The Life, the Job, the Mask

Everyone hopes to be content and fulfilled. A lot of people work very hard at it. Some people just ramble through life, doing what makes sense, working jobs as they come, complaining that things aren’t right and moving on, not seeking so much as drifting. I think most of us are drifters until we happen upon something worth seeking or make a choice to find it.

This isn’t a big new idea. If you’d like to see a real writer’s take on this American work ethic dystopia, check out Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It’s very fun. Not really. But it is very good. Regardless, in this day an age, the balance between working and living is a delicate endeavor. I really enjoy most of my work, and I struggle with it constantly.

Now, to business. I finally got around to checking out some of the DC’s New 52 stuff and it got me thinking. Most super heroes and a few villains  actually juggle three things: work, life, and the mask (or cape or inter-dimensional space suit) and a lot of them make it work.  Sure, crazy things happen to Clark Kent all the time and gene-spliced monsters frequent the lives of Peter Parker’s friends, but they tend to make it work. And by that I mean, they find happiness or at least a sense of meaning within these three aspects of life, even if one of the three sometimes impedes the others. Superhero lives are a lot more explosive than mine tends to be, but I think there is something to learn here.

Superheroes reflect people. All characters do. If that is true (and it is because I just said it), then what does the mask represent?

I think it represents passion. Some people discover a passion inside of them. They are driven towards it almost irrationally. A passion doesn’t even necessarily feel like a good thing or something you choose. Joan Didion describes the feeling very clearly in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t enjoy the Batman. But he needs it in order to feel complete. I think a lot of people spend their lives avoiding these passions. It is a terrifying thought to try something that really matters to you because you might fail. We wrap ourselves up in the things that seem important to everybody. There are support systems out there for these things. There are no safety nets for your passions.

The main difference between a caped crusader and you or I is that they are, by definition, going for it. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed, but they are alive in the moment. Their paths are wrought with conflict, but time and time again we see that through conflict comes growth and understanding.

What do you think?

1. Justice League #1 Review (2011)
2. A Horrible Truth about Super Powers
3. Super Powers. Inherently Evil?