I think the entire art performance scene (and Dick Grayson's "Governor" comment) was just marching to the same anti-pretentious art drum beat by many American TV series, including
The Monkees, Bewitched, The Munsters and others aired in the 60s and beyond. To me, it illustrates just how different Hollywood producers and writers were--culturally speaking--from that scene. After all, despite Holywood's attempt to take advantage of any new social and/or cultural trend for exploitation purposes, many directors, producers and studio heads were from older generations, not as "edgy", or living the same life as the artists they mocked.
In other words, its not so much about
Batman allegedly being a sitcom (even by late season two standards), and more to do with a resistance to the self-important art scenes of the 50s and 60s. Going back to
The Monkees (a group and series that starred and was created by fairly counter culture individuals)even they found it easy to call out the pretentious modern art movement, as seen In this clip from the episode
"Art for Monkee's Sake"--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRsgLDwh-9M
Diana Ivarson...anyone surprised at her
six--count 'em--six career credits as an actress?
*crickets chirping*
About the value of a superhero secret identity: Well, arguably one of comics' biggest stories--the death of Peter Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy--only happened (in-universe) because the Green Goblin knew Spider-Man's true identity. If Parker's identity had not been compromised (in
Amazing Spider-Man#39), the Stacy character lives. That's a pretty good reason keeping a secret identity...secret is important.
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