Asay - God on the streets of Gotham: what the big screen Batman can teach us about God and ourselves

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God on the Streets of Gotham: What the Big Screen Batman Can Teach Us about God and Ourselves

Copyright 2012 by Paul Asay. All rights reserved.

Cover and interior photograph of city copyright David Zimmerman/Corbis. All rights reserved.

Designed by Daniel Farrell

Edited by Jonathan Schindler

The author is represented by Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

This book is a commentary on, but is not affiliated with or licensed by, DC Comics, Warner Communications, Inc., or Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P., owners of the Batman trademark and related media franchise.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Asay, Paul.

God on the streets of Gotham : what the big screen Batman can teach us about God and ourselves / by Paul Asay.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4143-6640-1 (sc)

1. Batman filmsHistory and criticism. 2. Motion picturesReligious aspects. I. Title.

PN1995.9.B34A83 2012

791.43682dc23 2012000820

To Mom and Dad, who never gave up on me.

Youre my heroes.

Introduction

IF YOU READ this book and want someone to blame for it, waggle your finger at William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Its all their fault.

When I was a kid, I practically lived for Saturday morning cartoons. Id leap out of bed, run to the TV room (my footie PJs slipping on the linoleum), flip on the television, and watch cartoons until my mom made me stopand almost all of them were from Hanna-Barberas ber-prolific (and ultra-cheap) animation studios. I loved em all, from Hong Kong Phooey to Speed Buggy to Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels .

But nothing could compare to the excellent awesomeness of Super Friends .

To my five-year-old self, Super Friends was the pinnacle of cartoon quality Citizen Kane with Froot Loops commercials. I was mesmerized by these caped heroes and heroines: Superman with his super strength, super speed, and that super curly lock of hair on his forehead; Wonder Woman with her nifty Lasso of Truth and awesome Invisible Plane; Aquaman with his... um... well, okay, Aquamans ability to talk with fish and ride huge seahorses seemed a little impractical to me, even at age five. Really, how many diabolical crime sprees take place in large bodies of water?

And then, of course, there were Batman and Robin. Sure, they might not have had the outlandish super abilities their Justice League brethren did, but what they lacked in super strength, stealth planes, or the ability to talk with sea anemones, they made up for with technological savvy, clever wordplay, and sheer gumption. They made a great team. If youre going to be trapped in an old gold mine or stranded on a faraway planet or thrown back in time by a gigantic space ray, its nice to have company.

Its easy to see the appeal of these guys. For kids like me who could barely scoot a chair under a table, superheroes were the epitome of everything we wanted to be but werent: strong, brave, good, and strong. Powerful, too. Did I mention strong? No one would dare tell Superman when it was time to go to bed or force Batman to eat his veggies. And naturally, being the sort of boy who hated both bedtime and beets, it wasnt long before I started slipping into superhero fanaticism. The first coloring book I remember having was themed around Batmans brave exploits. Id draw my own Super Friends stories. Every time I got together with my best friend, Terry, wed shove rolled-up sock balls into our sleeves, tie towels around our necks, and zip around the backyard pretending to be Superman and Batman, righting imaginary wrongs and saving innocent stuffed animals wherever we might find them.

But every superhero experiences his share of adversityespecially those who are less than four feet tall and still a decade away from earning a drivers license. There comes a time when they must face an adversary too big and too powerful for them to tackle. They must deal with a threat that causes even the strongest of superheroes to quake in their primary-colored boots.

I called mine, simply, Daddy.

The Boy Wonder and the Dad of Doom

My father didnt send me to bed without my utility belt or take away my Bat Big Wheel. He went way beyond that. He told me that superheroes were bad. And then he said I couldnt have anything to do with them anymore. It was like he pointed an anti-happiness ray gun at me and pulled the trigger.

Had I been up on real superhero lore back then (rather than just a steady diet of Super Friends ), I might have interpreted my dads resistance to my heroic calling as a betrayal akin to Grecian tragedy. After all, my father was my heroso strong he could carry me on his shoulders, so fast I could never get away from him when bath time came. He could talk like Mickey Mouse, tell jokes better than Tim Conway, and when the car battery died, he could push the car all by himselfwith Mom and me in it. He was a fireman , for cryin out loud! Forget Batman: when I really thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be my dad.

And there was a time when he seemed to share my keenness for superheroes. He incorporated them into my bedtime stories (at my request), helped me build a Superman model (okay, he built it for me), and one time even designed a big, flannel S that I could pin to my shirt.

But something happened to my dadsomething took him over, body and souland my world was never quite the same.

That something was Jesus.

See, Jesus didnt just gently ask my dad to come, follow me. It was like Jesus took him by the collar and hollered, YOURE GONNA FOLLOW ME, BUDDY! And my dad followed like paparazzi follow Lindsay Lohan. And he took the whole family with him.

It was tough, or so I hear. My mom was already a Christian, but her Presbyterian brand of faith was pretty traditional, full of a steady dose of hymns and potluck suppers. So when my dad started speaking in tongues and pouring wine down the sink, she didnt have a great frame of reference for what was going on. And when my dads enthusiasm got us kicked out of our hometown church and ostracized by most of her friends, well, Mom was one loud Hallelujah! away from heading back home to her mothers, taking me and my little sister with her.

I was still pretty youngabout six or sevenso I was blessedly unaware of how close I was to growing up fatherless. All I knew was that we switched churches and I didnt see Terry (who was Presbyterian) nearly as much. But the biggest, most cataclysmic change was that I wasnt allowed to watch Super Friends anymore. My tiny collection of superhero comics and Colorforms sets disappeared. My solitary Batman record vanished. It was as if a big hunk of kryptonite had been dropped in my bedroom, dispelling all superheroes and sidekicks with nary a fwooping sound.