The Cliff Test

Batman passes The Cliff Test

Before I begin let me clarify a few things. I will not be talking about a test based upon the dad from the Cosby Show (whose names was not Bill, nor [paradoxically] was his last name Cosby.) I will also not be talking about a test based upon a big red dog, (that would be a Clifford Test,) or the main antagonist of Back to the Future (that would be a Biff Test.) Instead, I am going to talk about one of the first lessons I was ever taught by television, back when I was still just a kid, and how it shaped my understanding of the world.

I was very fortunate to be raised by a pair of working parents, which means I was also raised (at least partially) by my third parent, TV. The moving images on my screen that kept me so entertained also taught me many valuable lessons. For instance, Bugs Bunny taught me my vocabulary (indubitably,) and how to avoid hunters by cross-dressing. Similarly, Reading Rainbow taught me that the USS Enterprise must have a really good library. Yet, most importantly, Saturday Morning Cartoons taught me what it meant to be a hero. While other boys were modeling their ideals of manhood on professional sports players, firemen, police, teachers, U.S. Presidents, mailmen, my vision of adulthood came from men who fired red lasers (and never once killed anyone with them,) mutated ninja creatures, and superheroes (oh so many superheroes.) It was a magical time of life, when you got up earlier than you ever did in college, stuffed yourself full of cereal, and spent a solid four or five hours ingesting as much animated antics as possible. For me those days were formative, and the cartoons that stuck out most in my mind were the ones that contained battles between the forces of good and evil, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Thundercats, and all those wonderfully non-morally-ambiguous shows where you immediately knew who was the good guy and who was the bad.

There was always one particularly defining moment found in almost every single cartoon that stuck out in my head. I came to nickname it, "The Cliff Test." Surely as my name is Surely, there would come a time when the hero was fighting the villain high atop a mountain, or floating platform, or suspended walkway, Batman battling the Joker, Duke battling Cobra Commander, Lion-O battling Mumm-Ra. Inevitably, the villain would lose his footing and fall, grabbing for the ledge at the last moment. Then the hero would step to the edge to find their fiendish mortal foe helpless dangling by a mere few fingers. It would be so easy to finish them off and end the fight, but it is in that moment that heroism became crystallized for me. If a hero was true he would pass The Cliff Test by reaching down his hand and grabbing hold of his foe and attempt to pull the villain to safety. Ultimately, the bad guy would show his true colors and reveal some sort of weapon from behind their back that they stupidly used to strike out at the person currently trying to help them get to solid ground, resulting in the hero jumping back and his enemy plummeting to their deserved fate. Yet, that is supercilious in this argument. The real test of valor is passed once the hero makes the decision to assist their nemesis, despite all the bad that person had committed, and even despite the fact that seconds before he would have killed that villain in combat given the chance. There is no conflict here, because killing the foe in battle (It was a cartoon so no oven ever died,) is honorable and done in self-defense, but letting him mercilessly fall to his death serves no one, least of all the hero.

Not everyone can be Batman, I guess.

So, when I learned this week that on top of everything (government shutdown, questionable drone tactics, and the fact the NSA is probably the only one reading this blog post,) that the U.S. has been spying on allied leaders (as if they were some British newspaper mogul,) my cynical adult brain went, "yeah I'm not surprised." However, that younger part of me, (the one that spent everyday of the first Gulf War playing with G.I. Joes, because the heroism of my country so inspired me,) died a little more inside. Does Superman use his powers to spy on the rest of the Justice League? Does Batman? (fine Batman might, but that's not the point.) I am not ready to admit that we have become the bad guys in the story, but I don't think we're the good guys either. Everyday I watch us succumb more and more to greed and mistrust as we cling almost desperately onto power and spite. It's a path that leading us to ruin and is disenfranchising so many young people, whose formative years (unlike mine) will be filled with an atmosphere of disbelief, anger, and mistrust of their government and no Saturday Morning Cartoons, (which is an outrage. They don't exist anymore, but I'm digressing...) I understand that in the real world we can't always apply technicolor 2D morality to our 3D world, but part of me still believes that a house built upon a rotten foundation will only lead to trouble down the road.

The Cliff Test was a defining moment not just for the hero in my cartoons, but for me as a child. It was proof of what it meant to be a "good guy." I know there are people out there who would rather be a Sith Lord as opposed to a Jedi Knight, but, personally, my accessory of choice was always the white hat. Perhaps it is nothing more than childhood naivety, but I had always believed that the United States of America was more hero than villain. After all, I was a child of the eighties. Everyone from Regan to Springsteen was telling me that we were the good guys. I wanted to believe that our government strove to be the best and most upstanding it could be, because that was the core message of those old cartoons. You have to try and be the best person you can, to do what is right regardless of personal effort or cost, and even if you make a mistake you never give up on doing what's right for everyone. That is what those cartoons promised me about myself and others.

You might think it is naive of me to approach the world with a lens I developed before I was even old enough to read or write. You would assume once I grew up and saw the true nature of the world that I would have become disillusioned with the lessons those cartoons taught me, but  instead I found myself holding onto them and striving to be the Saturday Morning hero even more. I am not a very religious person, but those early lessons became almost an ancient and scared text to me. Maybe heroes are what the world truly needs right now, real heroes. I'm not saying I am some example that everyone should follow, but I do believe that we have to live, we have to breathe, and we have to fully be the change we want to see in the world. We are all human, even our institutions, (apparently even our corporations,) and we will make mistakes, but we have to keep going. We have to try to be the best damn people we can be, not just for our sakes, but for everyone's. Maybe this world could use a little more idealized naivety, maybe we all just need to remember our childhoods and ask what our ten year old selves would think of the people we are.

Perhaps we can look at The Cliff Test in another way. By helping the villain, the hero is actually helping himself. It is a way to reaffirm his actions and reinforce the kind of world he or she is fighting for, a fair one, a just one, and a merciful one. So in fact, the hero is not only reaching down to save the villain, but they are reaching down to save themselves. Right now we all stand upon a similar cliff, (over a hot menacing volcano.) Everyday we are faced with others in need who are dangling by mere fingers, ready to fall. There are issues facing our country and our world that just seem so big, too heavy to lift, and it would be simple to let them fall away. It would be easy to stop trying and stop caring. It literally requires that we do nothing, or we can reach down and help. We can help for no other reason than because it is the right thing to do. The Cliff Test is not about the dangling villain. It is about the hero and his or her resolve to make the world a better place. We all stand on a cliff, everyday in big and small ways. So you have to ask yourself what will you do?

And once you know, keep that knowledge and never let it fade, because knowing is half the battle.