Role Models, Part Three

Role Models, Part One can be viewed here.
Role Models, Part Two can be viewed here.

One of the best days I've ever spent in Fort Worth, Texas was when good friend Chad invited me and mutual friend Rodney Thomas to his house for dinner. Aside from having a fantastic meal and discussion with Chad, his wife Christina and children Autumn and Mark, I saw an example of a fantastic, loving family in which the father, Chad, is able to be his own person, weird as he wants to be, and it all just works. Previously, I had feared that I would have to sacrifice a whole lot of my personal identity in order to be happily married with children. But Chad is a role model to me, a wonderful alien in this world who has courageously asserted himself as himself, making no such sacrifices as I'd imagined I'd have to make, and the result is not only a functional family, but a flourishing family. His children are so bright and passionate that I suddenly want to have children just so my progeny can inhabit the world Chad's children create. If you can't already tell, this evening left quite an impression on me.

Christina confessed that she and Chad have little in common outside of their children and their religious faith, but they could have fooled me. Chad is passionate about comic books, specifically Green Lantern, and it was clear just sitting at that dinner table that everyone present shared some degree of that passion. Christina kept up like a champ when the discussion digressed to DC comics. The kids were well-versed in Bible stories, but also in superhero stories. Autumn recited to us the Hebrew alphabet, and I have little doubt that she could say, with the same confidence, the noble oath of the Green Lantern Corps. Mark has recently become obsessed with the Batman villain Mr. Freeze after hearing the tragic story of his origin in the midst of trying to save his beloved wife Nora.

After dinner, we retired to the living room. As we watched two episodes of Batman: the Brave and the Bold, Chad and Autumn discussed how disrespectful it is when men whistle at women and when women wear unnecessarily revealing outfits (or rather, when people, most often men, draw women wearing unnecessarily revealing outfits). During commercials, Christina commented on a Wonder Woman article she was reading in Entertainment Weekly. After the kids went to bed, Rodney and I joined in on Chad and Christina's weekly Smallville viewing. Chad would later tell me that one of the keys to maintaining a lasting relationship with the one you love is doing things together beyond simply occupying the same space. Smallville appeared to be one of these activities for Chad and Christina.

At the end of the evening, I expressed to Chad my elation at meeting his family. I think I went so far as to say that Chad's family was the perfect family.

"It was a good night for us," Chad said, keeping everything in context. "They're not all like that. But yeah, I have a pretty great family."

I think Chad was being modest. The way that Chad's family looks at one another hides no disdain - they truly love one another and are interested in one another. With Chad and his fantastic family I find that I have both proven and disproven my previous point regarding the importance of stories over role models. On the one hand, the folk stories of the Bible mingle with comic book stories - perhaps the most pervasive modern/postmodern American folk stories that we have - as Chad and Christina breed in their children a culture of ethical consciousness. On the other hand, I see Chad as my role model, someone who lives a life similar to the life I'd like to live some day, whose example I feel inclined to imitate and whose advice I feel inclined to follow.

This seeming contradiction points to a point that has just now arisen in my consciousness, that having role models in and of itself is not the problem. The problem lies in removing the role model from the context in which the role model enacts its story and asserting some sort of moral infallibility, suggesting that the individual is incapable of doing wrong. Comic book character Hal Jordan / Green Lantern is just as responsible for the development of moral reasoning in those who read his narratives as are the narratives themselves, but if we believe he is always good, then we excuse all the terrible acts of murder and betrayal, many of which have since been undone in the comics, that he commits as Parallax the living embodiment of fear. Consider also Peter Parker / Spider-man facing his dark side in the guise of the alien symbiote known as Venom. I bring up Spider-man because more of us can relate to him. (Hal Jordan is a fearless monument of a man who would have been a hero regardless of whether or not he was given a ring of power from the Guardians, but Peter Parker was a normal kid when he was bitten by that radioactive spider. Whereas few among us are courageous, bold and creative enough to represent an entire sector of the universe as a Green Lantern, any passerby can fall victim to a radioactive spider and become Spider-man.) Peter Parker / Spider-man is bound by the responsibility his Uncle Ben taught him to do the right thing, but Venom tempts him to cut corners, to use his strength for social benefit, to betray the very responsibility that is such an integral part of Spider-man's origin story.

Rather than follow Green Lantern and Spider-man into their darkness, we as readers are expected to criticize their actions and the evil that results. Hal Jordan's greatest loss and Peter Parker's alien chemical dependency pose traps that any of us could fall into. But in these dark times, the reader actually becomes the Green Lantern to the fallen Green Lantern and the Spider-man to the fallen Spider-man. We know what is good about these heroes, and we use that good to become the heroes ourselves in their absence. (Let's hope that we're better heroes than Azrael in Batman's absence. Am I right?) We tell Hal Jordan that he's not being himself and we pray Peter Parker overcomes his temptation. When the hero is away we successfully fill the void by knowing how the fallen would act were the fallen not so fallen, how the fallen ought to if this darkness is to be overcome.

When I was young, my father would tell me Bible stories, but he also preached of the youthful and rebellious spirit of Peter Pan. My mother would speak of the great things my grandfather Paul Slater had done both for our community and for our family. Two years ago I was asked at a conference on world aid work what my goal in life was. I answered that my desire is to save the world. Was I informed by Jesus or Moses or grandpa or Peter Pan in aiming for this haughty goal? To some degree, yes, I was, but to a greater degree I was driven by Spider-man, the X-Men, Batman and Superman, by the stories I've heard that change the way I think and the person I have become. My brother David was told by the family members who revoked my parents' guardianship that comic books are evil. If good and evil are defined by the positive and negative impacts that our stories have brought about, I think Bibles might be considered much more evil than any comic book ever has been. I'm no history scholar (I dabble...), but I've never heard of a crusade devoted to wiping out all humans who support the Sinestro Corps or a war against the nation harboring the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

I've spent some time talking about my childhood, but in truth this whole discussion on role models stems from my own desire to have children. I often wonder if I'll be too controlling, seeing danger in all the choices of my future hypothetical offspring. Or perhaps I'll be too laid back, perceiving freedom where there is only lack of guidance. In the end I think I'll follow Chad's lead. I'll love my family with all my heart and provide them with only the best stories I've ever come across, regardless of their holy or profane source. When they get into something I'm not familiar with, probably some Disney channel fad or something, I'll try to keep up with it too. most of all, I will talk with my children. It seems to work well for Chad, and in retrospect it worked really well in my upbringing as well. (I still have fond memories of watching X-Files with my mother every Friday / Sunday night.) Maybe in the process I'll become a role model for my kids. I suppose nothing is impossible when you live a life worthy of telling in story form.