The Superhero with a
Thousand Faces
I always had the
greatest admiration, not to mention affection, for Robert W. Funk,
co-founder, with John Dominic Crossan, of the Jesus Seminar. A great man who
had a vision and possessed the energy to realize it. I didn’t agree with him
on everything, naturally. No one agrees on everything with anyone, much less
everyone. But I guess my most important point of difference was a
theoretical one, or maybe I mean a moot one. In some editorial or lecture
somewhere, Bob Funk developed the idea that in the new millennium it would
be necessary to get rid of the idea of the Hero. I think he feared it was an
excuse for elitism, for some to think others better than themselves, as well
as to use those they admired as an excuse not to be heroes themselves: “How
could I ever measure up?” But it was plain to all of us associated with the
Jesus Seminar that Bob Funk himself was a hero. He had faced many obstacles
over the years and overcome them all, and he had managed to achieve his
dream: creating a vehicle to promote genuine, critical religious literacy
for America.
What I think he missed, because he was
too close to it, was that heroes have the function of running a battle
standard up the flagpole and rallying the courage of those who see it. The
hero attracts heroes to himself, like Superman and the Justice League. The
hero begets more heroes by revealing hitherto-unguessed possibilities. Sure,
some may look at the efforts of a Schweitzer, a Dr. King, and say, “I could
never do that!” But it seems just as likely that someone will look at those
heroes and say, “Wow! I wouldn’t have thought a single human being could
make such a difference! I guess it is possible, after all! Now where should
I get started?”
That, in fact, is the philosophy of the
superhero in DC comics: the powered “metahumans” have the effect of living
parables for everyone else in Gotham City or Metropolis. Superman, for
instance. Here is a man who is virtually a god, virtually omnipotent.
Schleiermacher would have protested that there is not enough commonality
between Superman and us for us to be inspired by him. But there is, as long
as you remember your Aristotle. He said that the Unmoved Mover acts as a
magnet drawing all finite beings to emulate its perfection so far as they
can. They will never reach absolute perfection, but neither is there any
point in their trying to do so (or despairing when they fail). No, their job
is to attain their best possible fulfillment. For an acorn that would mean
becoming the stoutest, strongest oak it can be. The housecat need not worry
about not becoming a Bengal tiger. Why should he? And I need not worry about
not being able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. But I can see
that the world is better for the efforts of Superman (even if his exploits
are fictional), and I can resolve to do what I can in my own little world.
A perfect illustration of this principle,
that the superhero draws forth from us the best hero we can be, which is
superheroism compared to our typical condition of indolent apathy, is the
story in which Superman sees John Henry Irons, a construction worker,
falling from a girder. The Man of Steel rescues him, sets him down, and says
to him something like, “Now that you’ve got your life back, make something
of it!” And he flies away. Irons becomes an inventor, an engineer. One day
he hears the awful news that Superman is dead, killed by the monster
Doomsday. He decides to take up the mantle of his hero. He has no
super-powers. But he has his wits. He designs a suit of techno-armor (much
like Iron Man from Marvel Comics) and dons a red cape and a metal
chest-shield with an “S” inside it. He has become a new “Man of Steel.” He’s
nothing compared to Superman, sure, but he can carry on the good fight in
his own way. Nor is he the only one. Bibbo, a retired merchant marine, now a
bar owner down at the docks, has been a great admirer of Superman, and now
he puts on a Superman sweat shirt and rescues a kitten from a tree. It’s
something. Maybe everybody together can equal Superman. And whether everyone
or anyone else does, you can.
Heroes have limits, even if they are
omniscient. One Superman tale pictures Superman/Clark Kent with his wife
Lois about to turn in for the night. But Superman is easily disturbed, you
see. Remember, he has super-hearing which apparently he cannot just turn
off. Suddenly he picks up the sound of bickering, then beating, in the
apartment next door. In an instant, he is suited up, flies out his window,
and bursts through the neighbor’s wall. Grabbing the abusive husband by the
collar he flies up into the sky and tells the guy, “If I ever hear you doing
that again, I’ll be back, and then you can find your own way down!”
Something to that effect. Well, he swoops back down to deposit the shook-up
wife-abuser back in his apartment, only to find that the wife has summoned
the police. The surprise is that they are after, not the husband, but
Superman! You can’t help someone who will not help herself. Not even if
you’re omnipotent.
Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell regard the
hero myth as an archetype that sets the individual’s unconscious (if not
conscious) agenda. Paul Tillich maintained that everyone, just about, has
some ultimate concern, whether or not it is really worth such devotion, and
that means everyone has some version of “faith,” since at bottom faith is
not belief but concern. In the same way, everyone is living for something,
to attain or to become something, and the determination to do so makes one a
hero. To live out that agenda is to embrace the hero within. Vladimir Propp
suggested that the origin of the hero myth is the story of the man winning
the maiden. The suitor must prove his worth to her and, more important, to
her father. If he is stubbornly opposed, the hero must defeat the father or
at least his opposition to the marriage. From there the basic plot line got
more and more elaborate and meaningful, with many possible grails and goals.
Even the death of the hero is a triumph, so long as it is a heroic death. It
must be seen as a Sartrean “final experience” that imparts an indelible
essence of meaning. Such a death is the final word spoken of the life it
concludes, whether or not the objective for which the hero died be gained.
Even what seems a life of quiet
desperation may be heroic as long as the one condemned to the salt mine
retains an inner freedom of triumph, as Sisyphus did. Thus there is always
the opportunity to be a hero.
I am at least as captivated by comic
books and superheroes as I am with the study of the Bible and religion, and
that is quite a bit. So potent is the idea of the superhero that there
seemingly cannot be too many iterations of it. As soon as Superman appeared
on the scene in 1938, he called forth a vast legion of competitors,
colleagues, imitators, etc., by both the same publisher and many others.
There were hundreds overnight. Some did not last beyond one or two issues
crammed as filler into the back pages. It is amazing to page through
reference works listing these. Still more amazing to count the number of
companies and superheroes that continue to debut on the comic racks today!
There is no end to the hero myths, and no end to the need for them. Why? You
will not be surprised to learn that Nietzsche explained it:
You still feel noble, and the others,
too, feel your nobility, though they bear you a grudge and send you evil
glances. Know that the noble man stands in everybody’s way. The noble man
stands in the way of the good, too; and, even if they call him one of the
good, they thus want to do away with him. The noble man wants to create
something new, and a new virtue. The good want the old, and that the old be
preserved. But this is not the danger of the noble man, that he might become
one of the good, but a churl, a mocker, a destroyer.
Alas, I knew noble men who lost their
highest hope. Then they slandered all high hopes. Then they lived impudently
in brief pleasures and barely cast their goals beyond the day. Spirit, too,
is lust, so they said. Then the wings of their spirit broke: and now their
spirit crawls about and soils what it gnaws. Once they thought of becoming
heroes: now they are voluptuaries. The hero is for them an offense and a
fright.
But by my love and hope I beseech you: do
not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!”
So says Zarathustra.
