Imaginary Worlds - Mentors: Dynamic Duos

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

In the first of a two-part episode on mentors in fantasy genres, we look at the roles of superheroes and their protégées. Matt Fraction talks about the inspiration for his acclaimed comic book series Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon, which was adapted into a Disney+ series. University of Oregon professor Ben Saunders explains why Peter Parker needs an endless series of mentors. Hellenic College Holy Cross professor Stamatia Dova explains why all these fantasy mentors can be traced back to the character of Mentor in The Odyssey. And Julie Nugent, senior VP of learning and advisory services at Catalyst, discusses how superhero mentorships reflect the way mentoring plays out in the workplace. This episode is sponsored by Aspiration Zero Credit Card. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. This is a multi-year journey you're about to embark on. She-Hulk debuts on Disney Plus this week. It's one of the final entries in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Being a Hulk asks for balance. Yes! Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the biggest themes in Phase 4, besides the danger of the

multiverse, is the need for mentorship. There have been so many examples of established Avengers meeting people with similar talents or powers and deciding to train them. Behind the scenes, there are practical reasons for doing this. The Avengers are played by established movie stars who might be ready to move on, and these up-and-coming heroes are played by young actors that Marvel can lock into long contracts. It's also nice to refresh the team and create a more diverse cast as they build up the next Avengers movies, which will be in 2025. Personally, I find mentor stories really interesting because there's something murky about these relationships. And because they're tenuous,

there's often a story beat where the mentor or the mentee becomes disillusioned and just walks away from the partnership. And as I was thinking about these different relationships, I started wondering, why are mentors so important to fantasy stories, even beyond superheroes? And what do these stories tell us about the importance of mentorships in our own lives?

But before we look at modern day superheroes, to really understand the trope of the mentor we need to go back to the first mentor in western literature it's not gandalf it's not merlin we need to go much further back 2700 years ago that's around the time homer the Odyssey. There is a character in the Odyssey named Mentor. He's an old war buddy of Odysseus. And while Odysseus is off having adventures with sirens and cyclopses, Mentor is supposed to be looking after Odysseus' wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus.

But Penelope is besieged by suitors with bad intentions because they think Odysseus is never coming home. Mentor as a character in the Odyssey is somewhat peculiar because he was assigned the task of protecting Odysseus' household. Somehow, he failed. That is Stamatia Dova, who goes by Mata for short. Mata is a professor of Classics in Greek Studies at Hellenic College, Holy Cross. He has no strength. He has no power. He has no army behind him. He cannot physically enforce the law, but he begins the process of setting things right. And here's where we get a little bit of deus ex machina.

Athena is the patron goddess of Odysseus. And while he's still far from home, she possesses the body of Mentor and speaks through Mentor to guide Odysseus' son Telemachus, so he can warn the elders of Ithaca that his family is in danger. I asked Manta, why doesn't Athena just appear as herself to Telemachus? Athena could not possibly relate on such a personal level to Telemachus. And most importantly, Telemachus needs to do it alone with some guidance, but in the context of the society of people, in the community where he grew up. And when he goes away to find information about his father, mentor Athena follows him up to a certain point in the journey

and gives him very important advice. So this hybrid version of the character, the humanity of mentor combined with the godly wisdom of Athena, is what creates the archetype of the mentor. And Matas says it's also important that mentor and Athena are not Telemachus' parents. It is said that choosing a mentor is killing the parent. So you don't kill the parent, but you move away from the parent. You are ready to move away. It is very difficult to combine the roles of mentor and parent. I'm not suggesting it's impossible, but in the context of the Odyssey, it is impossible because the father is absent. I find the gender dynamics really interesting here. In most fantasy literature, and in Joseph Campbell's template for the hero's

journey, the mentor is a man. In fact, the mentor is usually a stereotypical father figure who gives the hero space to fail, where a stereotypical mother figure might be seen as too protective. Now, there is a template for the heroine's journey, which was written by the author Maureen Murdoch. She was actually a former student of Joseph Campbell. But in the heroine's journey, who's actually a former student of Joseph Campbell. But in the heroine's journey, the mentor figure isn't that important. If anything, the mentor is more of an authority figure that the heroine needs to break away from. And Monta says it's fitting that Athena plays a part

in establishing the archetype of the mentor, because Athena is not like the other goddesses. Athena is a maiden goddess who was born out of her father's head. She was not raised by a mother. She does not have any maternal overtones, especially in respect to her mentorship. She shows compassionate concern for her mentees, both Telemachus and Odysseus, but this compassionate concern does not become affection. In other words, she gives Telemachus space to fail. The first time he tries to warn the leaders of the community that his household is in danger from all these suitors,

Telemachus flops. The elder men don't take him seriously. And before that happens, he goes to mentor, who's really Athena, for advice. This is such a powerful scene in the Odyssey. He expresses his fear, practically, his trepidation to mentor slash Athena. And he says, what am I going to do? I mean, I really don't know. I'm lost. You know, I'm young. I've never spoken to such an important person. I don't know.

And calmly, mentor Athena puts his fears to rest and tells him, some words will come to you. you will find what to say on your own some will come through divine inspiration and this is always the case with all his trials there is a failure that is evidence of effort evidence trial, and evidence of inexperience. Otherwise, the hero is not really a hero if he does not demonstrate indirectly the difficulty of what he's called to accomplish. Today, superheroes are the closest thing we have to Greek mythology. Some of them are actually based on Greek myths. And the way mentorships have played out with superheroes in comics and live-action adaptations has led to some really interesting storylines.

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When many people of a certain age think of Batman and Robin, they probably think of the 1960s TV show, where Batman had a very paternalistic relationship to Robin. In the you, you're a growing boy and you need your nutrition. Hamburgers, medium rare. In the comics, Batman and Robin are not so chummy. In fact, there have been several different characters who have taken on the mantle of Robin. And in the comic book and TV series Batman Beyond, a much older Bruce Wayne trains another teenage kid to take his place as Batman. A lot of these mentees come away feeling bitter. Like in this scene from Batman the Animated Series. Dick Grayson was the first Robin, he goes on to become Nightwing, and he runs into the boy who took his place as Robin. You sound just like Batman. I'm nothing like him. Yeah, right. The mask, the attitude, the long underwear. Drop it.

I'd love to know what happened between you two. Things change. No kidding. You guys used to be the greatest. Batman and Robin, the dynamic duo. Maybe you should ask him. I did. And you'll never guess what he said.

Things change. Ben Saunders is a professor of comics and cartoon studies at the University of Oregon. He has an interesting theory as to why the Batman and Robin storylines keep playing out the same way. Batman cannot actually develop, because if development were to occur, then he would realize the obsessive, self-destructive, and ultimately impossible nature of the task that he has assigned himself. And he would grow and move past the cowl, right? And he can't do that because you do that, you've got no more Batman. It's just a practical concern here. So because Batman can't really grow, somebody else has to. And that means that Robin is the character who gets to have some kind of

developmental arc or grow. So the longer the series goes on, the more Robins you need, because ultimately, if you do grow, you're going to grow away from that guy. You're going to realize that he's just recapitulating his own horrific trauma upon you and trying to create, actually, the conditions where you can master trauma. When we're young, mentor stories can be enjoyable because at that point in our lives, we're looking for guidance and wouldn't it be cool if this amazing hero wanted to help us live up to our potential? But when you're an older person sitting in the audience or reading a comic, mentorship stories can be appealing because you're watching a character whose life may be full of disappointments

or failures, but they're able to take those negative experiences and put them to good use. Even if a character like Batman is not exactly a shining star of mental health. But as much as I'm a Batman fan, I have to say, I think that the way mentorships play out in Marvel is a little more interesting. The X-Men, of course, is all about mentorships in terms of whether you follow Professor X or Magneto. And one of my favorite stories about mentorships was terms of whether you follow Professor X or Magneto. And one of my favorite stories about mentorships was in a limited series called Hawkeye, My Life as a Weapon, which began publishing in 2013. It's about a down-on-his-luck, broke version of Clint Barton, and he's training a new Hawkeye, a brash teenage girl named Kate Bishop. Matt Fraction wrote that comic book series,

and I asked him if he set out to write about mentorships from the beginning. Mentorship is sort of exactly right. I wanted to write about figuring out your mentor isn't without flaws and failings and unhealthy impulses and attitudes. And, you know, not just, I learned as much from my mentee as, you know what I mean? Not like you were the teacher all along, but also that sort of how the two of them could mentor the other in their ways. These are two survivors, and that's a thing they discover they have in common. And how it affects her and how it affects him are two very different ways. And that's one of the most critical parts of their

relationship. His comic book series was adapted into a Disney Plus show, starring Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton and Haley Steinfeld as Kate Bishop. The Disney show doesn't really pick up on the tone of Matt's comics, which were grittier with a dry, ironic sense of humor. But the relationship between Kate and Clint is basically the same. See, CB1 has trouble opening up. Nobody calls me CB1. I'm just trying to know for a second.

Probably some early childhood thing. He thinks he doesn't tell me much, but he ends up kind of telling me. I virtually tell her nothing. But yeah, I think it's because I'm generally just pretty chill. You know, I'm not like, oh my God, hot guy. Definitely not chill. Ben Saunders thinks the best stories about mentors and mentees often end up being about the balance between hope and disappointment. often end up being about the balance between hope and disappointment.

And the ways that those relationships then inevitably are going to fail is when the mentor becomes too focused on a form of narcissistic self-replication. I saw a version of myself in you, but you've let me down. And by so doing, have revealed something to me about myself that I don't want to know. And so I crush you and spit upon you. And for the mentee, it's just, oh, I worshipped you. And then, you know, you turned out to be human. And that's incredibly powerful, resonant storytelling material, right? It's fundamentally about desire and identification and the confusion between those things.

And that plays out in Matt's Hawkeye comics. No one lets Kate down like Clint lets Kate down. I asked Matt if his ideas about mentorship came from any real life experiences. mentorship came from any real life experiences. He says some of it came from parenting, but also being part of Alcoholics Anonymous, where mentorship is built into the program. I'm an alcoholic and drug addict in recovery, and you can't sell the program to anybody. You have to want to be there. Someone has to want to be in that seat. It's that, right? That inevitable just tragedy of watching someone about to wipe out and knowing that you have to let it happen because otherwise they're not going to learn. And if you stop them from wiping out, they're just going to wipe out bigger later because they haven't learned.

You know, like it's that there's a thing you just got to let happen. Sometimes you got to let somebody touch the hot stove and it's really hard to do. And when the hot stove is, you know, radioactive super monster from outer space, it looks real cool. I had a theory, which I presented to Matt. I think superhero stories are a good medium to explore mentorships because the stakes are so high. The heroes could die. The world could end. He disagreed. He says usually the heroes are not going to die or they don't stay dead for long. And if the world ends, there's always a do-over. Instead, he said something which had never occurred to me. For me, I think it's about the life of service and the sacrifice and duty that a life of service demands.

That's why he thinks Clint Barton is such a compelling character. He doesn't have a magic hammer, a billion dollar suit or a super soldier serum. He's just somebody who kind of compulsively couldn't stop helping other people because he couldn't help them help himself. You know, it comes with a price what does this life you want to live to really help people we try to help people anyway comes a lot of sacrifices and some things you'll lose forever no there's also things you gain, like trick arrows and a cool costume. And when it comes to mentees, Matt says teenage superheroes are great for these kinds of stories because they may want to wear cool costumes and do badass things,

but they also want to hang out with their friends and have fun. You can't do both because, as we all know... With great power comes great responsibility. Spider-Man's the perfect, perfect example of that, right? Like, that's so, of all the many reasons Spider-Man works and has continued to work and that that formula remains so unchanged and unchanging and you don't need to change it, is that, right?

It is the story about someone on that precipice between childhood and adulthood and it's pulling in both directions. And that's the metaphor for adulthood, right? You don't get to do everything you want all the time anymore.

And Ben Saunders says that's why Spider-Man has so many different mentors in the comics and the movies. One of the classic misunderstandings of Peter Parker, actually, is that there's something Batman-like about the origin in that Uncle Ben dies and Peter swears that no one else will ever die like that if he can prevent it. That isn't actually how it plays out over the longer arc of the character. The first panel of The Amazing Spider-Man number one, only the second appearance of the character, is an image of him throwing the costume across the room and saying, I wish I'd never got my powers.

And then he has an adventure that requires him to put the costume on. And then the last panel of the book is him going, what is the point of my spider powers if nothing comes out right? Why am I doing this? And when the mental figures show up, it's not usually to tell him that don't worry, you've done the right thing. It's to say, it's more a question of his being rather than his doing. They always end up saying things like, you are Spider-Man. That is your fate and your curse. You can't run away from it. You have to embrace who you are. Yeah. What do you think about, I mean, in the MCU, among the fans, Tony Stark was debated a lot as to whether he was a good mentor or a terrible mentor. What are your thoughts on him? And he's a different mentor in the comics than he is, you know, in the movies.

What is your thought of him as a mentor figure? My instinct would be that Tony Stark is probably a terrible mentor. that Tony Stark is probably a terrible mentor. One of the things that we understand about Tony is that he is a genial and lovable narcissist with just enough self-awareness to recognize some of these things about himself and enough of a conscience to pull him back from the most negative consequences of that narcissism.

But he's a profoundly self-involved figure. In trying to figure out what makes a good mentor-mentee relationship, I wanted to talk with someone who is an expert in real-world mentorships. Julie Nugent is a Senior Vice President of Learning and Advisory Services at Catalyst, a nonprofit that works to advance women in business. Full disclosure, my wife used to work at Catalyst, so I know Julie and I know that she's a Marvel fan. Julie thinks that Tony Stark did a pretty good job

handling Peter Parker, even in the movie, Spider- Homecoming. That's where a lot of fans thought that Tony was the most problematic. You know, Tony Stark, I mean, Tony Stark in general, it can be, he's definitely not, does not have humility. But he has a wealth of experience. And I think in that setting, in that movie, the character of Spider-Man is really looking, he looks up to him, right? Tremendously and really respects him.

And there is a lot to learn, even in the circumstances where, you know, Tony Stark's like, you're kind of, you're bugging me. Like, why are you, like, go away? So to some extent, you know, a lot of people focus on Tony Stark, but it sounds like you're saying also Peter Parker is sort of putting Tony Stark too much on a pedestal. He's almost demanding too much from him as a mentor as well. I think the read in that movie is, yeah, I mean, Peter Parker definitely idolizes him. And I think that can be a tough position to put your mentor in for sure, because you are then, in essence, setting yourself up a bit for disappointment if you do put someone on a complete pedestal, even if they have a lot to teach you. Now, I have been using the word mentor pretty broadly so far, but Julie says in the workplace, a mentor is not the same as a sponsor.

A mentor actually can play a lot of different roles. Mentors typically are folks who you go to for career advice. They can be functioning as more of a coach, you know, talking to you about what you might want to do or, you know, what kind of what's next for you, giving you specific advice, providing some of that role modeling. So kind of showing you what you can be and aspire to. Sponsors, on the other hand, are more actively advocating for you and often talking about you behind closed doors. And that person is really putting their, in a lot of ways, putting their relationship on the line to think about your own career or your experiences and talk about you. And that's what Tony does for Peter Parker.

He puts Spider-Man in the Avengers lineup and gives him a new suit. But Tony does not want to be a role model. Do you know that I was the only one who believed in you? Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a 14-year-old kid. I'm 15. a role model. I don't need that on my conscience. Yes, sir. Yes. I'm sorry. Sorry doesn't matter. I understand. I just wanted to be like you. And I wanted you to be better. Another aspect I've noticed in superhero mentorship stories

is how much leeway the mentor will give the mentee. Like in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Doctor Strange meets a teenage girl named America Chavez, who initially he's just trying to protect. I can travel the multiverse. What? You can physically move from one universe to another? How?

That's a problem. I don't know how. I can't control it. It only happens when I'm really, really afraid. Okay. Without giving away many spoilers, what I thought was particularly interesting about that relationship is that we see one scene where Doctor Strange has to take charge. He doesn't quite trust her with her powers. But in a later scene, he does let her take charge,

even if the cost of her failing is apocalyptic. I asked Julie if she often sees more realistic versions of that scenario in the workplace. Those are two different approaches, and I definitely see them in mentorship and sponsorship relationships. So in the one case, it's almost playing a mentor or a sponsor playing the role of protector. And in the other case, it's really empowerment. And I do think the latter is more powerful because at the end of the day, the empowerment and learning, even by making mistakes, is really important for people as they grow and develop. So, you know, even if you are making mistakes and in this case, you know,

the universe ends, huge mistake. But you're learning a lot from that. And, you know, the reality in the real world is that, you know, those mistakes and those failures are what help us grow. Yeah. Are there any sort of things that in your research and understanding of mentorship and sponsorship in the real world that you wish they would apply more often to these kind of fantasy stories? Maybe making it a bit more explicit or transparent would be interesting, right? Exploring the importance of mentorship, of sponsorship, of role models, probably more directly, particularly for women. That's why she likes the relationship between Carol Danvers and Kamala Khan,

otherwise known as Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel. In the comics and in the Disney Plus show, Kamala names herself Ms. Marvel because she is the ultimate Captain Marvel fan. I've learned a lot about Captain Marvel, and I know at least three things to be true. One, she blasted through Thanos' fleet like the flaming angel. And you know what? She looked good doing it. I've always loved Captain Marvel. I think Captain Marvel is just a great character in general. I think Captain Marvel is just a great character in general.

So, you know, that's really important for other women and young girls and people who are really energized and excited about the role that those superheroes can play. We don't see them interact in the new Disney Plus show, but they will be starring together in a movie next year called The Marvels. Kamala might be setting herself up for disappointment, given how much she hero worships Captain Marvel. But Julie thinks Carol Danvers will be well-equipped to handle this relationship, because the need for mentorship is really clear. Yeah, so I think being more transparent about that and upfront, and having that potentially be part of the story, could be an interesting narrative. In the next episode, we'll be looking at a different universe, where there's nothing vague about the relationship between a mentor and a mentee,

or a master and a Padawan. In fact, mentorship is the entire structure of the Jedi, and to their downfall, it may have led. To their downfall, it may have led. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Stama Tiyadova, Matt Fraction, Ben Saunders, and Julie Nugent. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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