A Hero Behind Heroes?

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

It might seem a bit preemptive to be talking about NBC’s new drama, Heroes. After all, it just premiered. Only one episode has aired. One paltry hour of television . . . that’s it. But don’t worry: I’m not really here to praise the show—though I do think it looks very promising and cool. I’m not even here to give some perfunctory overview of the premise or the characters or whatever—though I’m going to do a little of that in passing. I’m really here, simply, to say that Heroes, along with the current superhero obsession/pop phenomenon that it’s a part of, says truckloads about the culture that created it, and about human beings in general.

If you’re not familiar with the show at all, think M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable meets X-Men meets Lost meets some apocalyptic, end-of-the-world kind of thing—after the first episode, I’m feeling Stephen King’s The Stand for some reason—and you’ll have the basic idea. Like Lost, the show tracks the mysteriously intersecting lives of a large and diverse cast. Like Bruce Willis’ role in Unbreakable, all of these characters are “ordinary people” who discover, or confirm, that they have “extraordinary abilities”—you know, like the mutant protagonists of Marvel’s X-Men. And, at some point in the future, all of this character development, all of the superpowers, come to bear on the “fate of the world.” The characters, in other words, are destined to become heroes.

I know, I know: you’ve heard all of this before. If you’ve played any random role-playing-game with the archetypal random-kid-becomes-savior plotline, then you’ve heard it. If you know about Superman—generic Clark Kent from generic Smallville, USA—then you know all about it. If you’re familiar with any number of well-known characters and stories—from Tolkien’s Bilbo and Frodo to Lucas’ Luke Skywalker, from any underdog sports team to all manner of comic-book heroes, from Moses to Jesus—then you’re familiar with it. You’ve heard the story of Heroes before. Countless times in countless ways, in fact. But that’s the point.

We must ask why? What does our Batman/Spiderman/Superman/
X-Men/FantasticFour/Daredevil/forgive-me-for-forgetting-the-rest obsession, and now Heroes, say about us—the United States, 2006—as a culture? Briefly, I’d say that it underlines a few things. A sense of powerlessness perhaps. A longing for control in a world that perhaps feels out of control. No, I’m not mentioning 9-11-01, and this trend began before 9-11-01, but we must admit that the current world climate might easily breed the kind of fantasizing represented by this type of story. It might breed a sense that we’re part of some epic good-versus-evil struggle—regardless of the actual politics and ethics involved. It might make someone long for power, significance, meaning, et. al. It might make someone look for a hero.

But beyond just the specific culture of the present-day US, I think that Heroes and the whole metanarrative it’s situated in speaks to the nature of humankind, beyond culture, beyond time. To me, the underlying longings involved here—longings for other-worldly power, for the triumph of good over evil, for meaning even for the most seemingly insignificant, for adventure, for a hero—are the longings of every person. It seems to me that these are cross-cultural, timeless values and desires. And it seems to me that such a phenomenon, especially when it is attested to by story after story, and especially when such attention is drawn to it by the huge popularity and number of recent attesting stories, has to be considered very seriously.

Of course, you may be the one person who doesn’t have the kind of longings represented by stories like Heroes. These stories may not seem to resonate with you at all. To you, I submit that somewhere, at some time, an underdog story, or a hero story, or a story of good defeating evil, or some similar thing, whatever it was, touched you. Resonated with you like Heroes is probably going to resonate. And I submit that such resonance, again, has to be considered. Don’t ignore it . . . something is afoot here.

And, finally, I submit this for a possible starting point of consideration: these longings we’ve been discussing, ultimately, are spiritual longings. They are longings which—taken to the degree they’re inevitably taken to—must find their fulfillment in the otherwordly, the supernatural, the magical, the irrational, the super, the mighty, the amazing, the incredible, the divine. These aren’t longings for, simply, an escape. They’re longings for flight, for up-up-and-away. Not longings for simple protection, but for evil-destroying power. Not longings for human approval, but for fate and destiny. Not longings for mere mortal heroes, ultimately, but for the divine Hero . . . the Savior . . . for God.

C.S. Lewis in this article’s opening quote, as he so often does, makes it clear that these kinds of other-worldly longings can only have their source and their final fulfillment in another world. Finally, in God himself. The writer of Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “[God] has set eternity in the human heart”—he is the source. And Augustine says, famously, “My heart is restless until it finds its rest in [God]”—he is the fulfillment. So, on Mondays, if you’re watching Heroes like I’m going to be, consider with me the significance of it. The overwhelming and telling spread of such stories. Consider whether you don’t see these longings within yourself, whether the source might be from another world, whether there might be a Hero behind Heroes.

Ruminations on a #$!@&%* Movie: A Snakes on a Plane Review

Snakes on an Introduction: I wish this article could be short and sweet. Condensed and poetically perfect—just like the high-concept title of this film. Snakes on a Plane: as Josh Friedman put it, “the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles.” Who’s Josh Friedman you ask? He’s the screenwriter who wrote a brilliant blog entry and inadvertently created the pop-culture groundswell that put this movie on the map, spawned a hyper-creative community of SoaP fans (even before the movie released), and made “Snakes on a Plane,” as a concept, an idea, into the latest and hippest Zen koan around.

Snakes on a Side-note: By the way, if you didn’t realize that Snakes was a pop-culture phenomenon, I’d suggest checking out the blog entry in question, and also two other sites (of many) that have become part of this whole thing: snakesonablog and blanksonablank. So, check those, get acclimated, and then we’ll be ready to get back to my not-nearly-as-concise-as-the-title-of-SoaP article, wherein we’ll presently open some windows on . . .

Snakes on a Mini-Review: Alright fanboys, here’s the truth: Snakes as a movie, without the accoutrements, wasn’t that good. It felt pieced together—probably due to the numerous pickups done to achieve an R rating. Consequently, the tone was uneven. It was supposed to be funny in places, but felt needlessly violent in others. Jackson’s famed line about those mother-blanking snakes on the mother-blanking plane is gold, truly, but doesn’t match the feelings evoked by young children in peril, innocent honeymooners meaninglessly developed and then killed, pseudo-love-stories.

This doesn’t mean that I didn’t, on the whole, like the movie. I did, in a way. I mean, Sam Jackson could read insurance convention literature and make it interesting, and the story was workable, of course. There were, after all, snakes on a plane. But the problem is that, with the expectations that fans had, SoaP took itself too seriously—likely a hangover from before the Internet buzz, before the pickups. What was needed, I think, was Evil Dead. You know, on-purpose kitsch. B-movie status all the way. One-liners every five minutes. Cardboard-cutout characters. Obviously self-conscious stereotyping. Not even a hint that you should actually, as a viewer, take it seriously or become invested.

Snakes on a Transition: But this is where the fascinating thing happens—the thing that makes Snakes on a Plane worth watching and talking about. I was slightly disappointed with the movie because I was caught up in the expectations. I knew what I wanted, what everyone wanted, and it didn’t really happen. The movie wasn’t bad-good, it was just "eh" and I was upset. But what do these collective expectations say about me and us? What does it say that a large number of people made Snakes into a phenomenon, months before release, and surrounded it with such an artifice of shoulds and coulds, hopes and anticipations? I think it says several things . . .

Snakes on a Discussion of This Movie’s Function as Culture-Window: First, it has to be said that Snakes became what it was, mainly, because of the title. As Friedman puts it, “It’s a title. It’s a concept. It’s a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It’s perfect.” Exactly. The high-concept, super-simple title started it all. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the total lack of euphemism and politicking. There are snakes. On a plane. That’s it. No explication needed. No hiding. No misdirection. Just the snakes and the plane. Whatever the case—whatever this en masse embracing of concision says about modern moviegoers—SoaP tapped into something with its moniker, and to great effects.

Second, the Samuel L. Jackson factor has to be taken into account. He helped make the movie what it became, and played a large part in the specific expectations that people had, because he is an icon in the purest sense of the word. However he did it, Sam Jackson has become the icon, the epitome of cool. We all know what it says on his wallet. No one else has a purple light saber. I mean, he’s Shaft, for crying out loud. And it is this icon that we wanted to see pitted against those snakes. “Who’s cooler?” became the implied question. Snakes are quiet and deadly and cold-blooded and heartless and they look cool being that way. Oh, but Sam is all those things too, and he’s on our side. Go Sam!

Unfortunately, Snakes let its audience down on this point. The expectations were there—the icon was ready to be painted and worshipped—but this film was far from Pulp Fiction. Jackson isn’t even in the movie as much as it feels like he should be, and when he is, there’s just something . . . missing. The reality just couldn’t, in this case, meet up with the glowing fantasy of our King of Cool going head-to-head with King Cobra. All I was left with, obviously (and gladly, compared to the movie), was a chance to consider Jackson’s status as an icon, and why we create such icons, why we need them, what it says about us.

Finally, there’s something deep going on with this movie—and all movies that are, or that we want to be, bad-good—that has to do with value assignment. I can’t tell if movies like this, or like Evil Dead, or whatever, sprout up legions of fanboys because of some bandwagon factor, or because of some desire to be seen as unique, or because of something that’s gained from just the act of value assigning, perhaps a feeling of ownership or participation in something bigger than oneself, or what.

If SoaP had done what it should’ve done and veered straight into a sort-of action movie satire, then you could legitimately give it aesthetic credence. But it didn’t. Nevertheless, the fanboys will remain fanboys. In fact, they may become more rabid. They may slay you on forums. You probably just don’t get it, can’t get it, they’ll say. It becomes a club, a cult of those in the know who are able to see the true value of the movie, the TV show, the comic, the whatever. And why does this happen? How could it have happened with Snakes on a Plane even before it released? Dunno. But I know it says something about us.

Snakes on a Fleeting Spiritual Connection and a Conclusion: And does what it says about us have some spiritual relevance? Probably. It’s probably relevant that a large group of people (including me) long for simplicity, for icons, for a sense that what we value counts beyond just ourselves. It’d also probably be pretty easy to seat those longings someplace spiritual. So, is the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon, then, transcendent? Does it make sense that people use the words as a koan? Again, probably. All I know is: this is one case among many where the movie is less important, less interesting as a movie, than as a window into the culture and people that created it. On a plane. And I, for one, am glad to have been along for the ride.

Existentialism and the Vine: The Ruins Book Review

There’s something about the Kafkaesque. That bizarre, unescapable situation. Its being thrust forth, with no explanation, yet with a sense of destiny. Control. The resulting struggle, questionings, perhaps hope, perhaps angst/ennui, perhaps good ending, perhaps not—the inevitable character revelation and development that comes from being surrounded by the psychodramatic mirror of the Kafkaesque scenario. Sartre’s No Exit epitomizes it, along with Kafka’s works. Lost has it to popular appeal. Natali’s Cube has it in spades. And Scott Smith’s The Ruins has it. It’s dark, matter-of-fact, insightful, exciting, and thematically deep. And (necessary cliché alert): I couldn’t put it down.

The story is simple, though hard to fully explain without spoiling things. The book’s four main characters are on vacation in Mexico. They party, they meet new people, they be their innocuous selves. Quickly, however, a German fellow tourist they befriend invites them to come along on a day trip to find his brother. The brother, it seems, had met a girl, and returned with her to the titular ruins, where she was working as an archaeologist. The four hem and haw, their characters beginning to emerge in response to this new prospect, but end up going.

Once at the ruins, for reasons I won’t divulge, the four—plus the German, plus another fellow tourist, a Greek—are unable to leave. The ruins, in fact, place them all in great danger, and the remainder of the book is spent describing their navigation of this danger. Life or death, that’s the question. Suffice to say: the ruins are a scary place, and a place where that Kafkaesque scenario really begins to underline the book’s two strong suits: exciting, horrific, mysterious, page-turning plotting, and adept character development.

Not much more can be said about the former without spoiling things, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that The Ruins is already optioned to be made into a film—and it’ll hopefully be a good one. If the pacing, symbolism, and foreshadowing is preserved, and the gravitas respected (Ben Stiller’s production company holds the rights), it should make a great horror/thriller movie for some summertime release . . . though I bet they’ll change the ending, at least a little.

The latter, however, is even more key, and it’s also what brings out the thematic elements of the story. The six characters who end up on the hillside of the ruins all become more distinct and complex in the midst of their crisis. And they also all begin to conform to types—yet in a good, insightful, easy-to-identify-with sort of way. Who becomes the leader? The one who knows how to ration food and store water and care for wounds? Jeff the Eagle Scout, of course. Do we need a vamp? Does sex come into this picture? Absolutely. Hence Stacy. Comic relief? Check. Eric. What about the strong, silent, mysterious type? The guy who got them into this in the first place? Mathias, the German who lost his brother.

All of the six, in some way, fulfill and question these kinds of classic story roles, even to the point of a very meta and funny conversation between the characters about who will play who when they escape the ruins and a movie version is made of their story (apparently Adam Sandler, Bruce Willis, and Madonna should be expecting calls). But there’s more to it than just how Smith uses these archetypes to flesh the characters out. It’s how language barriers come into play to make us think about communication itself. How what we say in secret sounds when it’s shouted aloud. How our past dictates what people think of us in the present. How being in extremis brings out who we really are, especially in relation to others. And, like all stories of this kind, it’s how easily the reader slips into the shoes of first one, then another of the characters, until we see ourselves, a bit, in all of them.

Thematically, seeing ourselves in the characters is paramount, especially in extremis. This is where The Ruins can become a metaphor—as is so easily done with these Kafkaesque stories—for life and how we react to it. Some characters remain hopeful, vigilant, productive. Would we? Some go mad. Would we? Some give up? Is that me? You? In the end, though, in this particular version of the metaphor, it doesn’t matter how we react to the scenario. Smith gives the impression that the characters, we, are doomed to the outcome—good or bad, I won’t say. He even goes so far as to make these characters’ plight on the ruins circular: it’s happened to others before, it happens to them, it will happen to others in the future. Just like life.

And while there is something to be said for this stoic perspective—even a place for it to be parsed Christianly in an appropriate way—Smith’s take on it is dark, and hopeless, and as embracing of what he perhaps sees as the angst of the real world, as his characters are at times of the angst of their fictional situation. One character even decides, at the end, that she doesn’t, after all, in face of the direness of it all, believe in God . . . a final rejection of hope or meaning in the midst of something that screams for it, amidst their screams.

So is The Ruins finally some big allegory about the meaningless, cyclical, Darwinian nature of life? Are we “the ruins”? Is the world “the ruins”? Are our attempts at meaning “the ruins”? Perhaps we’re meant just to understand: “get through whatever you have to get through, dealing with the other people you happen to be in it with, hoping that hell is not ‘other people,’ and knowing that it’ll end soon.” Or, perhaps, this is only one side of the story. Perhaps Smith would agree with this basic existentialism, yet unlike his character at the end, say that God may yet offer a toe-hold. Perhaps he’d say that life is absurd, meaningless, non-communicative, cyclical, etc., but that God can change all of that—like Kierkegaard, let us not forget, the “father of existentialism.”

Or, maybe that’s just what I’d like him to think, how I’d like to read it, being generally of a Kierkegaardian bent myself. Or maybe, it’s just a good book and doesn’t need to be torn all apart to be enjoyed. In fact, finally, this is for sure the case: regardless of how you interpret the tone, the ending, the characters, and all of that, The Ruins was the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a long time. Definitely a page-turner, definitely worthwhile, and definitely inviting of deeper looks. I give it three Fs for Freaky Flowering Flora, and a high recommendation.

Clerks II

Commencement.

Alright, let’s get this out of the way first: Clerks II is wholly inappropriate and offensive. F-bombs drop without a second thought. Drug references abound. Characters come off as intentionally nasty, yet unapologetic. Nothing, apparently, is sexually taboo. In other words, if you have delicate sensibilities, you’ll want to steer farther away from this movie than Jar Jar Binks cosplayers steer from Comic-Con.

However, if you ask yourself: “Why does this Kevin Smith guy have such an avid and savvy fan base? Why will this movie make millions of dollars? Why are Jay and Silent Bob pop-culture phenoms? Why does something like Clerks II pass, not only as entertainment in this country, but as good entertainment, according to most critics?” then you’re just going to have to go see this movie, like Luke sees Yoda, Anakin, and Obi-Wan at the end of Jedi. And if and when you do, you may just find that there are some satisfying answers to be had to your questions.

Recounting.

If you loved the nineties like I did, then you probably saw the original Clerks, and maybe some other Smith films, and if so, you know the basic premise of Clerks II. (Ah, the nineties. I was actually a clerk at a convenience store when the original helped to change the face of cinema, and it was like Smith was speaking right to me . . . but I digress). This ten-years-later tale finds Dante and Randal—the stereotypical slacker stars of the original, back when the slacker became stereotype—doing the same thing they were doing when we last saw them: working McJobs and not really going anywhere, because they don’t know where to go or how to go there.

But whereas the original had a looser, dialogue-centered, Seinfeldian feel, Clerks II, plotwise, feels much more like a “real movie.” Dante is about to leave New Jersey for Florida and get married. This creates conflict between him and Randal, who are “hetero life-mates” to use one of my favorite Smithisms, and between him and his boss—(Rosario Dawson) perhaps the girl he should really be with. So: should he stay or should he go? Continue that slacker lifestyle, or grow up?

All of this works out, of course, against the backdrop of the static restaurant setting where, yes, most of the main characters are clerks. And, of course, much irreverent hilarity is interspersed—including requisite cameos from Smith’s troupe of actors, witty geek chic debates, slapstick, running gags, and Jay and Silent Bob interludes—all building up to a climax (ahem) involving “interspecies erotica” and the epiphany the characters all need.

Explication.

Speaking of the donkey show (since everyone else will be), is it crazy of me to interpret that scene as some sort of central metaphor? The story does lead up to it, after all. It is the scene where the character changes that bring about the end of the movie begin. It is the ultimate example—though we may rightly object to it specifically—of people doing what seems right to them, and other people being okay with that. The supreme, and supremely inappropriate, visual aid for Smith’s message of non-conformity when it comes to “what we’re supposed to do,” but conformity when it comes to what we think we should do.

Of course, this is also the central idea that inevitably provokes line-drawing—and Smith knows this too. He may not go so far as to say that bestiality is okay, but he certainly wants to question social norms, and traditional roles, and common expectations, etc., and he wants us to too. And if, like Dante by the end of Clerks II, we’ve done so to the point of self-realization or actualization, or whatever—if we’ve done so to the point that we begin to do what we really want to do with ourselves—then I’ll bet Smith would be happier than Han Solo at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

And let us also not forget the usual-for-Smith religious overtones in this context. By the beginning of this film, Jay and Silent Bob, apparently, have found God in rehab. They’re newly Christian and trying to be clean, but (of course) failing. That’s their newly found version of what they think they should do, and Smith makes it clear that imperfections along that road are okay—going so far as to feature a clearly visible bible verse on a wall near the end of the movie. The verse? A quote from Jesus, which says: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

In that same scene, tellingly, when it comes time for Silent Bob to finally break his silence and give the sage words of Jedi-wisdom he always seems to have in the View-Askewniverse, he says only, “I got nothing.” He knows that line-drawing and destiny-finding are hard given the way that things are. And even though the character would like to help Dante, maybe Silent Bob felt (and Smith feels) that the writing on the wall is already apparent. And clearer.

Denouement.

So, if it hasn’t been obvious yet, I’m a fan of Kevin Smith and his movies. I appreciate his take on growing-up (whatever that means) and being an adult (whatever that means), and I appreciate that amidst the humor, he takes his thematic material seriously (whatever that means). And I’m also a fan of this movie. It was nostalgic and funny and inappropriate and good-natured in the end, with hints at spirituality in the right places.

In the end, Clerks II is about failures who end up finally trying. Slackers who somehow stop slacking—just like me, and maybe like you. And, just like me and maybe you, it’s about people finally relying on friends, and love, and humor, and even God for help along the way.