Friday, June 14, 2013

Superhero Substitutes for the Savior


OK.  I am a geek.  I love superheroes.  I’m not sure what it is about them, but like most boys, I grew up pretending and wishing beyond hope to have super powers.  My super power of choice – the one that I knew I could get if I just concentrated and strained hard enough – was to have energy blasts coming out of my fists.  Sure it was a common trope among superheroes, especially villains, but I could have done so much good with it.  Despite my desire for hand-blasts, my hero of choice has always been the big guy himself, Superman.



Superman is the ultimate, iconic good guy.  He doesn’t have a dark side to his psyche that constantly haunts him like Batman (at least not as originally created).  His powers aren’t the result of some advanced technology like The Green Lantern.  He’s not lame like Aquaman (really?  He swims and talks to fish – give me a break).  And his powers are not the result of some tragic accident or ecological disaster (a.k.a., Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, Flash, etc.).  He doesn’t make big ethical mistakes.  He is purely and simply the perfect, iconic superhero.

Now that I am an adult and I am more mature, I can honestly say that absolutely nothing has changed.  Deep down inside I am still that same little boy wishing he could do something spectacular and (dare I say) “worshipping” his favorite superhero – Superman.  Granted, it is not worship in the traditional sense of the word, but Superman remains – in my view – the ultimate (and nearly perfect) Superhero.

While I didn’t closely follow the comic books per se (I really didn’t have the money growing up to spend on a regular installment of comic books), I have seen every movie and TV incarnation of Superman (with perhaps the exception of some of the more recent cartoon versions) – from George Reeves to the SuperFriends – from Christopher Reeve to the Justice League – from Lois and Clark to Smallville - even Brandon Routh in Superman Returns.  I haven’t yet seen Henry Cavill as The Man of Steel, but despite the really poor reviews it seems to be getting, I expect that I will not fail to make my way to the box office at some point in the next week or so.  I just can’t help myself – it’s Superman, after all.

Despite my own fascination with Superman, there is something about his character and his portrayal that has really started to nag at me.  I know it probably has always been there, but I really noticed it with Superman Returns.  Superman is a substitute for Christ. It hit me the hardest in the scene where Brandon Routh is hanging high in the stratosphere with both arms outstretched – an iconic image of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Then I see the FoxNews article titled “’Man of Steel’ filled with Jesus, Christianity References” (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/06/14/man-steel-filled-with-jesus-christianity-references/?intcmp=features#ixzz2WC651wNr).  

It is true.  For some reason, we tend to view Superman the way we are supposed to view Jesus – as our Savior.  We love that he will help us save the world, even from ourselves no less.  Looking back, I can see now that it was there in the original Superman movies as well – particularly when Christopher Reeve takes a strong-handed approach to the problem of nuclear proliferation (one of the worst Superman movies ever, but the Christ stereotyping was there nonetheless).  The article above, though, makes the point that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster go out of their way to intentionally create the imagery that Kal-El is a new Jesus – and acknowledge as much.  Like I said… it has probably been there all along… probably even from the beginning.

When you think about it, there is much of this Christ-stereotyping in all of our literature fantasies.  It is, after all, a common literary theme – good versus evil, with the good guy willing to sacrifice himself to save all of humanity.  In fact, I distinctly remember the topic of one of my high school English literature term papers being “The Picture of the Gospel in The Lord of the Rings” – with Sauron being a type of devil ( with orcs, goblins and trolls being demons) and Gandalf being a type of Christ (with elves and dwarves being angels – well, elves anyway – who could ever classify a dwarf as an angel…but I digress).  So whether it is C. S. Lewis intentionally creating Aslan to be a metaphor for Christ because he wanted to explain the nature and work of Christ to his children -  or Bruce Willis’ Die Hard character, John MaClane, being a heroic cowboy that no one in their right mind would compare to Christ - our fantasies are nonetheless filled with images of the “good guy” giving his all to save the world.

To me it really begs an important question. Why are we so eager to create a substitute savior but are so quick to reject the archetype of the messiah character – the only real savior of the world – Jesus Christ himself?  The answer is that, deep down inside of us, we all know that we NEED a savior.  Jesus said in John 12 that when his is lifted up (on the cross), he would draw all men to himself.  The problem is that Satan is doing everything he can to distract us from recognizing that need.   Every false religion in the world is merely Satan’s attempt at confusing us with false gospels and false hopes.  Create enough noise so that the true gospel message appears to be merely one message among hundreds of others.  His influence on the entertainment industry is no different.  Sure, it is just entertainment, but I really think Satan’s goal remains to distract us from the truth.  Give us a fantasy.  Distract us with a make-believe savior and we will forget our need for the real savior.  They are fallible substitutes for the infallible savior.

Everything these substitutes represent in greatly imperfect form, Jesus IS perfectly.  We may identify with the fact that Bruce Wayne has all of the same struggles we have, but we ignore the fact that he is such a failure at dealing with those struggles.  Jesus experienced every struggle we experience, but he has overcome and conquered them all without even the hint of moral or character failure.   We take great hope in the moral purity and child-like innocence of Clark Kent/Kal-El, but we overlook the fact that even Superman can be brought down by kryptonite.   Jesus was morally perfect, sinless in all respects, and without any weakness whatsoever.  He has overcome the world in every respect.  We “worship” our heroes for their willingness to sacrifice themselves into the hands of the bad guy to save the world and then rejoice whenever they somehow escape from their imminent doom – even when it comes as a result of the Deux Ex Machina rather than through their own effort.   Jesus truly sacrificed himself – not being overcome by his enemies, but willingly laying down his life for our sins – not being rescued through random circumstantial events of the Duex Ex Machina, but because HE WAS the Duex Ex Machina.   He said himself – I have the power to lay down my life and I have the power to take it up again (paraphrased from John 10:17-18).

I’m not sure how I feel about the Christ-stereotyping of Superman in general and in The Man of Steel in particular.  I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are so open about their intentionality of putting those images in the movie.  Is it blasphemy?  I don’t know.  I’m curious what you think, so comments are certainly welcome.  However, as a friend of mine put it… “I can say Jesus is THE superman, but I can’t say Superman is Jesus.”  Nicely put, John.

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