June 15, 2006

• By St. Kirby, that's ridiculous!
• But seriously, interesting articles. Although frankly, sometimes a superhero is just a superhero.
• I'm convinced. Superman is the gay second coming of Jesus.
• Richard Pyror, innit?
• Okay, yeah, so my spelling sucks. Or, could it be a Freudian slip? No. My spelling just sucks.
• Must be a slow news day over at CNN... Most obvious story evar... I hear that there Batman and Robin might be teh ghey as well... The article mentions that the Christian references are more recent additions. I suppose that by more recent they mean the mid to late 40's as opposed to the late 30's when Superman was invented. Sure technically, the 40s are more recent than the 30s, but it is deceptive to phrase it that way. Superman is facinating because so much of what we think of as the mythos surrounding him was actually created outside of the comic books. Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Kryptonite were all invented in the radio show in the 40s. And it was a novel in 1942 that changed Superman's name from Kal-l to Kal-el. Although the site could use a facelift, and better navigation, Superman.ws is a great resource for all things Superman.
• I believe I can fly.
• poor nunia! maybe it only sucks a little tiny bit, and not so much otherwise? I don't think they'd be discussing the putative gayness of Superman without the influence of Smallville. I'm not sure whether it was that show that caused Television Without Pity to coin the phrase "HoYay!" ("Homoeroticism! Yay!"), but I know that all the clinches and gazing-intently-into-each-others'-eyes moments between Clark and Lex are representative of its meaning. With specific reference to that show, "HoYay" gets used a LOT on the boards and, for a while when I was reading them, in the episode recaps. (Use of the phrase signifies, "That was a totally homoerotic moment just now.") I believe it's considered the current television ne plus ultra of HoYay. And I'd be fine with that, if Lex and Clark would just Do It already. Sheesh. I'm not a fan of slash, but that slash isn't even very SUBtextual! As far as the Xian angle... I think Skelton, like so many Christian authors who write on or in opposition to pop culture, sees that Superman has heated up again as an entertainment property, and that he can sell a lot of books in the evangelical market by tying in his theme with what is sure to be a hit film. There are similarities, but I think if you pulled out all the world myths that are often compared with Jesus's story, you'll see parallels there, too. More mythic resonance a la Campbell and Jung than a la James Dobson. I think this is a little obnoxious when it's being used to play on ppl's fear, as in the case of the anti-Harry-Potter industry, but it's pretty harmless when the authors are just writing appreciations from a Xian POV.
• PS all my teen gay friends were mildly obsessed with Batman and Robin when it came out, and that wasn't even good. So yeah, I think there is a superhero/gay crossover, as posited in the article... for obvious reasons in the case of B&R, but for other reasons as well. B&R didn't fail because of its HoYay, it failed because of a crappy script and cheap-looking filmmaking. I think that perhaps the gay appeal for superheros is, first and most obviously, the beefcake aspect... beefcake in tights, no less. But there's also the idea that many "secret identity" superheros have had to "stay in the closet" for some time... and when they come out of the closet (IE, use their better, truer selves to the best of their ability), they're fabulous and loved and save the world, unless they're stuck in Watchmen or one of its descendants (in which case, they only get to be angsty).
• As far as the Xian angle... I think Skelton, like so many Christian authors who write on or in opposition to pop culture, sees that Superman has heated up again as an entertainment property, and that he can sell a lot of books in the evangelical market by tying in his theme with what is sure to be a hit film. This is precisely correct. There are obvious parallels, yes, especially now with the Returns storyline, and comics have been covering this hero-as-Christ-figure meme for, oh, over half a decade now. But for those of you not at all familiar with the evangelical and fundamentalist communities, this happens everytime there's some new cultural movement. Chuck Swindoll or somebody says "Hey! That Orange County Choppers thing is really popular with the kids! Let's do a book about how Jesus is just like a motorcycle! Ayyyyyyyy!" *thumbs up* Like the proliferation of coffee bars over the last decade or so -- I don't know if this has happened outside of flyover America, but about two or three years after that started, Christian takes on Starbucks started flying up all over. My home town had a chain of three all go up simultaneously. They all folded because they were hysterically ignorant about how to make a damned espresso drink (plus twenty-something fundamentalists are, in my experience, almost universally cheap fucking bastards, and I say that as a former Southern Baptist who nearly married the preacher's daughter). But my point is, Superman rules.
• could it be a Freudian slip? I had a Freudian slip once. It was a lovely thing, with lacy trim around the bottom and sphagetti straps. I got it from Freud's of Hollywood.
• More mythic resonance a la Campbell and Jung than a la James Dobson. Well, maybe not as obvious as Lucas's Star Wars mythology, but yes, Superman has serious hero-myth overtones. But for those of you not at all familiar with the evangelical and fundamentalist communities, this happens everytime there's some new cultural movement. Yeah, the article says: "In today's culture, Christians need to claim everything significant about what our culture has to do with the gospel," Skelton said. "If the 'Chronicles of Narnia' was written by a Christian, and it was, by C.S. Lewis, then we need to claim that. ... If the Superman story retells the gospel story, we need to claim that." Instead of "claim," I prefer the word "co-opt."
• We should make clown porno be the next big thing. Let 'em work with that. That is, if clowns weren't so scary.
• The Lewis thing is fair, though, and that one I understand. While Lewis claimed he didn't intend it to be straight Christian allegory, he has a clear record of believing in art as a means of moral/spiritual instruction, and while he wanted his books to be for everyone, there was one hell of a lot more than just an undertone to the series. Many Christians were terrified that that part of the story would get washed out in the film adaptation. (But mention the pagan elements to the story, and some change the subject.)
• Well, christianity didn't invent the "monomyth" [this wiki in dispute], but since they're in vogue, I'll grant it.
• Ummmmm.... Yes, Superman is kinda Christlike. That whole death and resurrection thing. So was Neo. So was Aslan. So was Gandalf. Oh, and so was fucking Dionysus. News flash, people. the Xians were not the first people to think of the death-and-ressurection messiah gag. Not by a long shot.
• nunia, I didn't really read the wiki article, so if I just repeated what you said, sorry.
• Um, to include Richard Pyror it would have to be Prior woonnit? Uh Oh, George Reeves and Christopher Reeve, were I this man I would watch out for horses and Hollywood Hills sex parties. Could this be a clue? mmmmm?
• Weezel - you just repeated what *I* just said, and what Nunia agreed with. So yeah. I mean, it seems like a no-brainer or a logical fallacy on Skelton's part to me. The reason that any mythic origin story that follows the basic theme would be similar to that of Jesus is that HIS story follows the basic theme... not that it was necessarily based utterly on Jesus. (And if Superman were a "second coming of Christ" tale... it would be SACRI-LICIOUS!)
• What Weezel said. Human myth is full of supernatural god-men.
• MonkeyFilter: Not the first people to think of the death-and-ressurection messiah gag MonkeyFilter: Full of supernatural god-men MonkeyFilter: The gay second coming of Jesus. Going to hell in 3...2...1...
• Hell is actually quite nice.
• If I were Christian, I think I'd be offended by the blatant pandering and marketing of my Lord. The man who said "blessed are the meek" and "turn the other cheek" can hardly be pleased about being portrayed as a butt-kicking super hero.
• >Weezel - you just repeated what *I* just said, and what Nunia agreed with. >What Weezel said. Okay, so we're all right, but who's more right?
• We should make clown porno be the next big thing. Dahlink, Clown Porno is soooo last week!
• UltraChrist!
• This song seems apropos just now: http://www.lyricsdownload.com/king-missile-leather-clown-lyrics.html. Come to think of it, King Missile also had a great number called "Jesus was Way Cool" which also seems to fit...
• No. My spelling just sucks. i don't care for the spelling/typo nazis, either. don't let it get you down. i was just sayin'. freudian slip is ok, too.
• Yeah, but I shoulda done my homework. Hell, it's spelled properly on the damned IMDB page. Alas, I shall never win the Starbuck's spelling bee. Now I need coffee...without those annoying sunshine fairies, thank you.
• Richard Prior was in the previous one! *rimshot*
• Well, christianity didn't invent the "monomyth" ... Certainly not, and I didn't mean for you to infer that from my comment. My only point was that Lewis was a devout Christian and roughly 100% of his nonfiction writing and 75% of his fiction writing was explicitly about Christianity. The remaining 25% (basically the Narnia series) used it as not-very-sub subtext. So in this case, it's not as much of a stretch as is Superman or Neo or Hello Kitty. Lewis protested (and his stepson Douglas continues to protest) that these were not just books about God and Christ, and I suppose that's technically true, but as I go back and read them, I can feel Lewis giving a Sunday lesson to the children as he goes along. Most of it is harmless (even positive, healthy) moral instruction, but you don't have to have a lit degree to see the crosses hidden among the trees. You may argue (and I'd bet Lewis certainly would) that as a religious scholar, he used elements of the myth that were common to many (some much older) traditions, and I sort of agree, but his own faith determined which elements of the monomyth would be used and which would not. Evangelical christian audiences simply recognize that for what it is and want to trumpet it. But the Superman thing is stupid. LUHTOR IZ TEH DEBBIL.
• Hello? KEYSER SOZE is the debble.
• I disagree slightly about Lewis in the following respect. For a Christian, one could presume that the story of Christ is the most important story in the Universe; an interesting aspect of Lewis' work is (IMHO) not the fact that he reflects that story or follows its narrative elements but the ways in which his books deviate from them. Thus my theses (previous stated somewhere on this site) that Lewis is Christianity's most truly blasphemous writer: for him, the gospels are never enough, he needs to embellish the divine narrative, change its location, its characters and its language and presuppose its conclusions. Also I have a big horn for that Silver Chair chick.
• Well, I've never read Lewis's stuff, but I suppose I wouldn't have to in order to make the point that various derivatives of the monomyth and iterations thereof are common. It's an archetype people respond to because it allows for a method for the average joe to rise above his circumstances and align himself with some abstraction of superior existence. This is why religion is used in many cultures to keep the poor in their place: the trials they bear are burdens their deity has placed upon them to make them into better people/spirits and allow them to earn their right to a better afterlife (or some such). If the dogma ascribes to a pattern of human frailty and redemption, it makes the path to righteousness that much more accessible. I think that the allusions of Superman to Christ are intended to take advantage of what the movie industry sees as a highly-christianized movie-going populace. Look at the way the movie is being marketed. Are comic-book buffs the target audience?
• I just read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for the first time recently (read it to my son, actually), and I have to say I think Lewis was onto something there. I mean, (SPOILERZ?????) I found Aslan's death and resurrection much more moving and effective than anything in the Gospels, which don't have nearly enough ogres and pegasi in them, for my tastes. Of course you could argue that Lewis sees the Gospels as JUST ANOTHER MYTH and so feels free to borrow and rewrite and do all that stuff to make a moral/ethical teaching point, which he might have considered to be their point in the first place. As I recall, some of his "Why I'm a Christian" stuff is decidedly non-evangelical and "road-to-Damascus"-ish, as many fundie conversion stories tend to be--more like, "I kind of decided to be one, because it seemed like a good idea." But it's been years since I read that, and I very well may be making things up. I do that a lot.
• Of course you could argue that Lewis sees the Gospels as JUST ANOTHER MYTH This is definitely untrue. Lewis believed the Gospels to be stories of historical fact. He says so in Mere Christianity. He even went so far as to denounce those who believe in Jesus as mere prophet or wise man as fools. However -- and I think this bumps up against quidnunc's point somewhat -- his view of Scripture doesn't seem to come anywhere near that of your average Southern Baptist or AG. That is to say, if he was a 100% literalist (and I'm not certain that he was), he didn't appear to worship the Bible the way they do. Quidnunc is right -- though Lewis writes about the Bible stories, he almost never quotes them, in my recollection. I really put him more in line with Kierkegaard and Christian Existentialists only in the sense that he seemed to believe more in using what was within him to approach God, rather than the Bible. He looked to human reason and love and creativity as a means of approaching the divine, though he did believe in salvation through Christ. Really an almost contradictory view, until you reflect that the Bible != God. These are only my readings of him, of course. I'm not certain that his retelling and embellishment of the story == blasphemy, though. I think it could be read as saying that it's such a good, such a fundamental, such an important story that retelling it in different ways is paying tribute to the "historical" version, sort of like Coltrane riffing on "A Few of My Favorite Things." Though Lewis was no literary Coltrane. And yeah, I seem to recall his conversion happened over the course of a motorcycle ride. He sat in the sidecar thinking it over, and when he got out, he made his mind up that he believed in God. Something like that. This would come to be the hallmark of his apologetic writing -- though he offers various "proofs" of God's existence (he tends to favor variations on the moral argument), Lewis really concerns himself more with arguing that belief in the Divine (specifically God and Christ) is perfectly reasonable. He was not a rabid proselytizer in the friend-do-you-know-Jee-uh-zuss manner because he believed it to be useless for anyone with a brain in his head.
• I heard that his conversion was due to his friend JRR Tolkien, a devout Catholic. (Later Tolkien fell out with him, feeling that he had shown Lewis his drafts of LoTR, & Lewis had run off to 'have a go himself' with the Narnia books. Tolkien was a bit of a dick.)
• (Far better storyteller, though, in my humble.)
• But if you took away the literalist's negative connotations of the word "myth," it seems like you'd have a lot fewer arguments. But I'm talking out me arse, since I haven't studied Lewis or his writings to the extend that others here obviously have. So tut-tut, you are smart, I am dumb. I hope you're happy! You excrement! You whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding Lewisian secret handshakes. You wouldn't let me join, would you? You blackballing bastards!
• PWN3D JOO B1TCH!!11!
• I think whether Tolkien or Lewis was a bit of a dick depends on whose partisans are writing. The story I've always heard about Lewis's conversion is the same one Chy mentions, that it came after a long night of chatting with Tolkien, but I've also read plenty (especially stuff that came out around the same time as the Lion, Witch, Wardrobe film) that suggests that Lewis was kind of a dick too. I think they probably both were, in some respects, and not as much in others. But we have wandered far from the topic of Superman's co-option! (and so? so i like credit for my obvious insights! sue me.)
• I tend to agree with mct's reading of Lewis, particularly the connection with Kierkegaard. I always believed that Lewis' conversion had a lot to do with the "leap of faith" rather than pure reason. Although I'm not as studied in Lewis as mct is, I always got the sense that this kind of bugged Lewis. He's a rational guy, and wants to be able to convey things rationally, but this is one experience where he can't do that.
• all my teen gay friends were mildly obsessed with Batman and Robin when it came out Nipples on the suits, innit?
• I suspect the codpiece.
• I think his codpiece is made of actual cod.
• You kid, you cad.
• I think Jatayu das is spot on. Comparisons with comic-book heroes are not exactly flattering to Christ, and anyone who became interested in Jesus because of his resemblance to Superman would be, well, more than a little misguided. I suspect that Tolkien, Lewis and the rest of the Inklings had their own slightly gnostic version of Christianity going: a mixture of high-minded stuff about being co-creators with God, and tinfoil hat stuff about Numenor (=Atlantis, I'm afraid). I suspect that for Lewis there was always an element of the willing suspension of disbelief about it - in the Silver Chair Puddleglum says something like 'my myth may be as false as yours, but it's a better and more inspiring story, so I'm going to believe in it anyway.' Tolkien seems more committed to me, and hence more barmy - at times I feel he is on the verge of slapping a tea-cosy on his head and announcing that he is the long-lost seventieth Archon of Logres, or Tom Bombadil's godson, or something.
• So that makes Batman Buddha. With or without a cape and cowl, will you not become a Bodhisattva too?
• I devoured all the Narnia books as a child, but never saw the connection to Christianity until a few years ago. Dense, me.
• Superman is a tulpa.
• Aren't we all?
• a being or object which is created through sheer willpower alone Is that anything like the car Ed Bagley Jr. has that runs solely on the force of his self-satisfaction?