The Pen­guin is an empow­er­ing anti-hero for trans peo­ple like me

The entire super­hero genre hinges on the nev­er-end­ing dance between good and evil. Audi­ences are sup­posed to be inspired by the self­less acts of heroes like Super­man, Bat­man, Iron Man, or Won­der Woman, indi­vid­u­als with the pow­ers of gods or the bank accounts to buy them. Yet decades worth of com­ic book lore has also pro­duced a num­ber of vil­lains who, despite their obvi­ous treach­ery, are far more relat­able to those of us who can’t see our­selves in the genre’s biggest names.

The Pen­guin is an anom­aly with­in Batman’s rogues gallery of bad­dies. Oswald Cob­ble­pot is nei­ther insane like The Jok­er or Two-Face, nor intent on trans­form­ing Gotham into a dystopi­an hellscape like Mr Freeze or Bane. Cre­at­ed in 1941 by leg­endary com­ic book writ­ers Bob Kane and Bill Fin­ger, The Pen­guin oper­ates more like an old-fash­ioned gang­ster than any of his cos­tumed peers.

Spear­head­ed by Tim Burton’s Bat­man Returns, the ​’90s brought about many changes to the char­ac­ter in order to bring Cob­ble­pot more in line phys­i­cal­ly with an actu­al pen­guin, includ­ing webbed hands. Dan­ny DeVito’s mon­strous por­tray­al rep­re­sent­ed a sharp depar­ture from his pre­vi­ous styling as an ele­gant aris­to­crat­ic mob boss seen in the comics and in Burgess Meredith’s take for the ​’60s Bat­man tele­vi­sion series. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor across The Penguin’s 80-year exis­tence is his resound­ing sense of ugliness.

Bur­ton large­ly side­lines Bat­man in favour of The Pen­guin as the emo­tion­al core of Bat­man Returns. The film begins with a flash­back sequence where a new­born Oswald is cru­el­ly reject­ed by his par­ents; locked in a cage before being tossed over a bridge in a bassinet. Deemed unwor­thy to live in ordi­nary soci­ety, Cob­ble­pot spends the next few decades liv­ing among the pen­guins at Gotham Zoo, devel­op­ing a warped per­spec­tive on moral­i­ty along the way. It’s not until halfway through the film that The Pen­guin even learns his real name.

Trans­gen­der peo­ple are forced to live in a soci­ety that con­stant­ly belit­tles our own human­i­ty. Laws restrict­ing access to pub­lic toi­lets or ade­quate med­ical care exist to rein­force our per­ceived sta­tus as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens, unwor­thy of basic human dig­ni­ty. Anti-trans­gen­der cam­paign­ers are fre­quent­ly giv­en media plat­forms denied to trans peo­ple, which they use to send a loud pub­lic mes­sage that we do not belong in their world.

Every sin­gle one of The Penguin’s rela­tion­ships in Bat­man Returns are trans­ac­tion­al in nature. He cap­tures Max Shreck (Christo­pher Walken) in the film’s open­ing fight sequence, intend­ing to black­mail the shady busi­ness mogul into assist­ing him with a staged kid­nap­ping of the mayor’s baby in order to take cred­it for its res­cue. Shreck not only par­tic­i­pates will­ing­ly, he befriends Cob­ble­pot and plants the seeds for The Penguin’s may­oral candidacy.

The Pen­guin sim­i­lar­ly under­stands that the media’s sym­pa­thy for his sto­ry hinges on his abil­i­ty to sell them a nar­ra­tive wor­thy to print. He turns a vis­it to his par­ents’ graves into a pub­lic­i­ty event; sur­round­ed by cam­eras, Cob­ble­pot earns the public’s adu­la­tion with his disin­gen­u­ous con­cil­ia­to­ry mes­sage of for­give­ness. With­out that feel-good moment, Cobblepot’s sto­ry would be no dif­fer­ent from any oth­er home­less per­son who lived in the sewers.

With so few trans jour­nal­ists employed by promi­nent out­lets, trans peo­ple do well to fol­low The Penguin’s lead when engag­ing the media, who often frame our lives in the most sen­sa­tion­al ways pos­si­ble. Nar­ra­tives about trans peo­ple tend to focus on pain and mis­ery, rein­forc­ing the pub­lic per­cep­tion that our lives are uni­ver­sal­ly ter­ri­ble. It is deeply dehu­man­is­ing to expe­ri­ence shock and sur­prise from a cis­gen­der per­son upon hear­ing that trans peo­ple can lead hap­py, nor­mal lives.

The goal of tran­si­tion is not to not look trans, but rather to be at ease with the reflec­tion of one’s self in the mir­ror. The Pen­guin doesn’t want to be nor­mal – he wants to be heard. A cis­gen­der per­spec­tive might see ​“pass­ing” as a way for trans peo­ple to con­ceal their transness, but self-love can exist inde­pen­dent from assim­i­la­tion. The Pen­guin teach­es us to cast aside the bur­dens of con­for­mi­ty in our pur­suit of a mean­ing­ful existence.

The Pen­guin deliv­ers his most astute obser­va­tion ear­ly on in Bat­man Returns. Cob­ble­pot notes to Shreck that they’re both per­ceived as mon­sters – the only dif­fer­ence being that the busi­ness­man is a well-respect­ed one. Anti-trans cam­paign­ers claim that trans peo­ple are a dan­ger to soci­ety, but their man­u­fac­tured out­rage is real­ly about basic respect and which among us are enti­tled to receive it. Con­di­tion­al equal­i­ty is not equality.

Bat­man is an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure for many rea­sons, but he’s hard­ly a great role mod­el. There are far bet­ter uses for the Wayne for­tune than to fund a man run­ning around rooftops in a rub­ber suit. Bat­man strives to cre­ate a bet­ter world, but it’s a goal he’ll nev­er reach as long as there’s anoth­er week’s worth of com­ic books to fill the shelves.

While The Pen­guin cap­ti­vates Gotham’s media ear­ly on in Bat­man Returns, Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) takes a more skep­tic approach, declin­ing to use his vast resources to help in the search for Cobblepot’s birth par­ents. Although Batman’s reser­va­tions turn out to be war­rant­ed, Wayne hard­ly looks noble in pre­judg­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Trans­gen­der peo­ple rarely receive the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

Trans peo­ple long for a world where we don’t open our phones to find mes­sages from strangers on social media urg­ing us to kill our­selves. A week with­out death threats is as rare as a sun­ny day in Gotham. Bat­man offers hope for a brighter tomor­row, but The Pen­guin lives in the world of today, which is an often unfor­giv­ing envi­ron­ment to peo­ple who look a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. You don’t need to for­give his vil­lainy to feel inspired by his relent­less ambi­tion to thrive in a city that quite lit­er­al­ly left him for dead.