The Avengers.  One of my favorite movies, for a lot of reasons, along with about a million other other people.

There's that scene where all the characters are coming to a boiling point.  They're arguing about everything from wardrobe to nuclear proliferation, but one part always stuck in me like a barb.  Tony Stark, captain of the  "I'm not a hero, and we're not soldiers" quip-squad, throws this little spitwad in Steve Rogers' face  "Everything special about you came out of a bottle".  Never have I ever wanted to punch Tony Stark more than I did in that moment.  Because he was so dead-wrong.  Steve Rogers was a good, heroic, honorable man when he was still 95 lbs and 5'4".  Powers just took who he was and amplified it.

Look, I love Tony Stark, don't get me wrong, especially RDJ's Stark.  He's fun to watch, but what I like most about him is that he matures as a man over the course of the films, and really is a hero, despite trying so hard  to deny it.  But why does he try to deny it?  And why do I feel like people are relating more and more to that?  And why do I feel like, in Stark's most immature moments, the audience is still rooting for him for stupid reasons like "He's funny and he's wearing a Black Sabbath shirt.  So he's obviously awesome."  Except, in pretty much the first half of the Avengers, he's not.  He's a mouthy, immature playboy who practically spits in the face of a war hero and starts off by insulting his outfit.  And I think Stark represents a lot about our generation.  Daddy issues, and a belief that heroes just aren't a thing anymore.  Instead, some have insisted on believing that the antihero is pretty much as good and as real as it gets.  And look, believe me, I understand "daddy issues".

I think the reasons people find antiheroes so much more real and relatable is because they know of so few people anymore who went through bad things and still chose to be the hero.

Flip over to a media icon that may of us have grown up enjoying: Shia LaBeouf.  There's been a whirlwind of news surrounding the young actor for the last couple of years.  Public declarations of "I'm not famous anymore" to various PR and personal life snafus.  It's been a tumultuous story to say the least, leading all the way up to news of him "finding God" on the set of Fury.  Which, if it's true, is a great thing.

Now, if I ever had a chance to become friends with Shia, I'd do it (and going into acting, I very well might get that chance).  And I wouldn't run around tweeting, "OMG!  Friends with a movie star."  No.  I try not to freak out about people.  People are just people.  And a good friendship wouldn't need to be publicized like that.  Honestly the guy seems like he could use a good friend.

Anyway, this led me to the big daddy of recent LaBeouf interviews, ironically, done by Interview Magazine.  Within, LaBeouf talked about a whole lot of things.  His early and recent life, his work, and his personal situations.  He, like so many others, expresses an identification with the antihero.  He couldn't connect with actors like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks.  He prefers actors with an undercurrent of irony or anger (he cites everyone from Gary Oldman and Sean Penn to Mel Gibson and Steven Segal).  And in his own work, he's tried to use his pain, irony, and anger as well.  And not surprisingly, a lot of this tied back to his lack of a healthy relationship with his father.  Not that he doesn't have one, just not necessarily a healthy one (at least, from what I gathered).  This compounded the insecurity that he, and many other artists like myself, have dealt with.

He says the following.  These of course, are just snippets
:
"My greatest and my worst memories are with my father, all my major trauma and major celebration came from him. It's a negative gift. And I'm not ready to let go of it, because anger has a lot of power. "
----
"I'm an insecure person to begin with, but the only thing I've ever been good at is harnessing the negative in my life. "
----
"Because I always felt like I'm not good enough. I've felt that way my whole life. And I was so desperate to be good in that play that I overdid it. It became competitive in the wrong way. "Not only am I good enough, I'm better than you think I am." And then that became an aggressive thing. Fight rehearsals turned into fights. And it is unsustainable."
----
"I'm showing up with a set of problems, and I hope that they die when I'm done. Fury had to do with machismo, with this small-man complex, why I was getting in fights in bars all the time—there was this machismo element from being this kid who never had a f----- father to be around to protect him. So I'd always be super-aggressive with men. Fury did a lot for me in that regard. It calmed that down for me. "
----
"MITCHELL: It sounds like this is the first time you've ever had real trust in a director? 

LaBEOUF: In men. (...) "
----
"LaBEOUF: Well, how do you become an adult? My paths to adulthood looked like you either commit a felony, you impregnate a woman, or you go to war. These are the things that make a man. That's a skewed idea, but it is what I was raised on. "

-----

Man.  Men.  I do believe that women can be role models and heroes too.  So don't even get out your gender equality soapbox.  This isn't about that.  But what if we actually taught little boys that we can be heroes again?  That we can and should still do the honorable things in a world full of dishonor?  What if we taught our little boys lessons that would make them good fathers?  What if we allowed men to be men again, and like Uncle Ben, told them being the good guy is more than possible, it's imperative.

But this really isn't about men exclusively.  It's about the circumstances of life that have made us believe that the antihero is the only real thing we can expect.  Because we've seen so much hypocrisy, disappointment, rejection, you name it....so many people just don't believe others will just do the right thing because it's right anymore.  And those who do believe it?  We call them naive.  We make fun of their uniform and we call them a "boy scout".  And in some ways, there's been a culture of fatherlessness growing for thousands of years.  Thousands.

Shia also did a piece of performance art recently.  I'm going to level with you, I love art as an artist myself, but I usually find most performance art kind of awkward and weird (I don't mean plays.  I mean, like 'performance art', get it?).  Sometimes it just feels tryhard, or entirely to esoteric to be understood.  But this...well, I think this kinda worked.  

The exhibit was called #IAMSORRY.  He sat a room with his recently popular paper bag over his head.  People stood in line to get in, and were allowed to enter one at a time.  First they were presented with a table full of artifacts from Shia's career.  A transformer, some cologne, a whiskey bottle, the Indiana Jones whip.  People took an object then entered a room to sit one on one with a silent Shia.  Bag on his head, and red, puffy eyes peering through eyeholes as if he'd been crying.  The purpose was to take all these people who become vicious and even violent when criticizing him on the internet and put them face to face with an actual human being.

------

"The Indiana Jones [whip]. I didn't just walk onto an Indiana Jones set not knowing what I was a part of. And when that movie didn't fulfill the expectations, I was f------ broken, man. So when somebody comes in with the Indiana Jones whip, and it was giggle, giggle, giggle, and my face is in a f------ bag and I'm broken, [the question is] "Are you a human being? I am no longer an actor now, I'm a broken man. And this s---- is real right here. What happens to you?" It's wild when that connection happens. That's what we're lacking in this world, really. We all want to be a part of a community. This is why we have so much divorce in this country. No one man or woman can be 50 people to another person. And what we're doing to fulfill that is we're creating a family of ghosts on the internet. You're better off buying a f------ motorcycle and joining the Hells Angels than joining Twitter and finding your community there, but this is what we do. So maybe if the people that type the spam on the internet show up at the door, when they're right in front of you, and it's person to person, left eye to left eye, there can be a soul connection. Something changes. I watched it happen for six days. And it was powerful. "

------

How genuine was this?  Well yeah, people will debate that.  Sometimes it feels like everything like this is a publicity stunt.  Like Joaquin Phoenix.  Like these celebrities are so tired of getting tossed around by the public, that they just decided to do some tossing of their own.  But, this really conceptually made sense to me.  

Shia then talked about some of his more recent projects (none of which I can recommend due to the content within them).  He went around trying to find something more artistically gratifying in the last few years than Transformers, which he felt had no intrinsic value.  And while the first and second movies may have felt the way, I've always felt like the third Transformers movie actually had a LOT of weighty subtext about good and evil, terrorism, society bending to fear and dismissing their heroes, etc.  You can read more about that here.

So how does this all relate personally to me?  I didn't grow up feeling immediately inadequate.  Sure, the father wasn't there.  But the the attacks of inadequacy came slowly, sneaky, later.  I've had to reach back to that kid who knew, and bring him back.  I grew up with huge intentions that I will never let go of.  But as years went on, as I held to those things, I felt rejected.  In music, in art, in social situations, in life.  For a myriad of reasons that probably don't belong on the internet.  And this "we can all be heroes" thing? Some days I wasn't feeling it.  As time went on, I continually felt either dismissed by people or failed and disappointed by them.  I felt like despite a lot of the good things I tried to do, people didn't get it or just didn't care.  I felt like I was always being asked to  be the bigger person for no other reason than someone had to be.  And despite a lot of plaques on the wall for music and academics, day after day I felt like a jaded world was constantly trying to make me become like it every day.

I was once told that I have an overdeveloped sense of grandeur.  I took it as a compliment.  But that sense of grandeur made me disappointed with everything.

It's easy to become jaded.  I've always hated it when people tell you you're naive, in so many words.  "Oh you just wait kid."  "You just wait until you're actually in the industry"  "or you just wait until you're actually an adult" and on and on and on.  

But then I found myself wanting to do it.  Doing it.  Starting to say those things to other people, or at least think them.  Because things hadn't gone the way I thought they should go at a particular time in my life.  Because I got into places and situations and I suffered.  And when someone else started heading in a similar direction, some part of me wanted to tell them, "Oh you just wait, you stupid little wide-eyed fool."  Because some ugly part of me was so hurt by the fact that I suffered when I didn't think I should have had to, that now, they should have to too.  Because what had I ever done to deserve it either?

But this is the problem.  This is that fork in the road for heroes.  For fathers.  For men and women alike.  The only difference between heroes and the bad guys are the choice they make when things happen.  Do they make choices despite what happened, or because of it?  And what do they do when they get power?  If we'd have less of the above and more people willing to tell you, "well, it may not always be easy, but here, let me teach you.  Better yet, let me go with you and mentor you."  Well that....that would solve a lot of the world's problems.  And that's the difference with a hero.  Maybe they have been through some stuff.  But they choose to try to make the world a place where other people don't have to go through what they did.  Think about it: some of the best mentors in the world came from terrible situations.

The hardships I've faced aren't what make me.  Standing against them, what got/gets me through them, that's what makes me.  As soon as I start making my problems my identity, I may gain 1,000 fangirls who immediately find me more attractive because "He's broken and deep", but I'm also divorcing a part of my soul.

And as I've gotten into industries, I've realized that I don't like a lot of parts of them.  I love music, acting, and art.  But I'm not a big fan of their "worlds".  They are weird, strange, uncomfortable, and often dark places.  And and one point I began to wonder, "Why is it that I have been attracted to things that so often are industries that attract damaged people, or take good people and tear them apart?"  I think it's because someone needs to go in there, still holding on to that kid who believes in heroism and greatness.  Someone needs to Captain America.  Not lying to themselves or others about how the world is, but creating a new one within it that is better, regardless of who calls them the "boyscout".  

But I can't take credit either.  If it wasn't for my relationship with Jesus, I'd probably have given up on life a long time ago.  Those who know me best know that.  I'm not trying to put some forced Evangelical button on this.  That's not my intention.  I just have to be honest.  I can't sit here and say that because I'm so awesome, blah blah blah.  This is why I hope that Shia "finding God" was such a real thing.  Because as I went on, I had to learn to let God be my father.  I was constantly finding myself in situations where I was supposed to be the role model for other people.  And it felt so unfair.  How was I supposed to pull out of almost nothing something to give to someone else?  How was I supposed to be something for someone else that I felt like others hadn't taken the time to be for me?  (and before your gears start turning, no, this is NOT directed at a particular person.  Sometimes it's just the subtler things that start to add up to a person.) After feeling like the third wheel in episode after episode in life, how was I supposed to build a car?  I had to draw that strength from somewhere, and I know good and well that it wasn't me.

Went out and saw the Lego movie with a bunch of friends tonight.  Needless to say, it was a lot of fun.  The humor was fast, the animation was faster, and the nostalgia was real.  I found myself musing over how many thumbprints I could find etched into the characters’ paint.  And I mean, come on.  Batman.  Liam Neeson as Bad Cop.  I liked Bad Cop, despite how much he may have taken out his frustrations on an arm chair. 

They made no bones about the point of the movie. In fact, they made it wildly apparent.  Well, there were several points really, the most obvious of which being that everyone is special and has worth. 

SPOILER ALERT

There is a point there where the kid/Emmet has one thing he can say to Lord Business.  There is a pause there, where he finally settles on starting with these words, “You don’t have to be the bad guy.”  Man, I could write a lot about that alone, but I think it speaks pretty well for itself.

But then there was something else that was, quite frankly, HUGE.  Another point that they practically beat you over the head with (but, it’s a kids movie, obvious is often the name of the game when it comes to ‘subtext’).  Even so, I really hope everyone got it.

There’s this idea that they hit you with, that basically the world tells you what to believe.  What to watch, what to listen to.


It happens a ton still today.  And don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate everything about it, if you have something you want people to see or hear you want to get it out there.  I just want to have that big of a platform too.  I want to be a culture shaper.  Because too often, what the culture has been shaping itself into isn’t too great.  I’m not out to tear down the Grammys or something.  Let me take a few of them babies home.  You’d have to read my blogs about prosperity and the music business to totally get my take on this, but I donna want to digress right now.

It sometimes astounds me, the things people go wild about where music artists are concerned, and I think to myself, “Dear Lord, the Newsboys were doing that in the 90’s.  Why didn’t people freak out then?”  Well, frankly because they were listening to what “everyone” was listening to, which apparently didn’t apply to a “Christian” artist, whether what they were doing was good or not (and that’s not to shrug off the Newsboys, they were and still are one of the biggest forces and success stories in “Christian Music”, a genre and industry whose existence continues to be embroiled in much……big-worded, bloggy, debate-yness).

Now, you can go too far with this, really, and become someone who avoids something just because it’s popular.  I’m one of the farthest things from a hipster.  I like big budget movies (anything less typically disappoints me to some degree, with a few exceptions), music that is really well produced, and TV shows that probably cost as much as the aforementioned movies.  I want to play stadium concerts, and I just like most things that are big, adventurous, and most likely, expensive.  Though, at the same time, I can live without them as well.

Still, I try to be watchful about what I put my stamp of approval on.  I try to pay attention to the messages, the intent, the spirit.  And I haven’t always been perfect at that.

People jump in one ditch or the other about this.  So often, I see hordes of people wanting so badly to be non-conformists, that they just conform to the culture of “noncomformity”, which trust me, is so ridiculously obvious that it may as well have its own rulebook. 

The tragedy is that people think that being an individual means they have to be rebellious or wretched or attention-getting (or something else just as “edgy”, whatever the flavor of the day may be) as a means of being “true” to themselves, when in fact they’re just letting themselves be twisted out of shape.  It’s something we’ve all had to deal with, when in fact, we need to first realize that we are loved.  Then, we can better change into what we’re meant to be.

Ok, well, here comes the part where I can’t separate the fact that I am a Christian.

I’ve been learning a lot lately that Grace and Righteousness are free gifts.  That I have to know how much I am loved so that I can be what I’m truly meant to be.  Instead of trying so hard to “make” myself into it, by whatever means.  Sure, there are things I have to do.  Sure, determination may be (and has been) a part of that picture at times, but grace is also huge.

But swinging back around here.

The truth is, you’re going to conform to something.  Whether it’s good or bad, whether you think it’s original or not, we all conform to something, or somethings.  Or, perhaps someone.   

I believe that accepting and living with Jesus is how you really live that freedom.  And there that is.

Look, it’s all well and good to tell people to not “listen to what the world is telling you”.  Frankly, that’s half the battle, because the whole world has become so adroit at just feeding you the next thing.  But the thing is, usually that next thing pretty enjoyable (seriously) because they’ve literally got it down to a science (don’t believe me?  Do a tiny bit of research about what typically gets on national radio, all the way down to the BPMs).  Well, that is until something “breaks the mold” and gets a success story.  But then we figure out why that worked too.

I don’t mean for that to sound so conspiracy theory.  I just mean that most creative people go to school to learn how to create things people will actually like, and often there’s an amount of procedure to that. 

But again, it’s all well and good to tell people to not listen to what the world is telling them.  Or something.  But then what?  Because a lot of people fall off the boat right there and become paranoid, pot-smoking whacktivists, that typically don’t look or act like well-kept human beings.  If I dislike a pop song, it is typically because of the lyrics, because let me tell you, I don’t always care if it’s the same four chords I’ve heard for 30 years, sometimes I also think they sound fantastic.

Maybe it’s not so much about who not to listen to.  What not to do.  Maybe it’s more the positive.  Who to listen to.  What to do. 

It’s about believing the right thing, not trying so hard to disbelieve the wrong thing.  Because right believing will lead to right living, and that will naturally push out the other stuff.  Grace is meant to teach us the difference between something good and something that’s just dressed up like it, and then our perceptions will naturally mature.

Because you’re going to listen to something.  Someone.  You’re going to become something, to take on the form of something.  So make it the right thing.  I don’t really believe that we can (or at least, SHOULD) be just WHATEVER we want.  I mean, how many times have you seen someone trying so hard to be something they just aren’t?  You smile and congratulate them, but you just think to yourself, “Man, you just ain’t got it.”  And that’s why so many people spend their lives just searching for their purpose, arbitrarily “trying” things.  But I do believe that we are called to be great.  Greater than we can even imagine, and that if we follow that calling it branches out into many of those avenues we had tried and failed at before.  We can learn that we really do have to capacity to be a part of many or all of the things our seemingly endless interests would have led us to, but first we had to focus on just the one.  On drawing the strength instead of trying to create it.  First we had to focus on who we are.

Because, remember, you’re The Special and so am I.

We can learn a lot from super heroes. 

There's this quintessential statement that has been cemented in the lore surrounding Spider-Man.
"With great power comes great responsibility"
We've all heard it.  Or, most of us anyway.  And it's the thing that makes a super hero just that.

People will squabble all day long about what makes a super hero.  Or maybe even just a hero in general.  Is it their powers?  If so, perhaps Batman doesn't qualify.  After all, he's just a rich guy.  And here departs the sarcasm train, inevitably leading to Tony Stark's money, and somehow looping back around to Superman and whether he's cool or just ridiculously overpowered.

And somehow in all of this semantical nonsense, we've missed the point.
Let me reiterate: "With great power comes great responsibility."

Specifically as people who can create, whether we be artists, musicians, filmmakers, anything, we have power.  Great power.  The power to change and shape minds and culture.  To inspire, or merely redirect.  We have the power to give people something to identify with.  To stand behind or rally around.

Because behind every great song, every film, every heroic campaign, there's something basic.  Something elemental that resonates within ourselves and others that reminds us of who we're meant to be.

It's why when Bruce Wayne garnishes himself with a bat, years later street kids are scribbling it on the sidewalk in hopes that he'll return.  It's why, after the Avengers save New York, children are strapping trash can lids painted with stars to to their arms and guys head to the barber shops in droves to get the unmistakable Stark goatee.  It's why, when Peter Parker prints a spider on a luge onesie and finds who he is, street artists scrawl arachnids on brick walls in dripping paint.  It's why one kid who knew there's more  purpose to music and adventure and all things media than just entertainment sketched out a fireball on a scrap of paper, then invited others to wear it proudly.

"What is this, Sam?" You may ask.  "Narcissism?"  No.  This is a reality check.

Look, thanks to Suzanne Collins, hordes of females are running around with a fictional bird stuck to them and wearing their braids slung over one shoulder (not that I have a problem with Suzanne Collins.  I quite like "The Hunger Games").

I consider myself a lot of things.  A writer, an actor, but let me speak chiefly as a musician for a moment.

As musicians, we are one of the few types of people on earth that are basically looked at like super heroes.  I'm not saying we "deserve" it any more than the single father construction workers.  But it's just the way it is.

I remember when I was a kid.  Real little.  Like, 3rd and 4th grade.  I remember hearing lyrics out of other kid's mouths.  Seeing them imitate dances they saw on TV.  And even then I remember thinking, "These kids need different a different kind musician."  I won't say "a better class" (despite the Dark Knight reference here that's just begging to be corrected), because I'm not going to arbitrarily throw blame around.  But different.

The Grammys.  The resonance is still palpable, and I didn't even watch the thing (not because I have some big objection to the Grammys, I was just doing something else that night).  But people talk.  And the internet, well, it's the internet. 

Is it risque or is it empowering?  Is it edgy or is it damaging?  Is it inspiring or just sad?

We are culture shapers.  People will google us and see what we stand for, what we believe in, how we live, what our lyrics mean.  They'll wear our emblems, our hairstyles, our shutter-shades.  Men.  Women.  Children.

One thing about super-heroes, they have remarkable power.  Superman got his via a somewhat involuntary manifestation, but hey, so did Darkseid.  Imagine the self-control it must take to be Superman.  Batman is a guy with wealth, brains and astounding skills.  But hey, so is Deathstroke.  Peter Parker is the result of what you might call an accident.  But so is pretty much everyone he fights.  It comes down to what you choose do do with your power.

We creators, we have remarkable power.  In the wake of a performance or a major release, people often treat us like our abilities are nearly mythical.  And you know what?  Perhaps they are.  We can stick our hands right into your soul, and so often, you are more than willing to let us. 

But we must remember the lesson that Peter Parker's story has endeavored to hammer into our collective awareness.  Because people will imitate us.  They WILL follow us.  They will lend their themselves to our causes, but we have the responsibility of being the vanguards of those causes.

We may not always do it perfectly.  It's sad to see life overcome some little Disney star and watch their life suffer as they try to define who they are.  We too, after all, still undergo constant character development. But like any good super hero, our endeavor should be to embody the ideal.  This power isn't just for us. 

Because so often we already have the super, but we also have to remember the hero.