In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge told us how to really enjoy Man of Steel, the summer blockbuster that opens this weekend.
As every fastidious English major knows, Coleridge suggested “willing suspension of disbelief.”
He meant the act of will that enables us to believe the unbelievable in fiction, film, Fox News, and professional wrestling.
It’s that willingness that makes the ridiculous sublime. Sure, we know Mary Martin and the Flying Nun didn’t really take wing, and there are no vampires sustained by True Blood extract. But it’s fun to pretend, and it’s good exercise for the left side of our brains to briefly embrace what cannot be. When Alice tells the Mad Hatter she sometimes believes six impossible things before breakfast, she is at the height of her mental health.
Vivid imaginations and active fantasies can be good for you, and millions of moviegoers will emerge from 3D IMAX viewings of Man of Steel as happier, healthier persons because of their 144-minute break from reality.
And because Superman is such an unambiguously messianic character (see my 1979 commentary about that here), many will step into the light with renewed questions and new insights about the relationship between fantasy and faith.
Do we have to suspend disbelief in order to believe in God?
My experience with Superman dates back to early childhood when I believed everything I saw. The twelve-inch black-and-white screen of our Admiral television was a rich source of information that began each evening with John Cameron Swayze’s Camel Caravan of the News.
Brother Larry and I were cautioned to be quiet when the 15-minute newscast began so Daddy could listen to the sober reports. There was no reason to doubt any of the images on the screen, including the boxes of Camel cigarettes that clapped together before Swayze’s unsmiling face. I remember Swayze beginning each broadcast with carefully enunciated syllables (“PREZ-a-dent TROO-man said today …”) followed by grainy newsreel footage of Korean War action.
There was no doubt in my mind that television showed stuff that was real.
One day I happened to be sitting alone in front of the TV. The show appeared to be some kind of a cops and robbers drama because there were people sitting in a jail with long steel bars. Suddenly a man dressed in skin-tight pajamas with a long towel trailing behind him jumped into the scene and pulled the bars apart so the people could escape.
The fact that I remember this scene so vividly after 60 years shows what an impact it had on me. I was stunned. I quickly ran to tell my father about it: “And there was this really strong guy, and he bended open the jail bars, and he ran away …” If I had stayed in front of the TV long enough to see him jump out a window and fly away, I would have probably wet my pants.
What I was watching, of course, was The Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves.
Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to view this scene at a time when I couldn’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, when the most mundane things were mystic and magical. I didn’t have to willingly suspend my disbelief because I already believed it. The long years that followed have been, as they are for us all, harsh reality baths that convert us from starry-eyed children to jaded adults. But how wonderful it is to be able to remember how we viewed the world when it was enchanting and new.
My most vivid childhood memories, in fact, are of those times when I struggled to tell the difference between what was real and what was pretend.
I remember, for example, Sunday school teachers who talked admiringly of Jesus and General Douglas MacArthur, often in the same sentence. I had difficulty deciding if Jesus and MacArthur were different people and at one point theorized that Jesus sometimes wore dark glasses and smoked a pipe.
My working image of Jesus, of course, was Salman’s Head of Christ. When Pastor Bergner said in a sermon that Jesus was coming back, I envisioned Salman’s expressionless Jesus dressed in a tailored black suit, sitting behind the pastor waiting to be introduced to the congregation.
When I asked Mrs. Dutton how Jesus died, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “He died on a cross of nails.” I don’t know why she put it quite that way, but I immediately imagined Salman’s Jesus in his white robe, laying on hundreds of nails hammered into a large white X that looked like a Yogi’s bed.
Eventually I developed a more traditional Christology, but all of these images remain in my head.
I did not, I should make clear, think of Superman as a Jesus-like figure sent by his loving father into the world to champion good people and fight evil. That archetype may have been in the unconscious minds of Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, his creators in 1933, but it didn’t occur to me for years.
Even so, there was something thrilling and enchanted about the Man of Steel as George Reeves portrayed him in the 1950s.
And the Action Comics that brought Superman’s adventures to newsstands provided a tangible religious experience for me as a would-be cartoonist.
As I approached my teen years, I spent hours in my room, drawing and re-drawing Superman. I conscientiously copied the work of artists Wayne Boring and Kurt Swan who set the standard for Superman iconography. To me, these guys were no mere cartoonists but artists whose depiction of the human form in action provided free lessons as I traced them with my nubby pencils and broken crayons.
Of course it is also true that Superman taught moral lessons. He set high standards of conduct, brought evildoers to justice, and never abused his super powers for selfish reasons.
Too, he was always available to persons in need, cruising cityscapes and villages to save people not only from criminals but also from fires, floods, earthquakes, and airplane malfunctions. He was a deus ex machina – a God in the Machine – who swooped into dramas at the last minute to rescue people from certain injury or death.
This is what makes Superman a messianic figure. His exploits in Man of Steel – light years beyond the technology that sent Reeves and Reeve into the stratosphere – may deify actor Henry Cavill as well. The last 45 minutes of the film, filled with what the New York Times calls “bludgeoning excesses,” will undoubtedly make moviegoers grateful the Messiah in Blue Tights is around to save the day.
That will require a willing suspension of our disbelief that the whole idea of Superman is absurd and was made up by a couple of cartoonists from Cleveland in 1933.
But that willing suspension can provide both a healthy respite from the realities of life and an opportunity to open our minds to new realities.
For 80 years, Superman has been a morality tale that points us in the direction of greater truths.
Beneath all the legends, special effects and imaginary scenarios, there is an actual loving father who sent his beloved son to earth to rescue us from evil and death.
That son, Jesus, is the original Superman.
And one way to comprehend the real messiah is through a day at the movies that renews our childlike imagination and childlike faith.
That imagination and faith are the most powerful gifts we have because they exceed the capacity of any cartoonist or film maker to open our hearts and minds to the ultimate reality: the loving God.
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