Batman Spellbound Themes

The animated television show titled "Batman and Beyond - Spellbound," shows interesting themes that deal with the philosophy of mind. These themes include hallucinations, the dream argument, and direct and indirect realism. In this episode the antagonist, Dr. Ira Billings or Spellbinder, worked as a psychologist for Gotham City High School (Recap, 2016). When he became his persona Spellbinder, he dressed in an orange and black costume and used a "magic eye" to hypnotize students at the high school (Recap, 2016). Under this powerful hypnosis, students experienced vivid hallucinations, which the Spellbinder used to make them commit "robberies" (Recap, 2016). After the students managed to snap out of these hallucinations, they acted as if they were roused from a dream, having no recollection of their actions (Recap, 2016).
According to Rene Descartes, it is hard to determine whether we are living in reality or dreaming (Feser, 2006). In fact "there is nothing in...your experiences themselves that can tell you...whether they are waking or dreaming" (Feser, 2006). In the show, when Chelsea was walking home, she met the Spellbinder. If Descartes's argument was applied to this scene, that means there was no way for Chelsea to know weather she really even met the
One is direct realism. "Direct realism holds that in perceptual experience we are directly or immediately aware of an external world of physical objects existing independently of us" (Feser, 2006). In this view of Chelsea's situation, the senses definitely come into play. One can argue that since she saw the Spellbinder and the magic eye, and touched the artifact, that the experience was real. But according to indirect realism, it is possible that even though she was seeing, and feeling things, she had no direct contact with anything in her experience. For example, just because we touch a wall, it doesn't mean that it is actually there or that we are touching