The anti-hero?

So today I finally watched Deadpool and I loved it.

I remember watching the trailers for it way before it came out in theaters. I refused to watch it. I never really was into the whole X-men "superhero" genre. I lost track of the franchise; they kept making more movies with new characters, which I never would watch on time, and I eventually got left behind and I figured it's not worth watching the new ones because I wouldn't appreciate all the details having not watched the entire franchise movies prior.

Then comes Deadpool, breaking the fourth wall, serving as an example of another "super hero"  in the franchise.  He didn't charm me in the trailers. I'm like "that's not what a super hero should be". I judged the book by its cover.

Now having watched it, it's still clear that he's not quite a superhero, and I still don't think he's someone to emulate. But he's something else -- an antihero. And having the movie shown in quasi-first person, undependable, Notes from the Underground narrator style was a good move. He has a story. He found love. He was a desperate. He does a lot of bad shit, but generally for his love.

Deadpool in the movie says something along the lines of I'm a bad guy, who just beats up the worse guys. His humor was pretty catharsis enabling, too -- especially at times when he would point out the absurd notions: "Why do I only ever see you two [referring to Colossus and Negasonic], it's like the production couldn't afford another X-men".  His freak physical deformity post-mutation is real telling, too.

I get why the movie was a hit. Perhaps it's because that's pragmatically the closest we could ever get to being a real hero (super or not)... an anti-hero.

Then I thought about Flannery O'Connor's short stories. How each character had a flaw; no character was perfect. O'Connor uses of the grotesque (that's a technical term) Southern gothic:

“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”

― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Obviously, though, the full picture is that we are called for more. Fallen though we may be at times, even the anti-hero can pull heroic moves, then the rest is up for God to judge.  Somewhere between Colossus (unbreakable heroism) and Deadpool (the anti-hero)... we may very well fluctuate. It's scary. But we're not alone. Let the anti-hero in us move ever towards right side of that hyphen.

The Truth of Our Sadness

It's really hard to pinpoint the nexus of our dark side.
The side of us which we build walls around.
The side of us we think would scare people if they ever knew.
The side the demons taunt.

Our vulnerable side.  Our weak side.

But I know.
It's all I know now.

It's the side of us
That's sad
Sad at this idea
"I'm all alone"

Sad because
After all our efforts
We can't find anyone
Who can love us
Exactly the way we want

So this sad side
Begins to love itself
And builds ivory walls around itself.
And creates fake smiles to guard it from others.
It creates its own fortress of understanding for itself.
So strong and thick is its threshold it even forgets its there.

And if it never realizes its own reality...
And never meets the Love for which it yearns...
Even if this interior sadness is surrounded with every possesion it wants
Even if this interior sadness has found who it thinks is the love of its life
It'll still be sad.
It'll die sad.

Notes from the Bottom

"O matter and impertinency mixed! Reason in madness!" - Edgar, King Lear

I get why people become cold and bitter.

Just like the trope that says staunch atheists were once very religious people, perhaps the most ruthless, cold-hearted people were once actually the kindest people on earth -- the kind who did things for people without expecting anything in return, the kind who would put others before themselves.

They simply found that in their most dire of circumstances, no one would lend the kind of understanding, help, and support they offered people.  Being the nicest person made it difficult to find others who were as nice. They asked, people offered what they could and it would always fall short in comparison. Maybe to compare in the first place was their actual downfall. I guess you could blame them for that. But being in a bad place already, this only exacerbated what was already a sad disposition: a pretty self-destructive Molotov-cocktail.

Something that amazes me is the Year of Mercy Jubilee prayer we pray at the end of Mass.

"...You willed that your ministers would also be clothed in weakness 

in order that they may feel compassion for those in ignorance and error:"

 Well, may weakness not be our undoing. Lord, mercy.