The Problem with The Penguin (2024)

Plenty of other villains undergo a similar treatment. A few other popular examples include:

• The Phantom of the Opera (The Phantom of the Opera): The Phantom is locked away in the cellars of the Paris Opera House because society will not accept his disfigurement. His lack of human connection leads him to manipulate and abduct people to make up for the relationships he lacks.
• Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb): Though comedic, Doofenshmirtz was abandoned and neglected in childhood, leading him to seek control through his attempts to take over the Tri-State area.
• Darth Vader (Star Wars): Anakin Skywalker suffers enslavement, the deaths of his mother and wife, had his limbs violently amputated, and was brainwashed and manipulated into becoming the servant of Palpatine. All this leads to his role as one of the most famous villains in cinema.
• Magneto (X-Men): A victim of Nazi concentration camps and experimentation, Magneto builds his Brotherhood of Mutants as a way to prevent such horrors from happening to the next generation of mutants, but he becomes a voice of mutant superiority and violently retailiates against humans.

The Penguin (2024) successfully subverts this trope by making Oz Cobb undeniably evil. In earlier episodes, we see flashback's to Oswald's youth in which he and his mother suffer the loss of his two brothers. In his adult life, we see how cruelly the people around him speak about his facial disfigurement, his limp, and his size. These elements encourage sympathy from viewers. However, in later episodes, we see the truth revealed. The young Oswald murders his brothers by drowning them in a selfish bid to have sole access to his mother. When he is pressured to reveal this truth under the threat of harm to his mother, he refuses, proving he is willing to allow serious harm to come to her to protect himself and his secrets. After his mother suffers a severe stroke and loses the ability to speak or move, he breaks his promise to support her assisted suicide (a contentious topic in-and-of-itself), and imprisons her in his tower high above the city. He double crosses everyone in his life and shows, not only a complete lack of loyalty, but a desire to prevent himself from developing loyalty or connection beyond what is self-serving, evident in the moment he murders his protege, Victor Aguilar. By the end of the series, we come to understand that Oswald Cobb is a villain through and through, and his outward appearance is a sign of the ugliness within.

A Trope Sustained

By subverting the trope of the villain with a tragic backstory, The Penguin inadvertently sustains the tropes of the disabled villain and the villain with facial disfigurement -- and these are far more problematic tropes than those that humanize someone on the wrong side of the law. As I've discussed in other essays on similar topics, the tropes of the disabled villain and the disfigured villain come from a history of Ugly Laws and self-censorship in the film, television, and comic book industries.

In short, Ugly Laws were in effect in many parts of the United States from the late 1800s to the 1970s. Born out of the Eugenics Movement, such laws criminalized disability. Under these laws, people with disabilities and facial disfigurements could be fined, arrested, jailed, or committed to an asylum, work farm, or almshouse as punishment for attempting to navigate public spaces. I also discuss this topic in my essay on Disability Representation in Marvel's Daredevil.

Public support for eugenics and the criminalization of disability ties into the Hays Code, followed by the film and television industry from 1930 to 1968, and the Comic Book Authority Code, followed by most producers of comic books from 1954 to 1989. These codes encouraged the physical portrayal of heroes and protagonists as conventionally attractive, heterosexual, cisgender, White, non-disabled, and, typically, male. Those who did not fall into this camp -- those who were not conventionally attractive, Queer folx, people of color, disabled people, people with facial differences, and women -- tended to be relegated to villainhood. More than that, their differences were frequently used as physical manifestations of evil. A classic example of the disabled villain with facial disfigurement is the James Bond villain, Raoul Silva. Silva wears a dental prosthesis to conceal damage done by a cyanide capsule used in a failed suicide attempt. His true villainy is revealed when he removes the prosthesis and the left side of his face collapses. I go into the history of the Hays Code and the Comic Book Authority Code in my essay, Agatha All Along: Does It Subvert the Tropes?.

Oz Cobb's character portrayal does a good job of staying true to the physical hallmarks of the character -- a heavyset figure, scars on his face, and a limping gait which, in the miniseries, is explained by a clubfoot. But by doing so, the portrayal doubles down on the relationship between his atypical physique and his penchant for evil. Cobb operates in a world run by gangsters and mob bosses, and each one is crueler than the next. And, yet, Cobb is the worst of them. We know this from the beginning, because the people he goes up against are everything he is not -- slender, conventionally attractive, and nondisabled. At first, we are led to believe that he is the underdog. Beset by tragedy and poverty, he struggles to make a name for himself among the wealthy and priviledged members of the mob families that employ him. But by the end of the series, we realize that he is the most villainous of them all and his physique represents this. To be fair, he is not the only person with a disability, but his is the only visible disability, and each of the others also uphold the trope of the disabled villain. I'll break them down briefly:

• Victor Aguilar: Oswald's young protege has a stutter. From an underpriviledged family, Victor loses his entire family and turns to petty crime to survive. When his girlfriend offers him a chance to escape, he makes the decision to stay and try to make his way as a mobster. Victor's tragic backstory and stutter humanizes him and endears him to audiences as someone whose circumstances led him to a life of crime. When Oswald kills him to avoid the development of human connections, his death comes across as an unneccesary tragedy that cements Oz's state as a monster and proves that Victor made the wrong decision to tie himself to Gotham's dark underbelly.
• Sofia Falcone: Raised in a family of wealthy mob bosses, tragedy, double crossings, and criminal influences, Sofia is destined to live a life of polished crime even before Oswald double crosses her and her father imprisons her in Arkham Asylum. Her time there leaves her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the drive to burn everything her family built to the ground. Her punishment for killing her family, hunting Oz, and orchestrating her how rise to power is her return to Arkham.
• Francis Cobb: Oswald's mother suffers from an unnamed, degenerative condition that weakens her and causes lapses in her memory, but that doesn't mean she isn't conniving and manipulative. Early on, she discovers that young Oswald killed his brothers so that he doesn't have to share his mother's time and affection. Initially, she arranges to have him killed by a gangster. She changes her mind when she realizes that she can pressure Oswald to give her the cushy life of luxury she always wanted. Her downfall comes in the form of a severe stroke which causes her to lose the ability to move or talk. Her son imprisons her in his new penthouse where she suffers silently.

Ultimately, while Oz Cobb's character manages to subvert the trope of the disabled, tragic villain whose is punished for their evil tendencies, the three other disabled characters embody the trope to the fullest. What's more, in a world full of mobsters and gangsters, Cobb proves himself to be the most monstrous without any true compassion for anyone beyond himself, including his mother and his protege. His physical differences -- facial scarring, limp, clubfoot, and extra weight -- make him stand out. They are used as a visual shorthand for audiences and point to him as the most dastardly criminal of them all.

And that's the problem.

As I implied earlier, the use of this trope is closely connected to Ugly Laws, the Eugenics Movement, the Hays Code and the Comic Book Authority Code, each of which stem from and uphold societal inclinations to devalue the lives of people with disabilities and construct an artificial relationship between disability and the inclination to do evil.

So, why is this a problem?

It's a fair question. The Penguin is an entertaining television show about a classic villain associated with the much-loved comic book saga of Batman. The Penguin is an outlandish character who was always straightforwardly evil. Don't worry, I'm not telling you to stop watching shows like The Penguin or to avoid comic book genre content. Seriously. I love comic books and the movies and TV shows based on them. I would even call it a special interest of mine.

However, because I've spent so much time and energy studying comic books and related materials, I can tell you that many of the harmful tropes born out of the early days of comics are alive and well -- and they have an impact. You see, negative tropes have a tendency to reinforce negative stereotypes. In turn, negative stereotypes reinforce false narratives that impact public perceptions of people from various minority statuses -- often subconsciously. We may not even realize when fictional portrayals influence our beliefs about real human beings. This conversation has come up frequently in recent years in relation to skin color -- Black people appearing on the news in association with crimes rather than a balance of positive and negative events is a common complaint, though similar concerns pop up in fictional portrayals as well. While it is important to give proper attention to the harms of negative racial tropes, I think it is also important to have a similar conversation about the impact of negative tropes about disability -- hence this essay.

I'll speak, for a moment, from personal experience. I don't have a clubfoot, but I do have a neurological disorder that sometimes effects my mobility. Some days, my disability is invisible to those around me. Some days, it is visible through a limp, on others, through the use of a walking stick or a wheelchair. On days that I limp, my gait is not dissimilar to Oswald Cobb's. When other characters mock Cobb's limp by calling him a penguin, it feels as if they are addressing me. If this were another story, one in which the name-calling bullies were the bad guys who got their comeuppance, this might not bother me. I might even feel vindicated -- the name-callers are wrong for making fun of a person's disability, therefore, they are punished. But, as we already know, Cobb is the true monster. Calling him names doesn't have the same effect. Instead, it validates their actions. They should call him names because he is a monster inside and out. I have never encountered another character that walks like him -- like me. This makes the Penguin my only form of representation, and the messaging is that people who walk like me are disgusting, evil, and deserving of cruelty. If there were a large number of diverse characters with limps in books, on stage, and on screen who embodied a wide range of personalities -- both good and bad -- the impact of characters like the Penguin wouldn't be so damaging. But there are not enough disabled characters that exist outside of the tropes they've been forced into to counterbalance the damage.

Please don't come for me!

Don't get me wrong. The Penguin is an entertaining crime drama that is both well-made and well-told. The twists and turns of the plot caused me to gasp multiple times per episode. In isolation, it is a gritty and captivating story with intriguing characters, dark narratives, and plenty of excitement. But the Penguin doesn't exist in isolation. It stands on the back of decades of Batman content and exists within a pantheon of narratives told through our entertainment and media industries. Every time a comic book character is brought to a screen, the storytellers have the option adapt the character to fit the sensibilities of the present society.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Penguin showrunner, Lauren LeFranc, states that her decision to explain Cobb's limp with a clubfoot -- a largely treatable condition -- came from the intention to disrupt the harmful disability-related tropes present in the comic book genre. She says, "...in my mind, his mother, who didn't have a lot of money, decided that the difference in him would make him stronger. That he didn't need to change an aspect of himself in that regard." It is fair that the demand for disabled people to change or hide their disabilities should be challenged. I often feel the need to downplay my needs, pain, or limitations in favor of other people's comfort. When people express anger, sadness, disgust, or other negative emotions in response to my disabilities, I have to actively remind myself that whatever imposition my limitations may place on others, the largest imposition is inevitably placed on me. It is not my responsibility to ease the discomfort someone else has because of my presence, and I deserve to take up space just like they do.

I think this is what LeFranc is trying to get at. People with disabilities should be allowed to take up space, and they should not have to conceal their disabilities or hide the fact that their disabilities are a part of who they are. However, this portrayal of the character fails to circumvent the trope of the disabled villain and, ultimately, reinforces the negative stereotype that disabled people are subhumans with dark inclinations deserving of the pain placed on them by society or by the limitations of their disabled bodies. At the end of the day, I can't say this is LeFranc's fault or the fault of any of the other storytellers involved in the new miniseries. They're just pulling from old intellectual property to tell a new story, and audiences expect the new version of the character to remain consistent with the old IP. This is one of the things that makes the comic book genre of cinema so popular. But it also means that the comic book genre of film and television will take a while to catch up with social change.

So far, Marvel seems to be doing a more nuanced job with this. TV series like Daredevil, Echo, and Hawkeye have all been identified as shows that address disability with care. Echo and Hawkeye even cast actors who are deaf, hard of hearing, and amputees to play characters with the same life experiences. That's not to say that Marvel is doing a perfect job when it comes to disability representation. Both MCU and DCEU content carry some of the sins of their respective pasts. Again, we return to the issue of pulling from old IP. When we recreate old IP without addressing the societal problems represented within it, we fail to adapt our messaging in support of a better, more inclusive world. I wish it weren't so because I truly love comic books and their affiliated screen adaptations. That's why I spend so much time studying representation in comics. I love this way of storytelling, I enjoy critiquing it, and I look forward to seeing it grow to better represent its fandom.

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