That Moldy Opportunist

On Wednesday of this week, Neil Steinberg from the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a really clever, really helpful assessment of the State of the Impeachment. Here's a representative piece:

Were I teaching the novel Our Political Moment, I would try to draw my students into seeing how the author -- in this case, fate, or God if you prefer -- so handily supplied [Roland] Burris, that moldy opportunist, rising out of his political grave to dog [Barack] Obama's inauguration.

"Why is he there?" I'd purr, eyebrows raised, spurring the class with a quizzical look.

Perhaps as foreshadowing -- should Obama eventually be caught straying from the straight and narrow. Perhaps to give our story a Gothic twist -- [Rod] Blagojevich is not yet dead, but his ghost child, Burris, haunts the ramparts; his remarks lifted from the speeches of Shakespearean clowns, grandly struggling to turn his benefactor's cheap stunt into democracy's bright lamp.

That's why I don't write fiction -- you can't make this stuff up.

I see the two major players in Illinois's political scandal in really only two dimensions; I describe them each in only one word. For Governor Blagojevich that word has been, since prior to his first gubernatorial election, twerp. I've already explained that here, so I won't go into it. But Roland Burris is a late entry into my political consciousness. For all his much-ballyhooed life of service--elected thrice to statewide office, blah blah blah--I'm discovering him as we go. Whereas Illinois and federal officeholders are tripping over themselves to show Burris due respect for his political tenure, however, I have nearly no power (including, as of yesterday, significantly less purchasing power--but I'm not bitter) and consequently significantly less accountability. So I choose for Burris the word opportunist.

Not "moldy opportunist." You'll have to talk to Steinberg about that one.

Burris isn't the first person in the annals of power that I've reduced to the word opportunist. He's only the most recent. But in his company, he would be sorry to learn, is a fictional icon of opportunism, Lex Luthor. I wrote about Luthor in my first book, Comic Book Character (which, probably, can technically no longer be called a book--but I'm not bitter):

Motivated, apparently, entirely by self-interest, [Luthor] has built himself a material empire by outwitting and usurping anyone who gets in his way. He has a knack for turning adversity into opportunity, even turning the sale of his soul to to the devil to his own advantage. . . . Luthor, convinced that his successes in life prove his worldview correct, is stymied by Superman's great power and apparent altruism. Since they inhabit the same city, their paths often cross. Superman's agenda is straightforward--truth and justice--but Luthor's vendetta against him is nuanced by his obsession with power. Given the right set of circumstances, Luthor will go the extra mile to help Superman out.

Luthor's opportunism is fueled by narcissism; in issue 123 of Superman he co-opts messianic language to describe his own exploitation of Superman's plight: “As always, the question is this: do I gain more from Superman’s suffering—or his salvation?” Power consolidated through the methodical manipulation of people and events. Ripped right out of the headlines, no?

Take away his less savory plots of world domination--causing California to sink into the ocean, killing his parents, selling his soul to the devil, what have you--and Lex Luthor begins to look a little bit like Roland Burris. He sees an opportunity and takes it. He takes someone else's lemons and sells lemonade to his neighbors. He creates a political circus and denounces his opponents' political theatrics. He gets a senate seat (and a senate pension) for free while watching his benefactor go down the tubes for trying to sell it. Yes, if I were forced to choose one word to describe senior statesman Roland Burris--and let's face it, no one's got a gun to my head--that word would be opportunist. It would most decidedly not be Senator.

***

Oh, out of fairness to the reader, I should note that my thoughts on Lex Luthor once inspired the only time someone offered to pay me to stop writing. But I'm not bitter.

Oh, and in other comic-book news, check out the story on Spider-Man declaring Barack Obama "Nerd-in-Chief." Junot Diaz is right: we do find ourselves square in the Nerd Age.

Fan-tastic 4 Me

Apparently people are finding my first book in budget racks all over the world. I've seen a recent upsurge in interest around Comic Book Character in recent days:

* A minister from Pretoria, South Africa, wants to use the online discussion guide with students there.

* He's joined by my youth minister friend on the north side of Chicago, who wants to use the same study guide with his junior high students.

* Lest the book be dismissed as juvenile, which I freely aver is in keeping with my own level of maturity, it was recently given props at the hoity-toity Books & Culture Online by a student of philosophy at Calvin College. (Thanks to Ted Olsen for letting me know, and thanks to Edirin Ibru for his merciful representation of my discussion of the Punisher.

* And to top it off, the editorial intern at my place of work thinks the flip animation in the margin is "super-cool."

What's with the recent upsurge? I'm sure it has a lot to do with the recent release of Spider-Man 3, which had a decidedly morally complex plotline. That study of human sinfulness is followed up this week by the second installment in the Fantastic 4 franchise, which takes a decidedly apocalyptic turn with the rise of the Silver Surfer and the impending destruction of our planet. I wrote a background piece on the Fantastic Four for Christianity Today in time for the release of the first film; it's one of my favorite writing exercises in recent memory (probably because of the prominent props given to G. K. Chesterton at the end), so I'll shamelessly promote myself one more time and provide you with the link. Get up to speed for the release this weekend by going here.

Speaking of Spider-Man

I recently regained the electronic rights to my book Comic Book Character, so now I can put portions of it online here. I thought, with the third film in the Spider-Man franchise coming this week to a theater near you, it might be fun to take a look at what about Peter Parker captured my imagination at the time. The following is excerpted from pages 23-24 of the book, under the heading "The Fantasy of Strength":

What is it about superheroes that makes them endure the tedium of normal life? And why do we, as readers, allow it? If we had the powers of our heroes, would we stand for the petty meanness of the average people who bully us? If we knew our friends had such powers, would we allow them to do nothing for us or for themselves?

There’s an unspoken rule among superheroes that powers are to be used only in critical situations. We’re not often told why, but the origin of one superhero gives us a look at what could happen without such self-restraint.

Spider-Man wasn’t always Spider-Man. For most of his childhood he was mild-mannered Peter Parker, an orphaned genius being raised by his elderly aunt and uncle. He was a bookish, withdrawn kid, regularly used and abused by his classmates. . . .

Then one day on a field trip to a laboratory, Peter was bitten by a spider exposed to radiation. Over time Peter discovered that he had appropriated the physical characteristics of a spider—the ability to stick to walls and ceilings; greatly enhanced strength, speed and agility; and (we’re told much later in the 2002 film) the capacity to spin his own webbing. He had always been smarter than anyone in his class; now he was stronger, faster, more talented and quickly more confident as well.

So Peter did what you might expect the butt of everyone’s jokes to do: he started showing off. He picked fights with schoolmates and got quick revenge on the people who had abused him for so long, and he started making lots of money by exploiting his newfound talents as an unbeatable mystery wrestler. He alienated everyone he encountered—his employer, his classmates, eventually even the press—with his rash, defiant attitude. And when he could have stopped a burglary without even exerting himself, he didn’t bother. All the average, immature high-school students got their comeuppance from Peter, but no bad guys met justice through Spider-Man.

Peter learned a painful lesson though. His uncle, who had raised him since his parents’ death, lost his life at the hands of the very burglar Peter had let escape. Peter quickly realized that by his inaction he was complicit in his uncle’s death. And by the end of his first adventure, as he meditated on his uncle’s advice—"With great power comes great responsibility"— he grew up a bit and discovered the proper channel for his abilities.

Peter Parker added an adolescent humanness to superheroes that until his debut in the comic Amazing Fantasy had played a minor role, and he resonated with his readers. We learned that to fantasize about having special powers was all well and good, but there was a corresponding ethic to having such powers, and our fantasies would not play out as we might like if we intended to remain the hero of our own stories. We can hope that someday we will be stronger than we are, better equipped to handle the hardships we inevitably face, but we must also hope that we will use that strength with wisdom and humility.

For Peter, that humility meant returning day after day to school and eventually to work, enduring humiliation as well as he could, and seeking the appropriate balance of power and responsibility that his uncle had pointed him toward. He used his powers only against those whose passions could not be controlled by the ordinary safeguards of law, common decency and moral impulse. He alternately used and hid his powers so that he and the people around him could live as normal and happy a life as possible. Such was his gift, and such was the greatest use of his strength.

Of course, this passage is looking at the origin of Spider-Man, and he's grown up quite a bit since then. The adult Peter Parker we'll meet in 3 faces problems progressively more complex and more grave. This third movie should once again do what the first two have already done: demanded more aesthetically, psychologically, relationally and even morally from the genre. Let me know what you think of the previews you've seen; as for me and my house, we will buy I-Max tickets in advance.