This is a weird headline. Ok the guy really is a Batman researcher. I’m not sure why it was so important to mention that the Batman co-creator’s son was gay though, unless that was somehow relevant to the creation process or his life experience or something.
It’s important from a narrative standpoint in telling his own story of researching this; the point of these talks is much less about teaching kids the history of the co-creator of Batman than it is telling the story of the researcher and writer who put that history together. The point is to hopefully inspire a few kids to go down a similar path themselves.
It was presumed, since Bill Finger’s only child was a gay man who died thirty years ago, that no heir to his estate existed. The researcher discovering that Bill had a granddaughter would lose its impact without the knowledge that his only child was gay.
Finger died in obscurity in 1974, with artist Bob Kane credited as Batman’s only creator. Finger’s only child was a son, Fred Finger, who was gay and died in 1992 at age 43 of AIDS complications. Bill Finger was presumed to have no living heirs, meaning there was no one to press DC Comics to acknowledge Finger’s work.
But Nobleman discovered Fred Finger had a daughter, Athena Finger. That, he said, is a showcase moment of the presentation he estimates he has given 1,000 times at schools.
“It’s the biggest twist of the story, and it’s usually when I get the most gasps,” Nobleman said. “It’s just a totally record-scratch moment.”
Nobleman’s research helped push DC Comics into reaching a deal with Athena Finger in 2015 to acknowledge her grandfather and Kane as co-creators. That led to the documentary “Batman & Bill,” featuring Nobleman.
The same reason famous women inventors and inventors of color are often singled out to us in gradeschool.
Because history was written almost exclusively by (or at least authored by if they had others write it) heterosexual Caucasian men who largely wrote themselves as the victors of every war, inventor of anything they could take credit for, etc.
A child in that biased vacuum might come to the incorrect conclusion that straight Caucasian men are the best and the brightest rather than the truth: that they’re merely the writers of their own historical press releases.
Gay people have invented, authored, and created for all of human history, largely under the guise of being straight lest they be shunned and cast out of halls of power.
That’s why it’s important to demonstrate to children that creation comes from people who look like and have similar identities to themselves. Imagine being a 13 year old realizing you’re gay and remembering that civilization was created largely by straight people who largely also chose to make gay people’s lives living hells, if they let them live at all.
The point is the co-creator only had one son who was gay and had died in the 90s, so has no living heir to fight for his recognition. By surprise twist, his gay son had a daughter! That’s the whole thing. That’s why it’s interesting.
Oh god, the humanity, the children!!
His son would’ve been his only heir eligible to receive compensation if DC ever made things right, but he died young (from AIDS) and never had any children himself (because he was gay).
Edif: He did have a child! Wow!
Wow!
And this reaction is precisely the reason why the son being gay is a key point of the talk (it’s the twist of the story, and Finger’s gay son having a daughter who could demand restitution was the only reason DC eventually recognised him as co-creator!), and why removing that fact from the talk wouldn’t just be homophobic, but also profoundly stupid (not that being homophobic isn’t profoundly stupid already, of course, but this makes it stupidity squared).
Ok so they didn’t think the son had an heir but he actually did, I still am not sure that the son’s sexual orientation is that important in a story about Batman to elementary school kids.
It’s not a story about Batman. It’s a story about the creation of Batman. That’s why it’s important.
Why are straight white people the only people who don’t need a plot justification to exist?
Non-straight here: It would be just as weird to mention heterosexual people being straight when it’s irrelevant to the conversation, IMO. If you’re making a point to mention the person’s sexuality, there should be a reason for it.
In this case, it did have that. He was known to be gay, but turned out to have a daughter that no one knew about.
But we absolutely see backlash of the type of “why does he have to be gay” in response to something as simple as two men holding hands, or other things that would never be seen as “making a point to mention someone’s sexuality” if that sexuality is straight. I’m generalizing away from this particular example and addressing the idea that anything that isn’t cishet is abnormal and requires justification.
I think the question is why/how the sexual orientation is relevant. The same as skin color etc, that seems irrelevant to me.
In this specific case what makes the discovery of a grandaughter of the author a massive surprise and plot twist is that her father and only child of the author was gay. Had he not been so, expectations on the existance of a living descendant of the author might have been different.
That’s what makes his sexual orientation be relevant in this case: it explains why nobody expected there would be living descendants of the author and why her discovery was such a massive plot twist.
Had her father been, for example, a catolic priest (quite independently of sexual orientation), that information would’ve been relevant in just the same way and for the same reasons.
Whilst I agree that people’s sexual orientation is irrelevant in most stories that aren’t about romance (and no matter which way it goes, by the way), in this specific case it absolutelly is relevant to explain the behaviour and expectations of other participants in the story up to the point when the grandaughter was discovered.
In America, race and sexuality being irrelevant is a privilege of straight white men. When someone has done you violence because of who you are, you’ll spend every second of the rest of your life with who you are and how likely the people around you are to try to kill you over it in the forefront of your mind. When I, as a queer person, walk into a room I immediately sort everyone in the room into threats, allies, and people who will just stand off to the side because experience has taught me that if I don’t some people will beat the shit out of me and others will tell me that I deserve it for “being a f*g about things”. Ask your black friend, or your gay friend, or your woman friend. I guarantee you every one of them is more on guard than you because race, gender and sexual orientation will never be irrelevant to them.
