Category Archives: Pop Culture

Friday Night Lights Was What Roseanne Could Have Been

politics, Pop Culture

 

Image result for friday night lights

Rosanne is off the air for good after her racist tweet. Some are mourning the show’s loss because it portrayed a working class, Trump-supporting family sympathetically. The thinking has been that Hollywood and national media organizations are too quick to assume Trump voters are automatically racist and sexist. For their part, Trump voters felt misunderstood and enjoyed having a show that finally showed respect for their experience. Commentators who miss it want another show to showcase a family like Roseanne’s. But Friday Night Lights long ago accomplished what Rosanne could have.

Friday Night Lights centered around a High School football team in Dillon, Texas. One of the things I enjoyed about the show was how it used football as a vehicle to explore many serious issues still affecting our country.

It dealt with racism. Smash Williams (a black player) was the team’s running back, and he faced racism throughout season one. To make matters worse, it even came from his assistant coach Mac McGill, who should’ve had his back. In one episode, McGill observed that black players are like junkyard dogs and intellectually unfit to play quarterback. Unsurprisingly, Smash and the other black players were furious. It got to the point where they seriously contemplated sitting their next game. This episode was already interesting in that, far from portraying Dillon as an idyllic place, it laid bare simmering racial tensions between blacks and whites.

Where it got even better was that it allowed McGill to be more than an old white racist. At the next game, Smash got tackled after scoring a touchdown, and the ensuing altercation led officials to cancel the game. As the team rode home, the police stopped the team and came aboard to arrest Smash, claiming evidence that he threw the first punch. Of all people, McGill stood up, and told the police he wasn’t letting them on the bus without a warrant. And then in my favorite moment from the episode, said they made mistaken assumptions about Smash, “just like I did.” Maybe, McGill was just trying to ingratiate himself with his black players. But I like to think he genuinely grew. He was able to recognize his own racism and do better. In its own way, the incident shows us how to finally eradicate racism as a country. People like Mac McGill need to have the courage to see themselves as they really are and the confidence that they can be better.

Racial issues, of course, have been a central topic of discussion during the Trump administration. Think of the controversies over NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem, the President’s remarks after Charlottesville, or the immigration executive orders. In today’s climate, with its ongoing race conversation, we don’t really have a show like Friday Night Lights that shows racism in all of its ugliness, and yet manages to preach a message of racial optimism without being preachy.

I enjoyed how the show handled gender and career issues. One of the show’s highlights was Coach Taylor and his wife Tami’s awesome marriage. Throughout the series they confronted, the familiar question of how partners can ensure that a woman’s career doesn’t take a backseat. The couple repeatedly prioritized Coach’s career at first. But then Tami became a principal and was eventually offered a job as director of admissions at a private college. As we were asking whether Coach would follow her and put her career first for a change, it became clear that Tami had some resentment about how the couple had prioritized their careers. She told him that she had been a coach’s wife for so many years and wanted her career to take priority for once. He did.

This is still a fraught topic. Women who are ambitious in their careers frequently have to worry about coming across as unlikable. Others worry that their desire for fulfilling careers will turn off potential partners. Tami Taylor gave us an example of a woman in the heartland willing to question the often unstated assumption that her career was not worthy of the same consideration as her husband’s, and just as importantly, of a man who ultimately joined her.

I raise all this to illustrate that we can have a show that portrays “Middle America” respectfully and realistically. One that shows how far we have as a country to go on critical issues, and one which makes clear the goodness of people who live in places that feel alienated from Hollywood. And, it turns out we never needed someone who writes racist tweets to give it to us. Friday Night Lights has been there all along.

West Wing Can Heal Our Divides

politics, Pop Culture

Image result for ainsley hayes sam seaborn

We live in polarized times. Not only do we disagree with people who hold different political views, many of us also question their decency and intelligence. Today I want to suggest at least a partial solution to our troubled politics. We should all watch season two of the West Wing.

For those who haven’t seen it, West Wing focuses on Democratic President Jed Bartlett’s administration. While the show is almost twenty years old, the administration confronts familiar issues such as immigration, capital punishment, guns, and Supreme Court appointments. What really stands out about the show is its ability to be idealistic about politics while still coming across as plausible. All with some of the wittiest dialogue I’ve ever heard.

Early on in season two, conservative Ainsley Hayes crushes White House speechwriter Sam Seaborn in a debate on the show Capital Beat. The White House then does something unimaginable in today’s political climate: it hires her. What’s more, President Bartlett’s core team comes to value and respect her. When she is being harassed by two junior staffers who send her a vase of dead flowers, Sam fires them on the spot.

Aaron Sorkin is a well-known liberal. So he could easily have caricatured Hayes and her ideological views. She could have been a stereotypical southern conservative offered for comedic relief, or as a contrast to show how much wiser and smarter staffers like Seaborn were. But to his credit, Sorkin didn’t do that. Instead, he sought to really understand how a character like Hayes would think like she does and allow her to ably defend her ideology. He wrote her to be just as smart, insightful, and witty as anyone else. He even wrote a scene where she called Seaborn on his cultural elitism in a debate over gun control when she observed that at his core, he didn’t like people who liked guns. In that scene, she also called him on a blind spot where she noted that he talked a good game about the bill of rights, but didn’t really want to protect the second amendment.

Hayes also grows to appreciate the Bartlett administration. When meeting some conservative friends, one asks her “did you meet anyone who wasn’t worthless [while working at the White House]?” In an eloquent monologue she says that while they could question the White House’s policies, “their intent is good, their commitment is true, they are righteous; and they are patriots.” She ends by saying emphatically, “I am their lawyer.” Hayes understood a truth I wish more of us grasped—that people can disagree with us on issues we feel passionately about, and still be good people.

For issues important to us, some of us wonder how another person could possibly disagree. Actually, asking that question is key to understanding our ideological opponents. Instead of assuming that someone has a different view because she’s stupid or mean, we would do better to ask “how could a decent and thoughtful person see this issue so differently than I do?” We might go on to ask “even if I still hold my original position at the end of the day, what does my friend of the opposite political persuasion have to teach me? What blind spots might she be showing me? What assumptions am I making that she’s pointing out?” To ask these questions requires humility and self-awareness. To answer them requires open-mindedness and wisdom.

Those are the virtues which will help heal our divides and break the hold of poisonous tribalism. Daily, we see politics at its worst. One of the reasons I miss the West Wing was because it gave us a glimpse of what politics could be at its best.

Taraji’s The Best

Pop Culture

Taraji Henson might just be the best actress this generation. The past few weeks clarified this for me. I watched her pull off three very different roles: Detective Carter on Person of Interest, Cookie Lyon on Empire, and Melinda Gayle on Acrimony.

Person of Interest ended a couple of years ago, and was a great show. It follows a billionaire and former CIA operative as they use a complex computer network to stop murders before they happen. Taraji plays a cop who initially opposes them, but then comes to work with them. She is an earnest woman who wants to follow the law to a T and struggles with bending the rules to help even a noble cause. She was so good that when she died in season 3, I almost stopped watching the show.

A woman dedicated to law and order? That would surprise those of you who watched her as Cookie Lyon or Melinda Gayle. On Empire, the Lyons aren’t above threatening, blackmailing, or killing to get ahead. She threatens her own husband that she’ll ruin an IPO by telling the SEC that drug money was used to start Empire (in fairness her husband Lucius probably deserved it). And in Acrimony, Gayle eventually tries to murder her ex-husband and his new wife. Somehow, she does a convincing job of making you think she’s a victim, as I noted in my review.

In my book, the mark of a good actor is the ability to convincingly play very different roles, and to portray complicated, nuanced characters that we can both relate to and critique. Taraji can be ruthless, rachet, cunning, wise, deceitful, stupid, brilliant, empathetic, and earnest. Sometimes she manages to do all those things with just one character as she repeatedly does on Empire.

She hasn’t always had the best scripts or writing to work with. But whatever she’s in, she invariably makes better.

Don’t Listen to the Haters–Acrimony Was Good

Pop Culture

Acrimony is out to some less than stellar reviews. I disagree. It has deep, complex characters and phenomenal acting. The plot is a bit of a letdown, but the overall product was solid. [spoilers included].

The movie is initially told from Melinda Gayle’s (Taraji Henson) perspective. She is an aggrieved wife who has been cheated and abused by her husband. A charming man (Robert Gayle) waltzes into her life and supports her emotionally after losing her mom. The two get romantically involved and Melinda supports Robert by using her life insurance proceeds to pay for a new car and his last year in college. How does Robert repay her? By cheating. After he swears up-and-down that he’ll never cheat again, she takes him back and they marry.

A nasty surprise awaits. Robert robbed a bank as a teenager and is a convicted felon. This leads to him losing out on the job offers Melinda counted on to make their lives easier. Melinda presses on working two jobs while Robert tinkers with a rechargeable battery that no one else has showed interest in; he never brings in a steady paycheck. Melinda depletes her life insurance fund buying him research supplies. The two end up in debt and have to take out a mortgage on her mom’s house to stay afloat. Things would be so much better if Robert would stop wasting time on his stupid battery and get a real job. Melinda’s frustration was palpable. Amidst the ladies registering their disapproval in the theater, I myself was prepared to hate Robert. What a selfish guy, I told myself. What sort of man would sit idly by while his wife does all the work? Part of me cheered when she found he had the wallet of the same woman he cheated with (Diana) in his truck from the beginning of the movie and finally decided to leave him.

Then the battery sells for hundreds of millions of dollars. Robert tells Melinda he loves her, buys the house back (which they had lost), and gives her $10 million. This is where Melinda and Robert cease to be straightforward heroes and villains. Melinda visits Robert at his apartment and tells him she still loves him and suggests they could be together. Now, I thought Melinda was super fake. She comes trying to convince Robert to take her back after she divorced him, not because she had some epiphany about him, but because he was rich. Robert is engaged at this point to Diana. Seized with rage, Melinda harasses and ultimately tries to kill them.

But, while I hated Melinda’s actions, I couldn’t hate her. I could still understand why she was so angry. She had spent years selflessly providing for Robert, and now another woman was going to swoop in and enjoy the luxurious life Melinda’s sacrifices made possible. In some ways, she was incredibly unlucky. If she had just stayed with Robert another few weeks, she would have been on her way to becoming a billionaire. She and Robert could have thrived in their marriage without the financial pressures crushing them.

And it turned out Robert was a better man than I initially thought. Legally, he did not have to give Melinda $10 million or buy her house back. He had a moral obligation to do so and he did. It’s easy to envision another man with that fortune simply cutting off his first wife. When he vowed never to cheat again, I was skeptical, but he kept his word. And he kept his promises from the beginning of the movie to share his wealth with Melinda.

I thought both Melinda and Robert were well-acted. I found myself liking Robert by the end of the movie despite his shady beginning, and I found myself questioning how I felt about Melinda despite the justness of her rage at the beginning. Taraji and Lyriq Bent did a good job playing fascinating characters I wanted to talk about after the movie ended.

Now to the negative. Certain plot elements were so outlandish that they became hard to believe. Robert worked on his battery for 18 years and only pitched it to one company. Really? Was there only one company in the entire world that would be interested in a self-charging battery? I found it hard to accept that an inventor would really pursue such a limited strategy after working so hard on the battery. That in turn made the financial struggles Robert and Melinda faced seem artificial.

Still, I think the movie allowed viewers to wrestle with very real questions presented by quality acting. At what point should an individual give up on dreams of riches or fame? What duties would we owe loved ones who have supported us if we ever struck it big? Should we still have sympathy for Robert and/or Melinda at the end?

So I have to part company with all the negative reviewers. I found Acrimony enjoyable.

Wakanda’s Foreign Policy Conundrums Are A lot Like America’s

History, Pop Culture, Race

Wakanda’s foreign policy is a mess by the end of the movie. After spending most of it simply trying to keep prying eyes away from his kingdom, T’Challa starts an outreach center in Oakland and promises to share Wakanda’s knowledge with the rest of the world. Unintentionally (I think), the movie provides a valuable window into the competing strands of American foreign policy over its history.

Killmonger may be the movie’s villain, but in some ways he stands in for idealists who want America to promote freedom. He wants to use Wakanda’s military might to liberate blacks from their oppressors all over the world. It would be wrong, according to him, to have Wakanda sit idly by when it could instantly make things better for marginalized peoples.

He reminds me of Woodrow Wilson, in both flattering and unflattering ways. When asking Congress for a declaration of war, Wilson said the “world must be made safe for democracy.” In his 14 points further explaining America’s war aims, Wilson demanded an “absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

So both men wanted to use their countries’ might to further their moral crusades. But both men had blind spots. I found it interesting that Killmonger focused on the plight of blacks around the world, but not other groups such as Asians or Latin Americans who have been victims of European colonization. In fact, he never even acknowledges that other groups have suffered. In this, his vision of liberation appears to be an exclusive one. That is, he only wants to liberate the world’s blacks, but would leave other unjust structures firmly in place.

Wilson may have wanted to make the world safe for democracy, but he refused to make his own country safe for blacks. He presided over the resegregation of federal government departments. He approvingly screened “Birth of a Nation” in the White House, which celebrated the Ku Klux Klan. At the Paris peace conference after World War one, Wilson opposed a proposed clause in the Versailles treaty stating “The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.”

Interestingly, it is no answer to say Killmonger or Wilson were simply men of their times. In 2018, it strikes me that a Naval Academy graduate as motivated to fight oppression as Killmonger—and someone who had seen much of the world as a CIA operative—would be aware that colonialism and racism affected groups other than blacks. And yet, despite this knowledge, Killmonger’s vision of racial liberation is not universally inclusive.

It might be tempting to say that Woodrow Wilson held racist views as someone who grew up in the South during the 19th century, and that, although we should not excuse them, we should understand his racism in light of the time and place he grew up in. But Japan’s proposal for racial equality received majority support at the Versailles conference. So, a majority of Wilson’s contemporaries—who would have internalized racial stereotypes as leaders of countries colonizing Africa and Asia—were able to recognize that nations should not be treated differently because of race. It’s true that many Americans were racists when Wilson allowed the federal government’s resegregation or screened “Birth of a Nation.” But few had the opportunities to receive the extensive education he did or gain exposure to men like WEB Dubois, who could have easily disproven their stereotypes. The sad fact is that if any man had the chance to rise above the racism of his time, it was someone like Wilson.

Both Wilson and Killmonger were idealistic men who failed to follow their ideals to their logical conclusion.

T’Challa represents a strand of American foreign policy seeking to keep the rest of the world at a distance. It’s a tradition going all the way back to the early republic, when George Washington urged his countrymen to avoid entangling alliances with other nations. In his farewell address, Washington argued that America’s “detached and distant situation”—with an ocean separating it from European powers—would allow it to “defy material injury from external annoyance.” He defended staying out of a war raging in Europe.

America managed to stay mostly to itself during the 19th century. But the turn of the 20th saw increased American involvement in international affairs. Almost as if on cue, the American Anti-Imperialist League formed to oppose annexing the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish American war. Charles Lindberg, the pilot who made the first transatlantic flight, barnstormed the country arguing that America should stay out of World War two. Prominent congressmen opposed President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to provide arms and other aid to the British as the Germans attacked. But in general, interventionists have won over the last century. Think of American involvement in the world wars, the Marshall plan, the Korean war, Vietnam, and Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Early in the movie, T’Challa says nothing when a friend claims “[w]hen you let in refugees, they bring their problems with them.” And he opposes Killmonger’s attempts to use Wakandan military might to liberate blacks around the globe. Later, of course, he does offer to share Wakanada’s knowledge with the rest of the world.

In both cases, the hesitancy to get involved in foreign affairs reflects (in part) beliefs that America and Wakanda are exceptional. Because both countries are special, engaging with the world will only bring polluting influences. America’s isolationists would say that it is a city on a hill that should float above the rest of the world. Wakanda’s would stay the same. And in both cases, the impulse to spread their ideals to the rest of the world stems from that same belief.

At the end, Wakanda prods itself to take a difficult middle course. One where it maintains its security, but lives up to its ideals. It is a path America is still trying to navigate.

T’Challa and Killmonger Aren’t Martin and Malcolm No Matter How Much We Want Them To Be

Pop Culture, Race

T’Challa and Killmonger have been compared to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. This is an unsurprising lens to view the relationship between black leaders given their distinctive philosophies and hold on the popular imagination. The idea is that both have noble goals, but that while one goes about his in a gracious, loving way, the other is a violent radical.

But I’m convinced this analogy is not particularly helpful for two reasons. First, it reduces them into caricatures bearing little resemblance to who they were in real life. Today, Dr. King has a national holiday and is a revered figure. But “gracious” and “loving” were not terms often used to describe him during the Civil Rights movement. Gallup never showed him with more than a 45% favorable rating in his lifetime. In fact, by 1966, 63% of Americans viewed him unfavorably. He was apt to be called a demagogue and a Communist. He died leading a poor people’s campaign that could get him accused of class warfare.

This shouldn’t be surprising. He was unpopular to so many precisely because he challenged so many popular attitudes about black people. In his own way, he was a radical. He admitted as much himself. The purpose of his demonstrations in Birmingham, he wrote in a famous letter from its jail, was “to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue [of racism].” He had no patience for self-described moderates. In fact, he had “almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Malcolm X is usually remembered as an angry racist. And understandably so. He referred to whites as “white devils.” He argued that blacks should not identify with America because it was a “white man’s country,” and asserted that identifying as Americans was akin to “the ex-slave who is now trying to get himself integrated into the slave master’s house.” When a white college girl asked how she could help, he turned her away.

There was more to the story. In 1964, he went on his obligatory once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca. What happened there changed his views. He had “eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same God…fellow Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond…” He went onto say that this “was the first time in my life that I didn’t see them as ‘white men.’” So before he died, Malcolm X had renounced the views that comparisons to him draw upon.

If we really wanted to compare Killmonger and T’Challa to Malcolm X and Dr. King, we would need to compare them to Malcolm X and Dr. King as they actually were, not necessarily as we now remember them.

Second, even if we caricature the two, I don’t see how either Killmonger or T’Challa resembles them. If we insist on remembering Dr. King only as a kindhearted man who preached love, then neither Killmonger nor T’Challa fits the bill. Killmonger for obvious reasons; he’s a murderer who’s willing to cause a civil war and use Wakanda’s military to cause destruction around the world. T’Challa for his part might not be violent, but he certainly doesn’t advocate universal love. He says nothing when a man argues for excluding refugees from Wakanda because they bring problems. And for most of the movie, he refuses to use Wakanda’s knowledge to improve the lot of nearby countries, or the rest of the world. You wouldn’t say he dreams that Wakandans will be able to sit down with citizens from other countries at the table of brotherhood.

Neither resembles Malcolm X. Killmonger might seem like he does because of his violence and hatred. But there are important differences. Malcolm X’s religious beliefs were core to who he was. We have no indication that Killmonger has any. Where Malcolm X was eventually able to question his hatred and move past it, Killmonger never does. And while T’Challa doesn’t appear to care about anyone else but his own people, he never harbors the resentment that continues to characterize how people see Malcolm X.

So I don’t see Malcolm X or Dr. King as a useful analogy in this movie. I will say, though, that Killmonger calls to mind another important 20th century black leader: Marcus Garvey. Founder of the United Negro Improvement Association, Garvey wanted to see blacks unite, become self-sufficient, and ultimately go back to Africa and found an independent nation. Killmonger wants Wakanda to become that nation.

To advance his vision, Garvey met with Ku Klux Klan leader Edward Clark; he thought he could work with the KKK because both organizations advocated racial purity. Killmonger worked as a CIA operative for a country he regarded as an imperialist oppressor of blacks to gain the knowledge and skills he would ultimately use to take over Wakanda. Both men were willing to work with whites they detested to further their causes.

Garvey’s ideology lived on after he died. Killmonger is his heir.

So Maybe Holdo Isn’t a Hero…

Pop Culture

My friend, the wonderful Caitlin Hewes, has written a rebuttal to my post on Vice Admiral Holdo. It’s well worth your time to check out:

Given the recent international box-office performance of the latest addition of the Star Wars franchise has been sub-par at best, I’m pretty confident I’m the only one still talking about The Last Jedi. That said, if you haven’t seen it, it’s coming out on an Apple TV near you on March 13. My lateness to reply aside, a recent debate over the weekend reminded me I was going to write this, so here it goes.

There are many different shades of heroism in this film. I’d certainly agree with Marcus that the film questions the narrative that you must achieve, or fail, at something spectacular enough for other people to notice to be considered a hero.

Consider the mysterious-misadventure-that-reveals-nothing-and-wastes-our-time on the gambling planet Elerion as Exhibit #1. Pandering political commentary aside, WHY was this in the film at all? Rose and Finn go off to get some random guy who might be able to do a random thing that just might save everyone. They completely fail in pretty much every way possible, make it back to the rebellion safe and sound and go on with it as if nothing ever happened. Whoo hoo!? Seriously, if either of them had been a US political candidate in the next election cycle I would have run hundreds of attack adds exposing their wasteful use of Rebellion resources.

No one would argue Rose and Finn are intended to be heroes, but are they? I’m not sure, and for the same reason I don’t believe Holdo is a hero either. Being a leader, and by extension, a hero (whether you can be a hero without being a leader is a question for another day) requires you to get ‘buy-in’ from those you’re leading. The random jaunts by Poe, Rose, and Finn, valuable leaders with strong followership within the Rebellion, are directly attributable to Holdo’s lack of leadership. If Poe, Rose, and Finn understood the purpose of Holdo’s actions, they could have supported her, or at least held back from full scale mutiny. However, Holdo’s lack of action convinced them that Holdo had no plan and therefore they needed to do whatever they could as independent agents aka mutineers to save the Rebellion.

Let’s think about what would have happened if Holdo had involved Poe.

  • Holdo: I have this plan where we’re going to sacrifice all the ships but most people survive and we’ll figure out what to do later.
  • Poe: That’s completely nuts. We should attack and give people cover to flee.
  • Holdo: This is the only way we’ll convince the First Order that there’s nothing suspicious going on. What do you think?
  • Poe: I think it could work, but we should make X,Y,Z changes. I’ll get my people on it straight away, they’ll be glad to know what we’re going to do.

Now, Holdo has not only prevented a mutiny she’s enlisted a valuable ally and strategic thinker who can help her to make her plan better. The magic of building ‘buy-in’ with key stakeholders like Poe is that even if he disagrees Poe will likely voice his disagreement to Holdo and try to work it out before doing something that could endanger the entire mission (like a mutiny!)

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and heroes certainly don’t have to go around advertising their plans. But, the greatest heroes are those who didn’t fight alone[1], who were humble enough to ask for advice and help and once in a while, even change their minds.

[1] Even Jesus had 12 disciples who were somewhat ‘in’ on the plan

 

Dark Knight Still Resonates Ten Years Later

Pop Culture

I was rewatching Batman: Dark Knight the other day. And this time, I felt especially grabbed by the scene where two ships are in the water. One has regular Gotham citizens and the other has criminals. The joker gives each detonators to blow the other ship up. And he gives them a choice: either one of you blows the other ship up, or I’ll blow both of you up.

The people on both ships debated it for a while, but in the end, no one could bring themselves to actually push the button. Even after a man said that the criminals had their chance to do right and that if anyone was going to die, it should be them, he couldn’t push it. This scene gives us a fascinating—and uplifting— window into human nature.

First, it surely shows a discomfort with taking lives. Even if the criminals didn’t deserve to live, and even if killing them were necessary to save themselves, Gotham’s citizens didn’t want blood on their hands. This is particularly striking when we consider the criminals. It’s certainly plausible that there were murderers among them. And yet, they couldn’t bring themselves to push the detonator either. Perhaps, the movie’s writers are telling us, most people understand that human life has inherent value, even when placed in situations where there’s an incentive to kill.

Second, it provides a message about how to fight terrorists. That’s basically what the joker is. He is hoping to use terror to win his fight against Batman and Gotham. In such situations, there is a temptation to do whatever we have to in order to survive. That seems to be what the man who initially suggests blowing up the criminal ship has in mind. Yes, killing may be bad, but it’s what has to be done so we can live. But this would have given the Joker what he wanted: showing that human life is worthless and that people are inherently wicked, willing to run roughshod over others if it’s to their advantage. The only way to truly defeat the Joker was to reject the ideas he stood for, and that posed a real risk.

Third, I can’t help seeing a lesson that there is hope even the worst criminal can be redeemed. In a poignant moment, a huge criminal with a frightening frown commands an official to give him the detonator. The official obliges, and then the criminal throws it overboard. We don’t know what this man’s crimes were. But we know he was better than whatever bad decisions he made. He showed more regard for human life than many people without criminal records might under similar circumstances.

Do we really believe that criminals are capable of such goodness? Do we believe they deserve dignity? Dark Knight answers both questions affirmatively. If we do, that belief should inform how we treat criminals. We should seek to create environments that encourage their best instincts.

This is an optimistic portrayal of human nature for sure. And it contrasts with Harvey Dent’s storyline. Harvey starts out as an idealistic crusader risking his life to go after Gotham’s criminals. But after he loses Rachel, his fury turns him into a murderer. So while a crisis brought out the best from people aboard the ships rigged with explosives, it brought out the worst in Harvey.

That is the question I’m left with at the end of the movie. When the chips are down and we’re on the verge of losing everything, will we be more like the criminal who threw out the detonator, or more like Harvey?

When Heroism Doesn’t Look Heroic

Pop Culture

If you haven’t seen the new Star Wars, you should. In my opinion, it’s probably the best film in the series since the original trilogy. One of the things that I appreciated was its nuanced take on heroism. Most of us think of heroes as brave and dashing. They take bold steps and inspire others with their audacity. That description doesn’t fit Vice-Admiral Holdo—at least not at first.

With Princess Leia injured, Holdo takes command of the resistance’s fleet. Poe in particular (this trilogy’s hotshot pilot) is waiting for a big move like a counter-attack from her. It doesn’t come. Instead, she appears to sit there passively. She keeps the fleet out of range of the First Order’s cannons, but there isn’t enough fuel to do that for long. Finally, we learn that she is diverting fuel to transports to abandon ship. The whole time, she had a plan.

Of course, it wasn’t good enough for Poe. He starts to think she might be a traitor working for the First Order, or at the very least weak and incompetent. And it’s hard not to sympathize. If Holdo has her way, the resistance won’t have a fleet to fight the First Order with. He stages a mutiny which Holdo eventually puts down.

That’s when we find out the final part of Holdo’s plan. While the transports are traveling, she intends to stay on the ship to draw First Order fire. Aside from Leia and a few individuals nearby who may be listening into the conversation, no one knows about the sacrifice Holdo will make. Of course, the plan is disrupted when the First Order gets wind of the transports. It starts shooting them out of the sky. To give the remaining transports a chance, Holdo flies her ship into the First Order’s fleet, sacrificing herself all the same.

Holdo is a true hero. Thing is, she doesn’t look like it for most of the movie. In fact, her plan demands that she not look like a hero. She could’ve ordered a foolhardy attack to look brave, and it probably would have brought her cheers. But given the First Order’s superiority in numbers, such an attack would have inevitably failed. So, in order to be a hero who saved the people she cared about, Holdo had to be willing for her subordinates not to think of her as a hero.

That got me thinking. Some part of us probably wants to be considered heroic for the adulation we’d receive. If we were heroes, people would look up to us and admire us. It may be fair to say that most of us would jump at the chance to do something heroic if it meant we’d get praise. But how many of us would do something heroic if it meant we’d be condemned for it? What makes Holdo so heroic in my view is that she puts the good of her fleet ahead of her image. It’s a basic insight, but one that leaders fail to live by all the time.

Lots of impressionable kids were at the theaters watching this movie. I hope they all aspire to be heroes in their own way. What I hope they realize looking back is that the same actions that will make them true heroes will not always look heroic.

When Life Closes Doors, Watch This is Us

Inspiration, Pop Culture

Last week’s episode of This is Us got me thinking about how we deal with closed doors in life. In the episode, we see repeated flashbacks to Kevin’s high school football career. He was such a standout quarterback that he could turn his nose up at a scholarship offer from the University of Pittsburgh—surely he was going to Notre Dame or another powerhouse program. The NFL would follow.

His knee had other ideas. On one play, a defender tackled him hard in the knee and he had to be taken off the field in a stretcher. After an MRI, his dad had to give him the terrible news. His knee would likely never allow him to play football again. In an instant, dreams he had harbored for years were destroyed. What sticks with me is what his dad told him next: I know football isn’t the only talent you have. It may take you a while to figure out what that talent is, but it’ll be special.

I’m sure that must have been so hard to believe laying there in that hospital bed. But as we find out, Kevin ended up having a successful acting career. In fact, his talent for acting is something he probably wouldn’t have discovered if he had kept playing football. Looking back, Kevin’s life turned out far differently than he had imagined as a teenager. But can we really say it was worse?

Somebody reading this may have just found out that a door they had been working towards most of their lives suddenly closed. For you, I say take heart. Whatever talent it was you used to pursue that opportunity, it isn’t your only one. That door may no longer be open, but somewhere there is another one that is.