Part 2: "Son of Robert Downey Jr Says"

Iron Man from Tales of Suspense #45 Marvel Comics

The reason I reject all of these determinations is because they are fatalistic. The labels and the clichés can really get us boxed in when we most need to find as many ways of considering a situation as we can. At times, we need to step out of our self-images, favorite identities, and illness diagnoses as quickly as we change the costumes that go with them. It's one thing to know what your lot in life is-- what needs to be tended to and considered and respected. It's quite another to wear a label like a superhero or supervillian suit. What we do with our lives usually is found in the spaces between all of the things that we must supervise. Those spaces usually aren't focused on self at all, but is just a time we pass through, connected to other complex creatures and environs.

Photo of child unable to reconcile the reality with the role. Source: Dose.com

If any posed question about a person is answered with a label such as "He's an addict, she's a diabetic, they are Southern, he's Irish, she's a Pisces, he's a Mets fan, she's a woman, he's a man,"as if that explains it all, then we are heading into the realm of superstition, where we sense that we can understand and control people by the signs and myths that spring up around those labels. If you have ever found yourself in a statistical category, then you know how unsettling and soul-stripping that can feel. One feature of your life has just determined the rest, unfairly. And just as unfairly, a complete stranger can use their statistical category to gain unearned trust. An anonymous group that identifies themselves by an illness is still anonymous, and unknown. There is no way to skip over the work of discovering the reality about a person over time simply by trusting their mere presence in a room. Saints and sinners often show up at the same spots by the same routes.

Determinism of any kind can prop up people who shouldn't be, but more often it holds us back as individuals and as societies. The feminist movement was an entire political transformation that transcended biological determinism. When women were called up for machinist duties during World War 2, did society unanimously believe in their capability based on past behavior? Or rather did society have a sudden widespread need? What would have been  considered impossible or at least unseemly in the antebellum south for women became commonplace and celebrated only fifty years later. Scarlett O'Hara's youthful "fiddle-dee-dee" was replaced by Rosie the Riveter's "We Can Do It!" They're both fictional characters who symbolize changing perceptions. As fictional characters, these female types were imagined by someone and produced as a stirring visual template for examples of both oppression or possibility, as needed.

Scarlett O'Hara getting her story straightened. From Gone With the Wind, MGM Studios

When we reduce a person's life to slogans and tag lines, it leaves little room for change and good old-fashioned surprise. How can someone fully recover if they are always in danger of losing the status of being a recovered someone? That seems like striving for perfect attendance, perhaps necessary but not sufficient for healing and growth. If everything is starting to seem scripted with snappy one-liners, then our thoughts and actions will get foreclosed before we even know that we are part of someone else's scenario. It is important to know how we came to believe what we can and should do, so that we are aware of how we will be told what we can't and shouldn't do.

Scarlett's successor and "Iron Woman", Rosie the Riveter, before being asked to go back home and re-don the petticoat of the 1950s

When I tell a story, I often am aware of my audience. I play up different aspects depending on what I think will compel them to keep listening and what will impress them to want to hear more of my stories. Or depending on my mood or what point I want to make as I am telling a story, I fill in, shade, highlight, accent, smudge, leave out, erase, crumple. There are no stories that are not spun. They start out as impressions and statements that are in a lump and then the person who decides to mold it, starts up the wheel. This isn't political, it's human. A spin is just a hip way of saying, "someone shaped a story for a purpose." Propaganda is usually easy to spot for most people. It's like hearing something reduced down until its easy to cheer or boo. We often know when we're participating in some sort of melodrama. It feels good at the time, but like a drug, it's not ultimately helpful or satisfying.

Sometimes we participate in propaganda-based stories we tell about ourselves. On some days we clap, and on others we hiss. Our story is simply one description of our life artifacts-- including details that we decided were valuable to our sense-making as we form the story. When faced with confusing facts, and more than one perspective, it is easy to cling to reasons and a feeling of knowing the Truth. We spend lots of time and energy on narratives, be they politically motivated, economically motivated, or personally motivated. We analyze how stories stress who deserves forgiveness, power, resources or attention. We argue about who is telling us which parts of the story and to whom. If all this sounds like a modern problem, it isn't; King Solomon said, "of the making of many books there is no end."

The same can be said of stories. You are a living, breathing person, and not a story arc. Stories are important, valuable, beautiful, frightening and instructive. But they aren't complete and they aren't Whole, as in the root word of "holy". Sacred sometimes, yes, but there is no whole Life canon. Canons are selected by a committee. We can exist apart from and outside of story, its structures and flights of fancy.  Our lives are not a myth, a fable, or a tale. Our selves aren't holy in the sense that they are untouchable, although we might wish that they were. Dave Chapelle, another highly paid actor said, "Once you're famous, you can never get unfamous. You can get infamous, but not unfamous."

While that seems right upon hearing it, Robert Downey Jr. has proven this to be false, as he was once the most infamous actor in Hollywood. It is fortunate for us that people are fickle at worst and forgiving at best. It is possible, and often advisable, to revisit our opinions of people and their motives.

A scant five years ago the only time you saw Robert Downey Jr. getting big play in your newspaper came when he was on a perp walk. Yet when it came time for Marvel Studios to cast the lead for a huge franchise film, Iron Man, it bet on Mr. Downey. He is not only back in the game but at the top of it. Is this a great country or what?"

-- NYTimes.com, Apr 20,  2008 "Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super." by David Carr

We can and should learn from stories and learn from others. But don't inherit your story passed down from the last time you told it. You inherited a lot to contend with: your place in history, in society, your family, or any displacement from those as well. Don't mix up your existence with what is said about you by anyone, especially not yourself, and whatever you do, don't trade in your life for a eulogy. Everything can change in a New York minute. And if you are the highest paid actor in the world, a success story, maybe question why that same story-seller has you being photographed as though you were either a lowly waiter or a rich tycoon on the doomed Titanic. It's impossible to tell which one Robert Downey Jr is playing here, and that's the point of his statement. You never can tell about a person from their story, and that's a good thing.

For complete article in Vanity Fair, October 2014, see here