Thoughts on Stephanie Brown, Crime & Community
A lot of the posts I’ve been reading lately about Bruce’s brutality towards low level criminals and whether Jason betraying his own community or not, the double standards and meta analysis has all been very interesting.
And it has also left me musing on Stephanie Brown’s character.
Specifically how she operates in a really fascinating position that was likely not intended by the writers but one can reach anyway.
So a quick primer:
Stephanie Brown came up in a low income (at best) family in Gotham. Her father was consistently in and out of prison only briefly holding down a steady job and when he was home he was violent towards both Stephanie and her mother.
Crystal was neglectful and a substance abusing addict until Stephanie was about 15 and even then their relationship was quite messy with Stephanie still forced into a parental role.
(She also escaped sexual assault as a child and was clearly traumatized by the event and given her ‘boyfriend’ who got her pregnant looed significantly older than her one could argue she was a victim of grooming.)
Her first team up with Batgirl (long before she receives any training) Shows she has an intimate and immediate understanding of criminal operations that can only come from either self study or experience. One of her earlier team ups with Robin & the then Green Arrow (Investigating gun runners selling to kids) had her note she felt her community was neglected by the heroes. Her first team up with Batgirl also had them basically steal money that would have gone to evidence to donate it to charity and she also reveal hinted at different times a dislike or lack of faith in the police.
Now, not everything was hunky dory, as there were some writers who basically decided her motive was “Impress Robin”. Fortunately this only cropped up every now and again and she’d often try and seek out team ups and mentors elsewhere. And given it doesn’t line up well with her initial character I am content to view it as an artifact of the writer.
But I digress, how does this go into her relationship with her community and criminals in general?
Well, suffice to say her relationship with them is bad.
Her first time out as Spoiler she tries to murder her father and has to be talked down by Batman. She later reveals to Crystal she was doing this to protect her because she was tired of seeing Arthur come back and ruin their lives over and over again. She also used visitation rights when he was in prison to beat the hell out of him because he orchestrated her kidnapping and near missed murder for money, while the guards just let it happen.
In one of her first team ups with Robin they fight criminals in a snow covered building and his cutting of support beams leads them all to be buries. Robin insists on finding him and saving him, while Stephanie suggests leaving him to die, dismissing his motives along the lines of, “I was poor, daddy never loved me, ETC.” She only agreed trying to save him was a good idea when they accidently found a homeless woman and her child also buried.
later on she also didn’t want to save a villain who managed to kidnap both herself and Robin. We also see her shrug off the prospect of accidentally killing a serial killer she was in combat with. She also has a violent exchange with Penguin after he started using children as gun runners which hinted at wanting to wipe people like him off the map. When he was dismissive of even facing charges because “I’ve got people for that” she legit scared and injured him and Batgirl needed to stop her from going further.
(She also shrugged off Dick killing Joker while everyone else was freaking out but like, come on. Joker fills literal graveyards in universe and had been terrorizing the world minutes before, he’s not a ‘normal criminals’ by any stretch.)
Overall, her relationship to criminals in general was varying degree of contemptuous and she was quite comfortable with the prospect of doling out lethal punishment to criminals, though she never got the on screen opportunity. I think her general attitude is best summed up as “yes trauma sucks but its no excuse to take it out on your community” while holding those who profit off those circumstances in utter contempt. IE, she disdains petty criminals for victimizing their fellows and she hates the kingpins who run everything.
(Though I doubt this was intended by the writers.)
But I digress, I’m not expert enough to say whether this is a realistic or positive response to her circumstances, but I do find it an interesting one. I also think its a lot more nuanced than Batman’s brutality even if one could argue its problematic. Though that also broached the “Are we discussing in universe or out of universe” and so on. Really not sure where I was going with this. I maybe just wanted the chance to discuss Stephanie cos I think she’s really interesting.
So uh, yeah.
