I met a writer recently who told me there are only two types of people: Batman people and Superman people. I was a Batman person. It was just cooler to like Batman – or at least, as cool as it can be to idolize any imaginary person who wears tights and a cape. Batman was noir: dark, edgy, and mature. Superman was none of those. Superman was boring, corny, and utterly un-relatable. He was a Power Rangers episode. But for really old people.
But maybe getting older allows us to recognize the beauty of something timeless. After all, it wasn’t until I grew up that I, too, found myself waiting for the Man of Tomorrow. The idealistic hero story.
I'm not waiting for Superman. I’m usually aware that he isn’t real. No, I’m waiting for the idea of a 'superman' to find its way back into our stories.
I'm getting tired of 'artistic' stories that tell me 'the world is cruel', and present that idea as the only mature, sophisticated conclusion of life - especially since these stories keep winning Best Picture. Sometimes those stories actually are sophisticated, but it's getting tired because less and less of them are challenging us to believe the world in that movie could be improved. It’s gotten to the point that the protagonist who doesn't just accept the cruelty of people as the concrete status quo is considered impractical or naïve. By application, stories of idealistic heroes must also be impractical and naïve. Which is probably why the Dark Knight couldn't even be nominated for Best Picture.
But maybe getting older allows us to recognize the beauty of something timeless. After all, it wasn’t until I grew up that I, too, found myself waiting for the Man of Tomorrow. The idealistic hero story.
I'm getting tired of 'artistic' stories that tell me 'the world is cruel', and present that idea as the only mature, sophisticated conclusion of life - especially since these stories keep winning Best Picture. Sometimes those stories actually are sophisticated, but it's getting tired because less and less of them are challenging us to believe the world in that movie could be improved. It’s gotten to the point that the protagonist who doesn't just accept the cruelty of people as the concrete status quo is considered impractical or naïve. By application, stories of idealistic heroes must also be impractical and naïve. Which is probably why the Dark Knight couldn't even be nominated for Best Picture.
Our past is littered with stories about archetypical heroes - extraordinary characters who conformed to unbending ideals. Today, however, the hero is you or me. A flawed, ordinary person who indulges in the extraordinary and absurd. And when he or she indulges, it’s supposed to be heroic. That was the premise of Kick-Ass – and that was my only criticism of it. It maximized that self-indulgence, but none of it felt heroic.
Viewed strictly as a movie, it can be entertaining and funny. Viewed as a representative for a genre of our imaginations, it’s very troubling. I know it’s supposed to be a satire. But it fails as satire. Satire attacks a human shortcoming by highlighting its ridiculousness. The problem with Kick-Ass and its inevitable copycats is that it attacks the noble conception of the ideal hero by ridiculing it with a much more shameful human shortcoming – our own vanity. We've fallen in love with the idea that we, with all our flaws and weaknesses, can still be the ideal hero of the story. This idea works if your hero is like Peter Parker, and he’s striving to be a good person. But it’s really messed up if your heroes are Kick-Ass, Punisher, or the idiots in Inglorious Basterds.
Why is it so naïve to believe in a hero with moral integrity? Is it so important to us to feel that WE are the ideal hero to the extent that we even reject heroes who live up to better ideals? We cheer any time little hero Mindy murders people in Kick-Ass, but does laughing at jokes that completely devalue human life really make our tastes more mature? Roger Ebert wrote something similar after he watched Kick-Ass:
Big Daddy and Mindy never have a chat about, you know, stuff like how when you kill people, they are really dead. This movie regards human beings like video-game targets. Kill one, and you score...When kids in the age range of this movie's home video audience are shooting one another every day in America, that kind of stops being funny.
I love video games. Like most gamers, I think child-initiated violence is caused more by parental negligence than Grand Theft Auto. But I am also not disillusioned into believing that games which make entertaining sport of ending human life are sophisticated or artistic.
But I have a confession. I don't get Inglorious Basterds. I thought it had moments of creative brilliance, and I don’t question Tarantino as a credible filmmaker. But no one has been able answer for me the one question I had when I finished watching that movie: What was the point? I'm not asking for philosophy - I can be perfectly satisfied that even Starship Troopers had a point. Instead, I keep hearing in different ways, “Basterds was AWESOME. THAT is the point.” I suppose that answer is as well-reasoned to me as Basterds was as a film. Are my movie tastes less advanced because that rationale just doesn't do it for me?
We wouldn’t want to live in a world where people indulge in their most violent thoughts – so why do we so highly regard those stories that ‘realize’ those sick fantasies? On occasion, it can be funny for being so unabashedly shocking. But is taking pleasure in watching senseless violence a sophisticated reaction, or just primitive instinct?
These stories are stealing our time, money, and critical attention - and they're giving very specific and depressing answers to what people should find entertaining. In college, I started craving a palate cleanser. Something that felt more provocative than the ordinary blandness of ethical ambiguity and apathy. We get enough of that in life. I wanted stories of adventure, wonder, and fantasy (which is not the same thing as brutal wish-fulfillment). I started reading Superman.
The big secret is: Superman is mature storytelling. It’s simple and easy to say 'people suck' and 'the world is screwed.' It’s much harder to see all of that and still think that people can be good and the world can be better. Superman was conceived by Jerry Siegel, a person whose father was shot and killed by a robber. Reacting to the unspeakable evil of that tragedy, Siegel imagined a bulletproof man with uncompromising goodness. It takes courage to believe in what you can’t see. It takes imagination to think of what the unseen would look like...and how the writers of Lost might actually have a plan.
It takes hope.
That’s what Superman is; he’s hope. He’s the purest embodiment of an archetype that reflects our most innocent fantasies – of the qualities we can't see in ourselves, but like to believe might be there.
His story is our fantasy. An ordinary person capable of accomplishing the incredible. An outsider who values our lives more than we do. An immigrant who travelled far and reached beyond the zenith of human potential. This isn’t just science fiction; it’s very human ambition.
Timothy Dalton once said about James Bond, “You can't relate to a superhero, to a superman, but you can identify with a real man who in times of crisis draws forth some extraordinary quality from within himself and triumphs after a struggle.” This is what makes Superman so ‘super.’ It’s not about the powers or the cape; the point of Superman is that the world doesn't need a Superman – just a brave one who does the right thing. That itself is extraordinary. That's super.
So it doesn’t have to be stylish or edgy or Batman. It’s timeless. It’s universal. Today, a mirror might tell you that you’re an ordinary, bumbling Clark Kent who will never get noticed by Lois Lane. The superhero archetype - at its finest - challenges you to imagine the person you hope to see in the mirror tomorrow. Your potential.
That’s why Superman rocks. Because he makes it fun to imagine. Because his wholesomeness brings shame to our pessimism and brutality. That’s what I’m waiting for – for our stories to stop romanticizing the awful things we can see today. For us to be more certain of tomorrow's uncertainty.
Please. Let's stop indulging in the unrestrained and dishearteningly obvious. Dare to bet your optimism on tomorrow.
And look up in the sky.
Posts
