Dark Knight

Dark Knight                                                4491

Friday, July 18th, 2008-3:15 A.M.

Just got back to the hotel after catching a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight" (don't worry, no spoilers here).  I'm in Newport, Tennessee on a night off, and staying at my favorite low-budget hotel, the Motel 6.  There just happened to have been a movie theater across the street offering the movie of the summer, so I decided to plunk down the money and check it out.

I won't get into the particulars of the film, but it was phenomenal.  I was sitting amongst a group of young people (bad) at midnight (worse) in a small, rural town in Tennesee (oh Jesus, kill me now).  And yet, as ill-behaved and chatty as they were during the previews, once the movie got started, they were quiet and focused on the spectacle up on the big screen.

The Batman franchise has been invigorated by the two newest films, washing the bad taste of the campy Joel Schumacher films out of our collective craw.  Christopher Nolan is a wonderful visual story-teller (rent "Memento" if you haven't seen it yet....an amazing film) and he really does the Bat-franchise justice.

It's gotten to the point where super-hero films are becoming pretty evergreen, suitable for any season and drawing big box-office.  As a long-time comic book collector, I take umbrage with some of the liberties that directors and screenwriters take with the source material sometimes, but even in the comic book industry itself, characters have been relaunched, killed, brought back from the dead, and given the old "parallel universe" treatment so many times that films jerking around with origin stories have almost become forgiveable.

I would like to think that society as a whole has caught up with what I and several million hard-core fans have known for years; that the super-hero genre is exciting, inspirational and fun.  A lot of it also may be that the film-making technology has caught up with the genre and allowed filmmakers to proceed withough making movies that look "clunky."

But closer to the truth is that I think we need heroes today, and pretty badly.

When Batman was first conceived, back in 1940 by creator Bob Kane, the country was fresh out of the Great Depression and the pot was being stirred for America to enter the second World War.  Superman came first, Batman second, and then a whole pantheon of characters came around, heroes like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow and the like, who can be seen on lunchboxes, bookbags, and a whole department store full of paraphenalia to this day.  The current crop of super-hero movies (and their embrace by the general public) may be a reflection that the cycle of war and economic depression has come around again.

The Spider-Man films have done great box office, as have the X-Men and Fantastic Four, as well as the minor characters like Ghost Rider, Daredevil and the Punisher.  Marvel has been very aggressive in getting their characters to the marketplace, and they've got Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk into the theaters this year, with an Avengers movie being set up in the final frames of the aforementioned Hulk film.

But Batman is the character that has seemed to resonate with film viewers, and doubtlessly, this new film will give Spider-Man a run for his money as the big box-office champ.  A lot of that will be the curiosity factor surrounding the departed Heath Ledger and his dark reading of the Joker in the film (and damn, was it a great job).  But the character also taps into a need that I think we all have.

Superman and Batman are the big two, the characters that started it all.  They are instantly recognizable all over the world, having been around for almost 70 years.  And many people can recite the origins of the two characters, or at least give a pretty decent synopsis.  Superman was the last son of the planet Krypton, rocketed to Earth by his father, Jor-El (Superman's Kryptonian name was Kal-El, El being the family name) and his mother, Lara.  Kal-El's tiny rocket landed in a Kansas cornfield, and the baby was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who adopted him as their own and named him Clark.  Batman was the son of Dr. Thomas and Martha Wayne, and he watched them get gunned down in an alley after attending a movie (it was "Zorro," Trivial Pursuit fans) by a stick-up man named Joe Chill.

It may have been a sign of the times that both characters suffered the loss of their birth parents, although Clark was provided with surrogate parents in the Kents and Bruce was taken care of by Alfred Pennyworth, the family butler.  Still, the motivation behind the two characters were shaped by these losses and circumstances.

Clark was found to have super powers, a symptom of Earth's lighter gravity and yellow sun.  When the Kents found out about these powers, they basically told their son that they didn't know why he could do the things that he could do, but that he ought to use those abilities to protect the weak, to defend people who couldn't fight for themselves.  Clark Kent set a course from Smallville to Metropolis, to be closer to a large group of people who would benefit from his protection.  The positioning of himself as a reporter at a newspaper was designed to put him in a place where incoming information would alert him to potential tragedies and disasters that he could intervene in and prevent.  Bruce decided, after studying law in an effort to become either a policeman or a lawyer, that the law was sometimes too narrow to mete out true justice, and that guilty persons oftentimes walked away unpunished.  His decision to deck himself out in the scary bat-garb was a response to his realization that criminals were a "superstitious, cowardly lot" and that he would scare them, giving himself the upper hand.

So we have Superman, the other-worldly boy scout, putting himself in a position to protect the weak, but it is Batman, the self-trained vigilante who positions himself to punish the guilty.  This difference resonates with us today, in our uncertain world, where we need the reassurance that the bad people are brought to justice, punished for their misdeeds, rather than concerning ourselves with those who bring hope and shelter to the weak.  Our entertainment gives us away.  We have several crime shows, the newest offering being the CSI series that show through intense investigative lab work, the crime scene investigators will always get down to the truth of the matter and catch the murderers, rapists and other malcontents.  There is no movement to portray the "supermen" who protect the weak.  There are few documentaries of the people who are out there doing good, because that is boring to us.  We crave retribution.

The whole idea of the death penalty is based on this idea.  We cling to the Judeo-Christian notion that if we execute murderers, we somehow balance the scales and justice is done.  But really, all that has happened is the application of the "two wrongs make aright" rule which has been disproven over and over again.  And yet we want it, and we want it badly.  I'm so anti-death penalty, it isn't funny, but when the inevitable question comes up "What if someone raped and murdered your sister?  Your wife?  Your daughter?"  Then I turn to my basest instincts and the next thing you know, I'm installing step-up transformers on the chair and oiling those leather straps.

We need heroes, but we also need to look inside ourselves and find the part that is better than that spirit of retribution; we need to encourage ourselves to concentrate on protecting the weak, rather than exacting vengeance.  It is no coincidence that Superman derives his powers from the light of the Sun, while Batman hides in the shadows.  They are the Yin and the Yang, two sides of the same coin.

Years ago, I allowed a young lady to enter my life, and she was a drug addict.  I invited her to live with me, and while I was away, playing at a comedy club in St. Louis, she stole almost all of my possessions and pawned them for drugs.  When I returned home to see what she had done, sold my things and disappeared, did I become Superman or Batman?  I'll give you a hint; I was on a nightly patrol, driving up and down the streets of my neighborhood, looking for a sight of her or anyone I knew from her group of drug friends.  The sad punchline to the story is that I never caught her or even caught up with her, and I eventually gave up the patrol.  What would I have done if I found her?  At the time, I probably couldn't have answered that question.  If I were to tell you that I would probably try to get her into a rehab program, or try to help her in some way, I would have been lying to you.  She needed to be punished for betraying my trust the way she did, as though living the life of a drug addict wasn't bad enough.

So what am I trying to say here?  I guess the moral of the story is try to use your strengths to protect the weak, because in the long run, it's more noble than trying to punish evil.  You should never stop trying to fight evil, but you should also pick your fights accordingly.

I am inspired to write more, but I am also tired as it is ten after four in the morning and I really should get to bed.  I thank you for reading, and hope you get to see "The Dark Knight."  It is a strong movie with great performances, some niftyplot twists, characters introduced that you probably wouldn't have expected, and all in all presents a fine morality tale for the ages.  In the meantime, fight evil and protect the weak.  We can be heroes, every day.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

You're A Better Man Than I

You're A Better Man Than I                              4338

Tuesday, July 1, 2008-10:30 A.M.

Good morning from sunny Florida, where I am in the third week of my three-week summer tour.  I am performing tomorrow night in Cordele, Georgia, for the Comedy Zone and then travel south to Fort Myers, Florida for my yearly engagement at the Laugh Inn Comedy Café.

I’ve been coming down to Florida for about five or six years now, starting when my late father begun experiencing  health complications due to cancer (he passed away last year).  I had planned a small Florida tour every year to visit Dad and stayed with him on the off-nights.  It was a great way to both fill my summer tour schedule (Florida clubs don’t suffer the way clubs in other parts of the country do because of the hot weather; it’s hot all year so it’s not noticeable) and get a chance to keep in touch with my parents, make sure they were o.k.

My mom is still here in Florida, so I stay with her on my off-nights while I’m on tour.  She doesn’t so much need my attention as her health is still pretty good, but I know she enjoys the visits and the company.  Last night, she took me out to dinner with her buddies, the Karaoke Mafia (my nickname for her roving band of singers who hop bar-to-bar and sing, and there’s a different bar each night that hosts karaoke), and we sat on the lakeside deck of a seafood restaurant called Tailchaser’s and took turns warbling classic country and soft rock hits beneath a hazy setting sun as the ‘gators peered from the lake with their beady, red eyes.

This morning, I woke early to join my mother’s singing buddy, Rick, at the gated community’s clubhouse for coffee and chatter.  Joining us were Rick’s mother and a friend of theirs, an older man who I will call “Howard.”  We got to chit-chatting, and somewhere along the line, Howard mentioned that he felt there were “too many blacks on TV.”  It was the sort of thing that startled me, but I recovered because once I thought about it, the bigotry didn’t surprise me…I’m speaking with a man who grew up with institutional racism, and the sad truth is that by the time most folks are in their late 20’s, their attitudes are already in place for the rest of their lives.

So I didn’t make mention of my offense, because I didn’t see the point in confronting it; this man wasn’t going to change and there was no reason for me to try, or even to show my distaste.  The bottom line was that this clubhouse was part of his home, and I was a visitor, and it was in better taste to hold my tongue.  But I’m also not the type to let a lesson go unlearned.

Howard continued by mentioning that someone forwarded him a funny cartoon in his morning e-mail, and the cartoon featured Barack Obama, with blacks running away from him in every direction.  The caption read “Why Blacks won’t vote for Obama” and the word balloon coming out of Obama’s mouth said “If I am elected President, every American who can work will have a job.”

Now, I’m a comedian and I enjoy a good joke.  Hell, I even enjoy a bad one from time to time.  But today, I just wasn’t willing to absorb this talk, so I responded with humor.  And I peppered the conversation with every “old fart” joke I could remember.  I did it with a smile on my face, like there was nothing wrong, and I was just being part of the party.  I didn’t bother to mention that my wife is of African American descent; it justdidn’t seem necessary.  And so the coffee klatch broke up, uncomfortably, and I’m guessing it was probably because Howard had to pee.

The reason I even bring this up is that my mother made a statement a few weeks ago, (in front of people!) that America still isn’t ready for a black President.  When she said it, in front of my wife, my sister-in-law and her parents, and me, I thought it just to be a very narrow-minded, tasteless thing to say.  Either she didn’t remember my wife’s ethnic heritage or chose to ignore it, either way I shriveled inside, that embarrassed, pain-in-the-balls feeling that you get when you bring someone to the party and they piss in the punch bowl.

At the time, I dismissed my mother’s statement as pithy; she’s not exactly a political genius.  I once made reference to the “thousand points of light” comment from Bush 41’s inaugural address (and this was while he was still in office!) and she had no idea what I was talking about.  But after hearing Howard make his comments this morning, about “too many blacks on TV” and the Obama cartoon, I had to deal with the sobering fact that this man’s generation, folks in the United States entering retirement age, now represent a huge chunk of the voting public.  And their attitudes were put in place in the 50’s and early 60’s, that magical time when blacks weren’t welcome at certain lunch counters, were set upon with dogs and fire hoses, and still got the stink eye if they mingled with whites.

Some of my mom’s karaoke buddies were a little younger than the rest of the group, and living in redneck Florida (Fishin’ Boat Florida, I calls it), I was holding out hope that they weren’t just towing the party line.  Luckily, they were not; they were Obama Democrats, and we spoke joyfully about donating money to the cause (the wife, Barbara, a little more joyous than Denton, the husband) and volunteering to register the thousands of unregistered black voters to help turn the tide.

Everything happens for a reason, and my coffee invitation this morning opened up my eyes.  There’s still a lot of work to be done in this country.  And I know that Howard isn’t reading this blog today, but if he did, the thing I would say to him this morning is that there are two men running for President this year, one of them young and black, and one of them old and white.  And if the black one wins, old people will be treated with kindness, fairness, equality and love.  Their opinions will be considered and they will have a place at the table.  Their medical needs will be attended to, and their dignity will be protected.

If the reverse happens, could Howard say the same?  What will America look like then?

I don’t like to think about it.  And the more I hear, the more I feel that we need just one more black on television.  Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court with his hand on a bible.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY