What My Son Learned from Watching Spectacular Spiderman

Lazarus, after watching the episode about the Green Goblin:

“A boy turns into his dad. He turns into a different person, he gets bigger, and he becomes a bad guy.”

Boy Saves His Dad by Throwing Truck into Racing Gear

Every once in a while I have to report on a feel-good story. This one comes from the Black Hills in South Dakota, where a boy got a truck off of his father, who was pinned underneath. The father told the boy to throw it into “racing gear,” which earlier he had told his son was the meaning of the “R.”   The father lived, and the boy is being honored as a local celebrity. The full story here.

Abraham, Sodom and the Gospel of Jack Black

“liberalism,” def.: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, disapproves of your sexual proclivities.

It was no minor miracle.  Last night I persuaded my wife to watch Year One, a comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera.  In it two primitive tribesmen leave their village only to find themselves in the midst of biblical salvation history.   The poop jokes abounding throughout the film were, predictably, hilarious.  My wife’s reaction to the humor was, predictably, cool.  What the two of us could agree on in any case was Year One‘s utter disregard for the Genesis narrative.

In the movie the two protagonists run into Abraham, who is in the process of sacrificing Isaac.  Isaac is a mouthy, sex-crazed profligate, so it’s understandable why the father of all nations wants to slay the youngster.  When Black and Cera break up the would-be sacrifice, Abraham believes it to be divine intervention, and the two men are taken into the Hebrew clan.  Of course, the people of Abraham practice all manner of deviant behavior: his daughter is a lesbian, another son practices buggery.  A few scenes later Abraham gets it in his mind that he must circumcise every male among him, not so much for covenantal purposes as for a quasi-religious way to address sexual lust.  Throughout the visit to the proto-Israelite camp, Black and Cera endure Abraham’s diatribes against the people of Sodom.  The sexually depraved Sodomites are a people hideous to the prudish Abraham, and loathing for them drips from his mouth.

Casting the biblical patriarch as a sexually repressed sadist makes sense only in the gospel of Jack Black.  Denial of any personal liberty represents sin.  Numerous freaks lie along the path to wholeness, but the real problem are the puritanical.   Deliverance comes in the form of antiauthoritarian expression and the genuine friendship of those who condone one’s animalistic passions (which turns out to be the overtly didactic conclusion of Year One). 

The flick got me thinking about Abraham’s masculine identity, in any case.  If he didn’t establish his gendered self-identity as a pathologically aggressive killjoy, then how did he?  Of course, there is something to be said about his slippery personality when it came to interacting with pharoahs (Gen 12) and kings (Gen 20), not to mention his passive but self-serving attentiveness to his own wife (Gen 16).  More positively, he lives into his calling to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:2-3).  In stark contradition to Year One, Abraham is wholly on the side of Sodom.  He saves their people from wholesale defeat and slavery (Gen 14).  When the LORD intends to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, it is Abraham who comes to their rescue, interceding on their behalf (Gen 18).  That is to say, Abraham’s posture is not one of self-righteous condescension at all, but one of deep and abiding hospitality.

In the end, Abraham does far better than tolerate the Sodomites.  He intervenes for them who are so remote from the divine covenant.  That is a form of friendship quite impossible for Year One, caught in its haze of blasphemy and methane, to comprehend.

Contraceptive Pill for Men Remains Elusive

For as long as I’ve been doing men’s studies, researchers have claimed that the birth control pill for men is only a few years away.  That promise has never materialized.  The problem has to do with the tenaciousness of the male reproductive system, which produces 1,000 sperm each second (compared to the one ovum a month in women). 

Nevertheless, CNN reports, the thirty studies done in the last thirty years may be about to pay off.  A study of 1,000 Chinese men achieved 95% success with a hormonal injection.  That same rate has not been duplicated in the United States, though contraceptive gels are looking like a promising option. 

In any case, wide-scale studies have yet to be started, meaning we’re still five years or more away from having the pill for men available.

Encouraging Stories from Men about Men

It takes no more effort than tuning in to the evening news in order to find bad news about men: embezzelment, abuse, theft, corruption, cheating, molestation, lies.  But that isn’t the only word.  Here are a couple other sources to hear about positive things men are doing with their lives.

Tom Matlock founded the Good Men Project, devoted to capturing stories from men about the key decisions they’ve made to become honorable fathers, sons, husbands and friends.   A DVD and a book have each been released, and an introductory video is available online.

Sidney Poitier recently released his third memoir, entitled Life beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter.   Above and beyond his breakthrough roles as a black actor, Poitier testifies to a life of courage and character, and reveals insight about his own father, whose lack of education and opportunity never kept him from passing on remarkable character to his children.

William Herschel on Talking One’s Son out of Industry and Integrity

Richard Holmes, in his fine book about the years following the British Enlightenment, Age of Wonder, describes a series of correspondence between the renowned astronomer William Herschel and his son, John (pp.387-390).  Even beneath his father’s enormous shadow, John had done pretty well for himself, becoming a Fellow at Cambridge University and achieving some advances in calculus that appeared to be supplanting Newtonian theory of fluxions. 

He wrote to his famous father in 1813, explaining that, out of a sense of obligation to acquire an independent livelihood, he would pursue either research in pure mathematics at Cambridge, or become a lawyer in London.  William Herschel took this news poorly, writing back that it would be “crooked, tortuous and precarious” to forsake the “superior” studies afforded John over his life.  Clearly these sciences were not nearly adventurous or practical enough in the mind of William. 

Surprisingly enough, William recommended in the place of mathematics or law a career in the Anglican priesthood.  This must have sounded ludicrous to John, as neither he nor his father had much interest in Christianity.  But according to William, “A clergyman… has time for the attainment of the more elegant branches of literature, for poetry, for music, for drawing, for natural history, for short and pleasant excursions of travelling, for being acquainted with the spirit of the law of his country, for history, for political economy, for mathematics, for astronomy, for metaphysics, and for being an author upon any one subject in which… [he is] qualified to excell.”

A bewildered John responded that he hardly believed any Anglican doctrine, but an inveterate William kept pushing.  Without concern for his son’s religious integrity, he again wrote, saying, “The most conscientious clergyman may preach a sermon full of sound morality, and no one will enquire into theological studies.” Unsurprisingly, John was horrified at this.  Was his father discouraging him from self-reliance in an occupation and encouraging him to live hypocritically? What manner of manhood was this?

Only after the threat of a total breach of relationship did William desist.  John did practice law in London after all, followed by a full Fellowship back in Cambridge.  But William would have the final victory, as John came back to the astronomical life in 1816, minding his father’s telescope. 

It hardly seems believable that a father would talk his son out of a life of industry and integrity, which were in other circles (and to this day are) marks of manhood.  For the new nobility of 19^th century Great Britain, however, industry and integrity were hardly virtues.  They were the explorers, the speculators, the scientists and professors.  Such men were above mere labor or repose, religion or morality.  They were reaching for the stars – and no self-respecting father of this caliber would have it otherwise for his son.

Pheasant Hunting and Fatherhood

It was interesting to see my son’s reaction to a pheasant I had shot.  There it was: a fully-feathered, colorful bird, wrapped in an orange Hy-Vee plastic bag.  My son, who has seen animals only in the context of dog parks and zoos, literally took several steps back.  He wasn’t recoiling in horror so much as discomfort with something totally alien.  After I made a joke and started laughing, he reluctantly took a feather offered to him.

Admittedly, I’m not sure how to teach my son about hunting.  I believe it is a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment.  I also believe that hunting, if not taught properly, can promote a cult of violence.  How, in a world where hunting isn’t necessary for survival, does a father teach his son to enjoy the sport without justifying it through bloodlust?

Permanent Bachelorhood Loses One of Its Leaders

Vince Vaughn, one of America’s most outstanding bachelors, announced this month that is tying the knot with Canadian real estate agent Kyla Webber.  It seems that Vaughn’s movie, Couples Retreat, may have been therapeutic.  What happened to the lovable party animal from Swingers?  What will become of the Frat Pack? 

Interestingly, he told Oprah.com that he decided to get married not in order to find greater fulfillment, but to have kids.  He is actually sprinting towards responsibility.  He isn’t letting out many details about his relationship, but seems excited mostly excited about the new possibilities of a responsible life. 

On the other side, he has expressed ambivalence about whether the relationship is going to change him.  Good luck on that. 

The anthropological observation of importance here is that many men in America today are experiencing a mid-life crisis.  In contradistinction from a generation ago, however, these men are making moves towards resposibility, not irresponsibility.  Men today get married and have a child, where the boomer escapees were running from their wives and kids.  The midlife crisis today is not a new adolescence.  It is the late departure from it.

The political right – as in Kay S. Hymowitz’s recent article - continues the drumbeat for earlier marriages.  Certainly a wife and child and mortgage will force men to grow up.  Maybe.  But in a world where marriages are dissolvable as aspirin tablets, will this really do this trick?  Besides, men like Vaughn are going into marriage these days with the caveat that they don’t have to change their immature ways.  The a-woman-will-whip-me-into-shape days are over.  Which is why bearing children has become the real test of maturity.  Offspring are so, well, concrete.

In the end, maybe the only weapon the cause of maturity can wield is the promise of a better life.  Being a man is better than being a boy.  Attending a city council meeting is better than watching Southpark.  Wooing a woman is far superior to beating off to Maxim magazine.  Raising a child is more satisfying than being one.  If Vince Vaughn can come to that realization, why not others?

Fathers with Cameras

It is striking sometimes just how rarely fathers show up in family pictures.  The obvious reason for this is that fathers are most often the ones shooting the pictures, not the ones in them.  I ask myself, why is this?  Because men are more comfortable and competent with technology?  Because there is something particularly masculine about photography?  This doesn’t seem to be a good enough avenue. 

I was recently told about a psychologist who does family photo therapy.  He has his clients bring in old albums and interpret the pictures.  In this activity the expressions on people’s faces matter, and their poses.   It also matters who is in the snapshot and who isn’t.  Dad usually can’t be seen, and can’t be seen in a double way.  He is not in the static image, and even back then, when it was taken, you couldn’t see his face anyway.  It was covered by a Minolta.

A John Mayer song calls us to a important thought: 

     Didn’t have a camera by my side this time
     Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes 

How strange to think that our attempts to capture the world can take us out of it so much!  When fathers pick up the camera too often they risk missing the very engagement that sees life as something animated and kinetic – and something that involves them as subjects.

On the flip side, how wonderful a thing it can be that fathers perceive and document the family history as they do.  Being behind the camera can be, in some way, like the partially-visible mother in the kitchen throughout Thanksgiving Day.   There is a sense of gift in all of this.  With a camera in hand, there is also a sense of fatherly contemplation.  Not only have I myself experienced this, but I remember a few years ago seeing one of my uncles circling the room at a family reunion.  He simply walked around the perimeter of the room as his children played a game on the area rug.  With obvious enjoyment he noted the conversations and jokes and quirks of the children in their sibling drama.  He wasn’t restless or disengaged at all.  On the contrary, he was brooding in the most beautiful way a father can.

Toronto Father Regains Custody in “Alienation” Suit

In a rare and perhaps significant case in Toronto this month, a father was awarded full custody of his three daughters on the basis of “alienation” techniques used by the mother.  Justice Kaye McWatt of the Superior Court of Justice decided that the mother, a foot doctor, had “consistently and overwhelmingly” thwarted her ex-husband’s attempts to maintain a relationship with his daughters over the course of several years.  She had, for instance, hung up the phone on him when he called to say goodnight, or slammed the door in his face when he tried to pick the girls up for court-permitted visitation.  On the basis of professional testimony about ”parental alienation syndrome” Judge McWatt made the unusual move of inverting the custody rights.

I doubt this will set a definitive precedent for other courts to follow.  While this case seemed more clear-cut, how is one supposed to distinguish between common (and ubiquitous) alienating language which ex’s use in front of their children and an actual “syndrome”?  And aren’t there plenty of cases in which mothers are protecting from parental irregularities and abuses from the father?

That being said, I’m happy that fathers are beginning to see some hope in the court system.  Men’s rights groups have been crying foul on this very point for decades, that fathers are systematically discriminated against in custody cases and that mothers are able to get away with court violations with almost no repercussions.  If one admits that there is a de facto hole in women’s economic and political rights, then one must grant the same about men when it comes to de jure rights in the home.  The domestic sphere still belongs to the woman in the public mind, and this results in greater clout for mothers in court battles.  There are exceptions, as this case shows.  Though isn’t it telling that the father, a vascular surgeon, managed to win the case only after a lengthy and expensive court battle?

Maybe attitudes are changing, even as the alienation is passed around liberally.  The Greeks had Chronos and Rhea.  We have Kevin Federline and Britney Spears.  Anyone else feel a little queasy?