There’s a very big problem at the heart of Gotham City. Something that affects almost every Batman story we’ve seen since 1940. It’s bigger than Batman’s wealth, or the ethics of capital punishment. And it’s one we rarely ever seen honestly, earnestly addressed. We’re referring to the Arkham Problem.
In order to keep Batman’s persistent foes as colorful, dramatic and memorable as he is, a pattern emerged very early in the series’ history of pathological compulsion for thematic crime. The Joker, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, Two-Face—all of them, and many more, have been consistently portrayed as mentally imbalanced to explain an innate, unchangeable evil that emanates from within.
The result of this pattern is a troubling one for which the institution of Arkham Asylum, where the collection of Batman’s enemies are kept between issues, has come to stand as a towering gothic symbol since the 1970s. It’s the idea that “evil” is a state of mind. That those who don’t fall within neurotypical bounds are to be feared, villainized and shunted to the edges of society.
HBO’s The Penguinis not interested in feeding the idea that evil is an inherent state of mind. It absolves no one of their own choices, while demonstrating that when we cast the most vulnerable among us as monsters, we shape our own greatest fears. No one exemplifies this more than Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone in episode four, “Cent’anni”—an excruciating account of how the only escape from social villainization is to confirm it.
When we first encounter Sofia in the debut episode of The Penguin, she dominates the room with a suffocating presence. She’s spoken of in whispers as “The Hangman,” a volatile serial killer locked away, freed now to fill the vacuum of her father’s absence. She proves her bona fides in that same episode with the graphic torture of a nude Oz Cobb. Although more slight in appearance than her comic book counterpart from Batman: Dark Victory,Sofia’s sadism looms gigantic.
Slowly, though, we learn the truth: Sofia never killed those women. By both reputation and demeanor, it was her own father who made her into the Hangman. And for his involvement in her betrayal, and with Carmine Falcone no longer available to confront, it’s Oz who must bear the brunt of Sofia’s wrath.
We spoke to Cristin Milioti and showrunner Lauren LeFranc at New York Comic Con about the associations of mental illness with Batman’s rogues gallery, especially as we see in Sofia.
“You get to see how Sofia’s driven mad,” Milioti said. “And how the world can drive someone mad, and how pain can drive people to do terrible things. I think that’s why I’ve always loved Batman. I’ve always felt that the villains of the world, and Batman himself, they’re attempting to make sense of these horrible things that have happened to them. And it comes out in these larger-than-life ways. I’ve always felt there was a fine line between Bruce Wayne sewing a leather cape in his giant garage and the Riddler making his costume. They’re of the same. And obviously, that’s been explored in all the films, but what [Lauren LeFranc] does so brilliantly is she shows how someone can be broken.
“I guess in the [Nicholson] Joker, you see him sort of go slowly mad. The Heath Ledger Joker, his past is a mystery, which is also what’s delightful about it. So, it kind of shifts around a bit, but I love that we got the opportunity in this to show someone’s full descent. You understand the villainy.”
While Cristin Milioti’s love for Gotham shines through her own assessment of Batman and his enemies, Lauren LeFranc is upfront in addressing the Arkham Problem.
“I love comic books, and I’d grown up reading them,” LeFranc said. “But there are things when you look back where you’re like, ‘That’s unfortunate.’ ‘That’s a terrible trope.’ Or, ‘That’s deeply offensive.’ We can do better, especially when it comes to our villains. It’s easy to say someone’s ‘mentally unwell’ in broad terms, and therefore, they’re murderers. That’s something we had to contend with in The Penguin—a lot of these characters are drawn with giant scars on their faces, or Oz has a disability, and some depictions suggest that’s why he maybe acts out or does what he does.
“To me, we cannot go down that path. We’re more evolved as a society than that. Oz is who he is because of who he is as a man. We tried to showcase all these different sides of him. It has nothing to do with the fact that he has a club foot. That is a part of who he is, certainly, and there is a level of pain he lives with, but that is not why he’s ambitious. That is not why he’s a narcissist. That’s separate from that.”
In terms of Arkham itself, LeFranc offered up some additional thoughts.
“Obviously, we take place in Gotham City, there’s a certain level where we’re a comic book show,” she shared. “There’s a certain quality that you want to embrace. But, at the same time, I think there’s room to showcase mental illness, and to show it’s much more complicated than it has been depicted previously. So, we’re trying for that, certainly, and we’re very aware of it.”
Six episodes into The Penguin’s eight episode run, it’s certainly difficult to ignore. And as we approach the end of this climb to the social top and descent to a moral bottom, it’s only a matter of weeks until the rest of the pieces of these characters’ stories fall into place. Villainy is selfish, supervillainy is a reaction. And perhaps, as “Cent’anni” shows us, the solution to the Arkham Problem is to acknowledge it for what it is: an engine that processes the labels we place on others, until they can never be removed again.
The Penguin airs on HBO and is now streaming on Max. Look for new episodes every Sunday.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly “Ask the Question” column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe, Cristin Milioti and Lauren LeFranc and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
[[{“value”:”There’s a very big problem at the heart of Gotham City. Something that affects almost every Batman story we’ve seen since 1940. It’s bigger than Batman’s wealth, or the ethics of capital punishment. And it’s one we rarely ever seen honestly, earnestly addressed. We’re referring to the Arkham Problem.
In order to keep Batman’s persistent foes as colorful, dramatic and memorable as he is, a pattern emerged very early in the series’ history of pathological compulsion for thematic crime. The Joker, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, Two-Face—all of them, and many more, have been consistently portrayed as mentally imbalanced to explain an innate, unchangeable evil that emanates from within.
The result of this pattern is a troubling one for which the institution of Arkham Asylum, where the collection of Batman’s enemies are kept between issues, has come to stand as a towering gothic symbol since the 1970s. It’s the idea that “evil” is a state of mind. That those who don’t fall within neurotypical bounds are to be feared, villainized and shunted to the edges of society.
HBO’s The Penguinis not interested in feeding the idea that evil is an inherent state of mind. It absolves no one of their own choices, while demonstrating that when we cast the most vulnerable among us as monsters, we shape our own greatest fears. No one exemplifies this more than Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone in episode four, “Cent’anni”—an excruciating account of how the only escape from social villainization is to confirm it.
When we first encounter Sofia in the debut episode of The Penguin, she dominates the room with a suffocating presence. She’s spoken of in whispers as “The Hangman,” a volatile serial killer locked away, freed now to fill the vacuum of her father’s absence. She proves her bona fides in that same episode with the graphic torture of a nude Oz Cobb. Although more slight in appearance than her comic book counterpart from Batman: Dark Victory,Sofia’s sadism looms gigantic.
Slowly, though, we learn the truth: Sofia never killed those women. By both reputation and demeanor, it was her own father who made her into the Hangman. And for his involvement in her betrayal, and with Carmine Falcone no longer available to confront, it’s Oz who must bear the brunt of Sofia’s wrath.
We spoke to Cristin Milioti and showrunner Lauren LeFranc at New York Comic Con about the associations of mental illness with Batman’s rogues gallery, especially as we see in Sofia.
“You get to see how Sofia’s driven mad,” Milioti said. “And how the world can drive someone mad, and how pain can drive people to do terrible things. I think that’s why I’ve always loved Batman. I’ve always felt that the villains of the world, and Batman himself, they’re attempting to make sense of these horrible things that have happened to them. And it comes out in these larger-than-life ways. I’ve always felt there was a fine line between Bruce Wayne sewing a leather cape in his giant garage and the Riddler making his costume. They’re of the same. And obviously, that’s been explored in all the films, but what [Lauren LeFranc] does so brilliantly is she shows how someone can be broken.
“I guess in the [Nicholson] Joker, you see him sort of go slowly mad. The Heath Ledger Joker, his past is a mystery, which is also what’s delightful about it. So, it kind of shifts around a bit, but I love that we got the opportunity in this to show someone’s full descent. You understand the villainy.”
While Cristin Milioti’s love for Gotham shines through her own assessment of Batman and his enemies, Lauren LeFranc is upfront in addressing the Arkham Problem.
“I love comic books, and I’d grown up reading them,” LeFranc said. “But there are things when you look back where you’re like, ‘That’s unfortunate.’ ‘That’s a terrible trope.’ Or, ‘That’s deeply offensive.’ We can do better, especially when it comes to our villains. It’s easy to say someone’s ‘mentally unwell’ in broad terms, and therefore, they’re murderers. That’s something we had to contend with in The Penguin—a lot of these characters are drawn with giant scars on their faces, or Oz has a disability, and some depictions suggest that’s why he maybe acts out or does what he does.
“To me, we cannot go down that path. We’re more evolved as a society than that. Oz is who he is because of who he is as a man. We tried to showcase all these different sides of him. It has nothing to do with the fact that he has a club foot. That is a part of who he is, certainly, and there is a level of pain he lives with, but that is not why he’s ambitious. That is not why he’s a narcissist. That’s separate from that.”
In terms of Arkham itself, LeFranc offered up some additional thoughts.
“Obviously, we take place in Gotham City, there’s a certain level where we’re a comic book show,” she shared. “There’s a certain quality that you want to embrace. But, at the same time, I think there’s room to showcase mental illness, and to show it’s much more complicated than it has been depicted previously. So, we’re trying for that, certainly, and we’re very aware of it.”
Six episodes into The Penguin’s eight episode run, it’s certainly difficult to ignore. And as we approach the end of this climb to the social top and descent to a moral bottom, it’s only a matter of weeks until the rest of the pieces of these characters’ stories fall into place. Villainy is selfish, supervillainy is a reaction. And perhaps, as “Cent’anni” shows us, the solution to the Arkham Problem is to acknowledge it for what it is: an engine that processes the labels we place on others, until they can never be removed again.
The Penguin airs on HBO and is now streaming on Max. Look for new episodes every Sunday.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly “Ask the Question” column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe, Cristin Milioti and Lauren LeFranc and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.”}]]
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