The Green Lantern and Hollywood Morality

The truly appalling thing is that they really think John Stewart's parents were doing the right thing. During the first five minutes I could already tell some of what was coming. When John Stewart's father walked in and demanded to know, 'What was his name?' and John replied, 'Hal Something.' The implication was obvious, this Staff NCO John Stewart Sr. had been in the running for the post of Green Lantern of sector 2814 but had been passed over in favor of Hal Jordan. Since this is a Damon Lindelof show the odds were 100% that whatever the reason for the Guardians not giving John Stewart Sr.The Ring,it was going to be racial. That was a given. Hal Jordan himself was obviously going to be either racist or privileged, or something. Bottomline he was going to be transformed from, one of the heroes of our collective youth into, nothing but a bitter old failure. We've seen this same story fourteen times by now. It's the only one they are capable of telling and they certainly never get tired of telling it. They are, however, running out, Old White Men to use for their One True Story. However, Lanterns did put a rather astonishing twist on it. John Stewart Jr.'s parents proceeded to horrifically abuse him for the duration of his childhood because his father didn't get the ring and they are presented as being ideal the parents for this. Vanessa Baden-Kelly (a black woman with a hyphenated name tells you almost literally everything about her) was a child actor on aNickelodeonshow, consequently, her view of what constitutes horrific child abuse does need to taken into consideration. * It doesn't matter what show she was on, the fact was she was a Hollywood child actress and that is her entire view of the world… And. It's. Not. Right. But Lanterns needs to be viewed from that perspective. That of a child actress. John Stewart Sr. is pulled out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night by Abin Sur's ring, and he is asked, 'are you afraid?' He is shitting himself and basically screams, 'yes, I'm afraid.' The ring promptly drops him and fucks off to find somebody who isn't. For those of you who are quite naturally and understandably confused by this, Damon Lindelof and his writing team didn't understand anything at all about the Green Lantern Corps and didn't want to. The 'are you afraid thing' was kind of a Bene Gesserit - Gom Jabbar test of will. It was hiswillthe Guardians cared about, not literal fearlessness. But this failure shattered John Stewart Sr.'s entire life and you are never really shown why. Did he want to be a Green Lantern all his life? No, humans didn't know anything about the them until that night. Did he want to be a superhero all his life? I'm not sure there were any up to that moment in the Gunn-verse. But assuming there were, we really needed to see John Stewart Sr's entire life up to that point being built around becoming one someday and we didn't see that. We just see him shoot a TV the first time he sees Hal Jordan getting praised for doing some cool superhero stuff. Okay, he clearly feels strongly about this. We get that. But the motivation behind it… Doesn't matter to the writer. It never mattered to the writer because she never thought about it during her childhood. 'The Big Audition' isn't merely a metaphor I'm imposing on the episode. It's a social structure the writer knows intimately.And suddenly the otherwise insane behavior of John Stewart's parents has a very recognizable logic. John's father had his shot. He failed. That failure doesn't remainhisfailure. It becomes the organizing trauma of the family. The parents arrive at the conclusion that the problem wasn't the dream; the problem was inadequate preparation, bad decisions, lack of discipline, wrong timing whatever explanation permits the dream itself to remain sacred. His mother opted for racial insensitivity of aliens not being empathetic enough to understand 'the Black Experience.' And that's just human nature, thefailure of Othersis always that of character, whereas thefailure ofYourselfis always that of circumstance. It wasn't you, it was anything else. Anyway… John's childhood becomespermanent audition preparation. Everything has a purpose. Everything builds the résumé. Every weakness has to be corrected. Every opportunity matters because eventually there will be one opportunity that matters more than all the others. Your father had his chance and wasn't ready. You will be. That's almost exactly the psychology you can encounter in entertainment families: the parent who nearly made it, didn't make it, and subsequently treats the talented child as both a second chance and a vindication. It also explains something that otherwise feels strange about the episode:the parents aren't preparing John for an identifiable career so much as preparing him to be Chosen. That's child-actor logic. You don't actually know which audition will betheaudition. So the kid has to remain perpetually ready. Acting lessons. Dance. Voice. Appearance. Manners. Networking. Schooling arranged around the career. You aren't preparing for a particular job; you're constructing the person who will be capable of walking into the room when the impossible opportunity finally appears. AndLanternsliteralizes it. Eventually somebody reallydoesshow up and say:You're special. We picked you.The Green Lantern ring becomes the ultimate casting director. Which makes the father's failure particularly important. His parents aren't simply ambitious for John. They're trying to correct history through John. Dad failed his Big Audition; therefore John must never be permitted to fail his. And there's a darker implication there that fits John Stewart extremely well:John may have tremendous difficulty distinguishing his own ambition from the ambition that was installed in him. He succeeds because he was raised to succeed. He's disciplined because he was raised to be disciplined. He's prepared when the ring comes because his entire childhood was preparation for an opportunity nobody could name. But then comes the uncomfortable question: Did John Stewart choose to become exceptional, or was he raised from birth with no psychologically acceptable alternative? Seen through the biography of a former child actor writing the episode, that stops looking like an oddly specific family subplot and starts looking remarkably autobiographical in itsemotional machinerynot necessarily autobiographical in its facts, but in its understanding of what it means to grow up in a household waiting for the Big Audition. Hollywood has become the ouroboros, the snake perpetually eating its own tail. It no longer knows anything outside of itself. You don't have talented outsiders getting sucked in and bringing some kind of diversity of thought and experience with them. You have to have been born into this world that thinks it's the whole world, and cannot see anything but the tail that it is devouring. And it keeps wondering where all of this pain is coming from It produces things like Lanterns because it simply can't produce anything else. Discuss in the Comments Below *The show was called Gullah Gullah Island. I lived in the Carolinas for years and occasionally ran into Gullahs. And it was usually like Jeremy Clarkson talking to Gerald, there were a lot of 'Uh-huh, I see… Okay… I get that… Well, I gotta go, talk to you later,' and wondering if I'd just agreed to buy a pig.