Us and them
A confession: I cry at movies now. It's a new thing for me; over the last couple years it happened enough that I finally had to admit to myself that yes, I am this kind of person now. The emotional climax happens, the strings swell in the background, and I feel my eyes burning and tears starting to leak down my cheeks. I don't think I was especially stoic before, either. Stuff just hit different back then, ya know?
Anyway, I say this to say I've been thinking a lot lately about James Gunn's Superman, the latest reboot of the film franchise. I saw it when it released in theaters last year, and, predictably, by the end, I had shed more than a few tears. I didn't understand why until this weekend, when I was having some Outdoor Beers[1] with a couple friends. The plot of the film is pretty simple: Superman saves some people who need saving, and eventually, emotionally, saves himself. (It really is worth watching.)
But the reason I had such a strong reaction to this Superman, despite it being a lot like every other superhero film, was ultimately pretty simple: it felt radical to see a man with so much power could decide to use it for good. That someone — even a fictional someone — could believe that goodness was a thing worth sacrificing for, worth working to protect.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that idea is unpopular now. It feels like we live in a media environment that's been totally taken over by cynicism. Savviness trumps morality. Ethics have taken a backseat to knowingness. Performing cruelty for a faceless crowd has never been more popular. It doesn't feel, in other words, like people care much about what's right. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that it's even less rewarded than it's ever been.
It also feels like people are recognizing this feeling for what it is, which is a real sense of decline. The American project — the ideals, the lofty language, the convictions embedded in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — all of it seems pretty hollow. I'm not the only one feeling this, either. Take, for instance, this great piece in Liberal Currents, titled "The Last Idiot Who Earnestly Believes in the American Experiment":
Some time before I was born, America’s finest comedic minds decided it would be really funny if we all pretended that there was no greater idea than the notion that all people had inalienable rights, and that there could be no cause more noble than any effort to protect those rights for others. I, perhaps the biggest Bozo in the United States, totally missed that they were kidding.
I commend the Andy Kaufmanesque commitment to the bit. Without cracking a smile, adults I respected taught me about a thing called the American Revolution, and how it gave rise to a new kind of society where people could converse freely, even going so far as to criticize their leaders, and this would help uncover a more truthful and better way of living.
Though we're ruled by the whims of some of the worst people alive, it's not all bad. What the people of Minnesota have done for their communities in fighting ICE is superheroic in its own right, even as it's just neighbors who care enough about each other to show up. Caring about other people is non-negotiable, I think. And it is an unequivocally good thing in a world of worse ones.
There's a meme that I'm not sure is a meme that I think about often. Maybe it's just a shared sentiment? But anyway, the idea is: the world you were born into no longer exists. The institutions have fallen, and the barbarians have taken the keep; to borrow a very famous phrase, mere anarchy has indeed been loosed upon the world. The world is the world, though. It changes, yes, but it is changed by human hands. And those human hands guiding the world can change.
I think it's important and quietly radical to remember that evil is real and it does exist. And yes, I mean that even in our very secular age, where everything is gambling, scams, and petty grifts. Good exists, too. There is an us and there is a them. Don't become like them. Caring about each other is the only thing that will bring us into the future.
1. Best enjoyed on a 47°F day after a long, cold winter.