Superheros Our Salvation In Trying Times?

2 hours in a darkened theater provides, imho, the same results that an hour on the couch in some therapist's office and it is certainly a hell of a lot cheaper (if you stay away from the food stand) but reality is waiting for you.........

Why Batman Matters

By Father Jonathan Morris
FOX News Religion Contributor

Just when heroism was dying, when pessimism appeared to have an unchallenged grip on hope, Batman—the movie—has come to the rescue. The masked-man in silver and black reminds us tough times are the best incubators of ordinary heroes.

And don’t we need them now!

The Batman sequel “The Dark Knight” set a box-office record, taking in $155,340,000 this past weekend. That’s a lot of discretionary spending for an economy which has struggled for many months, mostly against the dime-a-dozen prophets of doom and their water-boy news outlets who have waged a war for the a declaration of an all-out recession. Today, these experts will surely try to explain why such leisure spending is just another sign of fiscal gloom: escapism.

Hmm?! Batman lovers won’t buy it. They know going to Gotham City is not running from reality. It is an investment in art inspired by positive thinking where good defeats evil. And as economists and sociologists know and rarely admit, hope and confidence in the future is the engine of human progress.

And that’s why Batman matters, for our lives and for our economic and political future. It is the story of human goodness, in all of its emotional and physical imperfection, overcoming the seemingly impenetrable powers of everyday evils. In the late 1930’s DC Comics published the first appearances of the Batman character, co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Batman’s secret identity is Bruce Wayne (got to love that name) who after witnessing the murder of his parents at the age of eight, undergoes a self-transformation in response to an inner call to fight perpetrators of crime (villainous characters originally inspired by pop-culture references of the day). Batman learns to ignore the pull of a superficial lifestyle of playboy, industrialist, and billionaire in order to fulfill a transcendental mission.

I believe Batman, as a caricature of virtue and thus a beacon of hope, is the principle reason people are flocking to the theaters in unprecedented numbers. We are rejecting the negativity that threatens to drown us. In the Internet media in particular, it has become fashionable, and perhaps commercially beneficial, to exaggerate the negative. The Drudge Report, for example, can’t get enough of sliding markets and revels in banks going bust. For a time it even dedicated a special section to society’s blues, entitling it, “Les Miserables,” and irresponsibly, in my opinion, giving as much prominence to apocalyptic predictions as it did to the facts. Scary headlines punctuated by a question mark are the tactic of the day. Tellingly, Drudge, too, seems to be looking for a hero for hard times, and is doing his best to crown Barack Obama as the dazzling young nemesis to two old Jokers, first Hillary and now McCain, without burdening us with facts. The Drudge Report, of course, is not alone in profiteering on fabricated fear and selective negativity.

Batman, on the other hand, is inspiring and convincing because neither he nor his surroundings are perfect, and still he is undeterred. Unlike other heroes, Bruce Wayne is not gifted with supernatural powers. If he is super—and he is—it’s because he forged, at great personal cost, both physical and intellectual prowess in pursuit of goodness. And if he perseveres in his mission, it’s because he refuses to be discouraged by the indifference and bureaucratic thinking of those who should be doing more, but aren’t. Eventually, he elevates, rather than eliminates, his small-minded counterparts-in-goodness to participate in something bigger than themselves.

Batman’s story is also important because he points us to invisible realities. He is fighting not only against small time criminals, but against the manager of evil, the Joker (played in “The Dark Knight” by Heath Ledger in his last complete performance before his tragic and dark death). In life too, we experience evil as bigger than the sum of bad things or bad people. There seems to be a supernatural manager of evil who cannot, or should not, be ignored.

Batman is an invitation to become an ordinary hero in hard times. We can either learn to think and act with truth-based hope — that we can make a difference in our families and in our communities –or let the powers of evil and the profiteers of negativity determine our fate.

God bless,

Father Jonathan