Our guest tonight is a man, known to move in mysterious ways, at the same time in the very center and the very fringe of society, deceptive yet honest, violent yet humanitarian, a man of masks, living out his chosen roles, thus fulfilling his destiny. Ladies and gentleman, here he comes … Batman! – give him a hand!!

So, Batman, what are your opinion on this new fenomenon in the cultural arena – live-action role-playing?

From my perspective it is interesting to note that such a great amount of people are trying out so many different roles and identities. As you all know, I have been playing a role most of my life, and that experience in itself, regardless of what I’ve done in that role, has given me fascinating insights into the human nature. In his book The Trip, Tom Wolfe pictures Ken Kesey as talking about the Experience – he was of course talking about psychedelic drugs -– but the pattern is the same: either you have gotten the experience or you haven’t. The larp experience is of the same kind, it’s something you must find out for yourself.

It’s actually impossible to say which of my roles are the ”genuine me”, Batman or Bruce Wayne. In some ways Bruce Wayne is just a likeable persona that I put on in order to move freely among the upper echelons of society, and it might be that the Batman persona is closer to my psychological reality, whatever that is. The experience I am talking about is the realization that we’re all playing these roles all the time, and that we have a freedom to choose among identities that are much greater than we are led to believe.

When I think of the persons I work with, confront or fight, I see roles. Commissioner Gordon, Robin, The Catwoman, The Joker, we are all playing roles in a drama that is much bigger than any of us. At the same time we play our individual roles, you may as well say that we are mutually dependent on each other; no crime, no Batman, and vice versa: if there was no Batman, a lot of criminal things would never come to pass. This is one of the laws of role-playing: any role carries within itself all the roles necessary to play out the bigger drama. Take away the Wolf and nobody would ever hear about Little Red Ridinghood.

So when I look at larps, what I see is people who either have realized that the world is made up of roles, and now are trying them out (i.e. having got the experience), or people who sooner or later – by larping – will come to the same realization (will get the experience).

You mean larping is like a drug?

Please, try to be serious. That is not what I said, and I’m not going to repeat myself for your convenience.

What makes larping a powerful tool for insight is that you can live at several levels of reality at the same time. Once you have realized that you can exist in one role and also observe your actions from the viewpoint of another role, that insight spills over into daily life. It makes you more perceptive of which ”You” is acting in a given moment, thus making it easier to understand what drives you to behave the way you do, seeing yourself and your motives, conscious or subconsious, in a clearer light.

You mean larping as therapy then?

Yeah, you could say that, although I think of it as more of self-discovery, a method to find out who you are and why.

Are you not using rather big words for something that’s just an advanced form of ”cobboys and injuns”?

Well, do you really think kids’ playing is just for fun? The reason for playing is just what I said – to discover how to hande this world they have been forced into, which is the same as discovering who you are.

But kids don’t play with real guns, putting their lives at risk the way you do. You can’t compare your life as Batman with larpers’ role-playing.

Bullshit. Have you ever been hit by a stray bullet coming out of the comics where the gangsters fire in all directions? What you fail to grasp here is that there are no real bullets, neither in a larp, nor in the comics. You remember Matrix II : ”There is no spoon.” Which means that you can do anything. It’s the experience that counts. Books and films give you the possibility to experience all kinds of situations, if only in your mind. Larps put you one step closer to the real thing, while keeping you out of harm’s way. You engage not only your mind, but the whole body, the complete organism. Sorrow, joy, hate, love, you name it, it’s all there, and to the brain it’s no difference if it’s play or not. If it’s believable, it’s real. ”Real” is just a term that means ”utterly believable”. Otherwise there would be no point in having literature or any other art forms – it’s all about giving access to other lives, other experiences that you usually don’t get in your daily life.

There is a reason why my character – the Batman – is important to lots of people. The reason is that I have such traits that are necessary for being a god. I am human – and I am endowed with special capabilities that are beyond human reach. True, in the Batman mythos – the stories that are told about Batman – I am supposed to be nothing but an ordinary man, no superpowers, only stronger, faster smarter. But the things Batman does can actually not be done by ordinary humans. It’s like the story of Jesus – he too is portraited as a normal guy, a carpenter’s son – only more so. Also, if you go up one meta-level and look at the comics as chronicles, then you realize that Batman is immortal – how many years have I been of the same age – 50?

In the case of Robin it’s even more evident, because he actually dies in the comics, not once, but several times. Then he is reborn again because there’s a demand for him, a need for him. In the same way that goes for our enemies too, some of them die sometimes, and they always come back, sooner or later.

Now here’s the interesting thing: larpers are like that too. A larp character may die in a game and come back in another, just because the player, or the story, or the organizer deems it good or necessary to have that character living in the next game.

It has often been said that larpers are like gods: they create New Reality. So here we have another way to be like a god – immortality. The brain is a stupid animal; it sees no difference between input and input. It’s all nerve cells signalling to each other, and if the input comes from the eyes or any other sense organ, or from dreams or hallucinations or fantasies – it’s all the same to the brain: signals between nerve cells. When you enact immortality, either by playing an immortal character, like a god, demon, angel, archmage, elven king or whatever, or by reviving a dead character, there is only one thing that keeps you from experiencing that as reality – your conviction that it is not so. You have many nerve cells constantly sending a strong message: it’s just a story, a game of pretense, an as-if. If you could block that message, you would be convinced, no, thats the wrong word since it implicates doubt, you would experience immortality in the same way angels do it.

I’m not sure I follow you there … do you say that you are immortal?

I am not immortal, Batman is. I have died a couple of times in the comics, but not until the production of Batman comics stops will I be dead. Even that is not enough, as long as there are copies of magazines or films which people can read and watch, I will be alive. Litte Red Ridinghood never dies as long as somebody reads her story.

What about people using larp as a pretext for acting out in anti-social ways? I mean, it’s not farfetched to say that you – Batman – are constantly looking for reasons to take revenge on the world for the death of your parents. Could it not be that larpers do the same, giving free rein to neurotic or pathologic urges?

And that’s not happening in the ”real world”? Actually I think you find more of anti-social behavior and pathologic urges in the daily news – with deadly consequences to boot – than you do in an ordinary larp.

As regards my reactions to the death of my parents, there’s a world of difference between being driven to murderous acts by unconscious motives, as in the case of Joker, and being aware of such motivations and harnessing their energy, using it to fight evil, as in my case. The Batman persona can rightly be said to fulfill two objectives – one, to create and express that awareness, and two, to utilize it.

By refusing to identify with just one aspect of my personality, I have been forced to consider my motivations, reading Batman’s acts in the light of Bruce Wayne, and at the same time seeing Bruce Wayne as a necessary balance to Batman. The Joker, on the other hand, is what you may call a ”whole” person – there’s nothing but Joker in him – thus making him blind to himself. He is almost a force of nature, whilst Batman keeps his essential humanity intact.

Now, to return to the question of larpers giving free rein to their darker impulses – if you cross the line between ludic play and real actions in a larp, you break the rules of the game and will be taken to task, in one way or another, by the players or the organizers.

If you’re asking if larping would encourage uncouth behavior in general, I would suggest you think of army exercises. (The army’s battle training are just rather big and well-organized larps.) If you are of the opinion that the army’s training turn out homicidal killers – which is a valid concern – then I would say that larps are a more playful and joyous way to experience the whole range of human life, including the dark sides. Kids ar not playing Cops and Robbers in order to become cops and robbers. If you do not think that army training produces killers, then the whole question is moot.

What would you say if someone organized ”Batman – the larp”?

Oh, I would love it! Considered the many hundreds of games that are played each year all over the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already done. That’s actually the whole point of larping, to get another person’s perspective, and if you get the chance to see yourself as others see you, to meet your Doppelgänger, that’s an opportunity I think everone should jump to. I would really like to participate in such a game, especially if I get to play against the Batman, maybe as the Joker or any other of my enemies.

Do you find it hard to keep your roles apart, does the Batman ”bleed” into Bruce Wayne or vice versa?

There are no easy answers to that question, since both roles also feed into each other. Batman needs Bruce Wayne in order to keep his feet on the ground – from the rooftops it’s easy to lose sight of the individual person. If you see people as ants long enough, it’s easy to start treating them as ants. Also, when would Batman have the time to pick up girls? That’s for Bruce Wayne to do.

On the other hand Bruce Wayne also needs to be brought to base, sort of. He’s socializing with the top of society, playing the playboy, wheeling and dealing with big buck business. At that level of society there are many superficial phonies with shark teeth behind shallow smiles. The crooks may be crooked, but they’re straight in a way that many straight people are not. If they want you dead, they don’t try to be nice about it.

As a last word, what advice would you give larpers of today and tomorrow?

”Go on!” The more facets of the human condition you explore, the better it is. I have the feeling that many young folks (of all ages) is waiting for some signal flashing through the sky, like the Batman signal, telling them where and when they are needed. Remember then that I put that signal there myself. Likewise you have to decide for yourself what your signal is. If you wait for it, you won’t get any other signal than what this society thinks is best for business. Then you will not be agents of change, just agents for the powers that be, and we all know where they have brought us – don’t we?

Thanks a lot for coming here and good luck with your work in the future. Ladies and gentlemen – tonight you have heard him – the Batman!
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