SUBSPECIES: Costumes

I was Robin #978.

Despite being taller than Michael Keaton, who was -- at the time -- still attached to the as-of then untitled third Batman film, Peter Bielagus and I ventured into Boston to attend one of the open casting calls that casting director Mali Finn was holding to locate the Next Big Thing to play the part of Robin. The name "Chris O'Donnell" was already on everyone's lips as a possible celebrity casting choice, and those standing in line engaged in idle speculation about whether the casting call was just been a publicity stunt, a la the re-launch of The Mickey Mouse Club, in order to boost flagging interest in Warner Brothers' limping cash cow.

Mali Finn passed on me, hesitated, and then passed on Peter. Keaton passed on playing the part a third time, Kilmer was passed the buck, and O'Donnell had passed the right age for the part, but played it anyway. The rest is past tense, and we hope it will remain that way.

But there are some things that one never forgets. For example, I will probably always be able to clearly recall the spectacle of a grown man wearing tights (color: nude) under his briefs (color: green), a cape, and a mask -- all arrayed for the purpose of convincing Ms. Finn that he was the right person to play the Boy Wonder.

The line turned away from him as he walked past us; we had not yet been admitted for the first round of inspection and selection, and he had clearly not made it to the second. His face was resolute, determined to patiently weather the snickers of the heathens that Just Didn't Understand. I sniggered with Peter, and we laughed long an! d loud when my local paper ran two photographs from the Associated Press wire in the coming week that depicted similarly clad adults in New York and Minneapolis.

How could these people not realize how silly they looked?, I wondered.

At a talent show, I watched a trio of twelve year-old boys clad in windpants and men's undershirts take to the stage and lip-synch a Backstreet Boys or N'sync song (As a junior high school teacher and occasional junior high dance disc jockey, I ought to be able to tell the difference, but I can't). The boys had clearly done their homework, the same studies that most early adolescents were engaged in: learning the MTV choreography to all the new top-40 hits.

It's fascinating that so many songs come with their own dance moves these days. Music videos, in my limited experience of them, used to be primarily cinematic displays of surreal, jump-cut imagery that may or may not have added a dimension to the meaning of the lyrics. They alternated between moody close-ups of the singer in a set-piece and the band playing soulfully someplace else. I am told -- I no longer have a television -- that this is no longer the case, and that music videos are primarily flashy dance numbers these days.

It must be nice to be able to get out on the dance floor at a junior high school dance and know all the moves to the songs, and not have to actually dance with anyone. I can't fault the new system -- we had the goddamn Electric Slide, which is a poor substitute -- as it seems to make dances much more comfortable for awkward youth. But I don't like the music idols. Britney with her midriff and her cleavage. The swarmy, knowing smiles of the boy bands, each "boy" arrayed with his distinguishing color-coded haircut and chin whiskers. I don't like the fact that they are filling in for the superhero.

Let's briefly examine the Britney Spears Pepsi advertizement that was unleashed upon a masturbating public during our most recent Super Bowl. The camera zooms in at Ma! ch 2 as Britney spins around and tears off a uniform that was able to disguise her as a nondescript member of the service industry. She then sings, thrusts, and gyrates or whatever -- I couldn't bring myself to watch more than that. But if one deconstructs Britney's initial revelatory appearance, it can be seen as typical of one of three tropes: 1) The constant Britney As Stripper motif, evidenced in every video and stage performance where she feels the need to tear off some article of clothing. 2) Standard Straight Male Fantasy, where a totally random person, like a delivery truck driver, finds the male in question so irresistible that she bares herself to him on the spot, unable to control herself.

Please note: I hate this fantasy, and if I have to see one more goddamn scene in a comic book or movie, where a girl exposes herself in order to distract some hapless patsy so that someone else can clobber him with a lugwrench, I will threaten the perpetrators in an empty manner with something overly violent.

And 3) Mild mannered ordinary being reveals herself as super-being by tearing open her outer shirt, revealing the trademark chest beneath the humble trappings. It's Superman, boys and girls, and if Pepsi's color scheme didn't clue you in, it should have. Okay, maybe the significant chestal differences might have thrown you off the scent -- I'll let it slide.

Britney is playing the part of a superhero. She may have more variations of her costume from video to video than The New Mutants did from issue to issue, but she is still wearing a costume. And a costume holds transformative properties. So, once arrayed in the panoply or her costume, she is no longer a private person, she is a public icon. Britney's costume extends beyond her actual clothing; Britney's costume is also her lack of clothing, her hair, her eyes, her face. More than a person, she is now a role. Her superstar status has eclipsed her secret identity.

And that is what her audience responds to. Just as B! atman's cape, cowl, and bat-signal strikes fear into the hearts of criminals, just a glimpse of the color-coded lads of N'sync cause the hearts of young girls and boys to palpitate feverishly. It no longer has to do with personality, but persona.

The young boys imitating the Backstreet Boys onstage at the talent show had adopted the uniform of the pop group as their personae. When they looked at themselves in the mirror, they didn't see the straggly prepubescent limbs emerging starkly from the sleeveless shirts. They didn't see how thin, how short, how unmuscular they were. I stood in the back of the auditorium and prayed that none of their parents were there videotaping the lip-synched dance. I hoped that years later they would be unable to look back at themselves and see everything but the magic of the costume.

These boys felt inside like they each looked like a lean, muscular pop star. The clothes made them each The Man. This was the secret success behind Underoos, of course. Briefs and an undershirt -- and maybe a towel for a cape -- and I felt like Robin. If I stood in front of a mirror and flexed I looked at myself and I saw the Robin I always believed I could become. It's harder to become Superman or Wonder Woman, of course, because they don't wear masks. You look at the reflection, and you're blond, and the illusion starts to reveal flaws. But even a construction paper "domino" mask conceals any variances between you and your hero.

If you read testimonials about the appeal of a character like Batman, they are all about his plausibility, his humanity. But had he merely been Bruce Wayne: Private Detective, would the world still care? Had he been as merely human and plausible as all of that, would he have captured the hearts of the general public for sixty-odd years? I think it's safe to say that this would not have been the case. As entrancing as Sam Spade is on the page and as popu! lar as the character was at the time he was written, a large amount of his current recognition comes from the attached persona and trappings of Humphrey Bogart.

The secret of the costume is it provides universality. A great story about Bruce Wayne is a story about an individual. It may be more human, but it is also therefore more particular, more specific. But a Batman story can be a story that is for anyone who feels that she or he can also be found behind the mask. And because of this, I am convinced that a superhero story will always have a wider appeal -- not a greater appeal, but a wider one -- than a non-superhero story. Just as celebrities, with their costume of glamour, will have a wider appeal than the magical intimacy that one shares with a partner or spouse.

Benjamin Russell thinks that Darth Vader Underoos were pathetic and stupid. They had a picture of Darth Vader on the T-shirt. What's up with that? Darth Vader didn't walk around with a picture of himself on his chest! Why didn't they make the T-shirt with the little control panel? He is also the Columns Editor for PopImage.

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