Secret identities: the superhero simulacrum and the nation

CineAction, Summer, 2009 by Matt Yockey

Dennis's utter zealousness by which he engages in his self-construction is thus enhanced by his Superman costume and Ogens suggests that it is just this earnestness that Pam Dennis charitably responds to in the following sequence. To emphasize the geographic (and ontological) distance between Christopher and Pam Dennis, the segment opens with a series of establishing shots of the countryside and then returns the viewer to the backyard setting that previously introduced the Dennis family. This time, however, Pam Dennis addresses Christopher's claims regarding her aunt. She examines a photo of him as Superman and remarks, "This is something that comes from his soul, it's what's driven him. Just like my aunt was an actress and it came from her soul and that's what she had to do." Though Pam ultimately expresses strong doubt regarding Christopher's assertion that he is Sandy's son, it is tinged with telling ambivalence. Not only does she apparently understand and seemingly admire what motivates Christopher, but she equates it with her aunt, echoing Christopher's explanation that acting is in his blood. Like Christopher himself, she makes him meaningful via Sandy Dennis as a textual template. Further, throughout this segment, Frank Dennis, Sandy's brother, sits impassively in the background, occasionally looking towards Pam but never making a comment. The lack of testimony from such a close relative, one who could presumably speak with some authority on Christopher's claims, can obviously be read in a number of ways, including an admission to the possibility that Christopher is telling the truth.

Thus the entire sequence, which, according to the culturally constructed logic of the "fan-as-other" narrative should confirm Christopher as the problematic social subject, does no such thing. It further invests him with ambiguity, not necessarily because it compels us to accept the possibility he is telling the truth, but because it informs us that, whether he is lying or not, this family has not, cannot, completely disavow him. This is the culture of celebrity as embedded within the familial narrative. Christopher is not regarded as threatening, simply as a possible liar. Pam says, turning to Frank, "I don't think she's his mother. I mean, when would she have had a baby?" We see no response from Frank. Instead Ogens cuts to a scene from The Out of Towners, in which Sandy Dennis's character finds a child lost in a park and declares, "Well, I'm not going to leave him." Ogens stitches together a number of textual threads here to confirm the manner in which we use cinema to sustain identity formations. Ogens deploys the simulacrum of Sandy Dennis as a reflexive defense of Christopher Dennis, placing the viewer in his subjective relationship to the actress. The underlying suggestion is that Sandy Dennis may not be his mother but that Sandy Dennis the doubly mediated simulacrum on the screen can be. Beneath this is the trace of Superman's foundling narrative, which haunts and reflexively validates the textual history Christopher presents.