I am Alfred, the Noble

The only thing that you will learn by reading this article — perhaps the only thing that you didn’t already know — is this: my name is Alfred Pennyworth. I am Mister Bruce Wayne’s butler and on some nights, when the sirens in Gotham are shriller than The Joker’s deranged laugh, I moonlight as an assistant to Batman.

No, that would be dishonest. I don’t even get paid overtime for all my assistant-to-Batman duties. But I have seen Master Bruce become Mister Wayne and I have seen him become Batman. It was in Batman Begins that I had asked him, “Why bats?” “Bats frighten me,” he told me. “Would it really be wise to surround yourself with them in which case? Would it really be wise to try and become one of them?” These are the questions that I should have asked, but by then even I had given in to the equally mainstream and high art intentions of Mister Nolan who needed his protagonist’s narrative arch to resemble a messiah’s.

As can obviously be gauged, I never wholeheartedly bought the whole let’s-transform-into-Batman idea. I can be a little old school in that sense. I was, of course, concerned about Master Bruce’s safety. Some may say, a little obsessed even; but there was something more. It occurred to me that it is no easy task for a man to constantly swap between two personas, both of equal worth. If Batman had to be something other than a mere crusader in a cape, his legacy must always be separate from the inheritance of Bruce Wayne. Besides, the mind of a man becoming and unbecoming these symbols of power and protection should, in the final picture, be like that of a crafty schizophrenic who can juggle his identities at will. I always knew that Master Bruce had the physical prowess, but mental discipline is always much trickier. You’d agree.

It mostly started with chidings when I would see his wounds. Then there was the day when I chastised Master Wayne for getting lost in that ‘monster’ of his. It might have seemed a bit much at the time, but leave alone the why-so-serious jibes, even small-timers like that Scarecrow chap were asking Batman to “lighten up” (and then setting aflame his cape). I blame it all on Mister Nolan. He has added a gloomy seriousness to the Batman franchise, entirely doing away with the frivolity of earlier, more comic adaptations, adding instead a paced slowness. Amidst all this gravitas, I have found I fit in well as the gentle comic relief who leaves a life-saving antidote on Rachel Dawes’s bedside table, and also provides a different kind of relief by burning her letter (because it really doesn’t do much to serve the interests of my master after she is gone). More than this, though, I have realised that I have become trapped in Mister Nolan’s hands ­— I am now the conscience of his story.

I remember it as clear as day. Master Bruce and I sitting in a newly-decked portion of the Wayne mansion, watching a man dressed as Batman being killed by The Joker on television. The unravelling I was terrified of had begun. The Dark Knight’s opening scene confirmed that Mister Nolan had caught on to it as well. The Joker is seen robbing a bank. He and his accomplices are all wearing the kind of joker masks you’d be handed at a child’s birthday party. One scene later, Batman tries to get vigilante imitations of him off the streets. Both The Joker and Batman are struggling to stay pertinent in a world where they see themselves multiplied like clones in a dystopian science-fiction novel. The Joker unfortunately has a gun he isn’t afraid to use. As the standoff continues, The Joker kills people in Gotham each time the real Batman fails to reveal himself. I remember his sleepless nights only too well. It was then that I had thought it right to tell Master Wayne that, rather than turn himself in, he should endure. Only Batman, I had told him, can endure being the outcast. Heroism, I believed, is easily accomplished. But it was always about more. Legend, which is the very theatricality that Batman demands, requires we forget Bruce Wayne. The question really is — will Mister Nolan somehow now want us to forget that careful distinction altogether?

You might possibly think that apart from concern and recrimination, there was little cause for me to dissuade Master Wayne from revealing his secret identity. He is, after all, the closest I have to family, and I would do my utmost to getting him a free pass out of any kind of prison. But the trailers to the new The Dark Knight Rises are out. And from the look of things, Gotham is in trouble again. The reason why the city has hope, and the reason why I have faith, is because there is a dark knight who is thankfully set to return.

Also, I like happy endings. I can be a little old school in that sense.