All posts by Micheal Hickerson

About Micheal Hickerson

Micheal is a writer and website manager who lives in Greater Cincinnati.

Wrestling, kayfabe, and only labels

Work, Identity, and Wreck-It Ralph

In 2012, Wreck-It Ralph joined The Incredibles[1] as an animated film that deals with those most adult of themes: vocation, work, and the meaning of life. Where The Incredibles deals with one’s choice of work and the freedom to use one’s gifts, Wreck-It Ralph deals with the complex relationships between image, identity, and vocation .

Wreck-It Ralph is a video game villain who spends his days destroying an apartment building that is then relentlessly rebuilt by the game’s hero, Fix-It Felix Jr. Ralph feels trapped in his role and longs for something more. In the brilliant opening scene, Ralph attends a meeting of Bad-Anon, a support group for video game bad guys. Attempting to help Ralph see himself in a better light, a zombie tells him, “Good, bad — only labels.”

Work Identity and Self Identity

This might sound like a position of moral relativism, but none of these “villains” are truly bad in a moral sense. They’re entertainers, playing a role given to them by the game designers. Being a “bad guy” is best understood as part of the video game kayfabe. Kayfabe is the depiction of staged story lines of professional wrestling, in which some wrestlers are “good” (“faces,” as in “babyfaces”) and some are “bad” (“heels”). They are all actors, not actual heroes or villains. In the ring, two wrestlers may act like die-hard enemies. In reality, they are coworkers in the same wrestling company, perhaps even good friends. Their wrestling personas have been assigned to them by their manager, all as part of the entertainment. Continue reading Work, Identity, and Wreck-It Ralph

Good is not enough

Feelings of Inadequacy

Last week, instead of publishing a post about feeling inadequate, I missed my self-imposed weekly deadline. How’s that for timely?

The week before, I heard Dick Gordon, on NPR’s The Story, interview a woman who had worked for many years at a chicken processing plant. Her job was putting stickers on chicken wings to mark their quality – A-grade, B-grade, or X for discards. The chicken wings came by on a conveyor belt, and she put stickers on them.

“That sounds like an easy job,” Gordon said, just as I was thinking the exact same thing. The woman laughed and described the conditions in more detail. She was required to tag 25 wings per minute — about 2 seconds per wing. The conveyor belt never stopped moving during her shift, and her shift might last 7 to 8 hours — maybe longer if the plant had more chickens to process. What I had thought sounded like an easy job, now sounded brutal in its difficulty.

If a job sounds easy, it’s probably because you either don’t know enough about it or don’t care enough to do it well.

Called by God…and Not Good Enough

Several years ago, Darrell Johnson spoke at Regent College on the subject of calling. He had just concluded a study of every person recorded in the Bible as having received a call from God to perform some task. He wanted to discover what they had in common, whether there were any patterns to their calls that he could learn from. As you might expect, they had several things in common, but the first surprised me: they all felt inadaquate. Continue reading Feelings of Inadequacy

The Girl With No Name

Statue of Anonymus (Budapest)
In Budapest, they’ve built a statue to Anonymus.

To a modern reader, the Bible seems obsessed with names:

  • The genealogies of Genesis and the Gospels
  • The book-length census in Numbers – which is then repeated Deuteronomy
  • Lists of David’s soldiers
  • Paul’s greetings to Christians in other cities in his letters

This concern with names goes to the very beginning of the Bible: one of the first jobs that God gives Adam is to name all the animals.

Considering this emphasis on names, it’s surprising when the Bible features a person without telling us their name. When we’re told the names of everyone and his brother, the anonymous person jumps out as surprising and notable.

The Girl from Israel

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:1–3)

If you can, imagine yourself in the place of this young girl. Captured by Syrian raiders, now a slave in the house of one of the Syria’s top military leaders, there’s not a single reason why she should be concerned from Naaman’s health. For that matter, no one is asking for her thoughts about Naaman’s leprosy. It’s none of her business.

Further, she’s taking an enormous risk. Naaman is a powerful man. Should the cure not work, or if Naaman takes offense at her presumption, her life would be forfeit. Naaman, however, makes her idea an issue of international diplomacy.

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:4–6)

How does the king of Israel respond?

As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!” (2 Kings 5:7)

He is terrified of this request. The humble servant girl’s suggestion has brought her king to the edge of panic. Continue reading The Girl With No Name