Working for many years as a waiter and bartend in high-end Manhattan restaurants, I found myself wearing standard-issue ties by designers who turned on customers but left me indifferent. The required color schemes and brands sent me to various stores from Calvin Klein to Nautica, searching for the appropriate shade of blue that created an innocuous, harmless façade.
Such dress codes certainly do not solely exist in the world of fine dining; a handful of years were also spent working as a consultant for two of the world’s largest distributors of wines and spirits – a fun job, but one that required me to always don a suit and tie regardless of weather or circumstance.
These are not regrets, but an admission of making money through selling an image: one of luxury and high-class taste, and while I wouldn’t consider myself uncultured or ignorant of quality, my preferred wardrobe is a clean pair of jeans or slacks and a button up shirt if I must, though a comfortable solid-colored fleece is more likely. However, my preferred look casts how I think of myself, and not necessarily how my employers want their customers to see me.
This too is not regret; rather, it’s acquiescence to the system in which we live, where our dress often reflects those whose names are on our paychecks. As employees, we are extensions of companies – and at times, suctioning appendages that bring new customers, create new sources of revenue, and add to the flowing stream. In a sense, our uniforms become costumes, our alter egos, fashioning our personas into a superhero (the ultimate do-gooder ready to take bullets and track down a runaway train of money-laden costumers for the company), and the other as the mild-mannered individual who sheds work through a loosened tie and rolled up sleeves during happy hour, using the next ten hours to whitewash the events of work, only to don the cape the following morning.
This dichotomous life is most intriguing when the socially-constructed roles are reversed, and our job resembles the mild-mannered individual and our real lives become the disguise with which we blend in with the every man.
Such a reciprocal is illustrated in Confession of a Superhero, a 2007 documentary that gives us four individuals whose days are spent on Hollywood Boulevard, circulating outside of Mann’s Chinese Theater, treading over the celebrity monikered stars and dressing as superheroes who “accept tips” to pose for photographs with tourists.
As Wonder Woman (Jennifer Wenger) notes, “this is my insane job,” likening it to the actors and actresses who spend much time waiting tables and tending bar in between auditions, head shots, and acting classes. And in this much, she is correct: the job is far from glamorous, but it ideally leads to an end, offering the possibility that “maybe, just maybe [they’ll] be able to meet someone” in Hollywood.
Perhaps Wenger is the only one of our four who truly dons the gold wrist cuffs and carries and invisible lariat to find her break in Hollywood – and truthfully, she’s the only one of the four with a decent IMDB page, having made appearances on shows like My Name Is Earl, and True Blood. However, the other three characters each seem to relish the identities they wear in order to offload personal baggage and atone for past mistakes, which makes their occupation a symbol of what they truly aspire to be – as opposed to a solely pragmatic endeavor to pay the rent.
Take for example The Incredible Hulk (Joseph McQueen), a young man from South Carolina, who seemingly had nowhere else to go, feeling trapped in a small community where “it can get pretty boring” with little to no support from family and friends. In addition, his diminutive frame makes him the least intimidating person to ever play the Hulk, and perhaps this is why he chose this character, creating in his occupation the gaze under which he wants to be seen – a powerful being, capable of inhuman strength and power.
Truthfully, McQueen desires to be in pictures, but equally as honestly, his scrawny look and “large white teeth” differentiate him from the Hollywood archetype, relegating him as a villain’s sidekick, but perhaps this is what he’s after: belonging – regardless of whether he’s the sidekick to a villain or a hero. Either way, he’s part of a grander scheme, and when he is cast in the mockumentary Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee, he’s genuinely happy, and the viewer needs to be happy for him.
Also walking the six-inch dividing line on Hollywood Boulevard between “public property” and “private property” is Batman (Maxwell Allen), a man whose wife suggests should only be believed “fifty percent” of the time. A part-time security guard as well as Batman, Allen claims to have studied Ninjutsu, Tae Kwan Do, and to be a third degree blackbelt in Karate – although, he can’t seem to follow simple instructions in a community Karate dojo. In addition, Allen appears to want to be vaguely open about his past, occasionally slipping in references to the “horrible things” he’s seen when he used to be an enforcer for a “very Italian” man and partially confessing to his psychiatrist that he murdered a man who killed Allen’s first fiancé by running her off the road – which, by the way seems an awful lot like the premise for the Lethal Weapon franchise, and I don’t think this is coincidental. Perhaps Allen was an enforcer for an organized crime syndicate, and perhaps his fiancé was murdered, which drove him to seek revenge; however, at times, his deliberately detailed events laden with vagueness also suggests that he has convinced himself that this all exists, providing excuses as to why he has a problem containing his aggression.
Regardless of the situation, his donning of the Batman cape and cowl seems to atone for his past – fabricated or not – inasmuch as Batman represents a protector of the innocent, an image that Allen would like to convey, though his admitted propensity to violence and “anger issues” prevent him from doing so on a regular basis. In a way, being Batman allows him a focus, an outlet for his aggression cum superhero protector. Perhaps coincidentally enough, his real life persona Max Allen is very similar to Bruce Wayne in that a dark buried past haunts them both.
Finally, we have Superman (Christopher Dennis), who is so “obsessed” that being Superman “is the only thing he knows,” which is also evident when seeing his apartment and the majority of square footage that is covered with Superman memorabilia, making Dennis a self-professed “historian of Superman and keeper of artifacts.”
Like Allen’s allure to Batman, Dennis’ infatuation with Superman is representative of himself. An orphan like Kal El, Dennis was moved from foster home to foster home in his youth, claiming to be the son of Academy Award winning actress Sandy Dennis. Now, there’s no proof that he wasn’t the son, though there’s also no sure proof that he was, particularly since, prior to her death, Sandy Dennis claimed never to have had a son. Perhaps she was lying. Perhaps Christopher came at the wrong time and would have impeded Sandy’s career; none of this is clear. However, it seems plausible that Christopher’s connection to Superman is made through their respective orphaning, and as such, Christopher has begun to live vicariously through the Superman mythology – an orphan sent away into the arms of a loving family becomes the protector of truth, justice, and the American way, a near opposite of what Christopher experienced as his teenage years led him into an addiction to crystal meth and a barrage of host families.
And in this sense, Christopher and Max are additionally similar in that both are using their occupational characters to atone for moments in their past, essentially fostering a new reality. Allen gets to be the brooding vigilante – utilizing his “combat skills” for the greater good – and Dennis gets to be the upstanding protector of the innocent, unafraid to show his confidence in the face of danger, something rather atypical for someone who had been shuttled from foster home to foster home until finding themselves steeped in addiction.
In the end, these costumes are merely representations of who each person wants to be, and the craftsmanship of each costume also suggests the struggles with imperfection that each character goes through. Superman’s “S” on his chest and cape are both asymmetrical as if they were drawn freehand. Likewise, the neck is gaped to a point where it could almost resemble a young girl’s strapless, off-the-shoulder shirt. Batman’s famous crest is a yellow bat on a black background – as opposed to the black bat on a yellow background – and looks as if it has been applied with acrylic paint by a wonky artist. Similarly, the Hulk’s feet and thighs are fastened with just enough duct tape as not to fall off of McQueen’s feet, though it is clear he’s tried to tape them all from the inside as not to let the crowds see too much.
And perhaps this is the most poignant part of Confessions of a Superhero: regardless of the perfectionist persona that we don for employment or catharsis, all facades become cracked over time, so maybe it’s best to let the two mingle, lest the reality be forgotten.
