6 - 2018 | unobtrusive lucidity

On Immaturity and Language

Wisdom comes with age.

I’m not just saying this because I feel…well, older…of late, but rather because we’ve already discovered this. There’s not only a time-honored tradition of, but a natural order to, learning from those older than us, those with more experience in life. That, after all, is the promise of apprenticeships, still required in many professions.

We’ve stopped rewarding this, though. Education has replaced experience and deference to elders as the point of recognition in the professional world, and post-modern philosophical relativism has replaced listening to experience in the personal realm. Thus, we have people in their 20’s with MBAs managing people in their 50’s who have been in their profession since they were 18, and a perspective that there can be no higher truth than what one sees in the moment.

The end result, I’ve come to see, is an immature culture, and this is nowhere more evident than our politics. A mature person displays careful use of language, but we use our language instead to incite conflict, resentment, and hate for personal gain. Instead of finding common ground, we paint those with diverging opinions from our own as the enemy. We take no care with our words, and thus our words consume us.

“for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a mature man who is also able to control his whole body…And consider ships: though very large and driven by fierce winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts great things. Consider how large a forest a small fire ignites. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among the parts of our bodies; it pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by hell.” James 3:2, 4-6, HCSB

I think that we don’t have to look around much to see the course of our lives set on fire at this point. There is power in words, but we don’t recognize that power, because we are immature. Our immaturity breeds a disrespect for our language, and the cycle continues. Language is so much more powerful than military force or laws, because language brings both of these into being.

“War is what happens when language fails.” Margaret Atwood

Our language as a culture is the result of our maturity, or rather lack thereof. We would do well to grow up a bit before we continue speaking.

A Review of “Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism”

I stumbled onto this book quite by accident, but it had a lot going for it fairly immediately. While I had not read Miller’s work on Daredevil, I, like most any other comics fan, had read (and come away with strong feelings about) his Batman retcon The Dark Knight Returns. That said, Daredevil has always been a favorite character of mine…indeed, the first comic that I ever seriously collected, although after Miller’s run…and so seeing what Miller had done with this character fascinated me.

I’ll preface everything else here by saying that, if this book grabs your attention at all (and you’ve likely stopped reading by now if it doesn’t), then you really should read the source material before reading Young’s analysis. I took the time to do so and it won’t take long….about five collected volumes of graphic novels, none difficult reads, an you’ll be up to date. Doing so gave me a great appreciation for Miller’s work in and of itself. I didn’t really appreciate just how influential his writing was on the character, nor how much of his influence shows up in the recent Netflix series. I particularly enjoyed Miller’s forward in one of these collections, in which he discusses that Daredevil had always fascinated him because, given his history, he should have been a villain, yet chose to be a hero.

Miller’s re-telling of Daredevil’s origin certainly takes a rocky road to get there, but I tend to agree.

This isn’t so much about Miller’s writing, though, as Young’s analysis of Miller’s writing. Young describes Daredevil here as the most Christian of superheroes, which piqued my theological interest. The rationale for this statement is that Daredevil’s focus is always on compassion for the victim, rather than justice or revenge on the criminal. Within the confines that Daredevil inherently struggles by adhering to the rule of law while still acting as a vigilante, this is a fascinating take. Young also feels that the current Netflix series isn’t truthful to Daredevil as a character because it seems to focus him on seeking revenge. Again, insightful perspectives and criticisms.

There’s an interlude in the middle of the book that attempts to ground the the author’s thesis theologically, but it’s strange. The writing style becomes oddly introspective. That said, the writing style throughout the book is very conversational, and I found myself often wanting it to be more academic given the subject matter. The issue is that the writing is conversational to a fault, including foul language at times, and that detracts from the seriousness of the analysis. I get the motivation to make the topic more accessible to a wider number of readers…this is sort of a comics apologetic in places…but the book suffers for this choice overall.

Perhaps the best part of this book is that Young writes as much as historian as he does literary critic, giving a detailed look into how the comics industry functioned at the time that Miller began working on Daredevil. This was certainly informative for me…as much as I’ve always loved the medium, I had no clue as to these inner workings. We also learn how influential Miller was on the industry and how artists are treated therein, especially within Marvel Comics, which was an entertaining account.

I enjoyed Young outlining Miller’s work on making Bullseye a villain to be taken (very) seriously, as well as his creation of Elektra, whom, as any Daredevil fan knows, is integral to Matt Murdock’s story. Young also gives an insightful analysis of the artwork decisions on Miller’s run, and the intent conveyed in those panels, which I found intriguing.

In the end, the author lands where most critics have with Miller’s perceived artistic and social digression in recent years, but does so while still respecting his contributions both to the character of Daredevil and to the medium of comics in general. If you’re a comics fan, and certainly if you’re as much a fan of Daredevil as I am, then this book is a must-read.

The Nature of a Hero Gone Wrong

Collectible statue of Thanos. Used under Creative Commons. A few days ago, I went to see Avengers: Infinity War for the second time. As usual, you see a lot that you missed in the second viewing. I still hold to my original critique that the movie is too big for it’s own good. However, there was another layer that I had missed the first time due to the sheer epic scale, and I think that it ties into the concept of the nature of a hero.

I’ve heard interviews with the writers of Infinity War in which they say that this movie was about Thanos. I found this to be very true, to the point that the heroes are almost all incidental characters. I applaud this, also, because, in order to tell the story of a hero well, one must have a compelling story behind the villain. Cheap and one-dimensional villains cause movies to fall (we all try to forget the altogether unfortunate treatment of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3). Thanos is anything but cheap or one-dimensional. He’s just as heart-breaking, in fact, as he is terrifying. He is terrifying because he acts with a decisive conviction. He will do anything, up to and including murdering the one person whom he (claims to) love, to achieve his goal. This is bad enough, and evil enough, in it’s own right.

On the second viewing of the film, I realize that Thanos is driven by such conviction because he earnestly believes himself to be the hero.

In any genre of literature, the most dangerous of villains live here. They are dangerous because they fight with the same conviction as the heroes. They believe that their cause is just. The motivation that comes with the belief that one is doing the right thing is not easily defeated.

The postmodern tendency here would be to lean on relativism. That is, if the villain can so easily be convinced that he is right, and fight with such a firmly held belief, and that fight can be the cause of so much evil, then let us stop defining “right” as an absolute. “What’s right for me is right for me, but maybe not for you,” and all that. That’s a slippery slope, and it’s a logical fallacy here, because there is an absolute point in which Thanos specifically proves himself to not be the hero.

Thano’s flaw is that he fails to respect all life as sacred. In the self-perceived nobility of his cause to save life, he is reduced to only logic. He sees the world, the universe, as only a mathematical equation, a “simple calculus.” In this reductionist worldview, killing some at random to save others is completely acceptable, because it is an action borne only of logic, while being devoid of any ethic.

The most powerful moment of this film is when Captain America refutes this type of logic with ethics. When confronted with the Vision’s sacrificial impulse to give up his own life to save many others, Steve Rogers replies firmly, “We don’t trade lives.”

There must be an objective litmus test that separates the hero from the villain. Respect for life is one of those. The absence of this objective proof is a dividing line that proves the nature of a hero, or defines the nature of the villain.

Image attribution: William Tung under Creative Commons.