*Content warning for following article: abuse, domestic violence, murder*
Gotham is an American crime and detective series produced by Fox Broadcasting in 2014. The show has been running for four seasons and its fifth and final season will air in January 2019. The show is based off the early years of DC comic characters, and centres around detective James ‘Jim’ Gordon and young Bruce Wayne, before the creation of his Batman alias.
The show includes other DC characters such as young Catwoman (Selina Kyle), Oswald Cobblepot (Penguin), Poison Ivy, Hugo Strange and Edward Nygma (The Ridder).
I am by no means a science fiction or comic book fan. However, this show immediately caught my attention and I’ve spent the last several weeks binge-watching the first two seasons. I highly recommend Gotham to anyone who appreciates dark dramas, crime and/or detective stories. The casting, storylines and acting are excellent. The show sends viewers a dark, but accurate message about the corruption in law enforcement, and politics, class stratification, death, family, friendship and the fine line between right and wrong.
That being said, the show also highlights a problematic element: the toxic masculinity in many of the male characters. While I argue that all the male characters in this show possess this toxicity, I would like to focus on one character, in particular, Edward Nygma.
So, what is toxic masculinity anyhow? It is an umbrella term that refers to the harmful ways that socially prescribed ‘male’ characteristics and roles affect both men and the people around them. This toxicity can be viewed in domestic and/or physical violence, workforce domination, subordination of women and feeling restricted from expression emotion or vulnerability. This is not at all to say that men are inherently toxic and violent, but rather, how these repressive socio-cultural norms equate ‘true’ masculinity with aggression, dominance, violence, suppression of emotions and label affection, care and empathy as ‘unmanly’ or ‘weak’ traits.
I’ll begin my analysis with Edward Nygma, a wordplay of ‘enigma.’ Nygma, who eventually is known as the ‘Riddler’ in the DC comic world, starts out as a forensic examiner with the Gotham City Police Department. In season one, Nygma is portrayed as the ‘nice guy.’ He is kind but awkward. He is infatuated with the forensics’ secretary, Kristen Kringle. He constantly follows her, interrupting her with strange riddles, giving gifts and invading her personal and physical space.
His intrusive and pursuant behaviour only becomes more extreme when Kringle begins dating Officer Tom Dougherty, who becomes physically abusive to her. Nygma, seeing this abuse, develops a saviour complex to ‘help’ Kringle out of her relationship. Yet, for his ‘niceness’ and help, he expects payment, be it sexual or otherwise. When he doesn’t receive this payment, things go from bad to worse.
He beings to ‘help’ Kringle out by re-organizing her entire file system without her permission, and when she becomes rightfully upset about his unwanted aid, Nygma justifies her lack of interests in him because she likes to date ‘bad guys.’ As she continues to refuse his advances, Nygma begins to stalk Dougherty, and in Season 1, Episode 18, he vengefully confronts Dougherty outside his apartment and stabs him to death. After committing his first murder that directly stemmed from the fact that he felt entitled to date and control Kringle, we see a switch in Nygma’s behaviour and his ‘Ridder’ alter ego begins to emerge.
Even after murdering Dougherty, he continues to ask Kringle out, emotionally wearing her down until she agrees to date him, as a way to move on from Dougherty (whom she assumed has just left town and has no idea he was killed). Nygma and Kringle are seemingly happy until one night, in Season 2, Episode 6, they are having dinner at Nygma’s apartment and he finally confesses his murder of Dougherty. Kringle calls him a ‘freak,’ which sets him off and begins to choke her to death and says “I would never do anything to hurt you…. I had to kill him because he hit you. Do you understand that? I did it for you…. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you.”
The downfall of Nygma’s character the dangers of these socially constructed ‘manhood’, which led him all the way from stalker behaviour to assault, domestic abuse and murder. Although this was an extremely violent scene, it depicts real-life situations and examples of this toxicity.
These were just several examples from one character in the show, and there are thousands of others on television and in real life. I feel it important to discuss the dangerous depictions of toxic masculine traits on television so we can understand these damaging effect, deconstruct meanings of prescribed masculinity and hopefully move forward together in from a feminist lens of care, knowledge and personal growth.