How Batman Beyond accurately predicted the future

"Become your dream" - James De La Vega

I know this is kind of straying away from the whole "life lessons" theme, but I figure I could spice things up while keeping with it, although seemingly off-topic.

I believe that we're always responsible for our own actions, and that the world of the present is a result of how much we contribute to it (or don't contribute to it). Now that I'm older, I see things though a different perspective. For example, as a kid I used to love the cartoon Batman Beyond. It was an alternate world that's supposed to be in the future where it had changed greatly, yet you can tell that it's still the same world of Gotham City because it still has the underpinnings of any present-day metropolis. It makes for great fiction, but now more than 10 years have passed since that cartoon premiered. Who would've known that while it was fiction, it basically predicted what was going to happen to the world in the future of today. The intro gives you a good feel about the happenings of the future.

Basically the whole premise of the series is that while society is advancing, it's basically going to hell with the problems of greed, abuse of power, and corruption. The series starts out with the unforeseen "retiring" of Batman (a very entertaining, but crazy milestone that you can see here) and then proceed to show a life without Batman. Twenty years later, the viewer is introduced to Terry McGinnis, who's a troubled high school teenager trying to make amends in his life. Through the out-of-control crime of the current city and the chance meeting of Bruce Wayne (the original Batman), he takes on the mantle of the new Batman and goes to clean up Gotham City so it can be restored to its former glory. It really is a strange case of life imitating art, and here's the ways how Batman Beyond foretold the future:

1) White collar crime - One huge protagonist that always seems to get in the way of Batman is Derek Powers, who's portrayed in the series as a ruthless corporate shark who is hell bent on usurping power any chance he can get and making millions in the process. Of course, not everything he does in order to obtain money and power is actually moral or even legal. He does things from manufacturing nerve gas to contract killings of his enemies to the destruction of historic land. Of course, he never gets in trouble with the law because he basically has the police bought, so he's willing to do whatever it takes to expand his corporate empire. Unfortunately, this is actually happening in real life as well.

JP Morgan Chase is one of the "too big to fail" banks that were involved in the stock market crash of 2008 that led to the Great Recession. Through its history, it's made a living through unfair practices and had its role in the derivative speculation that eventually crashed the world markets, yet made millions for Chase. After Occupy Wall Street started (a movement demanding justice for the illegal practices of Chase and other "big banks"), a lot of protesters were arrested by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) simply for speaking or demonstrating against Chase bank (which of course is not a crime per the First Amendment). A few days later, Chase offers a $4.6 million grant to the NYPD for their "service," which might as well be a bribe in plain view. While Chase keeps on being sued by the SEC for illegal transactions and they continue to lose money without being able to account for it, they have yet to be prosecuted for any wrong doing.

2) The Great Recession - Speaking of the Great Recession, Batman Beyond hints at one, especially in the episode "Armory." The episode starts with Jim Tate, a guy who's a rich defense engineer with invaluable skills, only to be laid-off by Derek Powers from his high-paying job. While he gets mad because Powers wants to get someone cheaper and therefore horde more profits for himself (see #1), he feels like he can get a job with great pay easily with his skill and experience. Unfortunately, the economic outlook makes that difficult for him. He applied for many jobs, but people give him excuses like "sorry, were cutting back" or "hey, I'm even lucky to have a job." Seeing that he needs money for his high cost of living complete with designer marble remodeling for the home and new luxury cars, he starts turning to crime.

In spite of the "improving economy," people continue to lose jobs and receive less pay. The worse part is that this is leading to record levels of poverty and the disappearance of the middle class. Also, recessions have been known for the rising of crime rates.

3) Laser weapons - You see everyone in Batman Beyond that own projectile weapons shoot off laser guns instead of regular bullet-loading guns. However, laser weapons do exist and regular laser weapons are planned for use by the Navy in the year 2014.

4) For-profit correctional facilities (that try to criminalize people for money) - In the episode “The Last Resort,” Terry is confronted with a problem. All of the children in his high school keep inexplicably disappearing. It turns out that they’re being sent by their parents to a rehabilitation clinic for troubled children, headed by Dr. Wheeler. In an advertisement for his clinic, he mentions how his clinic is “expensive” but at the same time reminds parents of their liability for their children’s criminal acts due to new accountability laws. The last straw happens when Chelsea, a friend of Terry’s that’s not known to cause trouble, is sent to the clinic right after she sends an e-mail to the school principal protesting the fact that the school is nearly empty because the clinic is taking all the students. After Chelsea’s unaccounted disappearance from the school, Terry goes and investigates the clinic.

Terry suits up as Batman and upon further investigation, he finds that the clinic is not as advertised for “rehabilitation.” Instead, he finds that the “troubled children” are being subject to cruel conditions, such as having to stands hours on end in “class” while Dr. Wheeler yells at them about how worthless they are. Anyone who resists his conditioning is sent to ISO, or solitary confinement in a chamber where all feeling and sound is blocked out.

Afterwards, Terry goes back to the clinic (not as Batman) to gather evidence on the clinic’s abuse on the teens. He poses as a visitor for Chelsea to get inside, but when he arrives, security tells him Chelsea canceled the meeting and they will not let him in. However, Terry manages to sneak in once the guards are distracted. He then finds Chelsea, who was told Terry was the one who canceled. Terry uses a camera he managed to sneak in past security to document the mistreatment the students go through. While Terry initially gets caught with the evidence, he manages to escape while the police become privy of the clinic’s misdeeds. This whole story about criminalizing innocent teens to make money makes for fascinating fiction, until you realize that this is actually happening.

Mark Ciavarella Jr. was a judge in the county of Luzerne in the state of Pennsylvania presiding over juvenile court until he and fellow judge Michael Conahan were indicted as co-conspirators for a “cash for kids” scheme. The two judges would basically impose harsh jail sentences to juvenile offenders in exchange for bribes that have totaled in the millions, as it just so happened that the prison complexes used were run by PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care, two for-profit companies that stood to make more profits as more kids were sent to jail. The bribes were given to ensure that the judges would impose harsh sentences to even innocent kids so that the jails could be used. Fortunately, many of the children's sentences were vacated, but the fact that for-profit prisons exist create a demand for prisoners, much like this instance shows here.

5) The popularity of the Internet - Throughout all of Batman Beyond, you see so many uses of the Internet. Remember that this was back in 2000, when the Internet was still fairly new. It wasn't brand spanking new, but it had yet to grab a real hold on potential users. This was back then when broadband was just starting to be developed and take off as a practical technology, AOL was the king of the Internet and they were virtually the only option to access the Web, and you didn't have social networking. Instead, you had chatrooms (a/s/l?). Who would've known the producers of the cartoon would get this right once more. You see people e-mailing, like when Chelsea denounces her school principal for sending kids away for no good reason while posting her opinion online at times for her peers to see, which can be seen as a prototype for social networking. You see people such as Terry or his computer-genius friend Maxine do Web research or system hacking to find information on certain people, like in the episode "Hidden Agenda." You see webcasts like in the episode "Ace in the Hole," where people running an illegal dog-fighting ring prepare to broadcast the fight to countless people watching at their computers.

While that world and this world we live in have advanced greatly, there's still many things that need to be changed. When art that's supposed to reflect a techno-punk dystopia becomes life, I can't help but be concerned for the well-being of human society. It reminds me of the message the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises tried to show. ***slight spoilers*** It showed that sometimes, we have to be our own superhero, band together and work towards a better future that everyone can benefit from. Not even Batman is enough, as he is only one person. What I'm trying to say here is instead of waiting for a miracle to come, we should become miracle workers. The Bradley Mannings or the Edward Snowdens of the world aren't enough. I for one would hate to see their efforts wasted, especially when they literally jeopardize their own lives by doing so. For me, that's the real reasoning behind "freedom isn't free" and not a war on Iraq that's $2 billion in the hole and having nothing to show for it. We all need to support acts of good whenever we can if we really don't want this world to become a previously-fictional world of Gotham City. Like I said in my blog post "United We Succeed, Divided we Fail" the reason why the superhero team, the Avengers kick so much ass is because they work together as a team.

Win or lose, humanity will receive the consequences of their collective actions as a team. What can you do to help? Take a chance and stand against what's wrong and fight for what's right. Throughout history, that's how it's been done from the Founding Fathers of the United States, to slavery abolitionists to people like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movement. It's time for a new wave of superheroes.

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Alucard from the game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night