A Hero for the Neurotic in All of Us

Peter Parker, like most of us, swings moods more often than he swings webs. He is the neurotic in all of us, without the caricature of neurosis that allows us to laugh unselfconsciously at Woody Allen and George Costanza. Like most of us, Peter worries about paying the rent, about getting the girl, and about the acuity of his moral sense: does he do good for its own sake, or to buoy his own sense of self-worth?

Pete’s neuroses sometimes get the better of him; at certain moments of his career, they have crippled him physically, robbing him of his ability to stick to walls and lift car-weight loads over his head. But he always returns to the antidote of humour: he can make a crack about Doc Ock’s bowl-cut at the same time he’s stopping the villain from destroying New York City. In the darkest moments, he lightens the mood by sheer force of will. Peter’s ability to overcome the big and little troubles of life makes him heroic, in a way that makes the “super” prefix almost superfluous.

(Note: I wrote up this meditation on Spider-Man for submission to the "In Character" blog on NPR.com. It doesn't include a direct quotation as these entries normally do, and so I hope you'll forgive me for this rare contravention of the blog rules.)

Blindness

"Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness."
- Jose Saramago, in the novel Blindness (1995)

This quotation comes from the novel Blindness, in which people across an unidentified country fall victim to an infection that robs them of their sight (they see instead a milky whiteness before them at all times). Saramago seems to be saying that we can only direct aggression at another person once we stop perceiving his or her complexity and perceive only that which frustrates our own self-centred needs. In this sense, then, the opposite of fighting is careful consideration of other people's needs and an ability to envision compromises.

Don't be blind!

The Dangers of Austerity

William Butler Yeats writes lines of such elegance and spiritual force that I find they resonate with me, like an unsettling, too-truthful dream, until I find an outlet for them. And thus the following quote:

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
(W.B. Yeats, "Easter 1916)

Yeats wrote this in reference to the sacrifices of the Irish nationalist movement, which sought to win Ireland's freedom from the United Kingdom into which it had forcefully been drawn in the early 1800s (and, of course, Ireland had been ruled by the English to various degrees since the 1300s). Irish nationalist movements had flared up occasionally throughout the centuries of English colonial rule, only to be snuffed out by the greater military resources of the English.

The armed rising that took place on Easter 1916 was the latest act of resistance plotted by Irish nationalists. They took over the post office in the center of Dublin and used it as a military base for the Easter Rising. The English sent battleships into the city centre, and waited out the leaders of the rising, executing all of them (save one) by firing squad. The death of these men was only the latest of many "sacrifices" incurred by Irish patriots.

In the poem, then, Yeats is suggesting that resisting the English may have too grave a cost - the drawn out resistance to English rule and the deaths that resulted threatened to make the Irish a cold and embittered people.

Yet, while the poem addresses a very specific sacrifice, Yeats' line has a lot of truth regarding sacrifices in general. We often make personal sacrifices so that we might come closer to realizing our goals - we avoid eating out or going on vacation to save for a car, a house, etc; we sacrifice time with loved ones to study or work; we forego new relationships to avoid being hurt. But that sustained act of self-denial can have a deadening effect upon us: repeatedly denying ourselves of the things that bring us joy eventually begins to erode our capacity to feel joy. At least this is what Yeats would have us believe when he speaks of a heart turned to stone, and I have found that he's usually worth listening to...

Will Not Compute

...friends, every day do something that won't compute.

- Wendell Berry

The poem from which this line is taken is about living your life in a way other than that prescribed by bureaucracy and business interests. The line asks us to do things that don't seem "normal" and which may confuse anyone who lives their life according to "common sense." Why challenge or resist common sense? Well, because common sense is just that - a system of beliefs and ideas that are held by the majority of the people around you. To live your life according to the precepts of the majority means that you trust VERY STRONGLY that the majority of people in your town or city know exactly what they're doing. That's probably not very likely.

Especially because the majority of people around you aren't operating solely on what they have figured out for themselves or as a community. No, much "common sense" is also a product of the suggestions and images we receive from the government, media, schools, business, and various other institutions with interests they hope to promote by cultivating particular germs in the larger store of "common sense." French critics have a more precise term for this kind of common sense - idees recue (received ideas). Received ideas are those notions that have filtered out into society and are accepted as valid simply because they are repeatedly stated. "Green consumerism" is an idea that has enjoyed a good deal of uncritical reception, for example, but which holds some problems upon closer examination (i.e. that often the "greenest" thing you can do is curb your consumption).

How to avoid the pitfalls of common sense and received ideas? Take actions and think thoughts that "don't compute" in the network of common sense. The poet from whom I took the quote suggests doing things like "planting sequoias" and "asking questions that have no answers."

For my part, yesterday I bought the ingredients to make bread and waited 18 hours for it to rise, when I could've just bought a loaf for $1.50. But can you really put a price on the satisfaction that comes with making your own ball of baked dough?

*******

Excerpt from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
By Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag.

Local Celebrities

The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.

- Michael Chabon, in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

When I lived in Massachusetts, one of my very good friends was a Greek guy by the name of Vasilis. Vasilis is a very charming, polite, witty, and wonderfully controlled personality - he has a habit of saying the right thing at the right time. For example, when I asked him once why he chose to leave a party at 11:30, he responded, in the staccato rhythm required because of his slight discomfort with English, "you should always leave them wanting more." He was not at all egotistical, and that's why I cracked up when he said this.

But from that point on, I started referring to Vasilis as a "local celebrity," and he did the same to me. We were poking fun at each other's actual insignificance; but at the same time, in a tight knit group of a dozen or so friends, it was easy to feel that we all were celebrities, the focus of each other's "rumors and fanfare," the topic of conversations that others reserve for chatting about Hilton and Richie around the water cooler.

The point, of both the quote and my story, is that in the finer moments and finer situations of our lives, it is possible to feel that the people you know are the center of a universe (albeit your own small one), the only people you really need to or care to know.

Postscript: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is Chabon's first novel and, in reading it, I've decided that he's awesome (he also wrote the screenplay for Spiderman 2). He lived in Pittsburgh for several years, proving again the sheer awesomeness of the 'Burgh.

Writing is a better way of thinking

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
- Francis Bacon, 16th century English philosopher

Bacon's point here is to say that while reading prodigiously will "fill" you with ideas and information, it is only when you are called upon to discuss those ideas and facts that you really apply them. More than this even, writing forces you to master your thoughts, to organize them and refine them, so as to express them clearly and concisely. It is this process that makes writing enjoyable (at least for me), and gives me a sense of satisfaction, that I have managed to say at least one thing with precision. It is also that wrangling with words, that wrestling which culminates in a satisfying victory, that probably spurred one poet to say

I hate writing, but I love having written.
- Dorothy Parker

Consume Away

Cultural Studies is a popular mode of criticism that has been practiced more and more in university English departments since the 1980s. What the practitioner of cultural studies does is examine products of pop culture to see what they reveal about our society's values and beliefs (which are often unconsciously woven into the things we say, movies we shoot, stories we write). For example, a very simple cultural critique might examine assumptions about masculinity in "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" - why do we associate poor grooming with straight masculinity, and fashion sense with male homosexuality? I'm prefacing my comments with this brief intro to cultural studies in order to assure you that what I am about to write is not really about comic books. And don't worry, I'll move back to high culture stuff like poetry and politics soon enough. But wait a second: who said comics were low culture?

"[Comic books are] one of the clearest and most direct expressions of socio-economic conditions I know of - conditions which permit an immensely rich industry with fantastic profits to reduce children to a market."
- Frederic Wertham, American psychologist and critic of comic books

Frederic Wertham was responsible for villifying comic books in the 1950s, and for bringing about events such as the New York State Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Comics, the Cincinatti Committee on the Evaluation of Comic Books, and the Canadian ban on crime comics.

Wertham was not a student of cultural studies in the sense that we use that term today, but he did have some interesting conclusions on the connections between what was being written and drawn in comic books and what was happening in 1950s North America.

Wertham's most famous argument was that the wide selection of detailed, highly graphic crime comic books available on newsstands contributed to the rise in juvenile delinquency observed in the first half of the twentieth century.

He cited many examples of gruesome criminal acts that appeared in comics and which (he believed) served as blueprints for the kind of delinquent behaviour he observed in his young patients. One of his most famous examples is the panel to the left, from True Crime Comics #2.

This is old news to all you comic nerds out there, and I'm sure we all agree that the notion that comic books would lead directly to swarms of pint-sized Tony Montanas running around sounds like a load o' bunk (yes, I wrote "load o' bunk").

However, the lesser-known dimension to Wertham's thinking is that comic books were emblematic of a larger problem with society, one which he alludes to in the quote I included above. It wasn't only the fact that comics were gruesome and violent that bothered Wertham, but moreso that the comics industry was including depravity and violence in its publications because they could hook kids on depravity and violence more easily than on other, less-offensive fare. Ultimately, what disturbed the psychiatrist was that the information, ideas, and cultural messages industry chose to present to children could be shaped by market considerations rather than considerations regarding their successful development as young people.

Bradford Wright, in his book Comic Book Nation, explains that while Wertham's belief that comic books directly contributed to juvenile delinquency was misguided, his concern that young people were being drawn into "a culture defined more by market considerations than by traditional values" was entirely valid. The boom in the post-World War II economy in North America resulted in children having more money in their pockets. As Wright notes, "America's young people had the consumer power to help shape their own culture, and entertainment industries proved increasingly eager to accommodate them." The potential problem here is that the entertainment industry was creating and selling this youth culture with consideration given to what would sell, not necessarily what was best for kids and society at large. This is a crucial turning point in contemporary North American/Western history - the empowerment of youth culture. This is what allowed the rise of such things as rock and roll, the hippie movement, and a new power balance in the parent-child relationship, wherein children are given leverage by commercial messages that suggest parents accede to child demands (this is why the United Kingdom has moved to ban commercials aimed at children twelve and younger).

My point here is not to say that commerce should not be allowed to shape culture - it always will, quite often in positive ways. But when it overwhelmingly compromises the practices, beliefs, and values of people for no other reason than to raise profit margins, we experience problems. Foremost among these today is the problem of needless overconsumption, the symptoms of which are global warming, super-sized meals, livestock factories that damage local water supplies, overburdened landfills and trains filled with trash sent to Michigan, two-for-one chocolate bars... (ok, maybe the last one isn't that important!)

I'll admit that at this point, I'm launching into a much vaster topic - commercial interests versus public interest - that can't be dealt with adequately in a small space. My aim has been to show how small things, like comic books, are emblematic of this struggle between commercial interest and public interest. Your best interests and my best interests are always in threat of being compromised when commerce decides it would like to acquire some of our money.

Is There Such a Thing as Shopping Green?

“There is a very common mind-set right now which holds that all that we’re going to need to do to avert the large-scale planetary catastrophes upon us is make slightly different shopping decisions.”
- Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability issues.

Fully Poseable Wayne

Another piece de resistance (literal translation: "piece of resistance") by our own Ryan "Deano" Deane!

Lightening Bolts

(This is a bit of a longish essay, but I quite like it, and hope you'll be so good as to read it. )

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Flash. More specifically, I'm intrigued by the story of how he obtained his powers. This bit of modern mythology unfolds as follows: Barry Allen is a twenty-four year old police scientist who laments the fact that he is hopelessly slow at completing work, at making appointments, and at making a move on Iris, the object of his affections. He has wished, since childhood, that he could be the fastest man alive. One stormy night, a lightning bolt crashes through the window into his laboratory, hits a shelf of beakers, and showers Barry in a flood of now-electrified chemicals. Somehow, instead of being electrocuted, Barry is granted the ability to move at super-speed, an ability which he decides to turn to the benefit of mankind by donning red tights and fighting crime as The Flash.

This is a fairly well-known story to most students to modern pop culture. However, one version of the story adds an intriguing twist to the Flash’s origin. In writer Robert Loren Fleming’s re-imagining of the tale (published in Secret Origins Annual #2), the lightening bolt destined to hit Barry freezes in mid-air – and speaks to him. It explains that Barry has a choice to make: he can stand in the path of the lightening bolt and become the quicksilver he’s always wanted to be, or he can avoid the bolt and continue his dull, snail-paced existence. When Barry asks for some proof that the bolt will not kill him, the spear of energy cautions that “nothing in life is certain,” and that Barry is “free to choose his own destiny.” It also explains that, should Barry live and gain super-speed, his life will be shortened by a considerable number of years in the process. Despite the sacrifices involved in the deal, isn’t this what the young scientist has always wanted, more than anything?

The situation is a wonderful allegory for those big decisions in life we’re all confronted with at one time or another. More specifically, it suggests the scary challenge of realizing your own potential. Are you willing to do what it takes to become the most fully-realized version of yourself possible? These questions are particularly germane to those of us in our twenties, when we feel the pressure of making decisions that will shape the course of our lives and who we will be for much of them. Should I switch jobs? Should I get married to this person? Is it a good idea to move? Barry Allen is twenty-four when he’s forced to make a life-altering decision, and many of us experience the same thing at his age. Barry hesitates.

I’ve done some hesitating of my own. The only thing I can say I ever really dreamed of becoming was an English professor. I began an M.A./PhD in English, but stopped after completing the master’s, having heard more than enough horror stories of underemployed academics searching years for that elusive tenure-track position. Feeling that I didn’t have the resources to gamble a few years of my life on the slim chances of finding a post-secondary teaching position, I decided that teaching at the high school level would be a far less risky option.
But although I’ve come to hold high school teaching in incredibly high esteem, I still feel that some of my personal strengths rest in the kind of work English professors do: connecting and summing up ideas (as opposed to the more disciplined teacherly work of breaking those ideas up into discrete, accessible units that students can learn piece-by-piece). For this and other reasons, I sometimes think that, if I had a lightening bolt of my own, it might whisper to me, “go complete your PhD and become the man you’ve always wanted to be. But be warned, should you live and gain a doctorate, you will have lost several years of your life in the process.” In the face of such a decision, I’ve hesitated.

And like I said, Barry hesitates too. He wonders if he will live through the process, and what he stands to lose if he does. The notion that the whole super-speed deal is a “miracle with strings attached” that will shorten his life is tough to swallow. But Barry takes a gamble, places the jar of ammonium sulfate on the chemical cabinet, and (after recovering from the force of the ensuing electro-chemical blast) finds himself zipping around his native Central City faster than any man alive.

But here’s the really novel bit of Fleming’s version of the story. The Flash’s greatest challenge occurs when the villain named the Anti-Monitor threatens to destroy the universe with a weapon powered by a faster-than-light tachyon particle. In order to deactivate the weapon, the Flash has to run fast enough to capture the tachyon particle. As he races towards the crackling ball of energy, our hero breaks the light-speed barrier and becomes a being of pure energy in the process. As he successfully stops the deadly particle, his form continues to change mysteriously. In the last few panels of the story, Barry’s super alter-ego is shown gradually taking on the shape of a lightening bolt, about to touch down somewhere in Central City. The final full-page panel shows Barry Allen running from his lab, out into the horizon –he’s just been hit by the lightening bolt he always eventually becomes. In this version of the story, Barry is the lightening bolt, the source of his own transformation.

I think I have some lightening bolts of my own – possibilities that have dangled themselves out in front of me, difficult questions begging to be taken up. I was in my fourth year of university when I decided that I wanted to attend graduate school and pursue my M.A./PhD. I had to collect reference letters as part of my application package, and I asked the professor from my sophomore Satire class, Julia Creet, to write one of the letters. I distinctly remember the moment I caught up to her, in the concrete wind-tunnel gap between the Stong and Bethune college buildings. I asked her, nearly breathlessly, whether she would be willing to write the letter, and she conceded gracefully to do so. I walked away contentedly, but just before I was out of conversation range, Professor Creet turned her head and called out over her shoulder to me, with as much earnestness as a Satire professor can muster. “Are you sure you want to teach English? It’s not the most lucrative way to make a living.”

I was sitting down the other day in a coffee shop when I remembered this moment again. Having finished two degrees in English, spent a year teaching English for far too little money in a private school in Pittsburgh, then spent (wasted?) another year running snot-nosed and broken-walleted after a Bachelor of Education degree so that I could teach English in a public school, Professor Creet’s question struck me with all the force of a proverbial lightening bolt. But much like the one that struck Barry Allen, the source and effect of my lightening bolt is more than a little peculiar. First, the source: I admired Professor Creet a great deal, both for her mastery of the body of literature she professed and for running the most thought-provoking, energetic, exciting tutorial discussions I had ever sat in on. Whenever I think of the kinds of discussions I want to have with students, I think of the chats we all had in her classroom. If Prof. Creet had any doubts about having spent her life becoming a professor...well, she had almost created another one in me. It’s probably a bit of a platitude to say that every great teacher spawns another one (or at least someone hopeful of becoming a great teacher), but it’s true.

Second, the effect. Although Prof. Creet meant to strike a subtle, sarcastic cautionary note with her question, I plunged on ahead into the literary/academic life. It turns out she was entirely correct. I own depressingly little: my wealth consists mostly of experiences and books and quotes just right for any occasion. But sitting in the coffee shop (the living room of the dispossessed) that day, I realized I didn’t care too much about my typical literati’s lack of lucre. In fact, inspired by Barry’s lightening bolt, I was excited by the thought that I might become the source of the things that have transformed me: that I might write out thoughts profound, to make someone think “I never thought that before”; that I might help a student or two believe there are arguments that cannot be proven and spirits that cannot be broken so long as you can invest yourself in something besides the acquisition of wealth.

Like my old hero, I ran off out of the coffee shop, into the horizon.