Cru Jones Society

 

In my last post about the show “Lie To Me” I compared Dr. Cal Lightman, the main character played by Tim Roth, to House, the title character of a similar Fox show. On the surface, both of these characters are similar – both are basically entertaining jerks, both have a staff of people who seek to impress them, both use a methodology of detection that no one else can seem to figure out, and both speak with a British accent.

And while I’ve never seen a full episode of “House, M.D.,” I’ve read enough about both the character and the show to feel to have an adequate grasp of them both. As I watched the season finale of “Lie To Me” I was struck by how the similarities are not only skin deep, they run much deeper. The stories of each character are really nothing more than updated superhero allegories.

House is an unbelievably gifted physician who is able to detect and diagnose diseases and maladies most mortal doctors wouldn’t have a hope in hell of solving. Lightman is a scholar of the highest order, and the world’s leading expert in nonverbal communication and deception. He also uses his gifts to save lives, but while he can’t save a dying patient from a seemingly hopeless affliction, he can prevent more people from dying in a terrorist attack as he did in last night’s season finale by uncovering who is behind them.

We live in a world of uncertainty and fear. With terrorist cells spreading throughout the world, and wars no longer fought on battlefields between clearly defined enemies, but carried out by suicide bombers who walk among us, our conventional knowledge is largely useless in trying to fight back. We’re helpless against those who refuse to play fair, and, in the words of Bonnie Tyler, “we’re holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night.”

We know that a real life Spider-Man doesn’t exist. We know there’s no Iron Man out there to rescue us when things go bad. Superman is nearly invincible, but suffers from the brutal Achilles heel of being fictional. We know this as a society, but as our fears often overwhelm us, we find ourselves gravitating toward fictional superheroes more and more. The Dark Knight is the second highest grossing film of all time. The Superman mythology extends well over 60 years. And movies like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Iron Man are consistently among the year’s most popular.

But fictional superheroes offer only ethereal release from fear. Seeing Spider-Man improbably prevent a train full of innocent civilians from crashing at the hands of a deranged Dr. Octopus is exciting, thrilling, and satisfying all at once, but when a bomb in a backpack explodes in a subway as it did in London in 2005 reminds us that there is no Spider-Man there to save us.

So, on a day-to-day basis to assuage our deepest-seeded fears, we crave real heroes. And this is why shows like Lie To Me, House M.D, and to a lesser extent, Law & Order are so popular. Cal Lightman, Gregory House, and Elliot Stabler are real people, with real jobs, walking among us just trying to scrape by everyday just like us. Yet, they protect us from dangers we don’t even know exist. Denis Leary on “Rescue Me” is a classic example of a flawed hero – a firefighter who braved 9-11 and now tries to persevere in a heroic profession as the demons from that day haunt him relentlessly.

To cite the work of Kenneth Burke, the characters of these shows give us equipment for living as we see our deepest fears realized on television in front of us – terrorist attacks, terminal disease, natural disaster – and then resolved within an hour. We’re allowed to be at peace knowing that someone is watching out for us, and that should disaster strike, someone will be there to fix it.

Granted, real life doesn’t always work out that way as FEMA took five days to get water to the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, Iran sits on the verge of becoming nuclear, and Osama bin Laden still lives. But shows like Lie To Me and House remind us that real heroes still do exist. Chesley Sullenberger is an example. The passengers of United 93 are another. And the bravery of Captain Richard Phillips in the face of pirate capture is yet one more. Which brings me back to Dr. Lightman…

None of the men mentioned above sought to be heroes; they acted best they could when faced with impossible circumstances, just as Dr. Lightman does every week on Lie To Me. Lightman is a gifted human lie detector, and has cultivated his craft over years of hard work no different than a good mechanic can tell you what’s wrong with your car within 10 seconds of listening to it. Lightman just happens to be charged with figuring out who’s lying when dealing with a copycat serial killer or terrorist cell operating within U.S. borders. Albert Pujols is probably the greatest baseball hitter alive today, but if he calculates incorrectly and strikes out, the world remains largely unchanged. If Lightman miscalculates, well, we’re all fucked and likely dead.

And this is what makes the Lightman character a modern day superhero.

Uncle Ben tells Peter in the first Spider-Man movie “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter’s remarkable powers transform him into Spider-Man, and rather than engage in the ultimately selfish pursuit of marrying his lifelong love Mary Jane, he rejects her at the end of the first movie for the sake of New York. Superman is presented with essentially the same message after discovering the truth of his existence and cannot marry Lois Lane which would jeopardize not only Metropolis, but the entire world as well. And Batman feels the weight of Gotham City on his shoulders all the time choosing a life of loneliness with his smartass English butler instead of living the good life of billionaire playboy.

Dr. Lightman cannot have friends, cannot spare the feelings of his co-workers, and must sacrifice anything for the sake of his craft. He understands the charge of “With great power comes great responsibility” and has lived his life accordingly. He was married once, but in a fight with his ex-wife four episodes ago, she laments that she wants a man “she can surprise on his birthday” and “a man who doesn’t stare at my eyebrows when I stand in front of him in a thong.” He is unable to turn off his superhero persona because the minute he does is the minute he might lose it forever. And then the world has instantaneously lost one of its greatest assets. It is his both his gift and his curse that he must live this way, but no one ever said the life of a superhero is easy.

In last night’s episode, Lightman discovers that Torres’ (his protégé) boyfriend is missing and was on his way to the scene of the latest terrorist bombing last time anyone heard from him. He hides this from her because he needs her to focused and there to help him solve this case, and once he discovers that her boyfriend was caught in the blast and is now unconscious in a nearby hospital, she lashes out at him for playing God and keeping this from her. She can’t believe what a selfish act this is, and how Lightman plays with everyone’s feelings, lying to them for whatever Machiavellian end he sees fit, and does so basically at will.

He says to her, “You still don’t get it, do you? This isn’t about you. It’s not about me. You have a talent, but it comes with sacrifice, believe me. And it’s time for you to realize that your talent doesn’t belong to just you anymore.”

Spider-Man gave his gift to the world, and his scholarship, his love life, and his financial stability all suffered because of it. He kept the world safe, but did so at the cost of great personal loss. Dr. Lightman is the best human lie detector in the world, and in order to do his job to the best of his ability, he loses his marriage, cannot have a real friendship because most friendships are based on more than occasional bullshitting, and often has to mindfuck his own staff for the sake of getting his man. In last week’s episode, Lightman played a long con on everyone to catch a copycat serial killer that no one was in on besides himself causing turmoil among the staff. But goddammit, he figured out who the copycat was, and managed to save additional lives in the process. Just as Batman sullies his reputation as Gotham City’s savior for the sake of Harvey Dent and the ultimate greater good, Lightman alienates those around him for the safety of those of us he cannot even see.

We empathize with the superhero because we all believe that if faced with the same circumstances, we’d do the same thing. The truth is, how many times have we folded when presented with even the simplest opportunities to stand up? It’s infinitely easier to ignore injustice in the world, and many times we do. But we come back to shows like Lie To Me because there’s always a chance for redemption.

Torres seemingly misses a man who turns out to be the next terrorist bomber and feels responsible for the deaths of the civilians killed in the attack. Lightman tells her that back in Belfast in ’86, he was working for the British and let go of a man who then went into a pub and shot three people. Torres asks him, “How’d he get by you?” Lightman responds, “Sometimes they just do.”

No one is perfect, not even the great Dr. Cal Lightman. Sometimes they just get by you, and the only thing to do is pick yourself up and move on to the next one. Because that’s what a hero does. Superman in the 1950s was perfect. Hulk Hogan in the 1980s was unbeatable. They were perfect specimens and no one could challenge them.

Today’s world is a lot more complicated and lot more unforgiving. Perfection doesn’t exist. We’re not perfect, the world certainly is not perfect, and seeing a perfect hero is not only inaccurate, it’s insulting to our intelligence. If the world portrayed in front of us has a perfect hero, we immediately know that we can’t trust it because it’s not rooted in reality.

But when we see the Cal Lightmans of the fictional world selflessly toiling away for our benefit, but still making mistakes and suffering the inherent loneliness of greatness, we feel better because we can believe people like that exist around us. And just as we press on despite our own imperfections, they press on with a calling much higher than our own.

I love the show Lie To Me. I love its clever storytelling, its use of real life pictures of well-known people emoting, and the acting of Tim Roth, Mekhi Phifer and the rest of the talented cast. But I love it most because it reminds me that superheroes do exist, albeit not in the flashy way The Fantastic Four do. And at the risk of getting mushy, I love being reminded of human potential. We see it in Dr. Lightman. We see it in Gregory House.

And on a microcosmic level, we’re able to see it in ourselves too.

edagger@crujonessociety.com