One of the great struggles of life is finding your identity. Discerning who you are and what you are about are key parts of our human development and our maturation.
Two films playing currently deal with the issue of identity in different ways.
First is Iron Man 3. The franchise based on the character of Tony Stark is unique in the superhero genre. If you have not seen the first two films, Tony Stark is a billionaire playboy and a super genius. He excels at mechanics.
Michael Parnell
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While being held by a Middle Eastern paramilitary group, he develops a suit of armor that allows him to escape. When he does, he returns to the West and develops a more sophisticated suit of armor and becomes — Iron Man.
Stark does not reveal who he is under the mask until the end of the film, when he declares to the press, “I am Iron Man.” Revealing your identity as a superhero is unheard of.
In this film, Stark is living with the repercussions of his adventure with The Avengers. In that film, Stark is taken though a wormhole in space and sees things no human ever saw. As a result, he is filled with anxiety and develops a panic attack disorder. It is as if he has lost touch with who he is.
Add to that the return of a bad guy, Aldridge Killian. Killian was once a nerdy guy who Stark disregarded and now returns to get revenge. He is using technology developed by Maya Hansen which turns former soldiers into walking bombs.
Also in the mix is a villain called the Mandarin, a terrorist. The Mandarin uses Killian’s technology to do his work.
Stark calls out the Mandarin and tells the villain he will be waiting on him. Stark gives out his home address, which leads to an attack which destroys his home and nearly kills his love, Pepper Potts.
Where identity plays out in the film is when Stark must find a way to get the Mandarin but with only his intellect to aid him. Along the way, the panic attacks continually cause Stark to doubt himself and his ability. But he never forgets who he is at his very center: he is Iron Man. That moves him to face his fears. His identity gives him a reason for being.
In the remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel set in the Roaring Twenties, The Great Gatsby, we are presented the character of Jay Gatsby who, like Tony Stark, is a rich playboy. Gatsby throws elaborate parties with all the best people attending.
Yet at the heart of the story is the question, “Who is Gatsby?”
There are all manner of stories about him. He is this and he is that. There is speculation about how he got his money. Some say he killed a man. Some say he is a bootlegger. But no one seems to know the truth about this man of wealth and power.
It has been suggested that this is very much an American story because only in America can people easily change their identity and become someone new.
Through the film we are told varying stories about this person with so much money and the finest of the stuff of life. It is only in the end that we discover who Gatsby is.
Walt Whitman famously wrote that “we contain multitudes.” Such is the case in both Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby. Both protagonists are captives of their multitudes. They are not people with a personality disorder but rather characters who struggle with who they are in the midst of the life they lead.
For many of us an identity as a Christian is hard to come by. We are caught like the characters of these two films, with conflicting attitudes and ways of being that result in unsureness.
In I Peter, we are told who we are as Christians. Peter says: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10, NRSV).
As Christians we are chosen, royal and holy. But the greater claim is that we are God’s own people.
Identity is founded on a relationship of possession. We are possessed by God and our identity grows out of that possession.
In the films, neither protagonist has a spiritual grounding which allows him to find his identity. We who believe have an identity that is found in our relationship with God in Christ. To quote Henri Nouwen: “Our identity is not rooted in our success, power or popularity, but in God's infinite love.”
Michael Parnell (drparnell@embarqmail.com) is pastor of Beth Car Baptist Church in Halifax, Va.