My Cop Is a Superhero!

Note: If you or someone you know is former law enforcement, please consider my Psychology Today article Life After Law Enforcement.

Humanism and the Heroic

What role does a superhero play in the fabric of law enforcement? Perhaps those costume-wearing saviors with badges and guns who similarly have uneasy relationships with the rest of society are symbolic expressions of our social subconscious and human existence. Today’s cops are vilified by the society they are sworn to protect. They are murdered with malice aforethought as agents of law and order. At the executive branch of government, they are even hung out to dry by their own. Pulitzer Prize-winning psychologist, Ernest Becker, once explained, “In difficult times as ours there is great pressure to create concepts that help people understand their dilemma.” What Becker did was challenge us to use creative and vital ideas over needless, intellectual complexities.

Cops-as-superheroes does not state the situation directly but is expressed indirectly by means of allegory. Much more than a metaphor, it states that something is another. In our daily experiences, we have been socialized to state things as accurately as possible while learning to discard intuition and fantasy, both in our language and in our thoughts. We lose, then, a quality that is still characteristic of the superb human spirit.

George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer pioneered an evolution of symbolic interactionism which, previously, helped move us beyond the complexities of science that dominated earlier centuries. Today, it serves to temper a postmodern culture that promotes moral relativity, secular humanism, faith in ambiguity and very few absolutes. Good symbols can be good anchors or navigational beacons while perpetuating the concept that you and I create social products in which we act toward things based upon the meaning those things have for us. Superheroes do just that—especially for the wives, husbands, children, family and friends who love them and who need to make sense of why they charge into a building under gunfire or write a speeding ticket.

Given innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolism to represent concepts that are difficult to define or comprehend. Like Mead and Blumer, psychologist Carl Jung expressed that most of us have “consigned our intellectual minds all the fantastic associations that every object or idea possesses.” He went on to explain that our primitive mind is aware of these psychic properties and so we have endowed things, such as animals, with powers we find to be strange or unacceptable.

J.H. Plumb, in his 1974 book Disappearing Heroes, offered “It is hard for us, bred on science and rationalism, to grasp how fearsome, how magical, the universe appeared to earlier societies, how full of wonders and portents it was. It could only be controlled by men and women larger than life. Heroes were necessary both as gods and as a part of the ritual that kept the external world secure and tolerable.”

In the law enforcement community, the problem is that the facts derived from symbolism and the hero archetypes they produce are undeniable and yet unable to be put into logical terms. Still, they evoke deep emotions and become powerful elements of their unique makeup. Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to symbols and ideas) has put him at mercy. Although he has freed himself from superstition, he has paid the price in his moral and spiritual traditions.

Anthropologists have long described what happens when a society’s spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. People can end up losing personal meaning, their social organization disintegrates, and groups become dehumanized. Jung offered, “Man feels isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional identity with natural phenomenon. Thunder is no longer a voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile.”

The tide is turning, however, as recently explained by Thom Parnham in Superheroes in Crisis. “Science no longer holds a privileged position for postmodern audiences—people are willing to explore the spiritual, the mythical, the neo-pagan, as a means of designing semblance of order in the chaos of 21st century life.” Interestingly, this has become a cultural impulse to which we are willing to explore and attach ourselves. Enter superhero mythology.

The family tree of symbolism extends back to our early ancestors, our Greek tales, prophets of the Judeo-Christian traditions, folktales, and our pop-culture. Consider, for example, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts, the Knights of the Round Table, The Lone Ranger, Superman, and Captain America—all of them symbolic, socio-cultural representations throughout human history. Even those who have never picked up a comic book or read classic mythology are at least remotely familiar with many of these popular stories.

Heroic Journeys

A phenomenon that often brings together these archetypes is what cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell coined the “Hero’s Journey.” Despite the demographics of our societies and cultures, today’s version of hero mythology (superheroes) shares an appeal that taps into cross-cultural models for storytelling. We use symbols and metaphors in pursuit of saving a truth and then return to that culture with salvation through knowledge, power, or wisdom.

We begin with a character in her ordinary world of everyday life. She is presented with a challenge and call to adventure. After accepting the call, the character must first cross a threshold between her ordinary world and the new adventure that holds trials and challenges, enemies and allies. A personal courage confronts the hero in the return of a reward. That reward is then returned to society, but not without the final (and ultimate) test of worth which brings a symbolic or literal death and resurrection.

Through our law enforcement superheroes, we can see ourselves, too. We see traits of heroism and goodwill which we want or aspire to be, but perhaps can’t, won’t, or don’t. We also see those who fight demons but realize that we are not always prepared or equipped to do so. At the very least, we remain aware of their beacon for moral and social justice that serves to represent our values and the best interests of our society. These are the virtues and catalysts that we must embrace regardless of our ability to do it ourselves.

The spirit that boils from our good choices, perspectives and attitudes cannot and must not be extinguished during our dark times, yet we are reminded every day that the darkness is at our doorstep. Very seldom do we go a day without seeing a police uniform, a vehicle, hearing a siren, and reading or listening to a news story that reminds us that crime and violence exists.

Ironically, while a law enforcement officer fights the darkness in fulfilling his own hero’s journey, our larger society uses him to fill a symbolic void of their own. Let’s face it, it’s much easier to watch a tragedy from afar—on the couch watching TV, scrolling through your newsfeed on your social media, or peeking out the window with your door locked.

While the empirical evolution of symbols can be, and has been, debated, Jung reminds us that there is a strong, practical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proven—they are known to be useful.

Symbols are often considered a natural and spontaneous production. Ask any comic book artist if they’ve ever sat down to invent a symbol. The point is you can’t take a rational thought and give it a symbolic form. It already exists!

Much like the “S” on Superman’s chest or the badge and star on a cop's uniform, they are often interpreted as symbols when they are, in fact, only signs. Signs are less than the concept they represent, while a symbol stands for more than its obvious meaning. As Bruce Wayne explained to his butler in the 2005 film Batman Begins, “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol—as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” If you pay attention to superheroes, it’s their behaviors and actions that are symbolic.

The mythology of Batman and other hero-ideologues brings a symbolic gesture of strength and independence that holds a particular meaning for the modern cop, as it is rooted in the existential idea of creating one’s destiny by relying upon inner strength and overcoming obstacles through endurance.

We all need general convictions that give meaning to our life and enable us to find a place for ourselves in the larger universe. Comic book scholar and philosopher, Greg Oropeza, argued that at the center of every human spiritual or intellectual journey is a quest for everlasting paradise. Law enforcement officers find themselves in a similar, yet peculiar, environment when faced with a public paradox—a community that condemns them, yet needs them in its most desperate hour. This is so important for cops because they can withstand the most incredible hardships when they are convinced that those hardships make sense and are worthwhile endeavors.

This sense of wider meaning is what raises cops beyond a mere “giving and receiving.” Would Saint Paul have realized he was a messenger of God if he had resigned his identity on being a tent maker? Real meaning made up of these inner certainties is often understood in the symbols that we purposefully seek or that take possession of us through fate and higher callings.

Superman could never fulfill his destiny as Clark Kent. In fact, scholars argue that the business suit, glasses, insecurity and general lack of “toughness” was his costume. It allowed him to shrink and blend in with us—it was Superman’s critique on the human condition. Only when he puts his gifts to use does he truly feel alive, strong, and engaged.

With authenticity to their gifts, law enforcement officers bring their distinctive strengths into the service of others. Like our own mentors, coaches, and friends, they give substance and motivation to our capabilities.

Our rich law enforcement history and traditions can be similarly and meaningfully discovered in the symbolic images and myths of the hero. In the film Unbreakable, the villain asks the protagonist (a stadium security guard), “Why is it, do you think, that of all the professions in the world you chose protection? You could have been anything—an accountant, a restaurant manager, a coach—and in the end you chose to protect people. You made that decision and I find that very interesting.”

As we dig deep into our past, it is not just the time and its events that move us, but the patterns and images that represent it. Critics argue that symbolism is an antiquated approach to human progress. I disagree. A cop-superhero archetype can be more than just fantasy and lip service. For our society, it can assure us that someone will be there to help us—to protect us—to save us. For a cop, it assures them that they are the person to do it!

Copyright © by Brian A. Kinnaird

References and Recommended Sources:

Batman Begins (2005). Christopher Nolan [Film]. Warner Bros.

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. Simon & Schuster Inc.: New York, NY.

Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces, 2ed. Princeton University Press: Princeton, N.J.

Homer. (1921). The Odyssey (F. Caulfield, Trans.) London: G. Bell and Sons.

Jung, C. (1964). Man and his symbols. Doubleday Press: New York.

Kinnaird, B. (2009). Parallel Universe: A theater for heroism. Watchman Books.

Oropeza, B. J. (2005). Superhero myth and the restoration of paradise. In B.J. Oropeza’s “The gospel according to superheroes: Religion and popular culture”. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.: New York, NY.

Parnham, T. (2005). Superheroes in film and pop culture: Silhouettes of redemption on the screen. In B.J. Oropeza’s “The gospel according to superheroes: Religion and popular culture”. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.: New York, NY.

Plumb, J. H. (1974). Disappearing heroes (14), 4. Horizon.

Unbreakable (2000). M. Night Shyamalan [Film]. Touchstone Pictures.