You may not believe this, but I do more than just review movies and write eccentric “Movie Monday” blogs. No, I’m also a father and, as such, I blog for Focus on the Family’s Dad Matters blog fairly regularly. And sometimes, my friend and fellow Dad Matters blogger Sam Hoover get to talk about movies from a father’s point of view. Below is our conversation regarding Man of Steel, the new Superman movie.
Sam: I don’t even know where to begin so maybe if I dip my cape into the water, we can follow the ripples to some meaningful place. Let’s start with Superman’s dad. I haven’t followed Superman mythology to know names, but I think I deciphered that his name is Jarrell. We learn to care about him in the opening scenes where Russell Crowe’s character plays midwife to his son’s birth. Should we just stop right there and give this guy Dad of the Year accolades? This guy not only conceals the birth of the first naturally conceived child in a few centuries, he doesn’t even let any other humans in the room. Are we supposed to give this guy mad props for “being there” or is he just mad?
Paul: Oh, Sam, you of little geekiness. Superman’s biological father is named Jor-El—incidentally a name that, according to the Internet (and we know how reliable that is) loosely translates into “God will uplift” in Hebrew. I’m not really up on my Hebrew, so I can’t verify this to be absolutely true. But I do think that El is a Hebrew word for God, and that the Superman mythos is just littered with little religiousy tidbits, so I’d not be surprised.
But despite his cool name, I think Jor-El’s fathering skills are a little suspect. Yes, he actually helps deliver his own baby. But, as my wife often reminds me, his wife did most of the real work. And then, without so much as taking a picture of the kid for Facebook, Jor-El slaps the little one into a spacepod, downloads a whole bunch of sensitive info into his genes like he’s a biological flash drive and blasts him into outer space‑‑and to a planet plagued by traffic congestion, fast food and reality television. Talk about your uninvolved father.
OK, granted, Jor-El’s home planet was going to blow up. As a dad, that doesn’t leave you with a lot of choices. And he does reconnect posthumously via computer interface a little later. But when it comes to fathers, I’m way more impressed with the Man o’ Steel’s adoptive father—who looks startlingly like that guy from Field of Dreams.
Sam: See, I was picking up on the guy who dances with wolves.
Man of Steel could really be retitled to My Two Dads. Each dad gives Superman a gift: strength from Jor-El and compassion from Jonathan Kent. And each dad imparts these gifts to Superman without a moment to spare as both of his dads are taken away from their son, sacrificing themselves for the benefit of others.
For me, this brings up the question of prioritizing life lessons for my kids. Should I be taken from my kids before I can complete their life education, what do I want them to know? What good parts of my life do I want them to have for themselves? Since my DNA aligns more closely than that of Greg Heffley, I can’t rely on my kids genetics to get them halfway to success out of the gate. I have to choose what lessons to teach, when to teach them and then discern they’ve mastered that lesson before I move onto the next.
Paul: Thankfully, I’m going to live to be 150 and plan to still give my children advice (lucky them) when they’re both in nursing homes. By that time, of course, it’ll be mainly tips on what foods taste best when put through a blender.
But for other people, your thoughts on what lessons are important to pass on is a good one to ponder. People always argue what’s more important: The “nature” side of being a parent (what genes your kids get) and the “nurture” side. As we see in Superman, both are incredibly important … but it’s the “nurturing” side—the character lessons that Jonathan Kent obviously taught his boy “Clark”—that really made the guy a superhero. Sure, Jor-El and his home planet of Krypton was the source of Superman’s physical gifts. But that could’ve made Supes more of a monster than a hero had Jonathan not given Clark such a great moral underpinning. We don’t see how Jonathan taught these lessons to Clark, maybe in part because he conveyed them each and every day. I think so many lessons are taught to our kids just in the way we carry ourselves, don’t you think? Our kids watch us more closely than we think (and more closely than maybe we’d like). They see when our deeds match up with the “lessons” we teach. And if they’re inconsistent, they’ll sniff it out.
When it comes to prioritizing lessons, I think that Jonathan’s priorities are right on. First, he tells Clark that it’s not the gifts that we’re given that makes us special; it’s what we do with them. And second, those gifts were given to us for a reason. It behooves us to try to find out what that reason is.
(By the way, don’t get the Greg Heffley reference …)
Sam: Now who is the one of little geekiness?!
So one of conflicts of Man of Steel is the revelation of Superman’s true identity. Until the evil General Zod puts Earth into his nefarious crosshairs, Superman has only been a very conflicted Clark — one who knows he is special but one who cannot keep his uniqueness hidden. He’s overwhelmed by his super senses as a grade schooler. He saves children on a bus that’s plunged into a river. He’s picked on and bullied by his classmates but remains a pacifist. Even as an adult, Clark is resigned to keeping his identity a secret as he rescues a team on a burning oil rig. He leaves “signs and wonders” everywhere he goes but without people knowing who he really is.
As a parent in a hyper-connected culture with the Internet, social media and a 24/7 hour news cycle, we’re constantly under pressure to not only prepare our kids adequately for their future, but to push them out the door so they can contribute to society.
One has to wonder was it fair for Superman to hide these abilities as long as he did. Didn’t the world need him every single day before it was at risk of annihilation? Didn’t Superman owe it to the planet to be using his strengths all along? When do we, as parents, know it’s time to send our little superheroes out into the big bad world to fight for truth, justice and the American Way?
Paul: According to the movie, Jonathan wants Clark to keep his powers under a bushel because the wider world wasn’t ready for it. As a storytelling device, it makes sense, given Superman’s quest for identity and all. As a spiritual analogy, it makes sense: Jesus kept his identity pretty secret for a good long while, too. But I agree with you, Sam. Even a 14-year-old Superman would’ve been a nice guy for the world to have around (assuming, of course, he didn’t abuse his superpowers through super teenage angst or something).
As dads of our own super kids, it’s an interesting concept to unpack, isn’t it? Like Kal-El/Superman, our kids are blessed with certain gifts and abilities, many of which reveal themselves early on. (My own 3-year-old son, for instance, could peg a goose with a piece of bread from 20 feet away. We were expecting some serious football scholarships.) Alas, none of our children (as far as I know) have been blessed with the gift of indestructability. They can be hurt—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And so because of that, we’ve got to be pretty watchful. It’s so cliché, but I do think we assume the role of gardener—watering and weeding and chasing away metaphorical rabbits to give our kids every opportunity to grow and blossom.
Jonathan’s challenge as a gardener is a little different than ours, given his little boy is the equivalent of a titanium dandelion. But still, there’s some work to be done. He sees Clark’s gifts early on, but he knows his inherent abilities won’t be enough to make him a “super” guy. So he gives his own set of gifts to his son and, as we’ve said, that’s fantastic. But I don’t think it’d be good for us to embrace everything Jonathan does with his kid. I think that, for us as parents, we shouldn’t unveil our children to the world in one massive, cinematic moment: It’s about us revealing the world to our children, gradually and courageously.
Just as we help them to walk and run and ride a bike and drive, we try to help our children make sense of the world—and how they can make a place for themselves within it. We encourage them to explore (within reason). We encourage them to take chances (within reason). We should, I think, tell them to do their best all the time (something Jonathan really didn’t do, and maybe couldn’t do, with Clark) and reassure them that, if they mess up or make a mistake along the way, we’ll still love ’em. That they’re always super in our eyes.
Editor’s Note: It’s not just small-f fatherhood that’s worth exploring when it comes to Superman, it’s also capital-f Fatherhood. Link to “Man of Steel: Longing for Superman” to read more of Paul’s personal thoughts about that spiritual subject. And, of course, jump over to our movie review of Man of Steel for all the nitty-gritty about the film itself.
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