Howard was generous enough to offer me a chance to contribute to his blog, so naturally I’ve chosen to use this opportunity to disagree with him...This is who I am, somehow. And I wanted to say some words on the subject of anti-heroes and why they matter.
Bar none, the most powerful moment ever achieved by a movie based on comic books can be found in the 2012-2013 animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. In fact, I was willing to forgive much of Zack Snyder’s almost universally panned Batman v. Superman (a film that at least attempts to pay homage to its source material), based purely on the strength of this two-part miniseries. As the second film nears its conclusion, the Joker is once again at large. Having gained his freedom by manipulating the naive and ideologically-driven therapist (nope, it’s not Harley) who functions as his care-taker at the prison for the criminally insane, we find the Joker on a murderous rampage through an amusement park and the aging Batman in hot pursuit. The chase is a long one, but Batman finally catches up to his quarry in the waters of a Tunnel of Love (the symbolism of which is a nice touch). After tipping over the Joker’s boat, Wayne grabs him by collars, draws him in close, and utters what has become my favorite line in all of the DC universe (Though it’s a close race with other lines from the same movie like “You don’t get it, son. This isn’t a mud-hole. It’s an operating table, and I’m the surgeon” as Wayne shatters the arm of the gang-leader that previously bested him.)
“No more! All of the people I’ve murdered by letting you live.”
Wayne’s voice descends to a growl, and the audience knows that this unpardonably neglected arc of Bruce Wayne’s character is, finally, going to be explored. And all I can say is “It’s about time.”
Objectively, he’s right of course. By any utilitarian standard, the classic Batman approach has been an unqualified failure. Wayne’s decision to leave the final justice to the legal system was always an act of faith, a wager on the benevolence of the universe or the idea that God is in charge, turning the final outcome over to something larger than himself. Unfortunately for Wayne, the universe in which he resides is not governed by the God of Abraham, or of Mohammed, or even by the infinitely impersonal god of cosmic “energies” hailed by New-Agers and spiritualists. No, Wayne’s universe is run at the whim of a cabal of capricious writers who have seen fit, time and time again, to unchain the devil, and who knows how many fictional lives have been thrown on that particular pyre. In the end, Wayne shares responsibility since he has always had the power to stop them. His faith has never been rewarded, merely thrown in his face over and over as a continual source of guilt.
The Dark Knight Returns 1 & 2 aren’t perfect movies. In particular, they suffer from some terribly stunted voice acting, as if the entire cast were all collectively nursing some tremendous, shared hangover, as well as some mediocre if not outright sub-par animation. But they are still my favorite Batman films because they are unequivocally the most sophisticated and mature. The fact that they are cartoons is ironic, but I suspect that’s because animated features require less of an investment from the studio and can therefore afford to take greater risks. Nolan’s films deserve credit for asking pointed questions about the moral implications of a character like Batman, but after watching these movies, it becomes clear that Nolan could not go the distance.
What has always been most fascinating about Batman is his commitment to his own moral code. He may be on the Justice League, but he’s not a team player. On one occasion (Superman/Batman Apocalypse), he resolves a conflict with Darkseid by threatening to use some of Darkseid’s own hell-spores (basically super-nukes) to eradicate Apokolips. Yeah, the whole planet, along with every living thing on it including his teammates. Darkseid backs down and admiringly notes that only Wayne could have successfully made such a gambit because only Wayne has “the strength of character” to actually make good on the threat.
Superman is unassailably virtuous, but his moral compass is not his own. Typically, he has answered to the United States government (Snyder’s Superman is the exception, but audiences have been none too pleased with it), but Miller shows us that this ultimately makes him vulnerable to being used as a pawn when that government is corrupt. A similar concept was examined in Watchmen with Dr. Manhattan and his relationship with Nixon, but it doesn’t deserve precedence as Miller’s work was realized at the same time and to greater effect. Both feature their respective super-humans winning a morally dubious international conflict on behalf of the United States, but in Miller’s work it is made obvious that the conflict is predicated on looking out for America’s interests (mostly economic). During Miller’s final battle between Superman and Wayne (the inspiration for Snyder’s film), Wayne spells it out, “You say you answer to some sort of authority. They [the administration] only want me gone because I’m an embarrassment, because I do what they can’t. What kind of authority is that?”
Nolan’s The Dark Knight ends with Batman taking the blame for the death of Harvey Dent in order to spare Gotham from the horrific truth: the Joker won. Here, whether he knew it or not, Jonathan Nolan (the writer) was mirroring the final scenes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness wherein Marlowe, having witnessed Kurtz’s descent into nihilism, lies to Kurtz’s wife by telling her that her husband’s last words were her name, when in reality they were “The horror. The horror…” In both stories, the protagonists’ final acts are to prop up a lie that will serve as a hedge against an impending existential calamity.
Though much could be said about the distinction between the hero and the anti-hero, I’m going to step over the debate and simply assert that the difference between the two is this: the anti-hero stands at odds or at least apart from the mores of society, while the hero props them up and validates our belief in them. Superman provides the muscle necessary for us to belief the things we want to believe about ourselves and our morality. Nolan’s Batman does the same, but through cunning, a bit of tech-magic (Sorry, but the surveillance system employed at the end of Dark Knight is beyond absurd), and, ultimately, a deceit. Miller’s Batman is an anti-hero because he accepts the falsity of those beliefs, and takes on those forces that society is intentionally blind to, even if doing so puts him on the wrong side of public opinion. Because, here is the truth about humanity: While we are capable of acts of immeasurable, incomprehensible grace, that is not our natural state, and if we were required to, as a species, prove our goodness...the preponderance of evidence would not be in our favor.
In killing the Joker, Wayne renounces his faith. This act is a statement to God, or the universe, or however Wayne might conceive of the higher authority that he has previously answered to, “If you can’t do this right, then I will.” It is a challenge to the Creator. Of course, this makes the faithful uncomfortable.
One of the most important anti-heroes in literature must surely be Raskolnikov (R.) from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. More than a decade before the publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s “ubermensch,” Dostoevsky had already seen enough to write a powerful rebuttal of the ideas that the German philosopher would offer. R. is a young, ex-student living in poverty who kills a pawnbroker and her sister, partially out of financial need, partially out of hatred for the woman and her dishonest dealings, but very importantly, also as a way of testing a certain theory he has, a theory that would later be more thoroughly described by Nietzsche, that there are certain people (and R. believes himself to be one of them) that are capable of transcending human morality. Throughout the book, R. speaks often of Napoleon, using him as an illustration of the man that is capable of surpassing society and bending it to his will. However, after the murders, R. is driven mad by his guilt. He senses that, by his rejection of the authority of men, he has stumbled into the court of a far higher authority. In the end and with the help of Sonya, a virtuous woman who has been forced into prostitution out of necessity, R. confesses to his crime, even after realizing that he could get away with it and never face man’s justice, out of the need to reconcile himself with this higher power that he has discovered. It should not be understated that it is only through his transgressions that he comes to know God, only after he has left behind the lights of Caesar that he is capable of seeing something far brighter.
---
I’m not sure what it is, or where it comes from, but it is undeniable that, in some of us, there is a spirit of Peter, a thing that would fight, that would hear that old warning, “He who lives by the sword dies by it,” and respond, “So be it.” For some of us, that fight is with the Almighty. But it seems the scriptures show us that God loves even those who wrestle with Him. I suspect this is because a man never truly challenges God. In matters between man and God, a challenge is only ever the most urgent form of supplication. Even the man who screams at the sky, “I deny You! I hate You!” is truly saying, “Reveal Yourself. Heal me.”
It’s an old question, and one every storyteller has to decide at some point or another: Is this fiction going to serve as a comforting fantasy, or should it represent our actual struggles, spiritual or otherwise? Of course almost all stories seek to resolve problems through art (which is to say “artifice”), but some grapple with those problems for rigorously and more earnestly than others. Sociologically, anti-heroes matter because they provide a way to examine a culture through a different paradigm, to punch holes in whatever narratives a society may use to justify itself. In Madness and Civilization Foucault claims that one of the highest things that a work of art can aspire to is to reveal our cultural 'blindspots,' those tears in the cultural fabric that our societies are ever weaving. If the hero is the manifestation of that fabric, the anti-hero is the tear. But for a Christian, they represent something else as well. The anti-hero, by his nature, inhabits the ideological “wilderness,” a place apart from the society that surrounds him. But if scripture shows us anything, it is in the wilderness that one finds the God of Abraham. Now, certainly this isn’t always followed within the numerous anti-hero story lines. I wouldn’t go in expecting Deadpool to have any particularly profound come-to-Jesus moment in the upcoming sequel, but I’d say that’s mostly due to the fact that pop-culture (maybe culture period) is still grappling with Nietzsche, and that means we’re still a long way from Dostoevsky or Kierkegaard, but that doesn’t change that it will be the anti-heroes that have to get us there. It is the man who transgresses, who wrestles with God, that best understands and can best show us the beauty of Grace, because he has the greatest need of it.
Ben is a co-blogger and contributor with The Saintly Savage (formerly Kingdom Geek). He is also a literature teacher that has a passion for writing on relevant topics centered on film, geekdom, and faith.
Comments
Post a Comment