When we think of DC Comics' Batman, we tend to have an unfortunately indelible image of a Flabby Felon Fighter, a Tights-Clad Teenager, and lots of bondage. Why? Well, the infamous Batman television series (1966-68)is to blame for that haunting set of images. I blame Susan Sontag for all this. If she hadn't published her essay "Notes on Camp" in 1964, then straight trendies wouldn't have tumbled to the existence of pastiche and irony that had been part of the lesbian and gay aesthetic up until then. Batman also had a context for that reception- Dr Frederic Wertheim, who had previously cast aspersions on the relationship between Bruce and Dick in Stately Wayne Manor. Holy homoerotic undertones!!! When Bruce was hurt, he was comforted by Dick! Ahem. Moving right along... Wertheim wrote his extremely strange Seduction of the Innocent in the mid-fifties. Amongst other things, he accused Wonder Woman of housing nests of ... suffering sapphists!!! And of course, they got tied up far too often. Mercifully, the sixties were the decade of sexual revolution and the emergence of lesbian and gay liberation. Realising that there was an alternative educated youth and gay audience out there, it was decided to re-upholster the time-honoured Batman comics series. And so, camp was struck. Batman became a fat man, reliant on his bat-suffixed high tech and vehicles, prissy and uncomfortable around women, physically awkward and engaging in stilted dialogue. Robin relentlessly sacralised everything. In 1966, there was a movie tie-in, which is the subject of this essay. It's a far cry from the modern noir Batman of the current comics, movies and television series. That Batman would never be seen dead performing an embarrassing 'dance' like the "Batusi." The television series played relentlessly during the seventies in New Zealand, along with Lost in Space and other mindless skiffy pablum. As for the movie, it pops up from time to time when one of the networks has some gap to fill. We can watch it, and enjoy the pastiche element of the ineffectual Camp Crusader, and reflect how far we've come. Or have we? Just how many butch openly gay action heroes can you think of...? That's right, all two of them. Batman. (1966) Dir.William Dozier: Adam West (Batman): Burt Ward (Robin): Cesar Romero (Joker): Lee Meriwether (Catwoman). Recommended: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7537/History.htm Batman 1966 Tribute Site Susan Sontag: "Notes on Camp" in S.Sontag (ed) Styles of Radical Will: New York: Delta: 1969. Frederic Wertheim: Seduction of the Innocent: New York: Mueseum Books: 1955. Craig Young - 10th November 2005