Holding out for a hero
By Alfred P. Doblin
I watched Superman on HBO. I saw it before, going a few weeks into its theatrical release. It was an early screening and there were few people in the auditorium. There was no audience reaction to gauge. No cheers, chuckles, or groans. Moviegoing, like life, is at its best experienced in a community.
By the time I saw director James Gunn’s take on Superman, I had read comments about this iteration of the Man of Steel. Many praised the film, but some criticised it as “too woke” or that it had reduced Clark Kent’s human parents to Ma and Pa Kettle. Does anyone younger than me even know who Ma and Pa Kettle were?
Having grown up watching reruns of the 1950s television series, Superman has been part of my life since as long as I can remember. The first film series came out when I was in college. It was fun, campy, but also reflective of a post-Watergate, post-Vietnam time when most Americans wanted to feel good about being Americans.
There were too many sequels with the late-Christopher Reeve. The second coming of Superman was a one shot. The third iteration had Henry Cavill. As a gay man, I don’t think I need to say more than it had Henry Cavill. But that aside, it was very dark—too dark for my taste.
The arrival of the new version with David Corenswet is welcome. It is not dark. It is not brilliant, either. The storyline doesn’t push any boundaries. Rather, it is the core ethic of this Superman that makes it worthwhile.
When I was a boy, my heroes were John Glenn, Frank Borman, and Neil Armstrong. They were astronauts—Glenn the first person to orbit the Earth, Borman part of the Apollo team that first orbited the moon, and Armstrong who put his NASA shoes on the face of the moon.
These were not easy time for heroes, the 1960s — Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK. But astronauts were heroes. Real heroes. Looking back more than 50 years, it seems impossible to conceive that men racing incrementally to the moon could become the national icons they were in such unsettled times, but they were.
We are living in unsettled times. Violence is widespread—the violence of guns and other weapons of destruction, and the violence of weaponized words. I know little about firearms, aside that they were created to do harm. I know more about words, and they were not created to do harm.
The gift of speech elevates us as people. Using it for destructive purposes is a societal tragedy. I recently read an opinion piece in the New York Times by Roxane Gay, “Civility Is a Fantasy.” I disagreed with everything, aside from the punctuation. The premise was that civility is a cudgel brandished by the far right to guilt others into submission.
Civility is not an act of submission. It is an act of power. It shows we are capable of seeing the arguments and the threats for what they are, without adding superficially driven insults. In many cases, we can find points of agreement. And in those cases, we should.
Civility prevents us from mocking our opponent; it does not prevent us from challenging them.
I could quote Scripture on the subject of turning the other cheek, but I prefer Patrick Swayze’s Dalton in Road House: “I want you to be nice until it’s time not to be nice.”
Civility is not a fantasy. It also was never the solution. It is a means toward a solution, but not the only one. Which brings me back to the latest version of Superman, an alien trying to be the best version of a human. He struggles with the choices his powers give him. He fumbles and stumbles, but he perseveres. This Superman believes in civility, while also believing that there is a time for action.
That is neither woke nor weak. Clark Kent’s human parents do not look like action figures, but they are people of action. They are not stupid because they are not trim or tech-savvy. To think less of them because of either is a reflection not of them, but of a smaller version of us.
Civility is not a fantasy. It is very real and, in these unsettled times, the use of it would be a far more impressive feat than effortlessly benching 135 pounds at the gym. And like the strength needed to lift a barbell, it gives us the power to move what is heavy.
Back in the 1980s, there was a pop song. “Holding Out for a Hero.” Part of the lyric reads: “Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat, it’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet.” Not Shakespeare. Not even Dalton from Road House, but I wonder if we, as a society, are still holding out for a hero. If we believe civility is fantasy, and that the depiction of people struggling to do the “right thing” is somehow corny or irrelevant, what does that say about us?
As a boy, my heroes flew to the heavens. The 1950s Superman series began, “Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It’s Superman!” Again, look up for your hero.
Having watched the new Superman twice, the message is don’t look up. Look ahead for your heroes. They are us… or they could be. And that is not a fantasy.
Until next time, Alfred with a P.