Hawkeye, the Adult Superhero

By Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Jason T. Poplin (http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=14389) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Superheroes are definitely having their moment in the sun, they are the modern pantheon of  pop culture. They conjure up childhood memories about tucking a blanket in the collar of our shirts and running around fast as you can pretending you're flying.

Superheroes are super because they have powers that we don't posses. They are super strong, they can fly, they know martial arts and they fight really well. When you're a kid you dream of these powers; how much better would life be if one had the strength to open the pickle jar yourself or knock out the bully who won't leave you alone? How great would it be to fly to the park or arcade instead of begging one of your parents to drive you?

So much childhood play was pretending to get the best of villains and saving the day which contrasted embarrassingly to having to be strapped into a car seat a thousand ways and running to your parents with any problem more difficult than building a really tall lego tower.

We are not kids anymore, we pick out our own clothes, we do our own cooking,  we pay our own bills and it's our job to make sure we do what we have to do to maintain our well being. We may not do it well but we're adults and we expected to have responsibility for ourselves and our actions.

Kid problems are the not same as adult problems. Being super strong doesn't pay the rent, being able to fly doesn't mean you can maintain a healthy, happy relationship and go around beating people up will most certainly get you sent to jail (but officer, I am the Night!).

While superheroes are almost exclusively adults they are adults through kids eyes. Looking at them with adult eyes we see flawed people. The Incredible Hulk reminds us of people who can't be happy because they can't control their anger and harm themselves and those around them. Batman is a man who has grown up never able to escape the trauma of his youth. His only lasting relationship is with his caretaker and his only true motivation is trying to undo the past by being a ceaseless guardian of the grimy city that took his parents' lives from him. Spiderman is forever a pubescent boy, constantly trying to figure out his powers, constantly trying to figure out how to fit in socially and never quite figuring how to use his powers without putting his friends and family in danger.

Where are the adult superheroes? The grown-ups who have it all. Where are the people who can defect unending obstacles that reality throws at us like Superman deflecting bullets (and emotional intimacy). When we get a superhero movie about an adult superhero?

We already have, it's Avengers 2 and the superhero is Hawkeye.

"Wait," you may say, "Hawkeye doesn't even have super powers!" I would disagree with that. Look at all the things we learn about Hawkeye in the film. He has mastered the family/work mix, he spends quality time with his kids, he has a meaningful life, he never gets overwhelmed, he builds strong relationships including a platonic relationship with a member of the opposite sex, he works hard and that hard work pays off, and he has the skillset to deal with all sorts of problems physical and emotional. In the previous Avengers' movie Hawkeye had something horrifying happened to him, he lost his own volition and was force to cause harm to those close to him. This trauma will be with him for the rest of his life but he doesn't let that interfere with his job and relationships.

While the rest of the Avengers are behaving childish and in dangerous ways (including falling down a well?) Hawkeye is able to keep the group together and be the adult of the group. He doesn't work alone. He's part of a team and he makes sure the team is greater than the sum of its parts.

Being an adult has many pitfalls. They can be carrying around emotional baggage, missed opportunities, regrets both personal and interpersonal, the feeling of wasted and aimless work and uncertainty about the future. Being able to overcome these problems, to face them and beat them sure seems like a superpower to me.

What would make you happier, flying around in your underwear and boots or not feeling overwhelmed when life throws you a curveball?

The Man Child Antichrist

A man child is a person who is a physically mature man but still has the emotional maturity of a child. Almost throughout the entire movie of Fight Club we see grown men acting like children; we see them riding a bike indoors, sleeping in bunk beds, having imaginary friends and treating real drama and violence as cartoonish or fake. In one series of scenes we see guys passing rumors around like they were at a cafeteria lunch table saying things like "did you know," and "I heard that he" in reference to Tyler Durden. We see these men making dick jokes, like splicing porn in children movies, and obsessing about their father issues. They form a "no girls allowed club." They do not accept the consequences or responsibilities for their actions like an adult would. They are man children.

It's easy to recognize the familiar traits of the man child lifestyle, there is sex without intimacy or love, there's working to buy stuff like furniture but not working to provide for a future and a family. The narrator says veiled but explicit things  such as "I can't get married, I'm a thirty year old boy" and "I'm six years old again." He talks about having a fridge full of condiments but no food to eat which is often associated with unencumbered youth not thirty year old adults

Another sign of this arrested development, of being stuck in boyhood, is the inability for healthy intimacy even beyond sex. The narrator labels relationships as a weaker person latching onto a stronger person not as a complementary pairing. The physical combat becomes an insufficient replacement to physical intimacy. An undeniable sense of brotherhood is formed through the only means available: violence.

The narrators job brings him face to face with death which he is too immature to process. Part of growing up is accepting our own mortality. The narrator tries to figure out how to face death by going to support groups for moribund people. Sleep becomes a metaphor for death and the character's insomnia a stand in for his own nonacceptance of his own eventual death . This is how Tyler Durden is created. His fear of death from an unlived life makes him pursue all the dangerous and fun things he considers "living." In the narrator's first meeting with Tyler, Tyler tells the narrator to "accept his fate." This is misguided because stupid and dangerous behavior is not living because living is adding meaning to life. It is our relationships, love and legacy which give life our value not cheap thrills in the face of death.

We start to see the break between the narrator and Tyler Durden when it comes to Marla. Tyler uses and exploits Marla as a play thing for amusement but the narrator feels the need to protect Marla and to look out for her safety and her well being. Whenever Marla is in danger or is vulnerable the narrator shows up. She spurs the character into to growing up and becoming a man. The movie ends with the narrator and Marla holding hands, a show of physical affection. 

Compared their first meeting, the last meeting of the narrator and his imaginary friend, Tyler, involves the narrator looking at an instrument of death, a gun, with his eyes open with the intended effect of making Tyler disappear. He is facing death and accepting his own mortality which forces Tyler out of existence.

While the narrator is coping with his own immature fear of death he creates what can be described as his own religion. He becomes an antichrist which is defined as someone offering salvation but who is not Christ. He refers to his followers as "God's unwanted children." When one member of the group dies, they bury him while chanting his name sounding like a form of prayer. In another scene he takes a beating as a sacrifice to save the existence of Fight Club and is carried away, bloodied and bruised, in the Jesus Christ pose. This sacrifice wasn't to save their souls or bring peace but to continue violence and immaturity. This makes Tyler Durden an antichrist, the savior of the man children who participate in Fight Club.

In the end we can say the narrator's soul is saved by rejecting Tyler's teaching and embracing an adult life with Marla. 

The Machine has no loyalities: The story of Gladiator

*SPOILER ALERT*

The movie Gladiator is a good action movie and it is great for testing out home theater systems but story-wise it's a little weak. There is little character growth, few twists and not much deeper meaning. Well maybe there is a deeper meaning and that meaning is told in the opening scene.

Two sides line up for battle: on one side there is the Roman Army bent on conquest, well funded, strictly hierarchy with an omnipotent emperor, who while not always seen is always in charge. The Roman Army is a military machine, each soldier has a role, a class and a superior. The army moves in formation, mowing down all that lay before them, a bloody lawn mower. In charge of the army is Maximus, the army makes him powerful but the army can exist without him.

On the other side are German barbarians defending their homes in what is now Austria. These man are not organized, not rich, they did not seek out conflict but conflict found them. They do not fight in formation as soldiers but stand as warriors. There is no clear king, no clear class structure. These man are not part of a military machine.

In this sense, the Roman military machine represents the political machine and the German warriors represent individuals not part of a political system or machine.

At the peak of this battle there are two things going on of importance: first Maximus is fighting back to back with another soldier and he almost stabs him because he executing his role in the army mindlessly. Maximus would never murder a fellow Roman but caught up in the batle he is a different person. Second we see a barbarian champion, a hero like figure, fighting off many Romans, outnumbered but he stands above them undefeated. He is an individual fighting to preserving his way of life but he is soon devoured by the army, dead and defeated.

The machine cannot permit an individual to triumph not matter how worthy his cause, any success against the machine will be inevitably be destroyed.

Maximus does change throughout the movie, he a family man who fights for his livelihood and what is just (justice for his murdered family). He doesn't learn a lesson, he doesn't grow, he doesn't display any trait later in the movie that he didn't have in the beginning of the movie.

So how does he go from the powerful head of a very strong army to a lifeless corpse bleeding in the sand of the arena? It happens because he ended up on the wrong side of the machine. His friends crushed and betrayed him because they are loyal to the machine, he stood up to the machine and the machine crushed him because he dared to be an individual who challenged the machine.

The lesson? Where you stand is more important than who you are. Don't betray the machine.

The Tale of Two Beasts

In Disney's Beauty and the Beast we have two main male leads, Gaston and the Beast. Both of these characters are introduced the same way, superficial, strong and lacking compassionate. Both the Beast and Gaston view the value of a woman based on her looks, the Beast places little value on the old lady because of her looks and age and Gaston values Belle not based on her intellect and personality but the fact she is the attractive girl in the village.

The Beast and Gaston are not exactly the same, there are differences. Let's consider their roles in the community, the Beast's community is poor,disfigured servants and they are so because of the Beast. Gaston's community is just normal hard working people who are better off because of Gaston. Gaston is a skilled hunter and warrior willing to protect the village from all sorts of threats demonstrated by his willingness to hunt down the Beast which the villagers consider a grave and immediate threat. Gaston hanger-ons are taken care of by him, not exploited servants.

Now we can compare the two vis a vis Belle. Belle is portrayed as too intellectual ( a bookworm) and compassionate to be marrying Gaston who doesn't bring enough to the equation even though he can provide for her in all ways material. What does the Beast being to the equation? The Beast isn't bookread even though he has a huge library and doesn't show any human decency until we are deep involved with the plot.

The story of the Beast is the story of someone who was worse than Gaston who is redeemed and becomes what we are told is the perfect husband, the reward for Belle being the perfect woman/wife.

So let's look at outcomes here, Beast is a obnoxious prince who indiscretions causes him and those around harm but is redeemed but Gaston acting in accordance with the welfare of those around him is not offered a chance for redemption but instead pushed to his death by the "good guy"

I guess redemption is only reserved for some.

Scar the Good King

Say what you will about Scar but he knew how to get what he wanted, he made the right allies, he didn't let anything get in the way and he did achieve his goal.

He had no friends and no one liked him so he had nothing to lose by usurping the throne. If he was nice he could have had friends but not the throne because the kingship is not a popularity contest, no one votes for the king.

You have this minority , the hyenas, with no rights who are outcast to live off of table scraps. Maybe if Mufusa tried to build a respectful relationship with the hyenas they wouldn't have backed his brother Scar. All the hyenas wanted was to know where their next meal was coming from, they didn't want to go hungry, is that a crime? I think that it's not.

If the hyenas weren't incompetent then Scar's reign would have lasted for quite some time. Scar has been labeled as evil but was he really? He had the power to enable an oppressed and threatened minority so he dethroned a king that was there not because of merit but because of luck of birth. I thought that we are advanced enough not to judge or reward people simply on the luck of their birth.

Scar was considered handicapped but in spite of that he fought for an oppressed minority and won over an aristocratic regime. I think that makes him an American Hero.

Sequel Recipe

So I finally got to see Pirates 2. It was a good movie but something bugged me.

I must warn you, read no further if it is a spoiler yer fear!

So all these big brains are sitting around at the studio after the first movie was a hit and they are trying to figure out how to make a sequel or maybe they had all three movies planned out from the beginning. The question must have arisen, "How do you make a successful second movie of a trilogy?" How has it been done in the past? What are some of the most successful trilogies in the past. Well, there was Star Wars and you must admit the parallel to Star Wars can not be denied so far in this series.

First let's do the line up:

Will Turner - Luke Skywalker
Jack Sparrow - Han Solo
Elizabeth Swan - Princess Leia
Davy Jones - Jabba the Hutt
Pintell and Regatti - R2D2 and C3PO
Bill Turner and Barbarossa - Darth Vader


So you have this restless young kid working in a dead-end occupation until the Imperium comes by and changes everything and plus you have a pampered high-born young girl who's independent and has no problem getting her hands dirty to get things done and eventually gets captured by the bad guys only to find out they have a horrible secret and they plan on killing her. So which movie is that? New Hope or Curse of the Black Pearl? Yeah, exactly.

So in the second movie the young kid grows up and is now involved in warfare and after getting himself into a tough bind discovers his father is still alive although he thought him dead his whole life. Now he is driven to destroy the evil enemy to save his father. Also in the second film the charismatic and Devil-May-Care outlaw is caught up by an old debt and ends up being "put on ice" with his fate undetermined.

Also through out both movies there are these two characters, one tall and skinny and the other short and stout. They provide comic relief as well as pushing along the plot at slow points.

In the second movie there is an introduction of two new villians. One is a human bent on ruling everything and will stop at nothing to acheive it and the other is a monster who is a dark warlord; who all the main characters end up getting captured by.

So the kid's long lost father made a deal with one of the villians a long time ago and since then has been damned to be in his service. His son, who was sent off many years ago, has come back to rescue his father.

My prediction for Pirates 3 is that Davy Jones gets thrown down a large vent shaft and Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swan go off and get married with a honey moon in an Ewok village. But all this takes places after Will Turner sneaks aboard a "Super Warship" that the East India Trading Company built to destory whole islands, the ship's name in the Full Moon.

I see they copied the Oracle out from Matrix which kind of breaks the thoery of copying off of successful trilogies but it doesn comply with the "Introduce a token black person in the second movie to balance out the the amazing whiteness of the main characters from the first movie" rule. Also known as the Billy-D-Williams Theorum.


May the Pirates be with you!

Top Ten Sports Movies

Top Ten Sports Movies I've seen:

10. Field of Dreams
9. Bull Durham
8. The Replacements
7. Rocky IV
6. Mystery Alaska
5. Major League
4. Sandlot
3. Slapshot
2. Miracle
1. Hooisers