I remember Superman III quite a lot better than it deserves.
Not because one of my all-time favourite comedians, Richard Pryor, is in it, and certainly not based on Pryor's so-so performance in the film. And not because Annette O'Toole is flamin' hot as Lana Lang, Clark Kent's old Smallville High School classmate, though that certainly did help. No, I remember Superman III so well because of a particular sequence when, after being exposed to a synthesized version of kryptonite, the Man of Steel loses his innocence and starts being a total prick.
It was a very disturbing thing to have to watch in the time I was growing up. When I was a boy in 1983, there was no one bigger than Superman except maybe the A-Team or Darth Vader. Okay, maybe Indiana Jones, too. Thanks in big part to the pure-hearted portrayal by Christopher Reeve, we all bought into Supe's unwavering decency. He was like some supernatural Elliot Ness---untouchable. So to see the Man Of Steel become a nasty drunk, well, that was about as disturbing a thing as a kid in 1983 could imagine, and I think that image may have sunk the franchise (though Superman IV was the dull aquatic thud of it hitting the ocean floor).
The reason it sticks with me and fascinates me to this day, however, is the way that problem of Superman becoming corrupt is resolved. It is by far the best sequence of moments in the whole shitty movie. He gets a nasty headache after stumbling out of a bar that he just destroyed by flicking beer nuts at every glass bottle in the place (remember, he's super-strong), and stumbles into a nearby wrecking-yard. Screaming in pain, the M.O.S. suddenly splits in two and becomes Clark Kent and the evil Superman. They begin to fight, sort of like Jekyll and Hyde going toe to toe, if Jekyll retained all of the brute strength of Hyde. This scene was also traumatic because nobody likes to see Kent being kicked around or squashed in a car-squasher. After duking it out for a few minutes, however, Clark Kent wins and rips open his starched white shirt to reveal that iconic logo. The stirring music of John Williams plays and we know the real Superman is back and will finish the rest of the lame movie in standard Superman fashion. What got to me, and it would have happened sooner or later whether I watched the film or not, was this sense that we can be at least two different people at the same time.
I am at least two kinds of person at all times.
One of these people is communicating with you right now. The other is waiting to get drunk and start flicking beer nuts at things. I know this yin-and-yang stuff is not news to anybody, except perhaps a seven year-old in 1983, but I hope to get beyond just blathering about moral duality, so hang on and give me the benefit of the doubt. I'm trying to coax out something perhaps profound without thinking too much about it.
My duality is more of an intellectual than a moral one. When I write a considered piece (even a rant), I am working on some level I can't possibly understand. I'm typing faster than my more buffoonish self can think, and it allows a deeper, more thoughtful side to rise to the top. I use words that I forgot I even knew, I develop ideas that I think are somewhat intelligent, and I don't just get wasted and act like a clown. I don't know how to describe it except to say that I am not fully conscious when I get into that zone.
I must confess something cheesy, now, that I was hoping to avoid:
I was inspired to start writing a blog after reading some Hunter S. Thompson articles. As phony as it sounds, I figured that maybe his 'Gonzo'-style was worth emulating to some degree. I think that much of Thompson's profundity lies in his inebriated and unconventional presentation of ideas, and I even pretended to myself that it would be good for me to write while under the influence. But as the buffoonish side of me began to write, it gave way to a more sober, literary part of me which championed some semblance of linguistic acuity. The trade-off, though, is that as this half emerges in my virtual scribbles, I notice I lose that sardonic Hunter Thompson edge I was trying for. Which I guess is for the best.
I am usually an idealist when I write and often a bit of a broken, flawed guy when I just hang out with people. It wasn't always the case, but I guess the day-to-day me didn't have the energy to keep believing in the lie of perfection, let alone attempt to attain it. I don't lack ideals entirely, but I get tired of coaching myself into striving for them. When I write, it's a different story. I write to make pronouncements, to make judgements, to try and change something. It's a different kind of communication, and if it seems to come from a pulpit, I hope it's at least occasionally enlightening or entertaining.
I once had a relationship based almost entirely on letter-writing.
In these letters I would try to be as poetic and romantic as I could, praising the object of my affections to the stars and trying to build my own image up a fair bit in the process. But whenever we did meet up, these rare encounters were always awkward and thoroughly un-romantic. This wasn't her fault at all, I realized, but my own because I never gave her the chance to just be herself. I made up what she was in my mind, and so whenever I actually met up with her, I was thrown off and confused and so, I suspect, was she. I couldn't do anything except blunder like Clark Kent---maybe boyishly charming, but not sexy or cool or deep or anything a lot of girls seemed to like in guys.
I think that is the precise moment in my life when the day-to-day me gave up on most of my ideals and started becoming bad Superman. I had had many moments of doubt before, certain crises of faith, but never on this scale. And it was horrible. When our 'relationship' (read: pen-pal romance) fizzled out, it did so because I could see everything too clearly. I could no longer pretend that I could whisk this person away and live like a rebel with her on the road, which was a naive fantasy we had been toying with very briefly. I knew that if we continued on the strength of our initial momentum, it could only be possible by supporting the lies of how I was presenting myself and how I chose to see her.
I got into a deep funk, at first thinking I had lost my true love, and afterwards getting more depressed as I realized it had never existed and I wasn't ever going to look at the world the same way. I did not realize at the time that this was a really good, healthy thing which would open my mind and allow me to fall for the person who is now my wife. But I was not comfortable with this new me and, unfortunately for my wife, there have been years of serious growing pains.
Through writing, I found a kind of truth in the analysis of my fictions. But man, did I wallow! I really went on and on about my broken-heart, my shattered ideals, and my inability to let go. I did so in a feverish bout of writing which yielded over seven hundred poems and scrawlings, averaging almost three a day, and a good many of these I turned into tragic, idealistic songs that I could sit at the piano and soothe my melodramatic soul with. It was like my bad Superman self was fighting constantly with my good Superman self.
We tend to forget the instructional value of fiction, whether you are writing it or reading it.
There is such a wealth of self-generated wisdom that can arise from appreciating a good novel or poem or play. Because we are being entertained, I would suggest that the potential for learning is especially high, for we aren't intimidated by a story we are enjoying, though many of us can be bored by or scared of an academic journal, or a philosophical text, or some such egghead thing. I'm trying not to think of where an overly-wordy blog would fall in that spectrum...
Rats, I've broken character too many times with too many coy asides to the audience. Writing things like this in such a way that I can believe in them requires that I balance precariously on the mid-point of my dualistic nature. I'm having a hard time getting back in the groove of this rant, and I kind of think it's overly self-serving. The only thing keeping me from deleting it altogether is that I suppose there's some small value in my sincerity.
I guess the reason I started off with the Superman III stuff is that I'm just starting to feel a new form of post-innocence optimism (a long time coming), and I think that's something that makes the evil Superman somewhat of a godsend. I know many people who can't stand Superman because he's an indestructible goody-goody two-shoes. Batman is much more easy to relate to for a lot of people who see the grime of the city, the inner conflicts of a mostly good person, the violence that it is sometimes necessary to explore in oneself. But I was not on board with Batman nearly as much as Kal-El, the Man Of Steel, while growing up. It was easy to believe in the virtuous, pure Superman if you were lucky enough to have a delightful childhood, which I was. The rude awakening comes when you get out on your own and realize there are a bunch of Lex Luthors out there, and a lot of them are your friends. The worst is when you realize that you yourself have a bit of ol' Lex in you, which every one of us does.
That's why the slightly traumatizing appearance of the corrupted Superman (and please remember that the ingredient in the synthetic Kryptonite that made him such a bastard was tobacco tar) was like the blessed shit-hammer of truth coming down on our heads. We had bought into the Superman lie our whole lives, but now we were being confronted with the truth: no one is incorruptible, but that doesn't mean they can't still snap out of it and come back to be our hero. In that theatre, I think I remember some kids (maybe even me) crying with disappointment and shock during the film's darkest moment, and I also think I remember being part of one of the most thrilling cheers in a theatre I've ever seen when the good Superman comes back.
And that, dear reader, is how I strive to see myself. I'm sick of the wallowing, and I want to work my way back into being something good. The joke that I composed this on Easter Sunday was not entirely lost on me, either. Can I end this now? Good. Don't get hung up about Easter, okay?
Naneek Of The North
Winnipeg, Canada.
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