Superheroes draw on universal themes

Posted: 7/07/06

Superheroes draw on universal themes

By Lauren Kirk

Special to the Baptist Standard

Dazzling special effects and out-of-this-world action un-doubtedly attract viewers to the big-screen versions of popular superheroes like Superman, Batman and X-Men. But Baylor University English Professor Greg Garrett believes an even more powerful force draws people into these comic book-inspired adventures.

Superhero stories “communicate important truths about the way we live,” Garrett said. “These are powerful stories with larger-than-life characters.”

The characters’ popularity is indisputable. At $103.1 million, X-Men: The Last Stand ranked the third-highest grossing film over a three-day start of any film in history and reached $120 million over its four-day opening.

Last summer’s Batman Begins topped the $200 million mark less than two months after its release.

And Superman Returns, which hit theaters June 28, promises to be the blockbuster hit of this summer, vaulting to first place at the box office faster than a speeding bullet.

These movies—and the superhuman characters they feature—touch on universal themes, Garrett insists. He has written several books about the spiritual dimension of movies and comic books. The Gospel Reloaded, which he wrote with Chris Seay, compares the Matrix characters to comic book characters and to biblical themes. Holy Superheroes explores what superheroes can teach about spirituality and faith.

And his upcoming book, The Gospel According to Hollywood, looks at underlying religious meaning in popular films.

“I was drawn to the stories. I wanted to make connections between the stories that are important to me and to Christians and the stories that I love in popular culture,” Garrett said.

X-Men, for instance, focuses on themes of tolerance and prejudice, he noted. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s, the stories about oppressed mutants paralleled struggles in the Civil Rights movement.

Batman—the caped crusader who committed his life to fighting crime after his parents’ murder—touches on life and death issues with which everyone can identify, he observed.

“We all face loss in our lives. We all wonder what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives,” Garrett said.

The familiar story of Superman—sent to earth by his father, endowed with special powers and committed to saving humankind from the forces of evil—closely parallels the Jewish belief that the Messiah will come to save the world and draws on Christian beliefs about Jesus as the Messiah, Garrett noted.

“The approach that Jesus takes in the Gospel of Mark, going around doing good deeds, is similar to what Superman does,” he said. “If there is a problem and somebody needs help, he steps in and does something about it to save the day.”

Garrett thinks Christians can use the themes in comic book stories and the movies inspired by them to witness to nonbelievers interested in these stories but not in Christianity.

He suggests Christians do this by finding connections between the comic book stories and their own stories of faith and then sharing these stories with others.

“We need to recognize that we are all spiritual beings,” he said. Not everyone accepts organized religion, but “almost everyone responds to powerful, spiritual stories in our culture.”