Batman Should Have Died

by Ben Howard

Batman should have died.

I'm not kidding and I don't particularly care if I'm spoiling the ending. Batman should have died at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. It was the only appropriate way for the trilogy to end. Batman sacrificing himself and passing on his legacy to another. 

But of course that's not the way the movie ends. No, instead Batman finds the time in his busy schedule to do a thing to some stuff and dramatically fake his own death. 

Sentiment makes for lazy plot mechanics.

This has become a regular part of all superhero movies. In order to emotionally hook the audience there need to be real stakes, the audience has to believe that the hero is actually in danger. Of course, everyone intellectually knows that you can't kill the hero, so you endanger those close to him. It's why Uncle Ben has to die in Spiderman, why Batman's girlfriend has to die in the Dark Knight, or why Tony Stark's cave friend has to die in Iron Man.

But how much emotional capital does an audience really have invested in a character they've only known for half a movie? Not enough. So you have to kill off the star. You have to make it really hurt. You have to make it real.

So you kill Batman, or Sherlock Holmes, or Doctor Who. And then you figure out a way to bring them back to life.

It's a good story, but it's also cheating because real life doesn't come with a writer's room.


My favorite stories are the ones that end in pain, that embrace it, not because it's beautiful, but because it's real. Friday Night Lights is my favorite sports movie almost entirely because at the end of the movie, they lose. You build up so much emotion waiting for the climactic moment, the redemptive moment and then...you fall just short.

Any Game of Thrones fan can speak to author George R.R. Martin's almost maniacal obsession with killing beloved characters. He's even gone so far as to say that the end of the story will be bittersweet.

It's not that I don't believe in happy endings, it's that I don't believe in endings at all. Real life does not fade to black after the ending, it does not have a lovely epilogue where Harry Potter takes his kids to school, nor does it pan back from a funeral to find the supposedly deceased watching from off in the distance. It just keeps going.

We are tempted to deal with pain indirectly or tangentially, pulling back on the throttle before we get too deep. We're tempted to tell only stories that have endings, and since we can't embrace a sad ending, we get stories that end happily ever after.

That's one of the reasons I'm so drawn to the liturgical traditions of Christianity. The story is one that continually repeats. It goes through the tense darkness of Advent to the pinnacle of Christmas, it descends into the painful remembrance of mortality on Ash Wednesday, the ache of Good Friday and Holy Saturday and the exuberant joy of Easter. 

Yet, there are also plains between these peaks and valleys. Life is not an infinite binary of pleasure and pain. There is also the aptly-named Ordinary Time where things are, well, ordinary.

And this happens over and over and over again. There is no end, no beginning, just a continual roll of ups and downs, valleys and peaks and long ordinary plains.

Endings are overrated, but Batman still should have died.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

You might also like:  

• The Meaning of the End
• What Nolan's Batman Movies and Jesus Have Taught Me About How to Respond to the Shooting in Aurora
• Jay Bakker Knows Why We Need Batman

On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 23 - On Superheroes

by Ben Howard

Ben, Jesse and Sebastian sit down to discuss superheroes, superhero movies and why we love them so much. We talk about superheroes as salvation figures, whether Superman is Jesus or Moses, how superheroes respond to our desire for control over chaos, and how the ethos behind superheroes presents a negative view of humanity. We also talk about weird stuff like when Superman fought the Ku Klux Klan. Join and enjoy our rambling and kind of ridiculous ravings.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store. If you download the show through iTunes, please be so kind as to rate and review us. We want your feedback and it helps the show to grow. 

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.
Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here:

Peace,
Ben

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

You might also like:   

• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 22 - Jason Collins, Homosexuality, and Christianity
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 21 - Doctor Who, The Hunger Games and God w/ Julie Clawson
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 20 - Sex, Violence, and the Gods of Westeros

 

Superman: Our Post-Post 9/11 Hero

by Steven Lefebvre 

I defy you to find a person who is more excited about the upcoming Man of Steel movie in June as I am. However, as a youth minister I am finding it difficult to rally my pupils around the release of this movie. In contrast, last summer I spent a week with my teens making a Batman movie in honor of the release of the Dark Knight Rises and it was the most popular idea I have ever had.

I have seen it in the media, I’ve argued with my friends, and I’ve heard it in the groaning of students when I told them we’re going to make a Superman movie this summer. America loves Batman and Superman is too "June Cleaver."

Let me tell you why you loved Batman:

Christopher Nolan’s Batman is a masterpiece of connecting mythology with culture. When the franchise began in 2004 we were living in a post 9-11 world. We didn’t trust anybody. Not Muslims, not the Bush Administrations, not even our own opinions and perspectives. Post modernity was on everyone’s lips. We began unpacking the metanarratives; that is the story behind the story. Everything was up for speculation and evil was everywhere, even within my own soul.

Enter Nolan’s Dark Knight; a story that ultimately discusses that eliminating the evil in this world must begin within. Bruce Wayne conquers his fears and doubts by embracing them. And the ends justify the any means necessary if your heart desires justice and there’s a lunatic threatening to kill everyone (remember that Sonar machine Wayne had built using everyone’s cell phone). In a post 9-11 world we needed a hero to teach us how to deal with all the uncontrollable evils in this world: By being on the side of justice at all costs both in our actions and in our character.

And then last summer someone killed a bunch of people in a theatre in Colorado, coincidentally during the release of Nolan’s final chapter to his Dark Knight trilogy. And I believe we’ve never been the same since. It seems in the last year public mass killings is all the news reports on, just when it gets quiet someone sets off a bomb during the Boston Marathon or shoots some kids in Connecticut.

Our conversation has dramatically shifted from terrorists in the Middle East to terrorists next door, and now we find ourselves in what I am calling the post-post-9-11 era. We’ve shifted from airport security to gun control, racial profiling to background checks.

It’s not so much about what to do about evil in this world, it’s about asking an even bigger question: Is humanity doomed? Are we as a society deteriorating? Do I need to carry weapons on my belt to protect my family and me? Can I trust anybody? Are people good?

The answer I have to all of those questions is: yes.

To quote Fred Rogers: ‘Whenever I saw something scary on the news, my mother would remind to look for the people who are helping. There are always people helping.”

Whether it is underpaid and overly criticized teachers taking bullets for their pupils or people running into the blast site to help, we as the human race have beaten the terrorists simply by way of virtue. 

And this is the overarching story I believe Zach Snyder will tell us in his Superman epic. You see, Superman is a demi-God, his battle isn’t with bullets or being overpowered. Superman’s battle is with humanity as a whole. Are we the kind of people worth saving? Why does Superman with all of his power choose to serve us rather than rule over us? Why in light of all the evil things we do, does Superman race into burning buildings, stop rock slides, and save Lois Lane from a helicopter accident? Because we as human beings are worth saving!

Superman exists to demonstrate to us the good in humanity, something we all need to be reminded of as our 24-hour news cycles perpetuate a lost and broken narrative about all of us.

Superman is the hero of post-post 9-11 America.

Shalom.

Steven is the Director of Youth and Young Adults at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He also rocks a fantastic bow tie. Check out his blog Adventures in Emerging Young Adulthood and follow him on Twitter @stevenlefebvre.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
You might also like:   

• The Paradox of Superman
• Jay Bakker Knows Why We Need Batman
• What Nolan's Batman Movies and Jesus Have Taught Me About How to Respond to the Shooting in Aurora 

What Nolan's Batman Movies and Jesus Have Taught Me About How to Respond to the Shooting in Aurora

by Steven Lefebvre

First let me apologize if you find this opportunistic or inappropriate and forgive me for adding to the noise…

Friday morning I took a dozen of my youth to see the The Dark Knight Rises, but not before I was awoken by a phone call from a concerned parent. She asked if I was still planning on taking the youth to see the film in light of the attack that morning in Aurora. I think she ultimately called me to think out loud, so I quietly ‘uh-hu-ed’ along as she pontificated that it’s probably safe because we were going to a morning viewing. Safe.

I was thoroughly entertained and satisfied by the film except for the scene where the antagonist, Bane, holds up the Gotham Stock Exchange Hostage. In this scene, he and his henchmen murder about a thirty people in cold blood. With the events of last night swirling around in my brain, I found it disturbing and terrifying. I caught myself looking around the theater a few times both imagining what it must have been like for those souls in Colorado and feeling afraid and unsafe myself. Safe.

Who promised us this safety that, every time a tragedy shatters our feelings of security, prompts us to demand answers? Why do we think that watching 24-hour news cycles and finding out what kind of parents the killer had will put the pieces back together? Why is it so important that things go back to normal?

Wake up my friends.

Evil exists in this world. If we learned anything from Nolan’s last Batman movie it’s that some people “just like to watch the world burn.” Sometimes bad things happen and there is no rhyme or reason, no plot or motive, no way to prevent it from happening, no way to promise it won’t happen again. It just simply exists.

This is the way it is for most people in this world. Whether its people dying and being mutilated by war lords and militias or epidemic diseases without cures or hurricanes or tornadoes or psychopaths or alcoholism or pedophilia or drought or starvation. Evil exists in this world. As long as there are varying levels of hate, greed, jealousy, inequality, prejudice, pollution, exploitation, bitterness, lust, disease, and sloth, it is here to stay.

Some people get the benefit of going longer periods of time being ignorant to evil’s presence, but sooner or later a tragedy will strike and it will find you. But the damned thing is, somebody in this modern world promised us safety. They told us suffering is bad and the quicker we can alleviate the discomfort the better. So when tragedy strikes we look at the talking heads like they're the crew on a sinking ship directing us to the lifeboats. Perhaps we tweet about demanding better gun laws, or we tell everyone to carry their own guns so that when it comes we can be ready.

But deep down we all know what the truth is: no amount of government, wealth or artillery will protect us from tragedy, suffering, and our inevitable deaths. The one thing that we all have in common is our suffering and its aim is to teach us compassion and tolerance. You cannot fix suffering, you can only run from it or turn and face it, embrace it and begin the process of grieving, which is the way we heal.

Please stop watching television. Please stop demanding answers. Please stop trying to go back to the way things were.

We have become a society of numb and lonely people. We complain about being enslaved by Facebook, our smart phones, and our individualized busyness. We complain that our kids are too addicted to video games and have become increasingly desensitized to violence. So why do we want things to go back to “normal?” Why is this uneasiness we feel so bad and our feeling of apathetic numbness so good (or maybe it’s the blinding stress and busyness)?

Sure, to be aware of the world’s suffering is to be full of tension and it causes us to reevaluate our values and our priorities. But I believe, as I watched people be murdered on screen today, Friday’s events put me back in touch with reality: Violence is evil. I should be uncomfortable with it. This doesn’t mean that there is some silver lining to the attack, that it was good that it happened because now we can all appreciate what we have, blah blah blah, etc etc etc. No, that morning’s event was senseless and unexplainable.

However, what we are today is conscious. So the question I wish to pose is: How are you going to respond? Are you hoping that something else will come along and trick you into believing you are safe again? Are you going to choose despair or apathy and hopefully time will lull you back into your ignorant and idle bliss?

Or are you going to use this as a time to be present to the suffering in this world? Will you choose to suffer with everyone you know and those you can imagine, learn more deeply the story of the human condition, discover the ways you are perpetuating the cycles of evil in this world, repent, forgive, forgive everyone because they are just like you and be more charitable to your fellow human?

WE CANNOT CONTROL EVIL. The only thing we CAN control is whether or not we choose to participate in perpetuating it.

Grieve well my friends.

Pray. God is near.

Shalom.

Steven is the Director of Youth and Young Adults at St. Paul's Episcopal Church.  He writes/posts about his music at http://www.stevenlefebvre.com/