IVP - Strangely Dim - March 2005 Archives

Desperately Seeking Dissemination

Help! I've written an article about Batman Begins, a guaranteed blockbuster film coming June 17 to a theater blissfully near me. I've written it, of course, as an attempt to hitch my book's wagon to this Clydesdale of a movie, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what publications to approach with the article. I've already approached a couple of online magazines, but I have yet to hear back and I'm not sure they're right for the piece anyway.

That's where you come in. What follows is an excerpt--the end of the article, which is tentatively titled "Everything Silly Is Serious Again"--and I'd love to hear from you what magazines or online forums you think would be game for such an article. The two thousand-some words that precede this excerpt focus on the history of Batman, who's gone through a regularly repeating cycle of serious devolving into silly, then back to serious.

Get the drift? Our comment posting capacity is going to be disabled for a few days, so chew on this for a while: Where would you expect to read an article like this one? What would you expect to learn while you read it? Who do you think would invest the fifteen or so minutes it would take to read it in its entirety? Also, and please be gentle: What's wrong with the part you've already read, and how would you fix it?

Of course, if you know someone who regularly publishes such stuff, feel free to cut and paste and make my case. The draft is fully written, but I wouldn't expect anyone to want to publish it until close to the movie's release.

Thanks for your help! If you can't wait till Friday to comment, shoot me an e-mail at dzimmerman@ivpress.com.

If I Don’t Laugh I’ll Cry
Today’s Batman, in film and on television as well as in print, is typically dour, obsessive, efficient and generally unfriendly. He remains so focused on his mission—to combat crime and seek the welfare of his city—that he remains isolated even from those closest to him. He has, as such, become a bit of a laughing stock to other superheroes. His seriousness is now largely held in clear tension with the silliness that haunts the medium. Hyperseriousness in any situation, after all, is itself rather silly.

The genre has clearly learned from Batman’s history. The principle of the dual audience has expanded to a triple audience: the young are courted through animation, merchandising and age-specific stories and formatting; the adult fanatics are honored with surgical misreadings of characters in a variety of formats; and the adult mainstream is guaranteed a laugh with winks of self-referential humor and with storytelling that acknowledges the silliness of simply being human. So, for example, the X-Men are represented in toy stores and on the Cartoon Network, they’re reconceived by postmodern storytelling juggernaut Joss Whedon, and they mock themselves in film with jokes about spandex and code names. Films that fail to acknowledge this triple reading, such as 2004’s The Punisher and 2005’s Elektra, are given negative reviews by fanatics and perform poorly at the box office.

The fact of the matter is, stories about superheroes, much like stories about all of us, can hardly avoid a simultaneous mix of seriousness and silliness. Fundamentally, after all, stories about superheroes are supercharged stories about us. The agony these heroes feel over the wrongs done to them may, from an objective distance, be clearly overdone, but with a sympathetic viewing they can be seen to be true expressions of how people struggle through the life they’ve been given. With a clear head we can laugh at ourselves for the ways that we react to others, for the things we give our hearts to. And yet, we can remove ourselves from our own lives for only so long before we have to deal again with the agony as we experience it. Our pain would be silly if it weren’t so sad.

An author has clearer sight than his characters; he can see the absurdity and the agony all at once. Authors who have over time told Batman’s stories, along with all his contemporaries in the various superhero universes, have chosen to emphasize either silliness or seriousness, but virtually no Batman tragedy is told entirely without humor, and virtually no Batman comedy is told entirely without the subtle weight of pain. We can sympathize with Batman even as we’re tempted to laugh, because life itself is such a subtle mix of tragedy and comedy that we don’t always know whether to laugh or cry. And there—somewhere between the tragedy and the comedy of it all—lies the truth.

And for the record, I wore the tights—and they’re fabulous.

Living the Last Supper

by David A. Zimmerman

I recently read the book Stumbling Toward Faith: My Longing to Heal from the Evil That God Allowed, written by Renée Alston. For anyone who’s grown up in the church and thinks that makes you special—immune from the world or safe from sin—let me warn you: if you read any part of this book, you will be utterly disabused of such a silly notion.

The experience of family and church has an impact on a child’s understanding of God, and as such for Renée, thinking of God as something other than an abuser or a tyrant or an absentee parent has been a lifelong struggle. But she remains in the church today—something keeps her hanging on. A poem from the book leads me to think of Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane.

o holy god

your will frightens me.

i plead for this cup to pass

to go beyond my lips

that i might not have to drink of its bitterness

that I might drink instead

from the sweet goblet of certainty and control

of choosing my own path

my own destiny.

i am afraid:

to entrust you with my life

my moments of doubt

the fear i cannot explain.

i am afraid:

to believe that you are good

though i long for it

even in this land of the living

and in the dead places in my own soul.

i am afraid:

to rip open my heart

to offer the contents to you to believe that you will

be gentle with them

with me.

i long to keep my privacies close

my yearnings tuck inward

my loves within my own grasp

please be kind to my soul.

be kind to my tremblings

be gracious unto me.

I find myself wondering, as we prepare to celebrate Easter and recall the terror of Holy Thursday and Good Friday that precede it, what attracts people like Renée—who have endured unspeakable abuse in the name of God—to the Son of that God. The short answer, I suppose, is “the Holy Spirit,” for Jesus is fully God, and God surely draws us to himself. And I suspect that some, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and Pontius Pilate and all the upper crust who found Jesus impossible to avoid, were attracted to the presence of someone fully divine among them.

But as I read the prayer at Gethsemane and as I watch the events of Jesus’ passion unfold, I suspect that for common folk—for women who were not allowed full participation in society, for fishermen who were not counted among the elite, for Matthew the tax collector and Renée the author and perhaps even you and me—Jesus’ greater appeal is his full humanity before God.

For us and for our salvation

He came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit

He was born of the Virgin Mary

And became man.

For our sake he was crucified.

***

Happy Easter. Have a good Friday.

The Church with Nothing to Say

by David A. Zimmerman

Every time I drive past a billboard with nothing on it I'm a bit startled. I suppose that's how I know that I'm being affected by advertising--I miss it when it's missing. I also notice the signs that read "Advertise Here": I feel something like an obligation to advertise there, to fill the spot that we as an economy have abandoned to loneliness.

But in all my days I don't recall ever seeing a blank sign outside a church until a few weeks ago. I was driving down the street and realized that this church--a mainstay in my community for decades--had nothing to say to me. I was startled, of course, but I found myself moving through a range of emotions, from offense to confusion to panic to despair to anticipation.

I expect more out of church billboards, I guess. Most billboards sit in isolation from the wares they hawk--they're jutting out of the ground on a roadside in the middle of nowhere, while the product they promote is being canned, bottled or wrapped in a sweatshop on the other side of the world, for all I know. Or they're clumped together along the interstate clamoring for attention, sometimes morphing from one message to another as we drive past. Once again the product exists only in the imagination of the observer. It can't be tasted or touched from where we sit.

In contrast, church billboards sit in the church's front lawn. You know (or you think you know) who the author is of whatever message they project, and you process that message based on what you read. My all-time favorite church billboard message was a sermon title followed by a general message:

Eternal Conscious Punishment

Visitors Welcome

But this church had nothing to say to me. At first I was offended: it's the church's job to say something to me, isn't it? But then I wondered what it means when a church has nothing to say. It's a frightening thought, really. This is the institution, we're taught, that's been entrusted by God with "the words of eternal life." If the church has run out of words, perhaps God has run out of words for us--perhaps God has given up on us.

Then again, perhaps God is just clearing his throat. Billboards don't stay blank for long. They're either torn down or given a new message. Perhaps the church is preparing itself to convey the next big message from God. As Moses said to the people of Israel, "They are not just idle words for you--they are your life." This is my life--coming soon to a billboard near me.

The next time I saw the billboard it did indeed bear a new message: "Pancake Breakfast Saturday, 9 to 11."

***

I haven't given an update on my book in a while. It's still in stores, and I'm still occasionally being interviewed about it. I suspect that the spring and summer movie season will revive interest in the subject matter; there are three major theatrical releases related to comic books in the next four months. I'll be having a number of related articles published soon, and keep in mind that there's a free discussion guide available for download that gives you an excuse to watch six classic superhero movies with all your friends.

If you've read the book and enjoyed it, consider writing a review on Amazon.com or similar bookselling websites. I'd be your buddy!

From the Heart

by David A. Zimmerman
It was a bright and sunny Valentine’s day this year. I opened a card from my wife before leaving for work. Then I had a conversation about how blood is represented by black ink in comic books. Then I had a conversation with a friend who had just cut his wrist. Then I went to donate blood.

On that particular Valentine’s day, red didn’t so much symbolize love and affection as it did blood—which, if you think about it, is appropriate. The heart, which we celebrate so zealously every February 14, doesn’t pump out chocolate or liqueur or butter cream or caramel; it pumps out blood. And blood is as symbolically potent as a thing can get. Blood is lifeforce; blood is genetics; blood is patriotism; blood is covenant.

What we do with our blood, consequently, has its own symbolic potency. When we portray it in our artwork we are conveying an intensity of experience that can’t be reached with other images. When we spill our own blood we are sending a message to ourselves and others that our life is slipping away, that our internal conflicts can no longer be held in. When we give our blood we acknowledge our interdependence. Blood may be a lot of things, but it is not easily ignored.

But it’s one thing to acknowledge that blood has entered the picture; it’s quite another to know what to do with it. Blood demands but doesn’t presume a response: I don’t give blood knowing when it will be used or who will use it. The image of blood in art and film propels the story forward rather than ending the tale. My friend cut his wrist without knowing what his next move would be.

Like Valentine’s day, Easter has taken on the character of cute little bunnies and cute little eggs, but in its origins it is marked by blood. On Maundy Thursday we hear Jesus compare his blood to the wine that slakes thirst and the covenant promise of God to his creation. On Good Friday we witness the torture and crucifixion of Jesus and we hear the crowd shout “His blood be on us and our children.” On Saturday we cover over his blood in the hopes that our shame and his pain can be outlived. And on Sunday, by his stripes we are healed, and by his blood he conquers even death.

Blood is never an ending; blood is a beginning. Blood marks not the end of life but the beginning of death, and if we take it seriously, it can mark the beginning of resurrection.

Talk About Existential

Someone sent me a link to an online mosquito-swatting game. Forgive me for passing it along to you. Fair warning: once you start playing you'll find it impossible to stop. The game never ends, for one things, and you'll be hypnotized by the activity.

http://www.shockhaber.com/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.htm

Enjoy, I suppose.

The Lost Art of Dining Together

by David A. Zimmerman

More than anything, my memories of Lent involve McDonald's Filet of Fish sandwiches. My parents weren't enamored with the idea of replacing a meal time at a table together with empty calories eaten out of a bag. But back in the day, fast food was a luxury for kids, and Fridays during Lent were meatless for us, and McDonald's was selling fish sandwiches for cheap.

For all I know we only did this once, but it dominates my reflections on Lent. We stood in line amid the bright colors and hustle and bustle, and two minutes later we had freshly fried fishstuff and Shamrock Shakes. You don't get memories like that everyday--Filet of Fish sandwiches really only sell during Lent. I liked them with cheese.

Meals are not typically events in the classic sense. Each day we are given our daily bread, and something so routine and so foundational to our survival as food and drink cannot be thought of as special in and of itself. The idea of ingesting food in between events--so loathsome to my parents when I was a child--is now a matter of course. More often than we might care to think about, we eat out of individual bags in bucket seats, at best facing the backs of our loved ones' heads.

But a meal together is something special; it might even be considered a lost art. On the night he was betrayed Jesus brought together his disciples for a meal not unlike the meals they'd have from day to day, except that this meal was an event--the remembrance of the Passover meal that marked Israel's exodus out of Egypt. Sharing that meal that night was a reminder that beyond our mere sustenance, God provides for our deliverance.

In retrospect we know that this particular Passover meal was a profoundly more significant event than even that ancient one: the bread that was broken at this table, the wine that was poured out, would mark the deliverance of all God's people from the burden of sin and the prison of death. Emmanuel--God with us--read his own epitaph at the Last Supper, and he did so over a meal with the people he loved.

I haven't had a Filet o' Fish sandwich this year. This year my Lenten observance involves preparing to play Matthew the disciple of Jesus at my church during Holy Week. The setting is a table, all of us disciples eating together with our teacher, like we would have every day. But what I'm learning is that a meal taken in communion with God, however routine that meal becomes, is never less than an event to be celebrated.

***

I continue to meet wildly interesting people by virtue of having written a book. Most recently Aaron Uglum posted a comment to Strangely Dim, and I read his very clever online comic, "The Flying Banner," about a duck with the uncanny ability to fly. Check it out.

Leashing the Hero in Us All

A friend of mine is going to become a grandfather for the first time. Moments later, he will become a grandfather for the second time, since his daughter is carrying twins, but that's beside the point. The point is, no matter how good you are with kids or how free you are with your money, becoming a grandparent is a big transition.

Not that I know. I don't have any kids, and becoming a grandparent in your thirties, while not totally out of the realm of possibility, would be a psychological blow to my Peter Pan ego. It was hard enough to be asked at a zip-line tour through the Jamaican rainforest recently if the seventeen-year-old behind me in line was my daughter. I was never more ready to inject Botox into my face.

Again, that's all beside the point. The point, actually, is that since my book came out, people of all ages and backgrounds in my life are reporting to me on the cultural impact of superheroes. We haven't given it to him yet, but my six-month-old nephew will soon be getting a Jamaican t-shirt with a picture of "Spider-Mon" complete with mask and dreadlocks. My friend the soon-to-be grandfather was doing research on grandparenting and found the following reference at a grandparenting website:

"If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a superman cape."

The subtitle of my book, "Unleashing the Hero in Us All," finally makes a little sense. My publisher and I haggled back and forth over the perfect subtitle for what seemed like weeks, and we both compromised and settled on the final product after we had run out of energy--not the ideal creative process.

But once again, and predictably, that's all beside the point. The point is, if you want to be a superhero, be sure to practice superheroism responsibly.

I'd be interested in seeing the weird superhero stuff you've come across. Feel free to post it below.