penguin moniker, Cobblepot resumed his nightmarish master plan, which Batman also foiled.

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Using recordings of the Penguin insulting the people of Gotham City, Batman and Alfred hacked the Penguin’s speaker systems during one of his rallies, revealing to the attendees that Cobblepot thought little of them. Realizing that their favored politician had been conning them, they turn on Penguin, leading him to flee Gotham and return to the sewers and the Red Triangle Gang. The Gotham citizenry’s eagerness to accept a seemingly downtrodden underdog champion but the equal speed at realizing that he was a fraud reflects the real-world end of yuppyism of the time and the rise of Generation X. Sadly, it’s depressingly difficult to imagine Batman turning them against Penguin in today’s political climate at all.

The so-called postie generation of adults that would make up the majority of Gotham’s voting population in 1993 would have been tired of excesses and institutions of late-stage yuppies at the time, as a reflection of the real world of the early ’90s. And as clearly unfit as the Penguin was for office, he played into the generation’s blind spots perfectly, depicting himself as the ultimate underdog. He was the antithesis of the politicians who Generation X had seen pile social burdens of homeless, rampant unemployment rates, and the deficit onto them, when their parents had grown up enjoying excess that they would never be able to emulate. Penguin’s tragic backstory and rise from the gutter made him the ultimate poster-boy for a defiant vote in his favor. Even with no obvious qualifications for office, the 1993-era Gotham citizenry was more than willing to accept the seemingly-idealistic Cobblepot. But they were also more tuned to scandal, having grown up at the time of Watergate, and as soon as the flaws in Cobblepot’s idealism appeared, Gotham’s citizens turned.

In today’s post-truth society, it’s depressingly unrealistic to assume that the people of Gotham (or anywhere for that matter) would possess the critical thinking skills to reevaluate their favorite politician when presented with incriminating factual information about them. Especially with a financier with the financial power and clout of Max Schreck behind him. In a modern Batman film, it’s depressingly easy to imagine the leaked recordings of Penguin being declared “fake news” by a populace who is unwilling to question their chosen leader. If anything, Batman may inadvertently cause Penguin’s voter base to support him more fervently.

What seems like a cynical commentary on politics and herd mentalities ultimately proved to be an idealized depiction of voters, at least by today’s standards. Even the staunchest supporters of Danny DeVito’s perfect Penguin responded to facts and abandoned him upon discovering his ruse. What worked in 1992 would be demonstrably unrealistic today, and Batman might have had to sabotage Penguin’s mayoral campaign another way in a modern version of Batman Returns.

Next: The Batman’s New Penguin Inspiration Mirrors Burton’s Genius Villain Trick

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