Super Villains of Gotham Group Therapy Session

By Slam New Orleans

All Dear Batman,

Riddler Who wears a green leotard stitched with questions?

Me, the Riddler,

asking questions is how I leave my mark

Penguin My name is NOT Oswald Cobblepot

It’s Penguin.

I take the mundane and add a twist of the insane.

This ain’t your daddy’s umbrella -

It’s a deadly weapon.

Bane I am the Bane of your existence

the blackness cast over your shadow

You, oh Dark Knight, dress the part

I AM the heart of darkness

Mr. Freeze You know me as Mr. Freeze,

but my parents called me Victor

until they sent me to boarding school

and stopped calling me altogether.

Said I wasn’t stable enough to live in their house

All Batman, do you know how that feels?

Penguin Being abandoned by your family.

Left like Moses to float downriver.

Mr. Freeze My heart left frigid long before the cryogenics accident that keeps me locked in this suit.

All Driven to insanity

Riddler My father dragged my battered body across concrete floors

with my blood trails forming the shapes of questions marks

Bane Do you know what it is

to be raised in a prison?

You mask your fears

to keep the bad guys at bay

All we are not that different batman

Riddler we both could’ve been detectives

but children that grow up broken

never grow out of dreams that only come true in comic books

Mr. Freeze I could’ve been a Nobel Prize winner,
instead I turned a cold shoulder to the world.

Bane I could have been a counselor, guiding wayward youth

but we hostages of childhood trauma often

get lost in our own maze of vengeance

Penguin I could have been mayor of these Gotham streets

But I kept slipping on the black ice of rejection.

So I learned to waddle.

While you learned to glide.

We both have wings

But some birds never fly.

All Not everyone was born with a bat shaped spoon in their mouth

Riddler Riddle me this

What do you call a billionaire with abandonment issues that adorns a mask and cape?

A hero or Bruce Wayne?

All Dear Batman, We are already gone

B & R We are all broken mirrors reflecting each other’s missing parts

F & P Still compensating for the ugly shards of our childhoods

Penguin Fending off the stench of the sewers

Riddler Questioning God

All Creating terror that mirrors the nightmares of our youth

F & R There are children like us in every city

P & B Who suffer through darker nights than you.

Riddler The next...

Riddler

Mr. Freeze Mr. Freeze
Penguin Penguin
Bane Bane

F & R But what if abused children weren’t typecast as villains?

Penguin What if our “flaws” had been embraced?

F, R & B You try to save people from us

F, P, & B But what if we'd been saved in the first place?

Bane You have 1000 gadgets to heal this blood-drenched city

R & P But they all amount to band-aids

All Dear Batman,

Instead of chasing broken men

Fix the city
That broke them

Socratic Seminar Questions

Opening Question:What word, phrase or line is the most significant? (Round Robin) Why? (Open dialogue)

Suggested Core Questions:

Note: The goal isn't necessarily that you ask each one of these questions. It's important to over-prepare for a student-centered discussion. It's similarly important to allow students to direct the conversation. For this reason, you may jump around from question to question depending on the nature of the student discussion.

1.  How do the poets present their dialogue in comparison to other poems you have read? What is the impact on you as a reader/ viewer?

2.  What seems to be the poets message in lines 14-18? Mr. Freeze says, "You know me as Mr. Freeze," and ends with, "I wasn't stable enough to live in thier house."

3.  What is the meaning of the simile used by Penguin in lines 20-21?

4.  Rhetorical questions are used throughout the poem, what is their purpose?

5.  Lines 32-45 describe "what could have been" for the Super Villains. What is the impact of repetition of this phrase?

6.  What is the meaning of the metaphor Penguin uses in lines 42-45?

7.  How do the speakers relate their lives to Batman's?

8.  There are moments in the performance where the poets speak all at once, or two or three at a time. What effect does this presentation have on you as you watch the performance?

9.  What is meant in lines 57-58, "there are children like us in every city?"

10.  What is the impact of the last 4 lines of the poem?

Closing Questions:

1.  How does this poem challenge your thinking around popular heroes like Batman?

2.  What commentary do you think Slam New Orleansis trying to make on our society?