I don’t typically acknowledge memorials because to me, you live, you die—it’s all transitory. The spirit of someone is what matters and the body is just a vehicle they ride in. So when a car stops working, I typically don’t attribute that to the end of a person. However, in regards to what I think is one of America’s great authors, Robert James Waller who died quietly at his home in Texas yesterday at the age of 77, I’ll make an exception because it’s likely we won’t see any more of his very good literature. Needless to say, I have been a fan of his since his breakthrough novel, The Bridges of Madison County. I was quite ecstatic when Clint Eastwood took up the movie project at Warner Bros. to make that very interesting novel into a movie just two years after the novel was released as it was to me a modern Arthurian romance mythology about the nature of love—how duty destroys passion between couples and how to live authentically in the modern world. Here was my favorite actor/director handling one of my favorite novels—so on the opening day of the film, I was the very first one in line—as if it were a Star Wars movie. I loved the material and subsequently devoured each book that Waller wrote from then on as they were released.
The Summer Nights Never End…Until They Do: Life, Liberty, and the Lure of the Short-Run(2012)
That little collection is a uniquely western view of the world mixed with the type of mysticism associated with oriental cultures. Waller captured perfectly the modern conflict of the esoteric and exoteric with out-of-the-box characters yearning like Ayn Rand’s characters always for more. Waller’s characters were trapped against foundations of social convention and always seeking to flee into the firelight—as he put it often. My favorite of his characters of course was Robert Kincaid who I always associated with—and was obviously autobiographical for Robert Waller himself.
The negative reviews of his work often confounded Waller, he really didn’t understand why the literary critics hated him so much, yet his novels did so well, especially The Bridges of Madison County. It was a short book that many desperate women were screaming for as a voice beyond the veil of their social conventions cobbled up like a dry rotted sponge being tossed into an old bucket to wash away the dirt on a car that needed to be cleaned after a long winter on the first good spring day. Pieces of that sponge of course fell off during the act and it showed culturally in the women and some men who read Bridges—and the critics hated it. Waller’s Robert Kincaid is exactly the type of man who the literary critics were afraid of—he was too perfect, too powerful, too smart—and the idea that someone like him existed in pickup trucks all across the American landscape honestly terrified them. For the weakened, defeated males of American culture it was also terrifying to them to consider that somebody like a Robert Kincaid could come along and steal their women by just asking for a cold drink on a hot day. Waller was essentially writing about T.S. Elliot’s Wasteland in the context of small town America. That wasteland is much more evident in the big cities, and it’s hard to put a finger on it in within the noise of a cityscape—because everyone is a little neurotic in those places—but to segregate the wasteland motif into the Iowa countryside was dangerous, and accurate. And the literary gatekeepers let Waller know what they thought of him.
Lucky for us all, Warner Bros has some rebels that have worked there for many years in their film and book publishing divisions that have the imprint of the great Clint Eastwood on them to this day. Eastwood made all his movies for the most part with Warner Bros. so he has had a large hand in shaping them as a company—culturally. And to this day, especially in regard to the D.C. comic universe of the Batman, Superman, and Justice League movies, there are some rebel filmmakers who are obvious Ayn Rand fans—and that’s wonderful. I’d attribute that same trait to the how and why The Bridges of Madison County was published and released with the backing of a major player in entertainment and the content took off brilliantly catapulting Robert James Waller into orbit as one of America’s great writers. Critics don’t like much that comes out of Warner Bros. for many of the same reasons they don’t like Donald Trump. It’s also why Warner Bros. still owns the rights to Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and has Zach Snyder working on a treatment for a modern film about that topic, because Warner Bros. is still a studio that gets it—in the closed-door offices away from the entertainment media. And Robert James Waller was one of their experiments—and a delightful one to emerge.
Waller was an economics professor and he understood business holding a PhD on the topic, but it was his art that he cherished most of all. He had acute observations about things and had to get them out. Unlike me, who lives in the days of the blog, Waller was one of the last writers to emerge before the computer generation exploded so getting access to his work required official publications of his written word. But he wrote things for years fine tuning his thoughts which came to a very fine point in The Bridges of Madison County. Robert Kincaid in that novel was essentially to an Iowa farmhouse lived in by the desperate love hungry wife of Francesca Johnson, what John Galt was to Dagny Taggart in the American classic Atlas Shrugged.
We are of course talking about “overman” characters here and that’s what critics didn’t like. They wanted flawed people who were melting with guilt by their middle lives—and certainly not dripping with life passion as they moved beyond the age of 50. Robert Kincaid was one of those characters and Waller managed to write about different variations of this uninhibited maleness in future novels, never to quite the same effect, but the characteristics were unmistakable. But while Ayn Rand focused on the exoteric nature of things which eventually led to her creation of the Objectivist philosophy, Waller spent a lot of time with the esoteric, which women tend to reside in. They love the idea of mystery and a connection to the unknown which is very oriental in its assumptions and the methods of Robert Kincaid were generally attributed to this esoteric nature.
Without question, Robert James Waller was one of the great American writers and I’ll miss the opportunity to read new work from him. He lived a good life and his novels captured a bit of it in a way that was unique—and lasting. So when it comes to the vehicle of Robert James Waller, I am sentimental about the many miles it drove and the quality for which it performed and as he dissolves into the esoteric nature of the universe I am glad that for a shining moment in the good ol’ firelight he was made terrestrial and formulated just enough exoteric language to share it with the world and give a voice to the wasteland which resides inside most people—if only for a fleeting moment.
With all the press over the new Batman vs Superman movie the director, Zach Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter that one of the next projects he’s working on is an updated version of The Fountainhead. The faces of nearly everyone in the liberal community of media and entertainment nearly melted off. Snyder is a highly respected film director and is at the top of his game. But it doesn’t surprise me that he and a growing contingent of Warner Bros. directors and screen writers are showing themselves as Objectivists—Ayn Rand’s philosophic dispute against Kantian collectivism. It’s no secret that I was very supportive of the film makers of Atlas Shrugged, which I thought was a successful cliff note to the great American novel—Atlas Shrugged. That book is what America is all about and could have only been written here by our culture. Ayn Rand was onto something with her work and I personally think The Fountainhead is one of the greatest novels ever written and I’ve read Finnegan’s Wake—and I understand it—just for reference. Finnegan’s Wake to me is probably the greatest novel in the history of mankind as far as its scope—but within it there are way too many Kantian limits. Ayn Rand takes away those limits and delivers us to a time before Plato and Aristotle’s great debate—to a time when mankind was contemplating that it was not the gods of Mt. Olympus who ruled the universe, it was the minds of mankind.
This is extremely important to understand because the candidacy and potential presidency of Donald Trump is the kind of story which might be a sequel to one of those Ayn Rand classics—he is a clear combination of characters from both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Trump’s popularity is very similar to the popularity of Ayn Rand’s novels even to this day nearly 60 and 70 years after their release. Atlas Shrugged is the most reviewed book in the Library of Congress behind only the Bible for a reason—people are curious—but the life around them built largely in the summation of Kantian philosophy doesn’t assimilate well to what they feel in their heart and souls.
I know people from every side of the argument regarding Donald Trump. I know the Glenn Beck Tea Party types, I know hard-core Objectivists, and I know traditional Republicans and I see their difficulty in understanding Donald Trump and his supporters. Some of them like Glenn Beck and even Ted Cruz are staunch Atlas Shrugged supporters—they love Ayn Rand—yet they don’t understand her—because religion clouds their thinking on the philosophy of the matter. Ironically, that is their same aversion to Donald Trump—that he’s a godless heathen who lives for himself counseling only himself not seeking the advice of God in times of crises. Trump declares that he relies on his own mind to make decisions—which is a very Ayn Rand type of thing to say—and Beck along with Cruz followed by a contingent of Tea Party supporters are frazzled by such a proclamation. Establishment Republicans hate Trump because he isn’t Kantian enough—meaning he doesn’t think in a Platonic fashion deep enough for them. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES) Then of course Objectivists aren’t sure what to think.
Not long ago I compared Donald Trump to Howard Roark from The Fountainhead and Objectivists sent me private messages concerned about my sanity. They declared that Trump was not ideologically pure enough to be an “Objectivist,” and he certainly wasn’t the hero Howard Roark. But a real life examination into the way that Trump has lived proposes a direct comparison. Trump has always had a very Roark-like certainty about hm. I don’t claim to be an Objectivist. Personally, I think mankind is at a stage where we need to deep dive Rand’s thoughts expanding on Aristotle’s original concepts—but perhaps either going back to a time well before Greek philosophy or into a new period that mankind has never been before. I am personally concerned with flushing out these kinds of thoughts over my years. I see Objectivism as a first step in that process and Ayn Rand was certainly onto the scent. However, Rand’s books were relatively simple-because they are exploring complex concepts and needed a host of adult characters to drape those concepts off of—for instance, there are no children in Rand’s books, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged—which makes it easy for the characters to act on their authentic natures. The world is neatly aligned in a way that represented Ayn Rand’s time period and her personal decisions which was to not have children with her husband and to carry on lavish affairs of her own with other men and force her husband to watch essentially. In the end Rand was a bit broken-hearted with some of her decisions and it hurt her following regarding Objectivism. That doesn’t mean she was wrong—it just means she wasn’t completely right.
I think the life of Donald Trump would be a sequel to Ayn Rand’s classics—and I think his third wife Melania is the key to his present success. I think Donald Trump fits right into the pages of Rand’s heroes with John Galt and Howard Roark and that is essentially why people are so bothered with his presidential candidacy. Objectivists would obviously disagree, but they share with most religions an almost sanctimonious relationship with the purity of Ayn Rand’s characters that they have become Holy figures to them similar to religious fanatics who insist that the life of Jesus Christ as it was written in a book 1700 years ago is testament to the precise way that we must all live today—and that the interpretation provided over the years and nurtured along by Immanuel Kant followed by many others—like Karl Marx would formulate political philosophy around the values of altruism. Donald Trump was a great person before he met Melania—but after she became his Lady of Tubber Tintye. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. She was his hero’s journey much the way Dagney was brought to such a figure in John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. In that case Galt was the type of treasure found in the classic story of The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island. In real life, Melania was the treasure that Donald Trump found and what we have today is a presidential candidate who has successfully completed a hero’s journey equivalent to a classic novel and he is here to bestow upon mankind the boons of his adventure.
Trump supporters have been lied to and manipulated by all the groups mentioned above, religious groups, political groups, activism groups—everyone, and they still see things sliding into an abyss. They have been told that they are bad because they are a particular color, that they are bad if they think well of American sovereignty, and that they are bad if they aren’t willing to give the skin off their very backs to those too lazy to make their own way in life—and they are the majority. People like Trump were allowed to the table of power so long as they brought their check book, but they weren’t invited to help fix anything. For Donald Trump I think love brought him full circle and into this political theater and the instincts of the American people understand it in spite of what everyone is telling them. Trump has great love for his wife, his children, and of course himself. People don’t comprehend it yet, but they know to trust it because literally everyone else has let them down.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche before Ayn Rand likely started the chain reaction—but prior to them in all of known history only gods of some mystic realm held such power of mankind. It was the job of human beings to appeal to the egos of their deities. Trump is not that kind of offering. He is something else that nobody has ever seen before in politics—or philosophy—and Trump supporters feel innately that they can trust it—because they still hope that its possible in America to step beyond the shackles of Immanuel Kant—even if they’ve never heard the name before—and live their lives as free people for the purposes ascribed in Ayn Rand’s classic American novels. Zach Snyder as a filmmaker has his hands on that pulse—and is working on The Fountainhead to show it to us for later analysis. For decades in the future we will still be coming to terms with this time period—and it will be through our art that we understand what has happened. In hindsight, we’ll be glad that it did. But we will rely on art—as we always do—to define it in our lives—even if the Trump train is moving too fast now to do anything but vote in favor of that gut we have in our stomachs. That is the very definition of a Trump supporter.
Essentially the argument in question revolving around the new Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice movie is a philosophic argument between Plato/Aristotle and Nietzsche/Ayn Rand. Batman represents the old human concept of law and order whereas Superman represents the overman. It is a compelling argument and one that I didn’t entirely expect to be conveyed so openly in a comic book movie—but here it is.
Of course it should be expected where my sentiments fall. And I’m sure Ayn Rand would be aghast that I compared her to Frederick Nietzsche. She would break things down by stating that she is more like Aristotle whereas Nietzsche is aligned more properly with the sentimental mysticism of Plato—but for this line of thought I’m breaking down philosophic development into the boundaries of western civilization itself. The minds of man have brought us into the modern age on the philosophy established in Greece. Ayn Rand and the concept of the overman is the future—it is the graduation of mankind from the boundaries of intellectual confinement driven by thousands of years of madness.
I have stated my love for both film franchises, of course the Batman films of Christopher Nolan and the Man of Steel film by the same producer. Both Christopher Nolan renditions of the comic legends have heavy doses of Ayn Rand in them—collectivism versus the individual. Yet Hollywood is directly opposed to Ayn Rand currently favoring heavily the Kantian philosophy of collectivism, altruism, and human depravity. The director of the Man of Steel films and the upcoming Dawn of Justice is Zach Snyder who obviously like Christopher Nolan, prefers Ayn Rand and even though Hollywood may not like it—the hot handed director is at the helm and is poised to deliver a powerful money-making franchise to Warner Bros that will compete directly with the wonderful Marvel Avengers films from Disney.
I’m actually going deeper into this line of thought with my Cliffhanger project, but for the masses right now at the start of the 21st century this Batman versus Superman battle needs to happen, and the trailer captured the essence of it very well. All through human history mankind has fallen in love with power and it has corrupted their minds. An overman on the other hand has no such love for power, because they understand the nature of it. Power is not given to other people through democratic measures. Just because one person can command hundreds, perhaps thousands from the lofty perches of a social title of some kind—there is no real power there—just an acknowledgment of collective will. Real power comes from an individual and will remain no matter what circumstances emerge.
In many ways in a modern since the director Ridley Scott surprisingly grasped this concept in his 2000 release of Gladiator, which won best picture that year along with a best actor award for Russel Crowe. Scott isn’t typically an Ayn Rand fan, but he did grasp the power of the individual in that film where Maximus—the protagonist had been the favored general of Marcus Aurelius due to his skill on the battlefield, but once the Emperor died, his son Commodus, deeply jealous of Maximus sought to put the general to death and kill his family. Maximus escaped, but not in time to save his family. The great man lost everything and is captured and toured around as a gladiator—one step always from death. Yet Maximus is so skilled at fighting that he quickly rose back to the top and eventually challenged again the Emperor of Rome as a masterful tactician. It is clearly one of the best films of its kind and is oozing with Ayn Rand strength centering on the individual over the collective. There is a truth in that particular film that Ridley Scott unintentionally released. I have put that truth to test many times and have discovered that it’s immensely accurate. You can take a great man and cast him onto a remote island in the middle of nowhere and he or she—will succeed in spite of the collective efforts to hold them down. Great people are not driven by collective salvation or sacrifice—they are creators of their own fates and can make success out of any situation—because success is an act of creation—not something granted by luck or the “gods.” A great person will always rise back to the top by default and there is a science to it that is predictable.
Zach Snyder seems compelled by this same resiliency and all the characters in his films embody some aspect of this. So it’s no accident that Christopher Nolan put Snyder in charge of the Superman franchise. There really is no better director today who knows how to handle the Man of Steel mythology. Superman is a superior being from another planet who simply wanted to help mankind become greater. He has absolute power, and came from a planet that collapsed under that power—not by his hand, but those of his people. Superman’s job is to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to earth. Batman on the other hand is a broken man who lost his parents at a young age and has spent his life righting wrongs essentially out of a vigilante need to rectify justice. But that justice is very terrestrial as it has been formulated around human perception. Batman is a second generation man of wealth meaning he inherited much of what his father made for him, but he is competent enough to sustain that wealth and apply it to fighting crime. Batman is always one step away from falling off the cliff whereas there is never any real danger that Superman would or could fall. Because no matter what happens Superman will always rise back to the top just like Maximus did from the Gladiator. So Snyder in the second film of his Man of Steel series is pitting these two heroes of entirely different philosophies against each other which is essentially the debate of our day.
The essential suspicion is that no man can resist the temptation toward corruption if given the opportunity. So Superman is a threat to the world even though all his efforts have been in trying to save it. But Superman is not a man of this world; he is essentially an alien functioning from an inner self-assurance that is a graduation of mankind’s limits. Yes, he has absolute power, but he also is immune to the desire to abuse it for the sake of social adornment. An overman knows where their power comes from so the appeasement of the masses does nothing for them. The only measure they have is themselves for success. Whereas the traditional western perspective is that if the masses support the power and authority of an individual that power is thus provided to control those people. This ultimately leads to a collapse of the individual ego upon itself because power is not generated from within, but from without.
It was the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw who termed the name “overman” or otherwise “superman” in his 1902 play Man and the Superman which would later inspire the comic. In the play established in Act 1 is the concept that the more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. This of course leads to a disastrous life making men miserable for most of their existence. As Shaw states in his play, “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” This is the world of Batman—he’s never really happy and feels he is a Dark Night that stands in the shade between right and wrong. However Shaw was a socialist who did not believe in the abilities of mankind to overcome such faults so he regulated his sentiments toward collectivism being lead by the elite in charge—which of course took Nietzsche’s work and perverted it into the Nazi regime. A couple of high school kids from Cleveland, Ohio inspired by many science fiction writers from the early 20s—inspired by Shaw’s play—invented the comic Superman to fight for the rights of left-leaning causes during the Red Decade coming out in 1933. The big difference between Nietzsche’s overman and Siegel and Shuster’s “superman” was that one transcended the limitations of society, religion, and conventional morality while still being fundamentally human. The other was alien and gifted with incredible powers choosing honorable human moral codes, holding himself to a higher standard of adherence to them, purposely. Over time Superman has evolved ending up in the middle of those two viewpoints under Zach Snyder’s care. And that is a good and healthy thing.
So Batman versus Superman is more than another popcorn movie about superheroes. It’s a philosophy for our age that needs articulation. A lot of history has passed since Shaw wrote his play but what has come out in the end is a fully fleshed out philosophy that works. That philosophy is what the theme of this upcoming movie is between two of the most well-known and loved superheroes of our modern mythology. Under Zach Snyder’s care I think he’s going to produce something revolutionary and I’m very excited about it. But in that battle I know already who will win. The overman always comes out on top—because it’s in their nature to always do so.
The other morning over breakfast my wife and I had a raging debate of mankind’s need and desire to behold simple “concepts,” as philosophy defines them. It is because of concepts that I occasionally detour away from the normally serious matter at this site and dwell in great detail about the nature of Hollywood movies and published books. In my private life I have two basic loves which drive me, a love of philosophy and the mythologies of thought which attempt to frame them to the human world through “concepts.” Most everything else I care about in life drips off the leaves of knowledge from those basic forms of art esthetically. The reason for the raging debate over breakfast with my wife was over the value of concepts in people’s lives versus a given morality. My wife values morality among mankind as the highest honor, even over the air she breaths. If she had to choose between morality and taking another breath, she would choose morality. However, my side of the debate declared that the ability to behold a “concept” of morality is far more important, because without having the ability to grapple with conceptual ideas, morality falters in both human beings and animals 100% of the time. I explained to her that the ability to understand concepts was like getting popcorn into a bowl that has been popped in a kitchen. If a person’s mind is small, they have a small bowl from which they can place popcorn in from which to consume. If a person’s mind is large they can hold a lot more popcorn. In my metaphor I was of course transposing popcorn with ideas, or in this case “concepts” in order to explain why mankind is so sick these days. We spend the first five years of our lives being given gigantic “concepts” from our parents, grandparents, friends, and extended family through the toys we play with and ideas they give us. We are given from birth extremely large bowls which hold a lot of metaphorical popcorn so that concepts can be formed in our minds allowing us to walk, speak, and develop ranges of physical movement. But from every year after our first kindergarten class in public school, we find that our bowls get smaller and by age 10 to age 15 our ability to hold thinking concepts diminishes greatly so that by the time we are grown adults, instead of holding a bowl of popcorn with most of what could possibly be popped in the kitchen, we are lucky to get a few small kernels into our 35-year-old brains. I view human mythology as a way of expanding our metaphorical bowls so that our minds can hold more philosophy about the way life should be lived, and today in all of human history it is the movies produced from Hollywood which are the strongest creators of modern mythology, which makes them of great interest to me. This basic preamble is needed before I say that I understand why so many critics stated that they did not enjoy the new movie which I have been raving about—Man of Steel. They did not like the movie because they are suffering from conceptual handicaps given to them by their crumbling society, of which the most recent rendition of Superman clearly was conceptually articulating. So I will provide you dear reader with a conceptual handicap free review so that you can understand why a slight tear was running down your face at the end of the movie, and why you thought about standing up and clapping at the end while others actually did with a ruckus ovation.
I have spoken before about how important the concept of Superman is to my family in a previous article. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Before seeing the film, we went to Newport on the Levee to view the new Man of Steel film by Zach Snyder and one of my favorite modern film producers, Christopher Nolan and have dinner at Claddah’s Irish Pub. My daughter, son-in-law, and wife wanted to make a big event out of this film with me so we went to that particular theater and dining location to place the experience in proper perspective. The AMC theaters at Newport are built three stories above the mall below, and are unique in their design. Going up the escalator to arrive in the lobby is literally like arriving in some heavenly plateau which is appropriate for a modern viewing of Superman, especially for my family. The reasons I love Ayn Rand’s characters in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are because her characters created during the same era as Superman are about the same elevated sense of mankind’s potential. For Ayn Rand, Superman is in all men who have a thinking mind. Yet for the character of Superman created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students living in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1933 their large concept ultimate man had extraordinary powers given to him from the sun’s energy on earth. But all these creations of the mind were a direct answer to the communism being imported into the United States by progressives during the roaring twenties and early thirties. It was a time when President Calvin Coolidge was going door to door running for office with a miniature chalk board trying to educate voters on the perils of socialism. Superheroes were born in literature as a way to protect the concept of Americanism against the anti-concept of European communism. Young Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman to define what living life in America was all about creating a symbol that allowed the concept of Americanism to be defined in a single character named Kal-El from the planet Krypton.
To understand what this 2013 version of Superman is all about, let me explain how the film ends without giving away any particular spoilers. Superman smashes out of the sky a drone aircraft which is attempting to spy on him and proceeds to lecture the U.S. military of his need for privacy even though he understands the military is afraid of all his vast powers. Superman continues to make clear that nothing the military can do will hurt him anyway, so the effort is useless. The military then asks Kal-El, how they can know Superman won’t use his superior powers against the American people. Superman explains with a smile, “I grew up in Kansas and am as American as there is; you’re just going to have to trust me.” This is almost the last scene of the film. Superman was metaphorically speaking on behalf of all Americans to their modern government which is currently plagued by scandals such as the IRS, Benghazi, and spygates against the American people. Superman represented in mythic form the power of every individual American who may not be able to leap about like Superman, or shoot lasers from their eyes, but hold the potential to be super in their own way which Ayn Rand would get more specific about in her own overmen exploits of literary endeavor. The message at the end of Man of Steel is that Superman wanted to be left alone to live as an American and that if he wanted to he’d crush anybody who stood in his way of achieving that goal. He chose to value the people of earth for the hope he had for them which was something that was lost to his dying planet of Krypton.
Russell Crow who played Kal-El’s father in Man of Steel was very good in his role of explaining how Krypton became doomed in the first place. The highly technological society of the Kryptonians had enjoyed a period of great expansion in their culture where they planted seed societies throughout known space. But as time moved on, their society had become more politically corrupt leaving them to pursue short-sighted goals like stripping out their own planet’s core for power, instead of harnessing the power from neighboring star systems, as they had in the past. The Krypton metaphor was clearly in reference to our own times where space travel has been cut away to virtually nothing in America as left-leaning politicians squabble in endless debate with political apathy serving as the centerpiece of their action. On Krypton, as many are attempting to suggest here on earth, they devolved from a flourishing society that embraced personal freedom and enterprise to one that micro managed the smallest detail of their lives including the birth of children which had been taken over by a technology called the Codex. Jor-El and his wife gave birth to the first free-born child in centuries on Krypton. That child was Kal-El–Superman, a free-born creation of two loving parents. Knowing that Krypton was imploding on itself, even as the political class squabbled in denial of the impending doom Jor-El sent his child to earth to allow the best of what Krypton was to live on elsewhere. All this while General Zod was staging a rebellion to turn Krypton back into a society under his managed care. In Man of Steel, Zod is a collectivist born under the dystopian care of the Codex, not having natural parents, but instead being raised to and for the collective Krypton society. (I knew Christopher Nolan would not let me down.) I was very concerned about how Krypton’s demise would be handled in the film, and it is very appropriate to the direction our current society is devolving. Man of Steel just in this regard is conceptually brilliant……….but that’s not all.
Even Kal-El’s adoptive parents were heroic as Jonathan Kent died in the Man of Steel defying a tornado’s wrath. He ran into the blistering storm as it consumed cars and entire homes to save a few more people only to get caught because he broke his ankle and couldn’t run away fast enough……..but he saved Kal El’s dog! That is a great dad! The good guys in the film were all heroic in their own way. Ultimately the pinnacle decision of the film was Kal-El having to decide whether the society of Krypton deserved to be resurrected on earth through the Codex killing all of humanity, or should the people who live on the planet be given the opportunity to have hope for their own future. Superman ultimately decided that Krypton had its chance, and it screwed it up. The people of earth had a real chance to get it right, and Superman had made a decision to lead them to the light under his guidance. Superman made a value judgment between the two societies, Krypton had taken a noticeably collectivist route and destroyed itself, and earth was headed in the same direction, but could still change course.
On the way home from the movie my family was philosophizing about the very idea of Superman, a man who was invincible and could be harmed by nothing on earth. For many this is a boring idea because the wish is to see conflict in their heroes brought about by fear and weakness. But that is not what Superman is all about. Superman could decide to rule the earth if he wanted as there would be nobody to stop him, but he doesn’t, because he is a good man who chooses to spend his time helping humanity instead of acting as a parasite off of it to feed his own ego. What Kal-El gained from his adoptive parents was a sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong which would be the key to allowing the grown-up Superman to use his powers for good, instead of evil. General Zod, with all his good intentions openly declared at the end of the film that his sole purpose in life was to serve the greater good of Krypton by any means necessary. He was speaking as a product of the collective and might as well have been a Russian revolutionary from 1917 marching around Petrograd destroying any life that stood in the way of communism, as the greater good of mother Russia was more important than the whims of any individual who might think they were serving good as it is defined by anybody. As I was explaining all this to my family a drunk driver nearly ran into the side of our minivan. I reacted as I have hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, with quick aversion out of harm’s way. It happened so quick that I barely paused in my sentence structure and after the danger was averted, I proceeded with the explanation of my metaphor without pause. Such situations are only dangerous if the mind surrenders itself to panic, and I don’t. After years of training myself, there is little that worries me. And it is this kind of attitude that Kal-El maintained throughout the Man of Steel once he had become comfortable in his role as Superman, savior of the planet earth from falling to a similar fate as his home planet Krypton. All men and women come to such a place in their own minds once the concept of goodness is understood by them. But first they must have a bowl big enough to hold the concept of such goodness and behold the definitions of evil in the same container. Once there, the mind can eliminate danger from its life-like avoiding a drunk driver by simply taking evasive action without any fanfare. Panicky social commentary asking politicians for more public safety never works. The truth is politicians are actually quite powerless to provide any safety without stealing from some to give to others in legalized theft. All they can really do is react as a second-hander and write new laws which bring our present society that much closer to the fictional fate of Krypton.
At the conclusion of Man of Steel my family sat till the end of the credits as viewers gradually left the theater. We were the last to leave. Several young men who might look like gang-like thugs in any other circumstance from the streets of Cincinnati were wearing the Superman emblem on their shirts and had obviously given up for the evening any youthful decadence they might otherwise engage in to see a story of “hope” unfold upon the silver screen. A young man covered in tattoos and body piercings saw me smiling at his big “S” imprinted across his shirt as he left the theater to descend the escalator back down into the shopping complex of Newport on the Levee. His first reaction was a bit of anxiety as he thought I was laughing at his immature love of Superman. But I gave him a reassuring wink as he walked by to let the young man know that I understood. He was attempting to behold a higher concept of what “man” should be, and I didn’t want him for a moment to think I didn’t approve. He smiled boyishly as he walked by, realizing that my gaze at him was not condescending, but quite the opposite.
Small-minded reviewers after they saw the movie found that without large concepts in their own imaginations to allow them to behold the messages of the film they were regulated to commenting on the physical appearance of Henry Cavell, the young man who played Kal-El or criticizing the 40 minute climax which took place in an epic battle all over the globe ending in a fist fight between Superman and Zod which migrated into space at times where even satellites fell from the sky in destruction. Critics spoke about the metaphors of 9/11 as half of the city of Metropolis was destroyed in the gigantic battle leaving a crater of cleared buildings in the center where the two earthly gods did battle in the climatic ending with Superman snapping the neck of Zod. When Kal-El broke the neck of the villain there was emotion in the audience. It was 1 AM in the morning, and the audience was filled back to the projection booth. One man yelled out from the crowd………….”damn!” Others clapped. Some whistled. It was not a critical appraisal, but one of approval from the audience, of seeing a battle between right and wrong, good and evil displayed clearly in front of them, resolving itself with the clear decision of a nearly decapitated villain.
Man of Steel is about “big concepts” and it assists the viewer in grasping those ideas which require large conceptual bowls to hold. It is why in spite of the attempts by established Ellsworth Toohey type film critics taught in their institutions of learning to have small concepts in their lives, not large ones; Man of Steel will become the next $1 billion dollar film franchise. Shortly after the drunk driver nearly hit us on the way home, and I dropped my kids off at their house, I thought of the export potential of this film. Man of Steel is about undeniably American ideas and it didn’t waiver from that responsibility for even a moment. Superman didn’t say he stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” at the end of the movie, he simply said…………..”I’m an American.” What a wonderful thing for kids throughout the world to see whether they are in London, or Delhi. The best vehicle for projecting American ideas to the world is the film industry of Hollywood, which has traditionally been consumed by left leaning communist ideologues, like what’s represented in the upcoming Matt Damon film Elsyium. Most movies that Hollywood produces like Elsyium or the 2012 fall attempt with Tom Hanks called Cloud Atlas are not so subtle attempts to sell socialism to America and the world. But the box office take usually tells the story as fans reject the message. They will go see the movies for entertainment, but quickly drop them, as word of mouth does not spread like wild-fire, the way it does during the very capitalist movie messages like Iron Man, and now Man of Steel, which is going to break records during its opening weekend. The film made $21 million just off Thursday midnight shows, and $50 million on Friday alone.
Man of Steel is a fantastic film. It is worth watching many more times than once. It is a pleasure to live in a culture that can produce films like Man of Steel where the story telling is first class, the visual effects epic, the music astonishing, but most importantly, the concept is huge. The value of Man of Steel is in its ability to generate a concept that is epic in scope and definitive in its message. There is no question where the message of Man of Steel intends to go, and it is in no way complimentary to evil, weakness, or even blind dedication to a race of people just because they represent one’s ancestors. It is more valuable as an American export than all the money that is currently spent on defense because the message is clear, and void of politics from any party. Man of Steel is film making at its best and the message to everyone in the world with a mind to think is one of goodness! It is a big bowl of philosophy that will take multiple viewings for those functioning with small bowls of conceptual thinking and will require expanding enough to behold the real message of Superman, which is certainly one of hope. A hope that earth will find its way and not fail the way Krypton did, leaving that society to live on in the rebellion of an innovative young couple who decided to go against their entire society and have a natural child who would have to flee their planet and live again as the shining beacon of truth, justice, and the American way for not just on a continent in North America, but the entire world which desperately needs the message of Man of Steel.
One particular scene in Man of Steel defines the entire film. It’s a scene when young Kal-El is being picked on by a group of bullies who are around 10 years old. The little Superman is reading a book, called Plato’s Republic. It wasn’t Tom Sawyer, or the Diary of Anne Frank. It was a work of philosophy that the budding superhero was reading, and a message to all viewers was that Man of Steel is not just an action movie, it’s a work of conceptual philosophy designed to give mankind the tools it needs to save itself. All society needs to do is listen to the message and allow their minds to conceptually hold the memorandum of goodness which is represented immaculately by Superman: Man of Steel.
The Overmanwarrior 