Dun-Duh-Duh-Dun-Duh-Duh
These Staccato low notes hammered on Cellos is all I need
for my heartbeat to fall into step with them. The music rises and I feel it in
my soul.
Pah-Pa-Pa-Pa-Paaaah
Horns peal out their salute. I know what is coming, I feel
the excitement gather pace. The rest of the orchestra joins the initial
staccato beat, swelling and moving onwards.
Then it happens…Three notes. Three notes that resound deep
inside of me in some primal place that contains all the goodness, all the hope
that is buried deep within, waiting to burst forth.
Three notes. The clarion call.
Three notes. The notes that seem to speak a name.
Three notes…
Bam-ba-Baahm
Three notes…
Thus begins John Williams’ magical score for the 1978
Blockbuster.
However, Whitefield in the late-seventies was not a place
that was high on the cinema distributors list of priorities and it was on a
Friday night in early March 1979, right before my fourth birthday that my
cinema experiences began. I can remember every single thing about this evening.
My first clear memory, what I was wearing, the smell of the place, the noise of
the crowd, the feeling of elation that I got from the next few hours.
My parents had told me that I was being taken to see
Watership Down, the sad, depressing tale of rabbits on the run. I remember
vividly my disappointment at being told it was sold out and we would have to go
and see the ‘other film’ that was on. I was bought some chocolate as
consolation.
We walked up the stairs to the balcony of the ‘Major’ screen
and took our seats. Centre three of the front row. My own seat perfectly positioned
so that the screen filled my entire field of vision. The lights dimmed and show
began, after some adverts for local furniture stores and Indian restaurants the
lights disappeared and the screen seemed to grow. Curtains on the screen pulled
aside to reveal a sepia toned scene alighting on a spinning globe and then it
began, those staccato notes that even to this day move me inside every time I
hear them.
For the next 3 hours (there was an interval after all) I was
transported to locations such as I had never dreamed, a cold, sterile, icy
planet; a lush abundant American farmland and a busy, hectic, bustling Metropolis.
This was my introduction to my favourite character, my hero, the mild mannered
reporter Clark Kent also known to the world as Superman.
Three notes.
Over the next 36 years my love for this character would not
wane. For many a dark avenging knight, a rapidly healing mutant with a metal
skeleton or a flag in motion would become their own inspiration and interest
but for me it was always The Big Guy. Number one. The original.
Three notes.
Three colours. Red, Blue and Yellow.
In these modern times when all around is dark and the world
seems a bleak place it’s seems easy to sneer at the ‘Boy Scout’ image that is
expounded about Superman and yet in the comics, on radio and on the moving
image it is very rare that the deep character of the Last Son of Krypton is
portrayed this way. To the contrary.
As point of fact I would say that the bleakness is precisely
why we need him. His beacon of hope. The never-ending battle for Truth, Justice
and the American Way.
Three notes.
In this blog which you are viewing on your device of choosing you will take a
journey with me all the way back to the disparate origins of two Jewish
immigrants creating a character for them to take refuge behind all the way
through to the latest big screen incarnation of the very first (and best)
Superhero. Through the good times and the bad the character has endured. So
settle down, join me and my caped friend and fly with us down the years that
our planet has been protected by Jor-El’s little boy.
Three notes.
Bam-ba-Baahm
Three notes.
Sup-er-man
Live, Laugh and Love.
Mark!
