The Power of Stories: Superman, Jesus Christ, and the Life of Pi

SPOILER WARNING: Massive spoilers for Life of Pi in this post. Seriously, I'm going to reveal the whole thing.

The irony is that Life of Pi would have been much more powerful for me if I hadn't known how it was going to end, but I wasn't at all interested in seeing it until I heard the spoilers. Visual spectacle isn't enough - by itself - to lure me to a film and I have a limited tolerance for lost-at-sea/stranded-alone-on-an-island movies. With Life of Pi though, the ending lifts the film to something that's going to stick with me probably for the rest of my life.

The film's framing sequence is an adult Pi talking to an unnamed writer. The writer has recently abandoned a book that wasn't working and ran into Pi's uncle, who encouraged the writer to seek out Pi. "He said you had a story that would make me believe in God."

Most of the movie is Pi's relating that story to the writer. It's a tale of Pi's survival aboard a lifeboat with a starving tiger and - for a while anyway - some other animals. Pi's story is shot with impossible beauty: Water reflects sky perfectly, colors are hyperreal, and the story becomes even more fantastical when Pi finally lands on a carnivorous island that's shaped like a human.

Finally, Pi relates a conversation he had with a couple of insurance investigators who were looking into the cause of the sinking ship. He told them the same story that he's just told the writer, but they can't believe it. They need something realistic to put into their report, so he tells them a second, far more horrifying version.

In the second tale, the tiger and other animals are all metaphors for other characters. The story as it really happened involves a brutal cook, the death of Pi's mother, and cannibalism. Since I knew the real story going into the movie, I didn't get to experience for myself the disappointment and horror of realizing that the second story wasn't just Pi's trying to appease the investigators, but was in fact the truth. Filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg does a great job of describing that experience though in a conversation he had with David Chen on the Slashfilmcast.

Pi explains to the writer that he's told two stories that account for the 227 days Pi was lost at sea. "Neither explain the sinking of the Tsimtsum," he says. "Neither make a factual difference to you. You cannot prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word for it. In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer. So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story?"

The writer thinks it over. "The one with the tiger."

"And so it is with God."

As Trachtenberg points out in the link above, a filmed version of the actual events on the lifeboat would have been repulsive to watch. It would have been like Hostel or Human Centipede. As filmed though, we still experience Pi's suffering and share in his emotions without being disgusted by his actions. When he - a vegetarian - cries over having to eat a fish to survive, we can relate to that in a way that we couldn't if we understood what it was he was actually eating.

That's the power of storytelling. We use symbols to represent deeply personal experiences so that other people can relate to them.

Comics writer Chris Roberson made some waves for saying, "I believe in Superman the way some people believe in Jesus." Some folks took that as commentary on whether Superman and Jesus are fictional or non-fictional, but I understood it as being about their power as symbols. To find out for sure, I contacted Roberson and he went into some more detail. "Superman works as an aspiration figure," he said, "someone who serves as a moral model for people to follow. W.W.S.D. What Would Superman Do? Superman is powerful enough that no force or laws can restrain him, but he does good because he CHOOSES to do so. He lives by his own moral code, regardless of circumstances."

In that sense, Superman and Jesus Christ are symbols for some of the same things: compassion, sacrifice, and truth, for example. There are certainly differences between the two men, but what makes Superman an enduring figure is the example he sets of the awesome potential of humans for good. And that's essentially the same purpose that Jesus was trying to serve.

It's also interesting and sad that both have been co-opted by groups for other purposes so that they've also become symbols for less noble ideals, but that's why it's important to remind ourselves what they originally stood for. And we do that through stories, too.

In Life of Pi, Pi's uncle claims that Pi's story would make the writer believe in God. Whether or not that happened is a question that's left to the audience to figure out, but Pi's point still stands. Like with Superman, whether or not God exists as a literal being is a separate issue from what God represents. Pi's not saying that it doesn't matter whether or not God is real. He's just saying that since we can't prove it either way, the more important question is whether we - as humans - stand for the things that God (and Superman) stands for: selfless compassion and justice for others. And we come to understand those things through stories.

Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game

While I was at Fabletown and Beyond, I picked up three card games from the good people at The Source Comics and Games (who sponsored the convention, but also happen to be where I buy my comics every week). The other two were Gloom and Ghooost!, but the first one I got - the one I knew I had to have as soon as I saw it - was Once Upon a Time from Atlas Games. It's not a new game, but Atlas recently came out with the 3rd Edition with new art and an expanded set of cards. The reason the Source was promoting it though was because it's so appropriate to a convention centered around myths and legends.

Once Upon a Time isn't just appropriate for its fairy tale subject matter. What made me want it was the way it encourages and teaches storytelling. The rules are simple: each player is dealt a hand of cards with story elements on them. There are people, places, and things, but also events and descriptors. Each player also gets a card with an ending printed on it. The object is to tell a story that uses each of your story elements and your ending, but the rest of the group is also in on the story, able to interrupt each other and take control, trying to incorporate their own elements and get to their own endings.

It's become a favorite game at our house (especially since David's allowed to include Pokemon characters in the stories) and I love how it teaches good storytelling. By nature, the stories created in the game are evolving, ever-changing beasts, so there's no Three Act Structure or Write What You Know or a lot of the other formal rules that writers get used to, but Once Upon a Time allows players to challenge each other if a player's contribution doesn't make sense. It encourages patience with younger or less-articulate players, but there are explicit rules about introducing elements gratuitously just to use up cards or coming out of nowhere with an ending that doesn't flow from the story.

Those are great lessons for storytellers and I'm excited that the game has us talking about them with my son. He also enjoys trying to make each game a sequel to the last. We haven't let him make that an official house rule, but he's thinking about serial stories and continuity and that's fun to see.

What I'm getting out of the game though is the opportunity to stretch my imagination in a way that I don't always get to when I'm writing from my outline and notes. I get to as I'm creating my outline, but once that's done and the work begins, Once Upon a Time is a fun tool for keeping my imagination flexible.

The spiritual side of writing

Sorry about not posting yesterday. I got back from FablesCon Sunday night and immediately went to work on writing it up for Robot 6. That, plus just being gone all weekend, didn't leave any time for here.

I won't go over again how much I loved the convention as a whole, but I can go into more detail about the effect it had on me. At some point over the weekend, I tweeted that the cumulative effect of the panels was "incredibly inspirational for storytelling. Like, spiritually so." What I meant was that being in the same room with experienced writers like Kurt Busiek, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, and Chris Roberson - and listening to these guys talk about not just writing, but storytelling in general - kind of filled up my tanks.

Writing is a lot of fun for me, but I don't always feel passionate about it. I discipline myself to write every day whether I feel like it or not, and that keeps me productive, but though I always enjoy writing as I'm doing it, there are times when I don't really want to sit in that chair. I've also developed disciplines to help me organize my stories and keep them on track and that's all really good. I need that, because I'm not that disciplined by nature, but it can get stifling.

At FablesCon, I got a lot of permission to let loose and just enjoy the flow of ideas. Roberson, Carey, and Gross talked a lot about it (Matt O'Keefe has a good write-up of that particular panel at The Beat) with Carey even saying that he doesn't teach three-act structure anymore in his workshops. Carey also poked holes in other writing conventions, like the idea that characters can steal control of a story from the writer (he writes more about that on his Good Reads blog, which is now in my bookmarks). He admits to being a very organized, outline-using writer, but he also lets himself play, as does Roberson. Their excitement about telling stories was contagious and motivating.

I want more of that and I think my experience at FablesCon showed me a way to get it. I got to chat with Roberson a couple of times in addition to attending some of his panels and was blown away by how well-read he is. I'm pretty good at consuming large quantities of stories, but Roberson makes me want to be a better, pickier reader. Though I don't do much linkblogging anymore, I still tend to read the Internet that way: scouring for details about comics and movies that I'm not even interested in. That time could be better spent on a critical essay or two; or even watching Life of Pi, which I understand has some deeply profound things to say about the power of stories.

In fact, I'm going to add Life of Pi to the top of my Netflix queue right now, because if it's everything I hear it is, I have post in me about it and Roberson's famous quote about Superman and Jesus. Thanks to FablesCon, I'm starting to realize how much of a spiritual activity storytelling is and I want to think and discover more about that.