Baader-Meinhof 

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is usually harmless. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, more colloquially known as frequency illusion, is when you seem to notice more of something after learning about it. It’s the realization that the new band you discovered has been playing at your local Starbucks, and you just never noticed; or when an actor takes the lead in a prominent film, and you suddenly realize that they’ve been in respectable projects for years. Timothée Chalamet is an excellent example: I first found his name from Dune (2021) only to later realize that he was Cooper’s son in Interstellar and Kyle in Lady Bird, two well-applauded films. Now I see that Timothée Chalamet is everywhere. He’s played Willy Wonka. He’s playing Bob Dylan. He’ll likely spend the next 10 years as the real Paul Muad’Dib Atreides, Duke of Arrakis. 

Most recently, I’ve felt the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon with Colin Farrell, an Academy Award nominated Irishman. Altogether, Colin Farrell has portrayed quite an array of characters, from wizard Percival Graves in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to Pádraic Súilleabháin in The Banshees of Inisherin. And now, to my great surprise, he’s playing a classic Batman villain. Covered in over 2 hours of make-up, Farrell switched his Irish accent to that of an old-school mobster in preparation for his role as the grim-and-coy Oswald Cobb—the Penguin. To an even greater surprise, Colin Farrell’s Penguin was given his own 8-episode spinoff.

Can Penguins Fly?

A crime drama, The Penguin has won near universal praise for its performances and storytelling, focused on the “politics” of a syndicate war against three criminal factions, one of which is led by Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb. I use politics in quotes because the politics of The Penguin are uniquely apolitical; the show’s political systems depict a failure of democracy at the hands of lobbying, effectively removing all sense of legitimate politicking. Dark money, raised through illegal drugs through organized crime, is filtered towards politicians, judges, law enforcement, etc. Drug money fuels corruption, which fuels more drug money. A corrosive cycle, the discriminatory levels of corruption leads to literal fracturing within the city of Gotham, as electricity becomes a luxury and open shootouts become regular. Crime remains ignored as an exclusive group of elites ensures that even democratic procedure can’t keep them away from total control. All while the people of Gotham suffer and can’t vote their way out.

The circumstances make Oswald Cobb’s rise that much more appealing. As a former resident of Gotham’s “slum” district—Crowne Point—his eventual goal becomes proving that even he, a member of Gotham’s lowest, deserves a voice. This message lures another Crowne Point resident, Victor Aguilar, to his side. Victor himself is an orphaned teenager, downtrodden by a corrupt society, and who turns to crime as a means of survival. Together, they take the criminal corruption into their own hands. They commit mass-murders. Espionage. Arson. By the end, through sheer determination and quick-thinking, Victor and Oswald are left the only ones standing, with the entirety of the old guard of criminals left dead, dying, or imprisoned. Victorious, the Penguin claims a spot among Gotham’s elite and proves that with grit and determination, even a penguin can fly.

Only, Victor isn’t there with the Penguin as he toasts to victory. No, in a cruel “twist” of fate Oswald, convinced that love leaves one weak, ultimately decides to strangle his partner-in-crime. He leaves Victor dead in the middle of nowhere, broke and forgotten as he was mere weeks before. In reality, the Penguin isn’t able to fly but excels at ensuring that all other birds can’t either. 

Penguin-Baader-Meinhof

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is usually harmless. But not always. The Penguin seems to suggest that in the same way one notices more good when exposed to good, one also notices more bad when exposed to bad. What I coin the Penguin-Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is when one is overexposed to the “bad”, and its illusion gets amplified until it’s the only thing left. This revised phenomenon becomes abundantly clear in comparisons of Oswald and Victor.

Cobb grows up in a single parent household burdened by financial struggle and surrounded by criminal influence. His mother is often seen doing business with Rex Calabrese, a local crime head. According to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, Cobb’s continual exposure towards corruption and crime means that he’s more likely to notice it. For Cobb, this translated to a glamorization of Rex Calabrese as a bit of a father figure, something that continues with him into adulthood. He’s surrounded by crime. In learning about it more and more, he sees it more and more, and loves it more and more. He begins to idolize crime as a means of freedom and attention. Eventually, Oz is left with the belief that the only way to find a voice in a politically-tied system is to eliminate those keeping you silenced—literally! This explains his violent nature; it’s all he learns about. So, when his two brothers began to annoy him, the only reaction in his mind was to kill them. Similarly, as the modern Penguin faces setback after setback the only choice he acknowledges is to keep lying and keep killing. The Penguin-Baader-Meinhof has run its course.

Meanwhile Victor faces a vastly different situation. Growing up in a moral family environment, he’s exposed to good and in turn sees good. His impression of Gotham isn’t of a failing system but of a home, imperfect but secure. After his family’s deaths, however, his only new exposure comes in the form of criminals. His friend, Calvin, convinces him to join carjacking missions. The Penguin recruits him into drug operations and violent crime. This leaves Victor with a conscience at war with itself, with his family’s memory keeping his morals alive and with newfound influences encouraging him to “break bad”. Baader-Meinhof suggests that exposure to contradiction only leads to more awareness of contradiction. It eventually consumes Victor, leaving him regretful of his crimes but willing to continue them. This contradiction is also what leaves Victor blind to the inevitable betrayal by the Penguin. Victor, however, is also left with a balance that keeps him with options. He remains aware that he may leave crime, or return to it if that is what he wants. As such, while he faces the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon it has yet to become as resolute as it has with Oz Cobb.

The Perception of “And” versus “Or”

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, almost conveniently, was named from a negative influence itself. Terry Mullen noticed that after mentioning the German terrorist group Baader-Meinhof, he began noticing it everywhere. I can’t help but think that The Penguin’s story is not nearly as fictional as we’d like to believe, and that this negative Baader-Meinhof effect isn’t exclusive to Terry Mullen or Oswald Cobb. Cobb’s failure as a member of society shows how frequency illusion can take root in structural negativity, where overexposure to negative influence causes just that: more negative influence. The Falcone family recognizes this in The Batman and used it to their advantage. By keeping their corruption secret, most Gothamites stayed unexposed to their own crippled system, living in an ignorant bliss. The movie’s initial reveal that the mayor is corrupt shifted everything into a new light, and people began to see more of what they had just learned of: corruption. That is what Victor represents: the torn citizens who find it easier than ever to embrace hopelessness and violence. The most extreme faction of Gothamites are ultimately left with the notion that they can choose one mayor or another and nothing happens either way. They can choose to be moral or they can shoot up a political rally, as we see with the Riddler’s goons near the end of The Batman.

This should serve as a rather grave warning for our own political and cultural systems. Our awareness of divisiveness is actively creating more awareness of divisiveness. While this may be beneficial for encouraging active change, it also takes awareness away from anything positive. More than ever it seems like good news is absent. Only that it isn’t, it just is no longer acknowledged. Our frequency bias favors the negative, which has only encouraged an embrace of the negative. In short, a society with nothing but problems only grows more problematic. We aren’t quite a society with nothing but problems, but we are slowly emerging as a society with a perception that there are only problems. And this too will start a spiral. If we let it, the perception of a problem-exclusive society will gradually become fact, and the Baader-Meinhof will evolve into the more resolute Penguin-Baader-Meinhof.

Oswald Cobb was always going to be the Penguin because society had made it so that no other options could be perceived. Let’s not allow for the Penguin-Baader-Meinhof to come into fruition, else we risk a world where destruction and creation, or division and unity, or good and bad, are replaced with a perception of “or”.