Kong: Skull Island and the Loss of Myth

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Gareth Edwards's Godzilla was something of a revelation for me. I left that Chicago theater back in 2014 having witnessed a kind of renaissance of the monster myth on the big screen. Somehow, Edwards had taken an icon of film lore and imbued that familiar character with an ancient, unknowable dimension that worked to draw viewers "further up and further in" to the world of myth. Three years later, in 2017, I was sitting alone in another theater on the other side of the country in Dallas, and witnessed another movie icon undergo the same treatment.

I walked away from Kong: Skull Island knowing that Edwards's Godzilla wasn't a fluke. Instead, it became very clear that what Legendary Entertainment seeks to do with these movies is to tell the preeminent monster myth of our time. Standing in the tradition of the great mythic stories like Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and dealing with themes of forbidden knowledge and the loss of myth, these films have much more in mind than big-budget carnage and monster smackdowns. Instead, what this interconnected film series does is bring cosmic forces to bear on a world that man has done his very best to ruin in his pursuit of forbidden knowledge.

Kong: Skull Island opens with a shot of the blazing sun, a recurring motif in the film. In the film's commentary, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts states that this opening shot is done with the specific purpose of establishing myth. As we stare at the fireball, a lone silhouette comes spiraling out of the blinding light, a WWII pilot plummeting toward earth—a nod to the myth of Icarus and another recurring motif. As the 1973 expedition formed by Bill Randa (John Goodman) plunges into a violent storm onboard helicopters in attempt to reach the unmapped "Skull Island," earth's very own final frontier, Lt. Col. Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) reassures the passengers, "Remember the tale of Icarus, whose father gave him wax wings to fly. But he flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted, and he fell into the sea. But our wings are not made of wax, but of Pennsylvania steel, guaranteed not to melt!" Packard's words are hugely ironic, as he misses the point of the Icarus tale: that man's hubris is his own undoing.

This is a lesson as old as time itself. The tree in Eden of which man was commanded not to eat was of the knowledge of good and evil. In the creation, man was made good, with the prerogative toward a good God and His value system. But the moment man sought to attain that which he considered to be "pleasing to the eye" and "desirable to make one wise," he reached beyond his grasp and stumbled over into sin. And, like echoes from Eden, this theme has resounded through the ages in our mythic storytelling. Man's greatest adversary has always been himself and his unwieldy, sin-ravaged spirit. In Kong, Packard is convinced that the triumphs of technology and modernity have moved man beyond those old stories. He all but says, "We are not like Icarus, we are better." And the helicopters made of "Pennsylvania steel" do indeed pass through the storm, and continue on to the uncharted island unscathed—right up until the moment a tree spears one of them from the sky.

And in a moment of horror intermingled with wonder, the proud humans look for the first time upon the awesome sight of Kong, a hulking mountain of a figure emblazoned against the light of the sun—the point being that Kong is a monster straight out of myth, a symbol of the great unknown that is bigger than both man and his machinations. And suddenly Packard is eating his words. That Pennsylvania steel might have gotten them through the storm, but it isn't much use against a monster that can—and does—swat them from the sky like flies.

Interestingly, in an interview with the popular entertainment industry news source Den of Geek, Vogt-Roberts was asked whether he saw movie monsters like Kong and Godzilla carrying on the tradition of the ancient Greek myths. He responded, "I think we live in a time in which people have lost myth in their lives because you can go on Google and google anything and find the answer to something. As opposed to wonder. As opposed to being okay with not knowing. I think that a big part of this movie for me was about confronting people with myth, reminding them myth exists and what happens when you are put in the presence of myth. What does it do to you?" What's important here is how he links myth with this notion of wonder.

In his brilliant piece, "When Our Souls Stand on Tiptoe," the late theologian Mike Yaconelli says: "I would like to suggest that what a pagan culture does first is steal the wonder and mystery from life. A pagan culture methodically takes away risk, danger, spontaneity, intuition, passion, chance, threat, and peril. We become the slaves of predictability, rules, policies, uniformity, and sameness." I can hardly think of a better description of the age in which we live. With the rise of modernity and the philosophy of the "self-made man," whose ultimate goal is something of a quiet life lived happily with his loving wife, two children, and a dog in the yard, all hemmed in by a white picket fence that separates them from the neighbor next door who lives more or less the exact same life, Christians have found subtle ways to erode the risks that come with living an authentic life of faith. We suddenly never have to talk to our neighbors about the gospel of Christ, because it becomes an inconvenience, a disruption to the routine that is so clearly the hallmark of the life well-lived. As our children grow, we tell them to put aside those old storybooks in favor of participation and conformity—because those old storybooks won't pay one's way through college, which is an absolute necessity if one hopes to have enough money to live a comfortable life devoid of suffering—a life which looks a lot like having a loving spouse, two or three kids, maybe a dog in the yard, all hemmed in by a white picket fence separating them from the neighbor next door...the cycle repeats itself.

If Yaconelli's diagnosis of the current cultural climate is accurate—and I believe it is—then stories like Kong: Skull Island aren't just temporary distractions from the "grind of life." These stories are, in fact, doing the hard work of replanting that sense of wonder in a culture that is unashamedly pagan. Director Vogt-Roberts explicitly states that the purpose of Kong: Skull Island is to confront a modern culture consumed by technological innovation with myth all over again. And it was the great conviction of C. S. Lewis that the story of Christianity, the story of the God who comes to earth in the form of a man, dies and resurrects so as to assure those whose faith is found in Him that they, too, will be raised up at the end of all things, works on us in the same way that those mythic stories do—with the key exception being that it really happened. Imagine, for instance, if I were to tell you that Kong: Skull Island is a story that actually happened. That there was a lonely, morose ape-like creature lording over a forgotten island discovered by an expedition in the 1970s. If you believed it, your paradigm would shift. Your world would come undone. Everything you thought you knew about reality and what was possible would be smashed to pieces, and you would be forced to re-contextualize everything you understood to have meaning in life. This is the power that Christianity wields. And though we try our hardest to reduce wonder to the ones and zeroes of binary, every so often a story comes along that works in the same way those old stories of myths and legends used to. Stories that jumpstart the imagination, that spark a sense of wonder and rekindle the fire that leads us to search for worlds unknown. That catch us up in a sweeping story because, when we just get right down to it, we all intuit on some fundamental level that there is something greater than what man can dream up out there just beyond the horizon, on the other side of the gray rain curtain that is the edge of our dimension, that secret place to which all of our longings point us.

Because, the truth is, there is something strange and mysterious lingering out there in a dimension just a little higher than our own. And there is something familiar about that strange and mysterious thing—familiar because it wears the face of a man, a man who has already been here. All our lives are lived in the wake of his first coming, and the seismic shift that occurred in the world when that man was put to death for bringing the power of that strange and mysterious dimension into our own. But the image of that dead man haunts us because the dead man is no longer dead. Because the dead man came back to life and, with a word of promise, returned to that strange and mysterious place to let the clock continue to run in our dimension, letting the hands turn so that you and I would be born, and in our own ways come to be haunted by this strange man of history.

Haunted by his word of promise: that things aren't always going to be this way, that the pain and suffering we experience in the here and now has a purpose—and that purpose points to why we need him to come back. Why we need that strange and mysterious dimension of reality to become one with our own—a dimension in which death itself begins to work backwards, a dimension in which myth becomes fact, where a sense of wonder is normative, where all of this is possible because that strange man is not merely a man, but a cosmic man, a God-man, whose final act is to pull all of reality together into himself to banish doubt, to judge evil, and to rescue those whose spirits rage against the predictability, the rules, the policies, the uniformity, and the sameness of a world in which Jesus Christ is nothing more than another myth to be scrubbed out by man's hubris.

This is the power of mythic storytelling at its finest. This is the power of Kong: Skull Island. We watch this big ol' monkey smashing the little helicopters out of the sky knowing that what we're watching isn't really about a monkey smashing helicopters. It's about man, who thought he could wipe out the world of myth. It's about the power of a cosmic, mythic being judging man's hubris. We watch these movies knowing that characters like Kong, like Godzilla, aren't just oversized monkeys and lizards, but are actually symbols. Symbols of something strange and mysterious. And the moral of their stories is that when the strange and mysterious comes breaking into our dimension of reality, everything we know is undone. The paradigm shifts. Our knees knock together at the thought of it.

And when we come to see that strange and mysterious thing looks more and more like the cosmic man upon whom the universe waits, we fall on our faces.

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year - Dark City (Review)

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year - Dark City

The fifth volume of Scott Snyder's Batman epic, Dark City, concludes the Zero Year storyline in suitably grand fashion. I've pointed out before that one of Snyder's strengths as a writer is his ability to blend genres, and Dark City is perhaps the best showcase of this. It's a tricky thing to tell an unexpected story, especially with a familiar character. Yet Snyder continues to defy the odds by spinning a new and interesting origin story that hits all the right character beats, demonstrating just what makes the Batman a complex and serious literary character.

The previous volume, Secret City, was a fun, pulpy narrative that began with its foot on the gas pedal and never really let up. Those same high points of breathless adventure are present in Dark City, but here they're more subdued, and really occur toward story's end, where they function more like a traditional climax. Instead, the story opens with a mystery. One of my frequent complaints about the Batman character is that so often his "core" is lost. The character got his start in a pulp magazine called Detective Comics. He is given the mantle of "World's Greatest Detective." But more often than not, Batman stories—on both page and screen—tend to lose this element of his character. Batman is first and foremost a detective, and a darn good one at that. So it's a welcome thing to have this volume kick things off with a good ol' fashioned detective story.

We begin in the aftermath of Edward Nygma's attack on Gotham City. With Gotham in a blackout, first responders are working tirelessly to get the city's power back online. Things take a turn for the gruesome and bizarre, however, when the police begin discovering bodies with their bones having burst from the skin and twisted into something more like beanstalks. While Gotham's only honest cop, James Gordon, works the crime scene through proper channels, another detective begins investigating from the shadows. The Batman is a relative newcomer to Gotham City, and people are still trying to figure out his role in things. The current police commissioner, Loeb, is adamant Batman is a threat. Gordon isn't convinced, and continues to try and see the big picture.

Batman's investigation leads him to mad scientist Karl Helfern, who has taken the moniker of Doctor Death since his experiments to try and develop better bone structure in humans failed. Doctor Death is a nice throwback to one of Batman's original 1939 villains, and a clear indicator that Snyder is working to honor Batman's rich legacy as much as he is telling an updated origin story for modern readers. Batman's investigation into Helfern takes up much of the first half of the volume, and the story unfurls like a moody detective story straight out of the old pulp era. The shadows are long, the terror is real. But as Batman uncovers the true threat, the man behind Helfern's descent into madness—Edward Nygma, now calling himself "The Riddler"—the story changes gears into something unprecedented. When Riddler blows up the nearby reservoir, flooding the city, we jump forward some weeks in time to find that Gotham is now something more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Batman is believed to be dead. Riddler holds the keys to the city, having cut off all access points, and controls things from an undisclosed location. Gotham City stands on a knife's edge.

But, of course, Batman must return, and he does so in glorious fashion to rescue the city from destruction. This is a story we've seen told a thousand times. Gotham City is threatened by a megalomaniacal super villain, and Batman must stand in the gap to battle the villain and ultimately save the day. In one sense, there is nothing special here, nothing new. In another sense, though, there is something to be said for a familiar story well-told. And that's what Snyder does here. In a way, this is Batman stripped down to his bare essentials. Gone are the gadgets that usually give him the edge in combat. When he can't solve the problem with his fists, he is forced to rely on his cerebral powers instead. Often forgotten is the fact that Bruce Wayne is a kind of genius, on top of being a physical powerhouse. In many ways, his mind is his ultimate weapon. You might beat him in fisticuffs this time, but he's always thinking, learning, calculating a way to turn the tables on you in the next encounter. Snyder understands this, and in Dark City he gives us a Batman who is as quick as he is strong, as sharp as he is deadly. Beating Riddler doesn't take much strength. It's hard to fight the man who would rather just drop a building on you than face you himself; on the contrary, it takes a brilliant mind to outthink the man who is always plotting ten steps ahead. You beat him by outwitting him—and that's exactly how Batman finally beats Riddler.

Perhaps the most satisfying element of Dark City is how Snyder gives us a Batman who learns. Bruce Wayne is young, only in his mid-twenties or so. He's new to this caped vigilante business, and he makes mistakes aplenty. He fails to anticipate Doctor Death using Wayne's friend, Lucius Fox, against him. He fails to stop Riddler from flooding Gotham City. These are devastating, costly mistakes. But he learns from these mistakes, and that's what makes him dangerous. It's absolutely fascinating to watch this angry young man morph into a hardened crimefighter, learning all the lessons that will be crucial in his later battles. Most of those lessons come through in the story's quieter moments, which are easy to miss thanks to the pure spectacle of the action scenes.

For example, Batman learns that allies are necessary. He must rely on people like Lucius Fox and Jim Gordon to help him bring down Riddler. There is a subplot running throughout the story that focuses on Gordon, who is perhaps one of the most underrated characters of the entire Batman mythos. In a slight twist, it turns out that Bruce Wayne harbors great disdain for Gordon, believing that Gordon is just as corrupt as the rest of the cops in Gotham. But as the story unspools, it's revealed that Bruce has misread things, and that Gordon is anything but corrupt. He's stalwart and ineffably straight, a true cop who cannot be bought, bullied, or outdone. Snyder deepens Gordon's character, and makes a real case for the value of uncompromising virtue. In a world where pretty much every character has some serious flaw or psychological disorder, Jim Gordon is a constant. His unwavering commitment to justice as well as his will to fight in Dark City makes it clear why he will go on to become Batman's greatest ally in the fight to save Gotham for many years to come.

All these heroic feats make this story a comic book classic, but Snyder's most profound insight into the character of Batman comes at this volume's conclusion. In the weeks following Riddler's fall, as Bruce Wayne steps in to help rebuild the city, Gordon is finally made police commissioner, and the status quo we're accustomed to begins to fall into place, Bruce's trusted butler, Alfred Pennyworth, tries to set Bruce up with Julie Madison, an old girlfriend. There is a touching sequence in which Alfred envisions Bruce's life with Julie, where Bruce gives up being Batman and elects to settle down and raise a family, having finally escaped from the darkness. But Bruce rejects Alfred's attempt to reintroduce him to Julie and steps fully into his role as the city's dark protector. Batman, Bruce argues, must become a symbol for the city, to show people that they do not have to live in fear of evil men. And this, Bruce insists, makes him happy. Alfred counters his assertion by saying, "You say that because you don't know, Master Bruce. You don't. There are joys you haven't experienced. Deeper types of happiness." But his words fall on deaf ears, and Bruce simply, tragically, replies, "Not for me."

The irony, of course, is that Alfred is very right. He is the only one who sees the Batman for what he truly represents. Whereas Gotham City might look upon Batman as a hero, as a symbol, Alfred understands that there is a human being behind the mask. That Batman is actually Bruce Wayne. And Bruce Wayne is a young man still traumatized over witnessing the death of his parents, still hurting at having grown up alone. Batman, Alfred understands, is not so much a hero as he is the manifestation of one boy's wanton act of self-destruction, a dark alter ego that Bruce indulges to numb the pain. If there is one complaint I have about this Batman story, it is that Snyder does not devote more time to exploring this notion. Alfred is noticeably absent for a good majority of the story's latter sections, and seems a bit underused. Then again, it could be his absence that makes his insight so profound. While Batman is off saving the city, Alfred waits alone in the darkness, for Bruce Wayne to reemerge and come home again. And when it's necessary, Alfred will step in and do what needs to be done to keep Bruce Wayne alive. He tells Bruce at one point, "I might not agree with you, ever...but I'll always be there to patch you up."

There is a dimension of sacrifice to Alfred's character that goes unsung all too frequently. Alfred is understated, and remains at Bruce's side because of the sense of commitment he has to the Wayne family. He is a man of honor, but he is intelligent and caring enough not to play into Bruce's delusion that Batman is somehow good for him. He understands that Batman is a choice, a choice Bruce makes to remain on life support, a choice that offers temporary relief, but does nothing to heal the pain. He speaks to Bruce of "deeper happiness," and I cannot help but think of C. S. Lewis and the "deeper magic" of The Chronicles of Narnia. Out here in the real world, we all must face our personal tragedies. And in the process of doing so, we run the very real risk of putting on a cape and a cowl, of convincing ourselves that sometimes our darkness is the best we can hope for. And that darkness doesn't necessarily manifest itself in stereotypically bad ways; in fact, most of the time our darkness works its way out in glittering vices as we indulge the things we like. These are the things that keep us on life support, the things that keep us numb to our pain, the things that keeps us from a deeper happiness—happiness defined as a thing that doesn't always wear a beaming smile. Following Jesus Christ is not always a happy venture. As any honest Christian will admit, it's usually one marked by a deep sense of loneliness, profound loss, and great and terrible pain. But there is a kind of resoluteness to Christianity, a strong resolve to make the hard but necessary choice to let Christ tear into our wounds in order to heal them.

See, our tendency is to think that Bruce makes the heroic choice by choosing to remain as Batman and forfeit his chance at a normal life with Julie. But the truth is—and Alfred sees this—the choice to remain Batman, for Bruce, is the easy way out. It's just another way of closing himself off, of remaining numb, of avoiding the human element. This truth is what makes the Batman such an important and profound character. He has as much to say about the human condition as any of the great literary figures throughout the ages. And like the best of those characters, Batman provides us with a strong warning. We, like Bruce, need allies in the midst of our own little battles, each and every day. It's not impossible to go at it alone, and in many ways we would prevail. But the real cost, the loss of the human element, ensures that the darkness that will eventually consume us is one of our own making. This is the great warning Alfred puts before Bruce. It's the great warning that Batman puts before us all.

With the Zero Year storyline, Scott Snyder tells a rollicking tale that seems tailor-made to be adapted for the big screen, offering up big, bombastic action sequences over against quieter character moments that are easy to miss. As always, the art by Greg Capullo is second-to-none. Batman has never looked better. And no small amount of credit goes to inker Danny Miki and colorist FCO Plascencia. The colors splash and electrify in hues of purple and red, and there are some truly stunning panels that plaster a silhouetted Batman against a sky marred by forks of lightening. This story is sure to go down as another classic, as Snyder continues to outdo himself with each subsequent volume. I'm eager to see where he takes the character from here.

Hokum with Heart: Hercules & Xena

As I've worked from home over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had two TV shows alternating in the background. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess are icons of the 1990s television landscape. With record-setting syndication statistics, at one time these shows were some of the most-watched the world over. A strong cult following remains, but by-and-large both have fallen into the annals of history, reduced to little more than punchlines to corny jokes by the standards of popular culture today. However, as I've visited them again, I've been struck by just how good-natured these shows are. Sure, they're campy and over-the-top, but there is an earnestness to them noticeably absent from the movies and television of today. Both function as throwbacks to the old swashbucklers of classic Hollywood, and for all their flamboyance, Hercules and Xena have a clear moral compass and ethical grounding; both of them try to have something to say.

Kevin Sorbo as Hercules

Both shows are set in the same universe, with Xena (Lucy Lawless) originally introduced as a villain in Hercules, but after she is redeemed by Kevin Sorbo's swaggering-cowboy take on the iconic Greek hero, she strikes out on her own, which is where her series picks up. Every episode of Hercules is basically a fable, with a clear lesson to be learned and redemption usually at its core. Xena is the more mature show, due to the darker nature of her character, and it usually deals with more complex moral issues and ethical conundrums. Taken together, they function as two sides of the same coin, forming a fascinating whole.

Hercules is the more optimistic of the two, and the harder one to do well, because the show sometimes borders on sentimentality. Sorbo's take on the legendary demigod is at odds with nearly every other conceit of the character, because he plays Hercules as a soft-spoken and easy-going man of honor, more in line with the white-hat cowboys of old Hollywood than the bombastic warrior of other portrayals. He is reluctant to identify himself with his semi-divine status, because in this universe the gods are petty beings who enjoy disrupting the affairs of men simply because it's a Tuesday and they have nothing better to do. He doesn't have a shred of pride to him. So Hercules tends to function more like the classic westerns, each episode serving as a self-contained fable that tries to teach a life lesson. The outlandishness evokes the feeling of an old storybook you'd find on a kid's bookshelf.

Lucy Lawless as Xena

Xena, on the other hand, leans into the elements of fables and fairy stories that serve as cautionary warnings for adults. Both shows deal heavily with the theme of redemption, and where Hercules suggests to us that no one is ever really too far gone, Xena utilizes an older, sometimes wiser approach to remind us that, sometimes, redemption comes at a cost. And for some people, that cost is too high a price to pay. Because of these more mature themes, Xena is a sexier, more violent show, probably why it surpassed Hercules in popularity.

Both shows, to some degree, seek to answer the question “Can violence be redemptive?” And both shows answer, “Sometimes.” But how either show nuances that plays out a bit differently. Hercules says, “It can be, but it’s best to be avoided.” Xena says, “But sometimes it’s the only way.” Both of them deal strongly in the hope that even the worst of people can change and the past can be overcome, but what that costs is examined from two different angles, through the lenses of two different protagonists.

Hercules and Xena have the makings of modern antiheroes because of their pasts. Hercules’s family is unexpectedly wiped out by his wicked stepmother, Hera. Xena used to be a ruthless warlord who left many orphans in her wake. But the key difference between Hercules and Xena and the antiheroes we tend to worship today comes in how they choose to deal with their trauma. Though he initially swears to battle Hera to the end, Hercules chooses not to avenge his family, and instead helps people who are in need—that’s how he ends up redeeming Xena, who comes to see the error of her ways, and then carries on the legacy of helping people on her own moral quest to atone for her past sins. And every now and then the characters come together for a crossover episode. Hercules will turn up in an episode of Xena and vice versa. And when the two are on screen together, it’s absolutely electrifying. Both Sorbo and Lawless are understated actors, and Hercules's plain, awe-shucks demeanor is the perfect counterpoint to Xena's quiet, simmering intensity. They are combustible, but when they finally link up with a common goal, you get the feeling that they're an unstoppable force.

As I watched the two series, I began to wonder what the landscape of television would be today if shows like these were still being made. Modern television laughs at and lambasts shows like Hercules and Xena for their moral fortitude and commitment to rehashing the same old stories, week-in and week-out. Today, a show like Hercules or Xena would be mocked for its archaic ideas and preachy tone. But one must wonder if these are, in fact, the heroes we need now more than ever. Both characters are the antithesis of the modern antihero, which is so commercialized and trendy right now. Hercules and Xena take their darkness and turn it around to find ways to help people who have been forgotten by society and the petty gods of ancient Greece. They don’t lose themselves in their own darkness, but find ways of redeeming it through simple things, like small acts of kindness, or spending time with close friends without the pressure of pretense. It's a far cry from the cynicism of popular movies like Taken or TV shows like House of Cards.

That's the irony of Hercules and Xena. They are didactic, instructional hours of television without the pretentiousness of today's popular high-concept series. But they play their cards straight and fair, and because the actors genuinely seem to be having a good time and don't try to take themselves too seriously, there's an easiness to these shows that make them not only watchable, but likable. It helps, too, that the lessons these shows teach us actually are good lessons to learn. There is a clear sense of right and wrong, good and evil, heroes and villains. And pop culture today recoils against those notions in favor of "moral complexity" and "gray areas," a lack of commitment which is often little more than moral cowardice. Recoiling so hard, in fact, that these older, goofier, simpler shows suddenly become new again, their preachiness becoming good, teachable lessons just waiting to be rediscovered.

Lilo & Stitch: More Than Ohana (Guest Post)

As is usually the case in a small seminary, you tend to end up taking multiple classes with the same people. That's how I got to know Esther Medina. A Georgia native, Esther is finishing up her MA in Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary. She's my current rival for the mantle of worst pool player on campus—that's probably because we end up talking more about our mutual interest in stories and films when we're trying to play than actually focusing on the game. After a handful of these conversations involving Disney's Lilo & Stitch, I wanted Esther to further explore her unique perspective on this particular film. So I was very glad when she agreed to write this piece for the blog. A photographer, writer, coffee addict, and reigning queen of the scratch, you can find and follow Esther on Instagram and Facebook.

Here is her insightful reflection on this underrated modern fairy tale.

Lilo & Stitch: More Than Ohana

by Esther Medina

Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind.

Stitch was introduced to the world in 2002, and the world fell in love with his chaotic nature. Lilo & Stitch does so many things right, even down to the watercolor backgrounds the artists were forced to use for the first time since Dumbo (1941), in efforts to save money. Disney’s original vision for this movie changed when the artists were sent to the Hawaiian Islands, the film’s primary setting, for concept art. Being on the ground and interacting with the people, ohana (the uniquely Hawaiian cultural construct of “family”) became the heart of the film. How could it not? It’s the heart of the people.

The movie centers on Lilo (Daveigh Chase) and Nani Pelekai (Tia Carrere), who are sisters. Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames), a social worker, visits the sisters to determine whether Nani qualifies to remain Lilo’s guardian. What he encounters is the messy life of two sisters who have recently lost their parents in an accident. He understands that they are still adjusting to such a terrible transition, and grants some time for Nani to take responsibility as the adult.

After Cobra’s first visit, Nani and Lilo have a yell fest later that night, like any normal siblings. Nani, being the older sister and stepping into her role as adult, brings a peace offering to young Lilo: food. They don’t have a long heart-to-heart, but they do apologize, and the first thing Lilo says is, “We’re a broken family, aren’t we?” Nani bridges the gap with food, like I’ve done plenty of times with my siblings, and they get straight to the root issue by acknowledging that the transition they both have to navigate is a difficult one.

According to psychological studies, anger is a secondary emotion, usually a reaction to some other underlying feeling—in this case, grief. Nani and Lilo are both grieving the loss of their parents and their coping mechanisms reveal themselves in different ways. Nani seems scatterbrained all the time and is easily angered with Lilo. She never expected to have to step into the position of parent at this stage in her life. She prioritizes being a parent to Lilo over being a sister—Lilo even tells Nani she likes her better as a sister. Nani can’t even give herself room for herself. She uses the excuse of having to take care of Lilo to not date David (Jason Scott Lee), though she really likes him. Nor does she allow herself to grieve, because she has to keep it together for herself and for Lilo; if not, she could lose Lilo—something she refuses to do.

Lilo, on the other hand, feels desperately alone. She does what she can to fit in, in her own weird ways. She joins the hula dance group, but comes in late because, as she explains to her instructor, she had to buy peanut butter. Her reason being that she couldn’t in good conscience feed Pudge—a fish who supposedly controls the weather—a tuna sandwich. She carries her doll, like the other girls, but it’s one she’s made herself and looks like a voodoo doll. All of this is Lilo’s attempt at normalcy, but her own anger, stemming from her grief and loneliness, reveals itself when she’s confronted by Mertle Edmonds (Miranda Paige Walls) and the other girls, who only see Lilo’s weirdness. Lilo’s reaction is to fight.

So, in their attempt to find some semblance of normalcy, Nani takes Lilo to adopt a dog.

Enter Stitch (Chris Sanders).

We are introduced to Stitch at the beginning of the film, with the mad alien scientist, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (David Ogden Stiers), on trial by the Galactic Federation for creating illegal experiments in his lab. When Jumba reveals that his latest creation, experiment 626, the experiment Lilo will later name Stitch, is endlessly cunning and indestructible, the Federation orders that Stitch be destroyed. Stitch proves his maker right when he escapes and crashes his spaceship on Kauai, where he is detained as some type of malformed dog.

That’s when Lilo, the weirdest kid on the island, enters the shelter where Stitch is being held. Their mutual quirkiness ensures an instant connection, and she happily chooses Stitch as the “dog” to adopt because, like her, he’s weird. But Lilo soon realizes Stitch’s destructive tendencies. Using Elvis, she tries to teach him to be a model citizen, but things always seem to end with Stitch reverting back to his destructive self. This is what Jumba claims he created Stitch for: destruction.

626 was designed to be a monster, but now there is nothing to destroy. You see, I never gave him a higher purpose. What must it be like to have nothing, not even memories to visit in the middle of the night?

Stitch tries to be “good,” but nothing seems to work. This creates in him his own sense of loneliness, as he realizes that his destructive tendencies stem from his attempts to find a place where he belongs. As he tries to understand these emotions, he is drawn to Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale, “The Ugly Duckling.” Feeling as though he doesn’t belong with Lilo, he plans to leave, taking “The Ugly Duckling” storybook with him. But Lilo knows he’s about to leave, and we see her own loneliness bubble up again, even as she acknowledges that she can’t force Stitch to stay.

Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind, but if you want to leave you can. I’ll remember you though. I remember everyone that leaves.

As Stitch sits out in the woods that night, alone, he, like the ugly duckling, cries out, “I’m lost!” He doesn’t think he has any other choice but to leave. He’s had nothing, and suddenly all these things he’s never had just fall into his lap: friends, a family. He tries to adapt, he tries to make himself good. But he fails. And so he does the most selfish thing he can, and walks away.

But he and Lilo are connected in ways they do not fully understand. They are not only connected through their eccentricities and mutual weirdness, but also through their pain, and their longings as well. Lilo longs to have back what she’s lost. Stitch longs to have what he’s never had. Both grieve the absence of something—either something lost or something never present in the first place. Wisely, the film never asserts that either one of them can fill the void of the other. Stitch will always have to contend with his destructive nature, and Lilo will never be able to get back all the years with her parents she wishes were still there. But what the two of them can find is redemption.

Stitch finds redemption when Lilo is captured by the alien lawman, Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson). Stitch’s natural tendency would have been selfish: destroy those seeking to capture him and flee. But he’s learned something—he’s learned that loneliness is often a choice, as much as it is a state of being, that, sometimes, loneliness doesn’t have to be. So he goes outside himself and fights for Lilo—his destructive tendencies and indestructibleness are finally redeemed because they now have a purpose. By stepping outside of himself, he learns he can finally be good, because he has found something that is good. Stitch perfectly sums up his own transformation when he says, at the end of the movie, “This is my family. I found it all on my own. It’s little, and broken. But still good. Yeah, still good.”

Lilo and Nani mirror everyone’s ohana in some way. We grieve together, but separately. We fight with each other, but still know we’re family. We see each other’s idiosyncrasies and find ways of dealing with them because there is a sense of obligation to each other, displayed in all sorts of ways. That is expected from family.

But Lilo and Stitch, on the other hand, display a facet of the familial relationship I would love to find more often in the real world. Both are wounded in some way, yet they come together not out of obligation, but through choice. Lilo and Stitch choose each other.

Don’t leave me, okay?

Okay.

Lilo could have forced Stitch to stay when he wanted to leave because, technically, she paid for him; she owned him. But because she truly cares about Stitch and about his need to find his own place, she knows that she must let him climb out that window. She gives him his space. She doesn’t expect him to stay. She cares too much about him to force him to stay in a place he might not belong. She wants Stitch to stay, not out of obligation, but rather by choice. She wants him to stay because he wants to be there.

There is nothing forcing Stitch to come back to save Lilo from Gantu. After all, the only thing Gantu wants is to destroy him. But Stitch chooses to come back for Lilo because he realizes, despite the brokenness within himself, he can be more than his chaos. His chaos doesn’t disappear, but he can be more. His indestructibleness doesn’t have to be used to destroy, but can be used to save, to rescue—the choice is his, and his alone. And by giving him the choice, Lilo ultimately rescues him from himself, freeing him to in turn rescue her. And together, they start anew. Not undoing the damage that has been done, but having given each other the freedom to make new choices and to build better lives.

Nani remains the scatterbrained sister-parent. Lilo remains the weird little sister. Stitch remains the loveable blue ball of chaos. The trio forming a perfectly broken little family. But this is the family that they have chosen; this is the family they want. And that makes all the difference in the world.

This is my family. I found it all on my own. It’s little, and broken. But still good. Yeah, still good.

Marvel's The Punisher: Season 1 (Review)

Marvel's The Punisher

Marvel's The Punisher is a dangerous series. A dark, moody story laced with moments of shocking brutality, the show toes the fine line between realism and sadism, between showing the toll violence takes on a human being and glorifying the very thing it's trying to comment on. To be fair, this is a tricky thing to do creatively. In the age of "switching off the brain" in the name of entertainment, this presents a real problem for shows like The Punisher, which prefers to communicate its deeper meanings through nuance. In other words, the point of a series like this stands to be easily missed.

For the most part, The Punisher walks the tightrope admirably. But there are missteps here and there, which seem to be the necessary pitfall of long term storytelling. Part of the problem arises in the realization that Frank Castle, the titular "Punisher," is not a character who translates well to long form serialization, instead working better in a more old fashioned procedural, "story of the week" format. His character arc is relatively small and tough to trace over the course of 13 hour-long episodes without beginning to feel stale and repetitive. However, the slog through the sometimes meandering story is made worthwhile by the fact that the writers have a remarkable understanding of the primary character, and by Jon Bernthal's ferocious performance as the haunted, tragic Castle.

The story is relatively straightforward. When the series begins, Frank Castle is dead, as far as the world is concerned. But Pete Castiglione is paying the bills by hammering down walls as a construction worker in New York City. Castiglione is, of course, an alias. He is actually Castle, alive and well, living under the radar. He works long hours, swinging his hammer until his hands bleed, then goes home at night to try and power through the rest of Moby Dick and catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. This proves especially difficult considering that his dreams are haunted by the faces of his wife and children, who were killed many months prior in a hit gone bad. In the wake of their deaths, Castle had gone on the warpath, carving a bloody trail through the New York underworld as "The Punisher," a one-man army, taking his revenge against those he believed to be responsible. Now, with his family avenged and the Punisher believed to be dead, Castle struggles to function in the aftermath.

But the past is not so easily outrun, and through an encounter with brilliant hacker and former NSA analyst David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Castle learns that the people responsible for the deaths of his family are still out there, all tied to an illegal CIA operation, one that Castle was unwittingly party to during his time in the Marines. This brings the threat closer to home than he could have ever imagined. Thus begins the resurrection of Frank Castle, the Punisher.

Castle's uniqueness as a protagonist is worth noting here. There is an effective storytelling trope in the vein of the Byronic hero, which sees a protagonist tormented by a dark past. When it comes to characters who are assassins—characters like Frank Castle—these characters are usually brooding, tired of killing, and looking to leave that life behind. The Punisher stands in stark contrast to this stereotype, because Frank Castle worships violence. In the wake of his first round of revenge, when our story begins, Castle doesn't know what to do with himself. Any chance he had of leaving this behind died with his wife and children. Now, he can barely function as a human being. He only snaps back to life the moment the possibility of revenge rears its head. As the time for the kill draws near, a kind of excitement overtakes him, and every kill is carried out in a state of religious rapture. There is very little heroic about Frank Castle, at least in the traditional sense. He functions more as an antihero, one who operates from his own set of ethical principles. On one hand, this makes Castle the most moral character on the show. He has a clear sense of right and wrong, and the punishment he deals to wrongdoers is absolute and final, usually coming in the form of a bullet. The problem with Castle lies in his power of self-determination. He singlehandedly judges what is right and what is wrong, effectively acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Castle thrives on violence, finds his purpose in punishing those he deems deserving of it.

The toll this takes, not just on Castle, but on those around him, becomes the driving force of the show's first season. There's a brilliant moment in the fifth episode, when Castle meets with an old acquaintance, journalist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). There are shades of Faithful from The Pilgrim's Progress in Page's character, as she's the one who stays the course and, in doing so, helps the protagonist to do the same. Castle espouses his usual belief that he has to find the people who murdered his family so that he can kill them, to which Karen finally asks, "So where does that end, Frank? Because I look at you and my heart breaks because all I can see is this endless, echoing loneliness." And perhaps the most telling thing of all is how quickly Castle retorts, "I'm not lonely, Karen." The truth is that Castle cannot see himself, he marches ever forward on his quest for vengeance, never once stopping to consider himself. His relationship with Page is crucial. He is drawn to her, but she perplexes him. Perhaps it's because she sees right through him. Viewers who aren't watching carefully might be tempted to see a hero in Frank Castle. The truth, however, is exactly what Page describes as endless, echoing loneliness. It's this trait that makes Castle a sympathetic, almost pitiable character. What The Punisher gives us is a man who simply refuses to cope with loss, and grief. Someone who deflects it all and reaches deep into the well of rage that, by his own admission, has always been present in his life, even from childhood, in order to manage his trauma. It's a tragic dimension of character, a willful act of self-destruction that Castle refuses to see about himself. He thinks he's keeping himself alive, when the reality is that, little by little, he is suspending more and more of his humanity with every life he takes. "I want there to be an after for you," Karen says to him, telegraphing where this story is heading, and the choice Castle will ultimately have to make. In many ways, this pivotal conversation lays the groundwork for Castle's character arc for the remaining episodes.

Yet another powerful conversation occurs in the eleventh episode of the season, between Castle and the hacker, Lieberman. The Punisher is known for wearing an iconic white skull. When Castle emerges with the skull painted on a suit of body armor, Lieberman says, "That skull? That's a memento mori. It's Latin for, 'Remember you will die.' In Rome, victorious generals would return from war, and so they didn't get blinded by glory, they'd have a slave who would say, 'Remember, you're only human. You are gonna die.' Well, it's meant as an admonition to value your life, to live it well." While Castle dismisses him, Lieberman's insight is a powerful one that, again, viewers who aren't careful can miss: the Punisher is not a hero. He is, like Batman to Bruce Wayne, Frank Castle's singular act of wanton self-destruction. While Castle might find his purpose as the Punisher, he is stunting himself emotionally by refusing to deal with his trauma.

All this makes the final scene of the season the most profound. The show's final episode, tellingly entitled "Memento Mori," sees Castle, having emerged from the shadows to finish bringing down the conspiracy that got his family killed, finally attend the veterans group run by his friend, Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore). For the first time, Frank speaks openly with the group about himself in a stunning monologue: "If you're gonna look at yourself, really look in the mirror, you gotta admit who you are. But not just to yourself, you gotta admit it to everybody else. First time, as long as I can remember, I don't have a war to fight. And I guess, if I'm gonna be honest, I'm just... I'm scared."

Castle's final words can seem oddly out of place for a comic book character. His words signal a movement from within. Because of Karen Page and David Lieberman, Castle has, to some small degree, thawed. He, for perhaps the first time, sees himself. It's an admission of guilt, to be sure. But more than that, it's an acknowledgement of fear. We like the heroes we worship to be larger than life. The problem is that the heroes we worship tend to be profoundly human characters with serious deficiencies of being. Our tendency now is to look to antiheroes, to men like Frank Castle, with the same reverie as those standing in the lineage of men like Atticus Finch and Shane. The truth is that there's no correlation at all. But that doesn't mean that men like Frank Castle have any less to teach us about ourselves. In fact, it's likely that most of us are more like Castle than any of the truly great men of literature. Which is why we should pay special attention to this iteration of the Punisher, and note his character arc.

It's a rare thing that an antihero emerges from his self-medicated state to see himself for who he actually is, much less take steps in the right direction to course correct and become a better man because of it. Yet that is exactly what happens with Frank Castle, and that is exactly what makes The Punisher worthwhile. We travel with Frank Castle through his dark night of the soul. We experience the cathartic release of witnessing him finally unleash on the ones who murdered his family, all the while haunted by the notion that though justice is rightly demanded, perhaps we take the power of self-determination upon ourselves at the expense of our very humanity. And, ultimately, we see Castle make the hardest choice of all, to do the truly courageous thing and take a good, long, hard look at himself and admit that he doesn't like what he sees. And then to look outside of himself for help in dealing with it. That endless, echoing loneliness that Castle finally confronts within himself is actually a terrifying prospect that I suspect is all too real for so many men in the modern era, myself included. And when we're standing on the knife's edge, threatening to stumble over into that dark void and lose ourselves, then we can hope to have the strength of Frank Castle to do the right and necessary thing.

Metaphor and the Nature of Meaning in Lewisian Thought

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)

The power of metaphor can hardly be overstated. Former editor of Time magazine's Europe office, James Geary, suggests that metaphor "is not just confined to art and literature but is at work in all fields of human endeavor, from economics and advertising, to politics and business, to science and psychology."¹ This notion attracted C. S. Lewis, and is one that he dealt with frequently throughout his work. In Miracles, Lewis writes, "The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion."² If Geary's premise is to be taken as true, that metaphor is at work in all fields of human endeavor, then, as Lewis demonstrates, metaphor is most certainly at work in the realm of theology. In fact, if this assumption is presupposed, then the implications for the bearing of metaphor on theological reflection are vast and extremely important.

Metaphor and the Organ of Meaning

Lewis understood the surprising and terribly efficient power that metaphor could wield. In his little-known essay in critical theory, "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare," Lewis extrapolates on the importance of metaphor to man's ability to ascribe meaning. This essay is the logical starting point for dealing with the role of metaphor in Lewisian thought in particular, for in it he posits in plain language a contrast seen clearly throughout the corpus of his work. "I am a rationalist," he writes. "For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition."³ Here, Lewis demonstrates the stark difference between thinking (perhaps reasoning works better) and imagining; in other words, Lewis differentiates between ideas and images.

The relationship between metaphor and imagination is nuanced, but the subtle points are critical in understanding how Lewis will develop metaphor in his works. Insofar as Lewis identifies the imagination as the "organ of meaning," he will attempt to demonstrate that the ability of the imagination to actually ascribe meaning—the ability to connect images (or, symbols) to ideas—lays the groundwork for reasoning of any sort. He writes,

When we pass beyond pointing to individual sensible objects, when we begin to think of causes, relations, of mental states or acts, we become incurably metaphorical. We apprehend none of these things except through metaphor … Our only choice is to use the metaphors and thus to think something, though less than we could wish; or else to be driven by unrecognized metaphors and so think nothing at all.

Such recognition leads Lewis to conclude that, "all our truth, or all but a few fragments, is won by metaphor."⁴ In a very practical sense, what Lewis speaks of is the ability of the imagination to connect images that are not necessarily to be taken as literally true to nevertheless convey ideas that are as true as truth can be. Thus, for Lewis, the discussion of metaphor is a discussion concerning meaning. In some ways, in many ways, metaphor takes one into truth in ways that literalities—not because they are untrue, but because they are literal—cannot, precisely because of meaning (given that the metaphor is an apt one).

The true metaphor, then, might be accurate without being necessarily literal. The accurate metaphor succeeds in capturing truth which, when further abstracted by reason, loses some of its clarity. In everyday conversation, one might be heard saying, "Don't carry this metaphor too far, it will eventually break down." This seems to be the very point Lewis is making. While metaphors might certainly break down when abstracted further into reason, Lewis is simply highlighting that the metaphor not further abstracted might nonetheless contain a very profound truth. In fact, Lewis suggests, it is very likely that all truth might be won through accurate metaphors not abstracted by reliance on reason alone. Rather, good reasoning accounts for the truth of the meaning contained within the accurate metaphor. For Lewis, many of the ways human beings come to understand God is through metaphor.

This is an approach that is favored quite heavily by the writers of Scripture to communicate truth. There are several metaphors in Scripture that are decently well known. Christ's famous "I am" statements from the gospel of John are rife with metaphorical language. The Psalms contain a number of metaphors, notably to compare God to a fortress, or a rock.⁵ To clarify literal terms, it is understood that Jesus Christ is not himself an actual loaf of bread, or that God himself is not a divine Stonehenge. But what these instances from Scripture demonstrate is the point Lewis makes—the ability of metaphor to stoke the imagination, to paint in stronger colors and define with crystalline clarity a truth that might otherwise be won with a lesser degree of potency.

Metaphor as the Language of Meaning

Thus it might be said that, for Lewis, metaphor is the language of meaning. "We can make our language duller," Lewis states in an essay presented to the Socratic Club on November 6, 1944, "[but] we cannot make it less metaphorical. We can make the pictures more prosaic; we cannot be less pictorial … In other words, all language about things other than physical objects is necessarily metaphorical."⁶ Viewing metaphor as the language of meaning becomes a necessary component for understanding not only the nature of meaning of Lewis's works, but also for understanding Lewis's own epistemology.

It is important to understand that Lewis does not attempt to favor imagination over intellect, or vice versa. Rather, both are incredibly important, necessitating that that they be viewed correctly. As already mentioned, Lewis developed the idea that the imagination must be dealt with first, because it is the mechanism through which the meaning of something is grasped. Therefore, when it comes to probing the Divine, if the words of Paul to the Corinthian church are to be taken with all the gravity in which they were intended, then for those who now "see in a mirror dimly," metaphor is imperative for grasping that which is both unfamiliar and remote. No more is this readily apparent than in one's attempt to understand the supernatural. And, as Lewis demonstrates at multiple points across his literary works, to accurately grasp the supernatural is to push one “further up and further in” to meaning itself.

Meaning and The Chronicles of Narnia

Though somewhat counterintuitive, perhaps the best place to begin when examining the treatment of meaning in The Chronicles of Narnia comes at the very end of the series. At the close of The Last Battle, the final book in the series, Aslan says to the humans, "There was a real railway accident … Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning."⁷ For the reader who has tracked the story through the entire series, there is a startling recognition here: what Lewis, through Aslan, identifies as "the Shadowlands" is, in actuality, the "real" world from which the main characters come. The point Lewis is making is that the current reality in which we inhabit is a mere "shadow" of the world to come. In a sense, this world is a metaphor in and of itself for the world to come.

Now, this notion of metaphor is not fully realized until the recreation of Narnia itself is taken into account. After Aslan has set about recreating the world of Narnia, Lewis takes a moment to contrast the old with the new: "The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more."⁸ It is the curious usage of the word "meant" here that becomes crucial for understanding how Lewis has developed his notion of metaphor throughout this series. As the new Narnia comes into being, meaning itself becomes more actualized. Truth, it would seem, for Lewis, is merely a statement that corresponds to reality. But meaning is what determines the initial statement. This corresponds to Lewis's notion that imagination—the ability to ascribe meaning—is the condition of truth. To extrapolate just a bit further, the point Lewis is making about this present reality is that, at some future point in time, when heaven and earth are reconciled, it is almost as if fact is transformed into meaning.

Meaning and The Space Trilogy

This same notion is captured in a singular instance in the final book of Lewis's science fiction series, That Hideous Strength. While the first two books draw up the mythos that is to define the series, this book gradually redefines the mythos before detailing the resolution. Famously panned by Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien for its reliance on their mutual friend Charles Williams and his writings, That Hideous Strength is something of a curious conclusion to the series. Yet the book also provides a startling insight into how Lewis handled meaning in his works, in many ways a better example than in his more popular Narnia stories.

Up to this point, the central character of the first two books, Elwin Ransom, has ventured to Mars and Venus, where he has learned the story of man's oppression at the hands of dark spiritual forces. In That Hideous Strength, the plot of which unfurls on planet Earth, the reawakened Merlin of Arthurian lore becomes the vector through which angelic, heavenly beings will aid man in overcoming the dark forces oppressing them in the form of a government agency tastefully (or distastefully, depending on the reader) acronymed N. I. C. E. The utter outlandishness of the plot aside, the moment the angelic being named Mercury descends on Merlin, Lewis writes,

For Ransom, whose study had been for many years in the realm of words, it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white-hot furnace of essential speech. All fact was broken, splashed into cataracts, caught, turned inside out, kneaded, slain, and reborn as meaning.

Again, fact becomes meaning.⁹ The recurring point of Lewis’s work, present in The Last Battle and here again in That Hideous Strength, is the notion that, when confronted with the Divine, the seemingly benign things of this present reality begin to mean more. Meaning becomes a key element of supernatural manifestation, and the impression one gets when reading Lewis is that dealing with meaning in such a way presses one deeper into truth.

Myth, Metaphor, and Meaning

As already pointed out, in Lewisian thought, statements that are true are simply meanings concerning reality abstracted from reality. In other words, truth statements are those statements that simply correspond to reality. But there is another type of meaning, what might be termed a "deeper" meaning, which is reached through myth. Such meaning is not necessarily reached through language. In fact, all of language could fade away and the core mythic qualities still communicate—accurately—the intended meaning.

Nowhere is Lewis’s understanding of metaphor and its relation to the nature of meaning more apparent than in his understanding of myth. In his essay "Myth Became Fact," Lewis points out that the "intellect is incurably abstract," and draws a hardline between experience and intellectually apprehending that experience. "You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting." Yet in "the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction."¹⁰ What Lewis suggests is that myth is the thing that draws one closer to truth and pulls one deeper into reality. This forms the basis of accepting Christianity as the "true myth."

The point of connection between myth, metaphor, and meaning in Lewisian thought is summed up nicely by Peter W. Macky in his 1981 essay "The Role of Metaphor in Christian Thought and Experience as Understood by Gordon Clark and C. S. Lewis." In this essay, he traces Lewis’s development of metaphor to conclude that there is a spectrum of language through which truth can be accessed. "Metaphor," he writes, "is most at home in the poetic type (including religious speech), for that is the way to speak of supersensible human experiences." This is precisely the function Lewis ascribed to metaphor, the ability to make clear a supernatural reality. "It is best done by appealing to the imagination, using metaphors that enable us to taste reality rather than just talk about it."¹¹ And this notion of "tasting reality" rather than just talking about it is the key component of myth. Myth is capable of "speaking" without necessarily abstracting. To ascribe meaning to myth is to do so intuitively, rather than analytically, thus requiring the power of imagination.

In myth, the analytical abstractions from reality about reality must necessarily give way to something that can be experienced as concrete in myth itself; that is to say, a mythic "truth" is not one that corresponds to reality, but is, in fact, reality itself. Myth, like the new Narnia, purely means. And this realization, like the realization of Ransom in That Hideous Strength, enables one to experience truth in a way that goes beyond merely talking about it, while at the same time communicating truth in new and profound ways.

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City (Review)

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City

Scott Snyder shakes up the Batman mythos again with Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City. With the New 52 initiative, the DC Comics universe underwent a soft continuity reboot. The slate of character histories was wiped clean in favor of establishing new and updated stories, effectively bringing their pantheon of heroes into today. Being one of DC's biggest properties, Batman's well-known backstory was one of the many that came under new penmanship. How fortunate that Snyder was the one wielding the pen.

After three quintessentially dark and murky Batman stories, the bright splash of color that greets readers on the first pages of Secret City is both a jarring and welcome shift in tone (having Danny Miki and FCO Plascencia on ink and colors, respectively, is nothing short of a revelation). The very first panel establishes that this is Gotham City, but six years ago. And this is where things take a turn for the surreal. The city lies in ruins, a kind of hellscape where fish swim in flooded subway tunnels and the buildings are overrun with overgrown shrubbery. Into this strange, post-apocalyptic world comes a child, who is almost immediately assailed by thugs. Enter the Batman, like you've never seen him before. Instead of his trademark cape, he's packing a rugged rucksack and crossbow. Instead of the classic Batmobile, he's mounted on a mud-slicked dirt bike meant for navigating harsh terrain. This is Batman by way of Mad Max. He saves the child, who proceeds to tell him that a mysterious "he" has been telling everyone that Batman is dead, "ever since he killed the city."

"Good," Batman retorts. "Then he won't see me coming." And suddenly we're off again, jumping back in time another five months, where we meet a younger Bruce Wayne—before he becomes Batman—who has an axe to grind. He has only recently returned to Gotham City after some years of being away, and everyone believes him to be dead. He wants to keep things that way. See, even though Bruce has yet to become the Batman, he has wasted no time getting his hands dirty as a street-level vigilante, working to infiltrate the vicious Red Hood Gang. Bruce is a young man, looking to be somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties. While he's full of piss and vinegar, as the old codgers say, he's a tad unrefined and takes ballsy but unnecessary risks.

The story established here is poles apart from Snyder's two previous narrative arcs. Which is an intelligent storytelling decision. After the dark subject matter of Death of the Family, having something a little lighter in tone gives readers who are in for the long haul some room to breathe. Snyder executes these kinds of genre shifts with a kind of flawless perfection. He has such an understanding of both the Batman character and classic genre tropes that he can flip between horror, thriller, adventure, and even science fiction with ease, exploring Batman through a multitude of lenses. If the first two volumes were action-thrillers, and the third flirted with horror, then this volume is firmly planted in the pulpy, adventure-thriller genre. For a retelling of Batman's origin, this is completely appropriate, given that the character was originally conceived by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1939, at the height of the old pulp fiction era.

Noticeably absent from this volume is Snyder's trademark use of mythological themes. This isn't necessarily a criticism, as Snyder is a master of genres, and he puts the storytelling emphasis not on symbolism, but on character development and big, bombastic set pieces. It works for the more adventurous feel that this volume is going for.

There are three major relationships Bruce develops throughout the narrative. The most obvious one is with his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Ever the caretaker, Alfred is quite opposed to Bruce's harebrained schemes, and early in the volume the two have a rather startling confrontation. Alfred has serious issues with the fact that Bruce refuses to reveal himself to the world and reclaim all that he is entitled to as the sole heir of the billion-dollar Wayne estate. He even goes so far as to accuse Bruce of behaving as a coward, and tells him that his parents would be ashamed. When Bruce turns physical, Alfred gives him a much-needed slap to the face—it's a jarring moment. After Alfred storms away and refuses to help Bruce further, Bruce flies into a fit of rage. This is a young man full of anger and defined by his pain, specifically the pain of having lost his parents to a senseless mugging as a child. This singular moment from his past is what drives him. Every criminal he faces down essentially wears the mask of the man who murdered his father and mother. There's very little selflessness here, and Alfred is right to walk away.

Another relationship of note is the one between Bruce and his maternal uncle, Philip Kane. Not long after Bruce's return to Gotham, Philip finds him. In Bruce's absence, Philip has been running Wayne Enterprises, the company that is the Wayne family legacy. With Bruce now back in Gotham, Philip approaches his nephew and asks him to reveal himself to the public and to return to Wayne Enterprises as the golden boy of Gotham, since the company never really recovered in the wake of the Wayne murders. Bruce refuses Philip's proposal, but is disturbed to learn that the Red Hood Gang has been stealing non-lethal arms manufactured by Wayne Enterprises. As the story unfurls, it becomes clear that Philip's not the most honest businessman, being that he has actually been negotiating with the Red Hood Gang to sell them small arms, in hopes of deterring them from stealing the more dangerous weapons. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Philip is drafted into the gang and is looking for a way out. The man he turned to in the past, a strategist with his own sordid history, is one Edward Nygma. It's clear that Nygma is Philip's confidant, and when Bruce refuses Philip's request to return to the public sphere, Nygma suggests that Philip should have him killed in order to gain public sympathy. While Philip's difficult position is to be appreciated, he is clearly a weak man who always looks for an easy way out and who is now paying dearly for it.

The third (and most interesting) relationship Bruce forms in the story is with the leader of the Red Hood Gang. As the name suggests, the gang is identified by the crimson masks each member wears when carrying out gang-related activities. There is implied to be a system of rules in place within the gang that prohibits the members from divulging information about their personal lives to one another. So each member is assigned a number, which becomes their gang callsign. As such, the leader of the gang is identified as Red Hood One. Now, this is where being a bit of a serious Batman reader pays off. One take on traditional Batman mythology tells us that before the Joker became the Joker, he was a small-time criminal known as the Red Hood, and only becomes the Joker after a confrontation with Batman leaves him boiling in a vat of chemicals. In Snyder's rewriting, it's clear that Red Hood One is the modern incarnation of the classic Red Hood villain. Though we only ever glimpse the man under the mask and never see him outright, Capullo brilliantly ensures the Joker's trademark hook nose is present, as is a penchant for unsavory jokes and a dark fascination with the Batman. It's a subtle thing that unfamiliar readers are likely to miss, but it's worth pointing out that Red Hood One and the Joker are likely one and the same, if only because of the nice parallelism with Snyder's previous yarn. As Bruce Wayne evolves into the Batman, Red Hood One evolves in the Joker. The hero and the villain are intricately tied together, even in origin. In a turn of sinister poetry, this provides a basis to the Joker's codependence on Batman, which was the highlight of the previous volume, Death of the Family.

The story forward is by the numbers, yet there's something to be said for doing something familiar, and doing it well. It gives the things we're accustomed to a new sheen, and that's exactly what Snyder does with Secret City. After Philip chooses to go public about Bruce's return on his own terms, his strategist Nygma goes behind his back and hires the Red Hood Gang to kill Wayne, and they nearly do. Broken and alone, Wayne heads to the only place he has left to go—Wayne Manor, where Alfred is waiting to patch him up. His brush with death giving him a new perspective, Bruce reconciles with Alfred and resolves to fight this war on crime in a different way. In a powerful moment, beneath the cold stare of Thomas Wayne's statue, Bruce resolves to "become a bat."

As Batman, Bruce begins dismantling the Red Hood Gang through fear tactics and guerrilla warfare. When he uncovers a plot involving the ACE Chemical Processing Plant, he chooses to combat the gang on two fronts by finally going public and announcing his return to Gotham, reclaiming the Wayne legacy. The story's climax involves a battle at ACE Chemical between Batman and the Red Hood Gang, during which Philip sacrifices himself to save Batman, and Red Hood One is dropped into the vat of chemicals despite Batman's attempt at saving him. Again, this is all pretty familiar territory for Batman fans, but the execution is done well enough that it's a thrill to read anew.

The biggest twist comes in the final pages of the main story. Batman and Alfred are discussing the outcome of the battle at ACE when Edward Nygma—now calling himself the Riddler—causes a city-wide blackout. This, of course, sets the stage for the story told in the first few pages of the volume, which depicts Gotham as a devastated cityscape. It's definitely an interesting wrinkle in Batman's backstory, but one that will have to wait until the next volume to pay off. The backup stories collected at the end of this volume give snapshots of Bruce's training sessions around the world. These are smaller, self-contained stories that are equally as fun as the main plot. One short story that stands out is titled "The Pit," and depicts a 24-year-old Bruce Wayne who has battled in a death match in Norway for 28 hours straight, simply because he refuses to kill his opponents. His instructor, a cryptic woman identified only as the Queen, tells him that the lesson he has yet to learn is that the only way to win a war is by finally killing his opponent. Sparing lives only leads to battles being won, not wars. Or so she preaches. But after hours of fighting, it turns out that no man is willing to set foot in the pit, having been frightened into submission. Bruce wins, having conquered his enemies with fear. It's a nice touch, demonstrating the beginnings of the scare tactics the Batman will eventually use to keep the villains of Gotham in check.

This volume is certainly not as deep as Snyder's previous work on Batman, but deep is not exactly what this particular story is going for. Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City is a fun, adventurous romp through Bruce Wayne's earlier years, that provides an interesting context for the relationship between Batman and Joker. It drips of pure, pulpy goodness and fist-pumping excitement, with a zinger of an ending that promises a bigger and more unexpected story to come.