I consider this the most important of the most important questions:
What inspired you when you were uncorrupted?
The roots of the identity you've chosen, the basis for the decisions you've made, the goals you've sought, the campaigns you've supported, you hairstyles you've worn, the music you couldn't stand, and things your friends did that you couldn't stand for, all grew from the first thing that inspired you.
When you were young that source of inspiration became your universe growing in front of you. You stood behind that influence, rested a structure of faith beneath it, and the person you are now and the place you now stand began from there.
Inspiration is something grander than creativity when you’re too young to be cynical. What could be more important to who you are than your first hero?
My father was my teacher, my mother was my protector; they provided the foundation of my life. I had friends I looked up to and a cool older cousin that taught me to fish, but no hero with his hand on my shoulder, no one specifically that showed me I could be, achieve or contribute something greater. I think for most kids, inspiration comes from something intangibly beyond your grasp. Heroism is inspired free will in action. Heroism is an ideal often outside the walls of your home and sometimes beyond the bounds of your realm.
For me being boundless was all about a cape and an 'S'. My hero was the hero.
I always wanted to be that kind of hero. I always wanted to play the good guy. I didn’t know how to enjoy the game from the other side. I’m certain not only that this influence was inspired from a cape and a curl of black hair, but that it formed the core of the now greyed and muddled virtues that direct me today. This seed is as clear in my memory as the tree that grew outside my first bedroom window.
What is the real purpose of religion when you’re too young to consciously choose a savior? When school is new, reading is new, and making decisions just beyond the reach of your parents is still a fresh taste in your mouth, the frame that you put around the daily experiment of learning is measured by the values inherited in your family’s collective faith, be they religious or not. In a sense your family is your religion, for lack of a better word.
As you grow into adolescence the purpose of faith becomes more philosophical; the religion of your family is intended to challenge who you are and ask where you belong, why you do what you do, and to what you should aspire toward. When you’re young religion is intended to give you a direction before you really require any answers. When you begin to ask questions, it evolves with you…
And then you reject it all.
I’ve always tried to do the right thing, which in my adolescence meant discarding and rejecting in the name of the unfocused rebellion with unflinching conformity of the almighty teenage anti-church.
I got in the long line waiting to be cool, and like everybody else, when it finally got to my turn I found myself reaching back into that basket of values and looking up that old tree in the backyard for fruit. I began to see the things on the road behind me with a new perspective, even if they were way up in the sky…
a bird…
a plane...
Superman is the creation of two young men from Cleveland. By no means are these cartoonists regarded as prophets, but within the right circles they represent the inception of something earth-changing. He is potentially the most recognizable and reproduced pulp-icon of the last century, exceeded in exposure by only actual religious figures… and perhaps Mickey Mouse. He is deserving of all conceivable manner of milestones and monuments, but should he be in any way a hero to the faithful?
There are a variety of parallels designed and drawn between saints, men of the cloth, and the Man of Steel. Unearthly origins, altruism, sacrifice, exodus, and a memorable symbol are common threads. None of these accomplishments in his case are real, but faith is never really about the tangible. Though these lines are often bridged for the purposes of selling movie tickets and novelty toothpaste, a certain context of greatness and influence is undeniable, and invincible. Through every medium, in every incarnation, the message and his mission remain constant. A kid in my old neighborhood will give you the same one word description at the sight of that ‘S’ than a kid in Japan or Russia or Mars. His iconic message is gospels of heroism, strength, guardianship and self-sacrifice. His is a story that crosses more boundaries than any doctrine is intended to traverse.
This all might seem trivial. How could a character of fiction, designed for a fantasy-seeking pre-adolescent, employed largely for the quest of advertising revenue, be pedestaled as some manner of religious mythos? Could I be more sacrilegious? This is after all a clear violation the very first commandment; but after all things, what better one to start with?
What is worship? Is it servitude? Is that really the path intended by any creator that gave out free will? Is inspiration any less valuable than worship? In my time of pure youthful discovery, my imagination was captured not by a doctrine but by a colorful adventurer that embodied a different kind of sacrifice. There is value in that, rooted in my secret-identity at the deepest level, which goes beyond what’s theologically measurable, what passes as cool in contemporary company, and seems as good in your maturity as it did when comics were cool. Identifying with this hero made sense to me when very little did and the grown up version of that little herophile, with his safety-pinned red cape and super-rubber boots, (they still fit - snuggly) relishes that memory. I might be too old to be a Super-fan, I might live in a world of sour grown-olds that need to quantify the quality that inspires them, but I think we have to hang on to that feeling.
Whether it’s Shakespeare, a nursery rhyme, an inspiring relative, Jesus Christ or an empty Kleenex box, if it stuck with you then I’m behind you. What you choose to link your faith behind is individual and all about your own experience.
My own prophecy regarding the eventual Man of Steel’s sainthood will sadly go unanswered for some time. There’s no doubt in my mind that this fictional figure will go on and keep his place as an icon, a story, a Halloween costume, a wallpaper pattern, and the Patron Saint of Pulp Immortality. I picture the archeologists of some distant future unearthing our comic book parchments and interpreting some sort of Hercules-like worship from the issue where he first encounters Kryptonite. The real question is how many generations will go by before he becomes mythology, before his place in society isn’t relegated to marketing demographics or a catch phrase. I for one think we owe our heroes more than that.
In the end, religion really isn't the right word for it. An organized system of beliefs structured around the faithfully unanswerable doesn't describe what grew around me as I poured through my comic books with a theologian’s precision.
In the bitter end it goes like this: grown-ups have religion, kids have heroes. Any bits of the perception of that kid within us that transcends into our maturity is a gift. Any chance we take to look on the whole world with brand new eyes and consider that anything is possible we are lucky and for that moment we are heroic.
Then it’s back to being Clark Kent.
