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linkspooky · 2 years ago

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What are your thoughts on the Al ghuls?

My second favorite dysfunctional family (behind Slade Wilson, his ex-wife, his butler, his children and Terra which I collectively call the DeathFam). The Al Ghuls specifically Ra's Al Ghul and Talia are my favorite batman villains, sometimes anti-villain, and in Talia's case sometimes Anti-Hero (My Girl's got range.) Since you asked my thoughts I will try to give them as organized as possible but warning there are a lot.

1. On The League in General

The League, the Lazarus Pits, and the mythology surrounding them is one of the coolest parts of DC Lore in general. In my opinion the best portrayals of the league are when they are one hundred percent genuine about their ideals. One joke I like to make is that Poison Ivy and Ra's are both environmentalists, but unlike Poison Ivy R'as actually has a plan and resources. Ra's love for the world and his desire to save it is at the core of his character, and the reason he will not let himself die, or let go in any real way because his work is not done.

One aspect I do not like about the league is that they are supposed to be antagonists, but I wish Ra's plan was more developed than "kill a whole bunch of people so the resources can be split amongst the survivors." That's such a disagreeable plan Ra's point to make about how the whole planet is dying and nothing superheroes do is really fixing that problem is kind of lost. It's also as dumb as movie Thanos idea to snap and destroy half the life in the universe. If I were to tweak it, I would make Ra's agenda more in line of a communist revolution. That is get rid of the capitalistic systems that drive the destruction of earth's natural resources for endless production and profit. That change would make some of the leagues motivations and methods much more sympathetic.

The league would still be villains however, because even if in this tweaked versions their methods are understandable they're still a big huge cult. Which is an aspect that a lot of fans and sometimes comic writers seem to miss. In the microcosm (Ra's personal family) and the macrocosm (the whole league) the league is a cult centered entirely around Ra's ego, his ideals, his wishes. Even if you can sympathize with their ideas of revolution and go "Hey, that might work" the League is still going about it the wrong way because they constantly prey upon vulnerable minors and people on the edge of society and then raise them up into loyal pledges to a cause. A lot of real life fringe groups do this too. In this version the league recruits members because it's easier this way, which is in line with Ra's character. The whole conflict with Ra's is that he just will not let go of control, he talks about how he wants an heir to take over everything but that's never going to happen because he won't even let himself die. You could fix this too, take the league out of Ra's hands, reform it, and it could be a more genuine force for good. So yeah, my take is less the league isn't good because they assassinate politicians and have more revolutionary ideals, but rather the league is bad because they regularly groom minors.

2. Ra’s Al Ghul

Here is a comic panel of Daphne from Scooby Doo sword fighting Ra’s Al Ghul, mostly because I love it.

Ra’s is THE Batman villain for me. If the Joker represents Batman’s completely anti-thesis, then Ra’s is Bruce, all of his ideals, his nobility, taken to their most logical extreme. He’s the definition of the noble demon. If you want to ready story arcs that I think show off Ra’s at his best, there’s the “Tower of God” storyline where Ra’s finds all of Batman’s measures against the Justice League he prepared in case any of them turned evil and then decides to use them himself. Then there is “Injustice 2″ which is one of the better depictions of Ra’s where he is at his most genuine to his goal of environmentalism and even at points sits down at the table to talk with the superheroes in a more peaceful manor on how they could be doing better.

If the Tower of God storyline did not explain it to you, Ra’s reflects Bruce in good aspects and bad ones. The same relentless dedication that Bruce has to saving Gotham, Ra’s applies to the whole world. Ra’s also like other batman villains shows how a generally positive trait like Bruce’s insane levels of dedication can easily turn into a flaw. Bruce has no powers just his martial arts training, but just will not give up under any circumstances. Ra’s determination gets him into a horrible cycle of corrupting himself worse and worse over the years both due to overuse of the pits and also frustration at a world that refuses to change, and also shows in his inability to surrender power in any real way.

The way Ra’s treats his direct family, and the league as a whole is also a dark mirror to Batman and the Bat Family. Now, I don’t believe that Bruce is raising up hero sidekicks as child soldiers... Suspension of disbelief people! However, Ra’s genuinely does treat all of his children as tools for his agenda. As much as he has the capacity to love them, their needs and desires will always come second to his use for them. Ra’s is undeniably a groomer not in the sexual sense but in the sense he is using his position of power raising up and manipulating these minors to shape them into what he wants them to be.

Ra’s also represents Bruce’s paranoia and the times where he abuses his position as patriarch of a family to manipulate his kids lives. Ra’s is undeniably the one who holds the most power in the Al Ghul family, and he uses that imbalance in power entirely to his own ends. What he creates is a cycle of generational abuse that lasts all the way until Damian. Ra’s also represents Bruce’s sometimes toxic ideas of masculinity turned up to 11. My man is a 400 year old misogynist. He is obsessed with ideas like divine birthright, dynasty, legacy as shown by the way he once again treats his children. His oldest son is disqualified for being albino and therefore having a defect, Nyssa and Talia are disqualified for being born women. The fact that Bruce represents his ideal heir and he is a man with money and power the peak of what society considers is masculinity is you know, telling of his opinions towards gender. Bruce and Ra’s are both carriers of family legacies, who devote all of their money and power to their genuinely good goals, but Ra’s seems to believe that might makes right, the money, resources and bloodline he has makes him inherently better or even chosen. Which cycles into the reason why he will never let go of said power.

3. Talia Al Ghul

Talia is my favorite member of the family, she is also hardest to talk about because she suffers from two things number one being wildly different depending on the writer, and two orientalism. Now I won’t discuss this much not because I don’t think it’s important but because I’m not qualified to talk on such subjects and a practicer of the “stay in your own lane” philosophy. The orientalism in Talia’s character is undeniably there, and also a part of a pattern in DC where female brown mothers are regularly villainized to make their white fathers look better. I think Grant Morrison’s take on Talia is inherent dehumanizing of her and kind of reducing her to a plot object, and also a deviation from the original ideas her character was meant to represent. I think also Talia has a habit of being reduced to her relationships to the men in her life rather than her own person with you know thoughts and feelings. Women have those. The league also as a whole is orientalist as a concept there’s really no getting away from that.

Just as an example of how Talia and Damian’s relationship could be better depicted than it currently is in comics. There’s a storyline in the fourth season of Young Justice that I really like (even though I don’t like the cartoon that much) which explores the family dynamic between Cheshire, Roy and Lian. Cheshire attempted to stay with Roy to raise Lian for awhile, until she went back to the lifestyle and could not give it up. Her sister Artemis eventually goes after her and it’s revealed that Cheshire left Lian with Roy not because she chose being an assasin over her but Cheshire believes she is inherently bad and harmful person and has too much in common with her abusive father and if she is in that kid’s life she will only hurt them. It also ends on a hopeful note that if Cheshire puts the work in on becoming a more emotionally healthy version of herself she could return to that household.

Now that that disclaimer is out of the way (please don’t yell at me for this I love Talia. If you want to discuss it further please use my askbox, I don’t like it when people reblog my posts to argue with me.) The most interesting aspect of the Demon’s Head is the generational abuse storyline. There’s no two ways about it, Talia repeats the cycle with Damian. That’s what makes abuse generational. Once again the whole storyline from conception of Talia having a secret love child with Bruce is kind of orientalist but you have to work with the plotline you got. At least until somebody retcons it.

Now I am going to go on a long diatribe on how Talia repeating a cycle of abuse that starts with Ra’s does not make her an inherently bad person. This is where I am qualified to talk because I’ve done a lot of research into this subject! Talia grew up in a cult. Not only that she was the direct daughter of the cult’s leader. In the microcosm Ra’s family is what you would call a Narcisstic Family Structure: a family centered around one person’s individual needs where the other’s needs go underlooked. In the macrocosm it’s a goddamn cult.

People view members of cults as either stupid, or immoral for joining because they imagine it could never happen to them, but the way cults work is by preying on vulnerabilities every single person has.

No one joins a cult voluntarily; they are recruited into it. There is lack of informed consent. Everyone has vulnerabilities. Possible situational vulnerabilities include illness, the death of a loved one, breakup of an important relationship, loss of a job, or moving to another city, state or country. [x]

Haruki Murakami wrote a book named “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.” It is a non-fiction book containing several interviews of victims in the aftermath of the Saren Gas Attacks. This is a real life event where the Aum Shinrikyo Cult convinced its members to release Saren gas in several subway trains. While the attack was viewed by society as an act of fringe extremists, the cult was made up of members who were educated people, doctors, lawyers, who were still somehow convinced this was a good idea.

The interviews highlight many intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche. Work was a high, if not central, priority for most of the interviewees. Isolation, individualism, and lack of communication were also strong themes which were common throughout many accounts of the attacks. Many of the interviewees expressed disillusionment with the materialism in Japanese society and the sensationalistic media, as well as the inefficiency of the emergency response system in dealing with the attack.

The book also includes Murakami's personal essay on the attacks, "Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?" In this essay, he criticizes the failure of the Japanese to learn from the attacks, preferring to dismiss it as the extreme act by a group of lunatics rather than analyze the true causes and prevent similar events from occurring in the future.

I bring this up once again to reinforce the idea that anyone can be preyed upon by a cult, and Talia was literally born into that environment. Clts also operate with a specific method of cutting off their members from the outside world to cut off their ability to leave (BITE: Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotional Control). Talia grew up in an environment where most likely all her social interactions and her contact with the outside world was controlled by Ra’s and only Ra’s because in most versions her mother dies early in her life usually in some horrific way.

That’s not even getting to the kind of parent that Ra’s is. He is always a really outwardly loving parent to Talia, but that love comes with a big huge asterisk. Ra’s loves his children until they either have a defect, or they decide to be someone other than what he wants them to be, at which point he either cuts them off, or relies on emotional manipulation to regain control. Talia’s only parental figure was both extremely loving, but made it clear that love was conditional. Even if Talia tries to live up to Ra’s expectations of her and be what he wants her to be, she’s immediately disqualified from actually taking on the mantle she was groomed for her entire life by being a woman. Even the original concept of Talia’s character who is much more anti-hero than anti-villain chooses her father over Bruce at times because Ra’s conditional love is what she knows, whereas Bruce’s love for her is something she does not understand fully even if she desires it.

I’m going to bring up my favorite comic book character Terra here. Terra was also a character who her creators have said several disrespectful things about and she was not created by the best of intentions. However, Terra is a unique character because she is one of the few grooming and CSA victims who is allowed to be downright unlikable, to show her trauma in what are considered to be traditionally bad ways. She’s a character with flaws and agency and stuff. Terra represents a specific kind of fifteen year old kid who usually does not get help and adults believe is a lost cause. Characters who carry Terra’s trauma either magically get over it, or they are just reduced to weak, pitiful shells. I’d rather have Terra be the mess she is than either of those things. It’s honest to a reality that certain people face, and also shows victims who would not normally get sympathy.

I just went to great length to establish the horror of Talia’s upbringings so she’d undeniably be affected by it. I won’t even mention what kind of mother Talia is because wildly depends on the author, but the decision to raise Damian in that cult rather than try to leave is her perpetuating the cycle. This is something that happens in real life too, parents who are preyed upon by cults will either drag their kids into it, or raise them up in that same life when they are young and vulnerable. It’s undeniably something she did to Damian and deserves to be called out on.

If Talia shares Ra’s nobility and idealism she also reflects his bad qualities as well, his belief in special people, of causes that succeed individuals, of noble purposes. Especially since these are toxic ideas that Ra’s has essentially forced onto her. I don’t even think Talia is past the point of redemption or incapable of learning to be a better mother, because while abuse is a chain it’s also a chain that can be broken.

4. Damian Wayne / Al-Ghul

To begin with I don’t think Bruce is a good parent to Damian, and Talia is a bad one. They both kind of fail Damian in equal and totally different ways. I don’t believe Robin is a child soldier, but right away making Damian Robin is kind of a mistake because Bruce makes him Robin to try to fix some perceived flaw from being raised by the League, when really Damian is more or less just a ten year old kid reacting how any ten year old kid would if they were groomed their entire life and had that kind of destiny practically forced upon them.

The difference between Talia and Damian is of course, Damian got out of there which gives him a unique opportunity that Talia didn’t to make connections outside of the League and to the outside world and therefore learn to think in different ways then how he was raised to think. Damian represents the chance to break the cycle of generational abuse passed down from grandfather, to mother, to son.

Because like I said Damian reserves the right to call out his mother for not choosing to put him first, but at the same time Damian undeniably loves his mother. Even in the storylines where they have a strained relationship at best Damian is fiercely loyal to her because essentially Damian and Talia want the same thing which is to have a loving family of their own, and to be their own people outside of their usefulness to other people (cough, cough, Ra’s).

Damian’s character arc tends to repeat a lot but there are more modern storylines that are pushing Damian in this direction where his goal is a reconciliation of the past and to be able to move on with a healthier version of their relationship. Ra’s getting shot in the head helped a whole lot.

Damian represents a chance to break the cycle for both himself and his mom, because like I said Talia isn’t an inherently bad person, or a bad parent, she just like anybody else has an opportunity to grow and develop as a person especially if one day she gets to finally move on from the league. People can be influenced by circumstances, but also circumstances change and in better environments people have a chance to do better. Damian isn’t obligated to forgive either parent for the ways they’ve failed him but at the same time he clearly wants a connection with both of his parents, and is willing to work with them on it.

It is funny how Damian typically gets portrayed as the edgy Robin, because in my mind he’s actually one of the most normal ones. He acts like a thirteen year old boy, with the needs of a thirteen year old boy, he desires a normal life outside of capes and costumes. He just has been told he’s the chosen one all his life and that’s had an effect on the way he views the world. Damian has every chance to break the chain that Ra’s started though, and that’s probably where the comics should go if they didn’t repeat the same plotline with him like nine million times.

#league of assassins #league of shadows #batman #ra's al ghul #talia al ghul #damian wayne #al ghul family #demon's head #dc #dc comics #dc comics meta

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