B:TAS reviews: Mad as a Hatter

(7/17/09)

Jervis Tetch is the introverted man with a knack for social ineptitude who feels constrained by his physical appearance and meager existence.  A scientific researcher, he is hunched over with large teeth, working on a project he fears will never gain approval, and dreaming for a woman far out of his league.  But as soon as he injects a little Lewis Carrol into his persona and subverts the real world to fit his fantastical ideal, he changes.  Psychologically he may very well be alleviating stress and building self-esteem, but the slope is slippery, and soon the man has become a control freak, compromising the authenticity of his world for self-pleasure and authority.

As can be easily inferred from the title, Alice and Wonderland is pervasive in Mad as a Hatter.  When Dr. Kates states that heads will roll, the parallel is obvious.  It is difficult to slight Tetch for seeing these connections between reality and the fantasy that so delights him, especially when the elusiveness of Alice crushes him and the sternness of Kates suppresses him.  How delectable they are as subjects for molding into the characters of his ideal storybook world.  As Tetch sits in his lab, manipulating the actions of the mice, we witness the precursor to grandiose acts of exploitation and dominance.  If anything his toying with the mice merely serves to point inwardly Tetch's dissatisfaction until he inevitably snaps.

Of course Tetch is not simply a case study.  He is also sympathetic in his idiosyncrasies.  We love characters that love completely, and what earns our cheering on like a bashful man hoping to win the love of the cute young woman who works at the counter across the hall?  His nervous tics emanate from a naturalistic human behavior not typically found in the mechanical animation of 90s action cartoons, and the ease of these animated movements, regardless of their sloppiness as attributed to AKOM, do all the more to flesh him out as a human being. Exemplary of this visual characterization is the way he puts his hand behind his head in conversation as a way to cope with his transparent nervousness. In his state of pre-madness he is a far cry from psychological extremes of Batman's usual foes. 

Tetch is representative of an all too real emotional imbalance and insecurity, and surely his transformation has been enacted throughout all of history by similarly unstable men. The only way to get over dissatisfaction and depression and introversion is to dive headfirst into a total identity reversal. His is a shift from pent up introversion to emotional overexertion. When a person gains the courage to act a little more forthcoming after a stint with crippling shyness, how much further will he go if the object of his desire remains unattainable?

To add to this study in the drive for control, Batman plays his role as the interventionist who disrupts the world that Tetch has constructed and is struggling to sustain.  The Mad Hatter, as he now calls himself, is pathetic in his attempt at maintaining control over his storybook land. And as the Hatter spouts off about his desperation, how long he has waited for Alice, Batman brutally retorts that she has been reduced to a soulless doll. The moral is simple: harsh reality is preferable to artificial bliss. Because Batman is the reality that comes crashing down on the his euphoria, who more appropriate to blame for what has gone wrong?  When the Hatter says that it is Batman who has forced his behavior, might he mean that not in a literal sense, but in the sense that Batman is a tangible representation of the brutal reality that has presumably spurned him for his entire life?

We are not asked to feel sympathy for the monster that Tetch has become.  But we are urged to look with an eye for tragedy on the gruesome transformation from shy Jervis Tetch into insane storybook character.  Though he is defeated in the end, there is no sense of triumph.  Those final lines are devastating.