The Rhetorical Leadership of Fulton J. Sheen, Norman Vincent Peale, and Billy Graham in the Age of Extremes by Sherwood Timothy H.;

Author:Sherwood, Timothy H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The character of Superman further reflected messianic and Christological overtones by his suffering on America’s behalf and saving it from evil’s demise, thus being referred to as the “American Messiah.” It is no coincidence, as Klein pointed out, that Superman originally appeared when a messianic hope was most needed during America’s Great Depression and with the Nazis’ threat of another World War on the horizon.[9] Yearning for a heroic “savior” steadily grew after the second World War with the worry of real “supervillains” in communist uniforms who had the power of inflicting nuclear holocaust on the scale of comic book proportions. This reflected a greater recognition within society of its need for assistance from a higher authority, both human and divine. The superhero story of battling against evil revealed not only a “magnification of the human dilemma, but can also be an adaptation of the story of divine intervention. . . . Superman shows the human need for faith in a greater power.”[10] Faith and fear were prevalent during the Cold War of the 1950s and early 1960s. A Daredevil comic book episode explained that “a man without fear is a man without faith,” and inferred that “fearful people cling onto religious faith to keep their emotions under control. Religion is a coping mechanism used to block out all the terrors of life.” But another important source of strength came from “a firmness of character . . . understood since at least the times of the ancient Greek philosophers.” Strong character, ideally personified in superheroes, included the qualities of “courage, resilience, persistence, integrity, and a concern for other people that is firm and overriding in its motivational impact.”[11] People were looking for heroic leaders to follow and emulate as well as answers to the deep abiding questions of life. Comic books were certainly an entertaining distraction from the real world, but they also provided revealing insights to the underlying hopes and concerns of America at that time.

Popular culture in America has long been drawn to the sensational publicity of celebrities. Rollin argued that the “sine qua non of heroism is publicity.” This does not mean that every celebrity is a hero, but publicity is important if a heroic act is to be widely known and celebrated. He explained how effective religion was in taking abstract principles, like good and evil, and giving them incarnate identities with Satan as the villain and Christ as the hero. The secularization of popular culture, however, has increasingly taken over the role of religion by “reinforcing communal values and providing role models, heroes, who are the repositories of those values. . . . Popular culture heroes are gestalts of the popular mind, symbolic figures whose totality is greater than the sum of their parts.”[12] Definitions of what it means to be a hero vary, but it at least implies admiration and the desire to emulate the heroic figure. Keyes rightly pointed out that even Hitler can generate admiration and emulation, so a moral or ethical character is also necessary to make a proper distinction.

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