This blog post is more of a blog in the classical sense. A journal entry of sorts. As I stated on the show, the aim for our blogging is not only to talk about nerdy things, but for our audience to get to know us a little better. So I thought I’d share a personal anecdote of one of my earliest memories. It came up during dinner with a friend and I thought it would make for a good entry to share with you all.
For those wondering, yes, I’ve been meaning to get to another Franchise Fatigue article for a minute, however, it’s been a bit of a crazy month. While I don’t expect to do the insane amount of research and reading to be prepared for the subject for the next installment, I want to give myself enough prep time. Just in case I go down yet another rabbit hole. Since Patrick and Drew like to call any solo ramblings “The Myles Minute,” I figured I’ll keep it for any similar such entries I do in the future.
Now, where were we? Ah, yes.
“You will believe a man can fly.” The tagline to the 1978 classic, Superman: The Movie, called to me like a beacon. I stood in the ACTION/ADVENTURE aisle of Blockbuster, glowing with excitement as I held the blue and white clamshell case that trapped my prize. The movie seemed to be glowing as well, although in retrospect it’s obvious that I was standing directly under one of the store’s erratically placed lights (or I was simply hallucinating or, you know, being a child). It was impossible to keep myself from skipping to the counter and even harder still to wait as my dad paid for the family’s weekend rentals. I was perhaps..four or five..maybe even six years old. I don’t exactly recall.
He looked down at me from the counter and smiled at my thrilled state, encouraging me with “we’ll be home soon”‘s and pats on the back. He didn’t get it though. This was a movie about SUPERMAN! A good majority of the movies for “my age” usually contained cartoon bears or singing dinnerware; so learning about an honest movie about something I treasured blew my small mind.
Comic books taught me, among other things, how to read. I used to beg my parents for reading lessons outside of my school’s slow pace because I desperately wanted to know what stories were being told along with the images. As a result, I became a reading prodigy, tackling adult novels by the second grade. Although in a few years I would fully enter a realm of comic book fandom, my world centered primarily around Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Ghostbusters, the former two being my strongest experiences in the world of the fantastic.
Legendary writer Ray Bradbury once said, “Superman is us, and we are Superman.” A wide-eyed child with an overactive imagination, I fully believed that. Superman embodied the best of human potential. Everything good a person could be. Long before the dark realities of the world drew me to relate more with Batman, Superman was who I strived to be during my childhood, as my busted lip and blood-stained furniture from botched “flight” attempts could attest to. It wasn’t just the powers that sparked the inspiration to be like him; rather, his inherent heroic nature that spun me into awe.
Superman is one the great American exports. Worldwide, even if they’ve never read a single comic, people know who Superman is. He’s a mythic icon on a level few achieve in the modern era. Superman serves as the personification of hope; he is the resilient sound in our ears when our heart is telling us to do the right thing. He’s not the light at the end of the tunnel, but rather the force driving us to carry on to reach it. In any instance, whether the villains had matched or somehow drained his power, he always chose what’s right over himself.
He was more than just a character to me. Superman existed. Yes, my mother taught me all about make-believe, fiction, and things of that nature, yet at the same time she tried to raise me in a semi-conservative Christian household. Inquisitive and perhaps too skeptical for my own good (her words, not mine), my younger self questioned why talking bushes, controlled floods, and the dead coming back to life was so readily accepted, but the idea that the last member of an alien civilization was sent here, and, having a unique reaction to the solar energy of our yellow sun and a different biological make-up, gained certain abilities and used them to save people was preposterous! Of course I never actually said this to my mother, primarily because I didn’t want my comics taken away. Despite the fact I have always been and will always be a smart alec punk kid, I knew better. Also, keep in mind that I didn’t necessarily believe a guy actually flew around in blue tights and red underwear saving people left and right; but I certainly believed in the spirit of Superman. In my mind, someone somewhere existed someone with the ability to bring Superman “to life.”
To have a live action representation of this character was Christmas come early.
When I got home, I grabbed a box of Ecto-Cooler Hi-C, a package of Chips Ahoy cookies, and made a mad dash for my room. Instantly, the lights were out, the VCR was on, and I was on my bed, eagerly basking in the soft blue glow of the television. However, I came utterly unprepared for what would be one of the most memorable scenes in cinema for me.
The movie paced itself properly, competently setting up the origin, or what my younger self would call “the boring stuff.” During the origin, contrary to the source material, Pa Kent dies of a heart attack. Clark Kent (this is pre-tights, mind you) and his adoptive father were finished working on the family farm and were coming up a dirt road that curved through the sea of wheat like a snake. Playfully challenging his father to a race, Clark runs ahead. Pa complies but soon asks his son to wait for him. All of a sudden, he stumbles to a stop, and clutches his arm. When he fell to the ground, so did my Hi-C box. A mourning Clark says between choked back tears: “All those things I can do. All those powers. And I couldn’t even save him.”
I watched in horror as my hero held his dead father, expecting him to do something other than lament. My eyes widened as an uncontrollable flow of tears began rolling down my cheeks. I became anxious. My hands tightly wringing themselves as I waited in vain for some kind of last second miracle. “What is this? What’s going on?” I thought to myself. I didn’t know how to accept this.
People dying, or death itself, wasn’t an altogether brand new concept for me. There were many nights when I snuck to the family room to watch the horror movies airing at midnight, but death in these films always had maintained physical incarnation. I had not yet been exposed to something so real. Death via natural causes was something completely alien to my younger self.
At the time, I couldn’t understand why Pa Kent was dead. Death came swiftly, silently, and invisibly.
There were no roars of terror, no claws, blood or slime. Nothing preceded death’s coming but an instant in time. Most importantly and shocking to me, Superman could do nothing about it.
I had never been afraid of death before, even when watching those old horror movies. The forms in which death had taken in these movies, I had full assurance the Man of Steel could defeat them, and this filled me with a sort of self-confidence. But when he failed to conquer this new version of death, I felt as if I were rendered helpless.
Death cheated! After being defeated so many times, it returned as this invisible monster that took fathers from unsuspecting boys.
I didn’t dare sleep that night. I couldn’t. And this silent death would bring future nightmares upon me, often including me being knocked off a building by an invisible force and an emotionally beaten Superman reaching out to me in futility. Death became a reality in my world. It manifested into a real force that threatened everything and everyone, and robbed me of my protection. No longer could I just depend on my insistence that a hero could save the day, or even that I could be this person in order to ward off the darkness. The world zoomed away from the TV screen until it seemed millions of miles away, and I was this tiny speck of color in an infinite stretch of pale blue-lit black. Reality had become my kryptonite. Its cold truths splashed upon my young, idyllic mind, waking me up to the problems of the ‘real world.’ And when my dad had heart attack the next year, I feverishly thought, for a childish, hot flash instant, death seeped from the film and was coming after me and my family.
In 1993, death even took Superman. By this age, I managed more an understanding as to what exactly death was, but even years after seeing this film, Superman’s dying had not really brought closure to me. I tried to convince myself otherwise. After all, he sacrificed his life to save millions of others. Even in the face of Doomsday, he did not compromise. Later, he would go on a strange spiritual journey, and like other iconic mythological figures, Superman returned, beating death. Too little too late, though, The ideal of Superman’s spirit, the force within someone to overpower anything, had become stained to me. It still felt like the brightest bulb had burned out.
Clearly, this is all something I had rationalized and come to terms with later, but this scene made a great impact and deeply instructed an instant skepticism for bright, idealistic characters for a good long while. I hope you all enjoyed this little memory fragment. If anyone else has stories such as these to share, by all means, please share.
Until next time…NERD OUT!