Batman Returns or...the Masks we Wear

One of my brothers was kind enough to loan me a few movies. I have to take a break from the book research because it is simply so depressing and discouraging sometimes when you see how people treat each other due to somewhat arbitrary differences. Two of the movies were Batman and Batman Returns.
In Returns there is a fascinating by-play between Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) while they are in their civilian roles. They have a double-entendre conversation about duality and truths...the underlying meanings were their secret lives that were distinctly different from their everyday personas.
Bruce Wayne is the distracted, unassuming multi-millionaire while Selina Kyle is the talented but flighty, forgetful and naive Assistant...errr...secretary (a running joke within the movie of moderate to no humor value).
Their discussion on the duality has undertones about how the filmmakers felt about people in general. The ntimation is that every person has the potential to have that secret life. It is a part of them. A suppose a p-sychiatrist or pshychotic-ologist might make some connection here to the habit some people are alleged to have where they substitute themself for the hero of whatever movie/book/story they are reading/watching/etc. They somehow "become" Judge Dredd or McCain (Die Hard) or Raymond (Everybody Loves Raymond) or Vickie Vale...they somehow "associate" and "identify" with these fictional characters and live through them vicariously.
Interestingly, later both Kyle and Wayne attend a masquerade ball. However, they both attend in formal wear while every other attendant has a costume, the vast majority including masks.
Walken, one of the villains, comments to Wayne, "Nice costume". The inference of the subtext is his civilian persona, like all those with "secret lives", is not real. It is merely a facade.
This theme is then expounded upon by the interplay between Kyle and Wayne. They put on the costumes of civility when in public, but when people see them as hiding behind a mask as Catwoman and Batman, that is when they are truly themselves.
When juxtaposed against the mask-wearing elite of Gotham at a charity ball the inference is that much charity comes not from who people are but rather who they wish to be perceived as. Thus, the underlying suggestion is that, left to their own devices, these people might never help any other person. Instead, they would hide behind the mask that isn't a mask as they move through their daily lives.
Less subtly...who people think you are is not who you are. It is instead a mask you put on while in public to fool people into thinking you are something you are not. The real you wishes to live outside the social conventions and do things that are unacceptable.
Note this is not necessarily criminal...after all, even though he operates "outside the law", Batman always stays on the side of the law. His vigilantism always is justified because of timing. He battles criminals who have always broken the law first...thus his actions can be construed as self-defense which allows the police to turn a blind eye to his violations. He keeps the spirit of the law if not the letter...or perhaps he keeps the letter but not the spirit.
The filmmakers are arguing that most people have a true desire to act in ways that violate social norms...perhaps violent, perhaps sexual, perhaps monetary...but those desires are the "real" you while the smiling, hand-shaking, workaday person people believe you to be is just a mask.
Hence the line delivered by the Penguin to Batman; "You are just jealous because I am a natural freak and you have to wear a mask." Or, in plainer English, people born "different" have the leeway to break social norms while "normal" people need an excuse...a bad break-up, having their rights violated, etc. Thus a McVeigh can justify killing people who never affected his life because they were in a Federal building at the same time, a Kzynski can justify mailing letter bombs to random people because technology does not agree with him...these people had excuiese to let the "real you" come out.
Note that I am not arguing this is an accurate view, simply that it was an interesting subplot to a rather pedestrian effort in the Batman franchise. On the bright side, there were no nipples on the Batsuit.