Save the Planet; Save the Earth
Two theater movies in two successive afternoons: and (in case you don’t know the latter title, it’s the global warming documentary starring Al Gore, who seems to have found his true calling on the big screen). And, believe me, I was much more excited about seeing the latter.
I’ve mentioned my feelings about Superman before. His boy-scoutishness and American-as-apple-pie-ishness annoy me, both in the 1978 original movie and in the current, nostalgic installment (again, I’m not discussing any other Superman media, because I haven’t seen/read them). Because of the aforementioned characteristics, I get particularly miffed when reviewers draw attention to Superman as a Christ figure. Jesus wasn’t a goody-two-shoes: he was perfect, divine, and yet more human than Superman could ever hope to be.
Superman Returns plays up the Christ angle more than the original movie, deliberately posturing star Brandon Routh in positions reminiscent of paintings of Jesus. And, of course, we have the repetition of Jor-El’s (a pompous Marlon Brando’s) pseudo-Johannine words to his Super-son: “They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my only son” and “You will carry me inside you all the days of your life; see my life through your eyes, as yours will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father and the father the son.” Apparently many Christians have (only, um, no Holy Spirit), but to me it just seems to be glorifying a very human sort of father-son (and exclusively father-son, not parent-child) relationship.
Then we have all sorts of lines about saviors. Lois Lane, bitter about Superman’s five-year absence, says “The world doesn’t need a savior. And neither do I.” Supes replies, “But everyday I hear people crying for one.” He hears everything with his super-ears, all the cries of suffering and distress from all around the world, and he goes around and rescues many of them—but what happens when he’s dallying with Ms. Lane? Every minute he spends with her is a minute in which convenience stores are robbed, trains derailed, and people killed. The idea of Superman as a unique savior is pretty untenable. Therefore, in Superman Returns, the screenwriters resort to the ultimate twenty-first century truism: we can all be supermen, if we look deep enough inside ourselves. We’ve got to learn to be our own saviors. Only . . . that’s not very much fun to watch, because most of us don’t have capes. So Superman lives on and on.
Of course, here the notion of a savior is very different from the Christian one. I won’t go into a discussion of soteriology, because I can’t pretend to understand it completely. But one aspect of Christian salvation that Superman does attempt to capture is that, ideally, Christ’s/Superman’s life is infectious. We just don’t really get to see the effects of that in the Superman movies.
Now . . . cut to An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore’s voice tell us how, if you drop a frog (insert animated frog here) into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out. But if you drop a frog into a pot of lukewarm water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will just stay there until . . . until . . . someone reaches down and plucks him out. It’s a surprise ending, and one that’s welcome to a person like me who can be extremely upset even by animated-animal death, but, through the laughs, you know that it’s silly—and, I would argue, un-Christian—to wait for God to magically undo all the environmental damage that we humans have wreaked. It’s not saying that we need to become our own saviors—but it is saying that we need to act. As the common proverb (cited in An Inconvenient Truth’s credits) goes, “Pray with your feet.”
In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore (or “Gore-El,” as I’ve been calling him around the house, to the horror of my Superman-fan Porpoise) does connect most powerfully to those who saw him as a savior (or at least as a much preferable alternative) in 2000. Gore introduces himself, with self-deprecating humor, as the man who “used to be the next President of the United States.” Throughout much of the film, he mentions his own failures—particularly failures to get people to hear his message about the environment. Those of us who are still in mourning over the election of 2000 are there with him, feeling we’ve failed, wondering what went wrong. The barrage of alarming—and clearly explained—facts that follow makes the failure seem all the more poignant.
And then, towards the end of the film, just after Gore has shown that the U.S. alone is responsible for over 30 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, he shows how the cumulative impact of apparently small progress—greater fuel efficiency standards, more alterative energy sources, more electricity-saving devices, etc.—could bring our carbon emissions even lower than they were in 1970. We already have all the technology. “We have everything we need,” Gore says. “Except the political will.” He pauses, then delivers the best line of the whole movie: “But in America, political will is a renewable resource.”
Oh. You mean that those of us who, since 2000, have been wearing black and muttering about immigrating to Canada could actually do something?
An Inconvenient Truth is so well targeted to get well-meaning wimpy environmentalists off their chairs and bike, not drive, to their nearest representative’s office. Unfortunately, this does mean that the movie is mostly preaching to the choir. But unlike, say, Michael Moore’s films, An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t just amuse us and make us mad: it motivates us to do something. The credits are filled with practical suggestions for ways to reduce your own environmental impact, as well as a prominently displayed web address directs you to a .
I do wish, however, that the film had greater crossover appeal. For example, I know that there are many well-meaning religious people out there who are concerned about the environment, but who believe that combating global warming would consume resources that could otherwise be devoted to the immediate needs of the poor and hungry. Gore does a good job of illustrating how the environment and world poverty—even world violence—are not separate causes, and how global warming will have the greatest impact on the poor. I just wish he would have deliberately tried to reach out to this slightly-outside-the-choir group by using language more reflective of religious and/or humanitarian motives. It’s language that could bridge the supposed red-blue divide.
To me, Gore-El, because we see and identify with his struggles and failures, has more power to inspire others to good action than Superman does. He can’t save us, and he’s telling us not to depend on him. Nor, he says, should we depend on our elected representatives to keep an issue on the agendas if it’s not on the tips of their constituents’ tongues (and typing fingers). We have to act and let them know that it’s important to us.
And I know that I, who have a tendency to curl up in a little overwhelmed ball rather than take action (I mean, beyond private actions of recycling and biking and so forth) against big bad problems, need the strength of Christ to go beyond myself. And that’s part of how Christ-as-savior works, part of how he answers prayers to save the earth.
SPOILER ALERT—Further Superman Returns Details Below!
I know there are people out there just waiting to argue that Superman displays more vulnerability than ever in Superman Returns, both physical and emotional. I agree. But it’s still not enough for me. Yes, you can see that he experiences emotional pain over the fact that Lois has a fiancé. But, because he’s good old boy-scout Superman, and he’s programmed to do the right thing, it doesn’t seem like it’s even a struggle for him to be noble and leave Lois and Richard to their life together. Superman may temporarily fail physically sometimes in the presence of Kryptonite, but, if he really struggles morally, we don’t see it. Maybe his stoicism would be more interesting if it were better acted.
There are also a number of plot holes in Superman Returns—for a summary of them, I refer you to .
7 comments July 2nd, 2006