I’ve been watching this show Heroes on NBC, and I quite enjoy it. Tonight I’ve been waxing philosphical about the hero.
I can’t start any essay on heroes without revealing that I’m Batman. Before you picture me in blue underoos and a cape jumping off my carport to see if I can fly, please know I don’t literally think I’m Batman. A few years ago, in my “sky is falling” funk that occured shortly after I graduated with my first degree in acting, I was looking in the mirror, getting ready for my soul-fulfilling job in chocolate sales. I was doing the usual existence contemplation when a scene from the Tim Burton’s Batman movie popped in my head. Michael Keaton is trying to tell Kim Basinger that he is Batman, but he is interrupted by the doorbell at the critical time. She goes to answer the door, and he mouths the words he needs to say to her “I’m Batman, I’m Batman.” It turns out to be the Joker at the door, chaos ensues, Kim Basinger misses a chance to be in on the secret. But that one moment has always been my favorite part of that movie. It’s a confession of love, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you but I never felt I could. I’m Batman.”
I re-enacted this moment in the mirror. It’s what actors do. And then I giggled. What if I was Batman? Seriously, an excellent disguise. No one would look to me, a chocolate salesperson, a struggling actor, a woman, and think “Is that Batman?” This idea completely delighted me out of my funk that day. I found that as my soul-fulfilling career in chocolate sales progressed, this idea that I could be Batman came in handy. When a high maintenence woman argues for twenty minutes that the raspberry cordials were not wrapped in purple foil last week when she came in, even though they have been wrapped in purple foil every shift for six years*, the idea that she might not know I’m Batman somehow gave me peace. When faced with minor daily adversities, the idea that I had a bit of super hero in me helped.
This has been said many times about Batman, but he is the most accessible of the super heroes. No radioactive spider bites, no other-wordly super powers. Just a huge pile of money and a PhD in Everything. So it could actually happen. And we all have the capacity to strive towards this dark-justice-loving-action-hero ideal when we are faced with our small adveristies. We use our brains and our available resources to make the world a better place. In real life, not everybody has a pile of money and a PhD in Everything. To me a hero is someone who inspires admiration and devotion, who strives to do better and deals with adversity with 90% grace. That’s Batmankind.
Anyone who seriously wants to be Batman can read the manual. (Thanks, Neda!)
*Note: I should have let this go, let her think they were unwrapped the week before, and sell her two dozen of them. But seriously, it’s chocolate sales, I had been doing it a long time, I actually could claim expertise. I wasn’t saying I was an expert in Medieval literature or nanotechnology. Just this particular set of chocolates. I could guarantee I had spent more time looking at these raspberry cordials longer than she had, and I couldn’t let one more person treat me like an idiot.