Batman and Me takes a startling look at an obsessive fan — and the director judging him

Batman and Me takes a startling look at an obsessive fan — and the director judging him

Documentary filmmaking has traditionally sparked many great philosophical clashes over method and intent, but one of the most common points of contention now feels like it may have gone the way of the buggy whip and the cell phone the size of a suitcase. In 1975, when the Maysles brothers published their sad and breathtaking mother-daughter portrait gray gardens, they have been widely accused of exploiting their oblivious subjects by befriending them and then publicly ridiculing them. Similar criticism was leveled at Chris Smith for his inadvertently hilarious 1999 doc American moviewhich presents independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt as an awkward amateur, simply by watching him work. But these days, that particular complaint seems to come up far less often, whether it’s because filmmakers are more sensitive to how their subjects might be perceived, or because it’s so common for people to expose their own lives. online that we are collectively beyond the idea that public visibility is invasive or inconvenient.
Michael Wayne’s Doc batman and me could revive the debate. His understated take on an obsessive collector of Batman props is only slightly torturous compared to Gray gardens. It unfolds with a fascinating specificity that goes far beyond the specifics of Batman and opens up many thoughts on the different ways and reasons people associate with different fandoms.
But Wayne’s slightly contradictory, even dismissive, attitude toward his subject matter is particularly off-putting, and seems designed to get viewers into a similar mindset. It sometimes feels like he’s nudging the audience in the ribs, with a “Get a load of this guy!” message – and in the process, possibly misunderstanding this audience, and why they might be watching.

Wayne first made contact with Australian collector Darren “Dags” Maxwell online, after browsing Maxwell’s self-deprecating webpage devoted to individual items in his surprisingly stuffed collection of Batman toys, promotional items and cool stuff. other derived products. Maxwell has invited Wayne into his home and into his life, and sits down with him for candid and in-depth conversations about how and why he ended up with an entire room in his house dedicated solely to Batman gear, which he pretends he doesn’t even want or don’t like. It’s a movie on a very small scale: Wayne interviews two of the most important people in Maxwell’s life, and he uses action figures to play out adorably cheeky flashback scenes of Maxwell interacting with his friends, family and the public. But above all, it is an intimate portrait that gives the impression of spending a few hours in the company of Maxwell.
Along the way, Maxwell tells some funny stories: he describes how he literally bought a shirt off a man’s back at a convention, and how he got revenge on an ex-girlfriend, first by eating the Batman cookies she gave him for his collection, then buying his own box to replace it. He also drops startling revelations about the depth of his mania for Batman merch: Among other things, he still stores 1980s Batman ice cream bars in his freezer, and he has a taped-closure milk tub in his fridge. , dedicated to an old chocolate Batmobile that he protects from blooming.
Other revelations cover what’s going on in the collector’s mindset. Maxwell describes the insurmountable urge to hoard things, no matter how good or useful they are. He reviews what got him into collecting in the first place, what turned collecting from a minor hobby to a vital goal, and what ended this phase of his life. He stopped buying new products in 1997 because he found Joel Schumacher batman and robin so off-putting: his entire collection focuses on all four Batman films from Tim Burton’s 1989 feature through batman and robin. Now it’s just a static museum. But when he was building this collection, it was his primary financial goal, ahead of everything but the basics of shelter and survival.
Maxwell describes her collecting phase as an attempt to buy her way into a community to make up for the holes in her life. He speaks with perfect candor about his troubled childhood, a lack of meaningful family ties, and a powerful need to impress fellow collectors and be seen as an authority, not on Batman, but on memorabilia. of Batman. He openly talks about how the fandom and his collection-obsessed circle of friends function as a sort of surrogate family where he could count on being seen as important and meaningful.
“The fandom and the sci-fi genre as a whole, that’s the only thing I’m good at,” he told Wayne. “Outside of this community, I am nobody. I have nothing to contribute. I can listen to the conversations people are having, and I’m like, ‘You know what? I have nothing to offer to participate in the conversation. I live a very limited life, I guess.
This extreme level of self-reversal could make batman and me a pretty depressing movie, if Maxwell didn’t deliver it with such cheerful aplomb, and if he weren’t in a stable, supportive, happy relationship, with friends who share his interests and can talk with a calm self-awareness and equal to embrace and explore their geeky sides. Even Maxwell’s candor about his hobby and its downsides seems like a boon to the movie: He understands why people might see him as “a loser,” but he also recognizes where his comfort zone lies and what she brings him. For a man who at some point wishes out loud that he could smack the little kid who once owned and wrote his name on one of the used collectibles in Maxwell’s collection, he seems remarkably well-adjusted.
All of this makes Wayne’s palpable distance from his subject matter stranger. It’s not aggressive, but its off-screen narration betrays open judgment and dismay about Maxwell’s life. And he specifically suggests that Maxwell’s self-analysis is too pat and prepared, and that he is deluding himself about the depths of his mania, given that he kept his collection rather than selling it. When Maxwell laments that he’s never seen what one of his toys looks like, because if he peeked at the contents it wouldn’t be considered “new in box”, Wayne buys some one himself and randomly unwraps it and slams it together for the camera, in a move that sounds like a jubilant sneer. A striking jab at the closing titles, with action figures slowly falling into a trash can one by one, feels like a pointed editorial commentary on Maxwell’s life and the film as a whole.
Darren “Dags” Maxwell with his collectionPhoto: Freestyle Digital Media
All this does batman and me feeling more condescending and censored than he should be. Wayne captures particularly telling schisms in the fandom, with Maxwell speaking judgmentally of cosplayers, and some cosplayers speaking equally judgmentally of collectors. (Lore Sjöberg’s classic Geek Hierarchy comes to mind, with its insight into subsets of fandom who consider themselves superior to others.) The film also tackles a host of interesting topics, including how merchandising has dramatically changed to exploit nostalgic nerds with money, instead of targeting children, and the way some people use purchased items as physical bulwarks against the accusation of not being “real” fans. And it really captures the tension in Maxwell, between the version of himself who intellectualizes, rationalizes and downplays his need for his bedroom full of untouched toys, and the version who still clings to it hungrily, 25 years after he quit. add more. .
But the audience most likely to be drawn to these topics is an audience that has already invested in some form of fandom, whether it’s Batman-related, collectibles, or something else entirely. This cozy little doc is likely to be too small and too specific for onlookers and gawkers, but it’s exactly the kind of mix of familiar interests and unfamiliar execution of those interests that might attract other fans. The Comic-Con crowd will find a recognizable mirror in batman and me, complete with a guided tour by one of their own, who accepted his extraordinary geek and what it means in his life. It’s just weird that Wayne speaks to this audience more than he speaks to them.
batman and me is available for rental or purchase via streaming on Amazon, Vuduand similar digital platforms.

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#Batman #takes #startling #obsessive #fan #director #judging

Batman and Me takes a startling look at an obsessive fan — and the director judging him

Documentary filmmaking has traditionally sparked many great philosophical clashes over method and intent, but one of the most common points of contention now feels like it may have gone the way of the buggy whip and the cell phone the size of a suitcase. In 1975, when the Maysles brothers published their sad and breathtaking mother-daughter portrait gray gardens, they have been widely accused of exploiting their oblivious subjects by befriending them and then publicly ridiculing them. Similar criticism was leveled at Chris Smith for his inadvertently hilarious 1999 doc American moviewhich presents independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt as an awkward amateur, simply by watching him work. But these days, that particular complaint seems to come up far less often, whether it’s because filmmakers are more sensitive to how their subjects might be perceived, or because it’s so common for people to expose their own lives. online that we are collectively beyond the idea that public visibility is invasive or inconvenient.
Michael Wayne’s Doc batman and me could revive the debate. His understated take on an obsessive collector of Batman props is only slightly torturous compared to Gray gardens. It unfolds with a fascinating specificity that goes far beyond the specifics of Batman and opens up many thoughts on the different ways and reasons people associate with different fandoms.
But Wayne’s slightly contradictory, even dismissive, attitude toward his subject matter is particularly off-putting, and seems designed to get viewers into a similar mindset. It sometimes feels like he’s nudging the audience in the ribs, with a “Get a load of this guy!” message – and in the process, possibly misunderstanding this audience, and why they might be watching.

Wayne first made contact with Australian collector Darren “Dags” Maxwell online, after browsing Maxwell’s self-deprecating webpage devoted to individual items in his surprisingly stuffed collection of Batman toys, promotional items and cool stuff. other derived products. Maxwell has invited Wayne into his home and into his life, and sits down with him for candid and in-depth conversations about how and why he ended up with an entire room in his house dedicated solely to Batman gear, which he pretends he doesn’t even want or don’t like. It’s a movie on a very small scale: Wayne interviews two of the most important people in Maxwell’s life, and he uses action figures to play out adorably cheeky flashback scenes of Maxwell interacting with his friends, family and the public. But above all, it is an intimate portrait that gives the impression of spending a few hours in the company of Maxwell.
Along the way, Maxwell tells some funny stories: he describes how he literally bought a shirt off a man’s back at a convention, and how he got revenge on an ex-girlfriend, first by eating the Batman cookies she gave him for his collection, then buying his own box to replace it. He also drops startling revelations about the depth of his mania for Batman merch: Among other things, he still stores 1980s Batman ice cream bars in his freezer, and he has a taped-closure milk tub in his fridge. , dedicated to an old chocolate Batmobile that he protects from blooming.
Other revelations cover what’s going on in the collector’s mindset. Maxwell describes the insurmountable urge to hoard things, no matter how good or useful they are. He reviews what got him into collecting in the first place, what turned collecting from a minor hobby to a vital goal, and what ended this phase of his life. He stopped buying new products in 1997 because he found Joel Schumacher batman and robin so off-putting: his entire collection focuses on all four Batman films from Tim Burton’s 1989 feature through batman and robin. Now it’s just a static museum. But when he was building this collection, it was his primary financial goal, ahead of everything but the basics of shelter and survival.
Maxwell describes her collecting phase as an attempt to buy her way into a community to make up for the holes in her life. He speaks with perfect candor about his troubled childhood, a lack of meaningful family ties, and a powerful need to impress fellow collectors and be seen as an authority, not on Batman, but on memorabilia. of Batman. He openly talks about how the fandom and his collection-obsessed circle of friends function as a sort of surrogate family where he could count on being seen as important and meaningful.
“The fandom and the sci-fi genre as a whole, that’s the only thing I’m good at,” he told Wayne. “Outside of this community, I am nobody. I have nothing to contribute. I can listen to the conversations people are having, and I’m like, ‘You know what? I have nothing to offer to participate in the conversation. I live a very limited life, I guess.
This extreme level of self-reversal could make batman and me a pretty depressing movie, if Maxwell didn’t deliver it with such cheerful aplomb, and if he weren’t in a stable, supportive, happy relationship, with friends who share his interests and can talk with a calm self-awareness and equal to embrace and explore their geeky sides. Even Maxwell’s candor about his hobby and its downsides seems like a boon to the movie: He understands why people might see him as “a loser,” but he also recognizes where his comfort zone lies and what she brings him. For a man who at some point wishes out loud that he could smack the little kid who once owned and wrote his name on one of the used collectibles in Maxwell’s collection, he seems remarkably well-adjusted.
All of this makes Wayne’s palpable distance from his subject matter stranger. It’s not aggressive, but its off-screen narration betrays open judgment and dismay about Maxwell’s life. And he specifically suggests that Maxwell’s self-analysis is too pat and prepared, and that he is deluding himself about the depths of his mania, given that he kept his collection rather than selling it. When Maxwell laments that he’s never seen what one of his toys looks like, because if he peeked at the contents it wouldn’t be considered “new in box”, Wayne buys some one himself and randomly unwraps it and slams it together for the camera, in a move that sounds like a jubilant sneer. A striking jab at the closing titles, with action figures slowly falling into a trash can one by one, feels like a pointed editorial commentary on Maxwell’s life and the film as a whole.
Darren “Dags” Maxwell with his collectionPhoto: Freestyle Digital Media
All this does batman and me feeling more condescending and censored than he should be. Wayne captures particularly telling schisms in the fandom, with Maxwell speaking judgmentally of cosplayers, and some cosplayers speaking equally judgmentally of collectors. (Lore Sjöberg’s classic Geek Hierarchy comes to mind, with its insight into subsets of fandom who consider themselves superior to others.) The film also tackles a host of interesting topics, including how merchandising has dramatically changed to exploit nostalgic nerds with money, instead of targeting children, and the way some people use purchased items as physical bulwarks against the accusation of not being “real” fans. And it really captures the tension in Maxwell, between the version of himself who intellectualizes, rationalizes and downplays his need for his bedroom full of untouched toys, and the version who still clings to it hungrily, 25 years after he quit. add more. .
But the audience most likely to be drawn to these topics is an audience that has already invested in some form of fandom, whether it’s Batman-related, collectibles, or something else entirely. This cozy little doc is likely to be too small and too specific for onlookers and gawkers, but it’s exactly the kind of mix of familiar interests and unfamiliar execution of those interests that might attract other fans. The Comic-Con crowd will find a recognizable mirror in batman and me, complete with a guided tour by one of their own, who accepted his extraordinary geek and what it means in his life. It’s just weird that Wayne speaks to this audience more than he speaks to them.
batman and me is available for rental or purchase via streaming on Amazon, Vuduand similar digital platforms.

Register to receive the newsletter
Patch NotesA weekly roundup of Polygon’s best stuff

One more thing!
Please check your email to find a confirmation email and follow the steps to confirm your humanity.

E-mail (mandatory)

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European Users agree to the Data Transfer Policy.
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#Batman #takes #startling #obsessive #fan #director #judging