Much of Christensen's interpretive work with Batman might be characterized as a linking of figural associations. The connection between Vicki Vale and Time, Inc. "is explicit" Vale's photographs have been published in Time and are mentioned three times in the film. Because Batman's cave is set up as a television control booth and because the movie-premiere-searchlight-like bat signal "visually rhymes" with the Warner Bros. trademark, Bruce Wayne "strongly suggests" Warner. And then, because the Joker quips that Vicki (Time) is about to "'trade up'" from Wayne (Warner) to him, shoots his old boss, and showers Gotham with dollar bills, "it makes sense to read the Joker as a demonized Martin Davis" of Paramount. Davis's bid for Time had asked Time to accept his offer over Warner's; Davis had become CEO when his old boss Charles Bludhorn died of a heart attack; and Davis had offered to shower Time stockholders with a premium price (see pp. 601 - 2).

But as Christensen notes, "the timing seems all wrong." The film (which had begun shooting eight months earlier) premiered only a week after Davis made his offer. "But the problem is only apparent" because the film is really "a scenario devised in order to control contingencies that might follow the launching of the merger" (p. 602). And how do we know that? "The movie attests that such planning did occur" (p. 603). But since the movie can attest to corporate planning with respect to the merger only if it is indeed the corporate allegory Christensen claims it to be, it becomes, in that sentence, allegory by fiat.³

For the rest, Christensen relies on Peter Drucker's theory that, absent government interference, all businesses aim to create customers through marketing. Warner's use of Batman as Òa scenario devised in order to control contingencies" applies the company's marketing/authorship to the promotion and justification of the Time-Warner merger whose terms had been challenged in court by Paramount and to the creation of Time as "the perfect customer for Warner" (p. 615). But there is little external evidence that Batman could be the allegory Richard Munro "didn't get." Christensen offers only a mechanism by which Warner might have effected its authorship: Jon Peters's interference with Tim Burton's direction, affirmed by Peters's claim that "he had written, directed, cast, and single-handedly marketed the film" (p. 602 n. 11). Could Peters have been the instrument Warner used to write Batman?

Perhaps, but the suggestion would ignore the agency Peters has in our story, which is a tale of persons adding and subtracting elements of the Batman narrative as it can be observed to develop and change through the numerous scripts and hundreds of comic books that preceded the film. We rely also on the testimony of those who were observed to have had a part in making the story that Ross and Munro saw in Washington. That particular Batman story began to take shape when Tim Burton asked Sam Hamm to write a screenplay in 1986.⁴ Hamm's first effort was dated 20 October 1986,⁵ and he was to write four more drafts before he joined the 1988 Writer's Guild strike.⁶ The first draft, however, contains much of what was actually filmed. For example, the Joker's murder of Boss Grissom, his mutilation of Grissom's mistress and threat to do the same to Vicki Vale, and his showering of money on the people of Gotham as part of a plot to bring down the city are all there. The events that lead Christensen to believe "it makes sense to read the Joker as a demonized Martin Davis," in other words, entered the world eight months before Nicholas Nicholas of Time "first started talking to Ross about a business combination" in June 1987.⁷