Those of you who’ve been around for a minute will know that, for me, one of the unique and indispensable functions of art and literature—one of the things that I think only art and literature do for us—is this: they can make us understand what people who believe in a religion (broadly defined) get out of it, even (especially) when we don’t share that religion or find it basically unappealing. I got that from Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s classic bildungsroman, Ambiguous Adventure: here is what is beautiful in conservative Islam. And I got it from Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha, re, of course, Buddhism. (Buddha, along with the work of Mary Midgley, also caused me to fully realize that animals are conscious, a realization so basic that the fact that I had to learn it, fairly late in life, from books makes me wonder whether I am. I was reading a series of panels in which, I think, a deer does something kind for our hero, and at the time, I was suffering from a mild case of what I think was poison oak. Our cat Scarlett kept trying to lick the afflicted portions of my arm. All at once, reading Buddha, I realized that she was doing this out of love; she didn’t think the red marks on my arm were catnip or something. Talk about a work of art directly and dramatically improving your life.)
I suppose Metropolitan does this for me w/r/t being a WASP. The spell evaporates immediately after I finish the film, but while I’m watching it, I manage not to hate these literal Averell Harriman admirers, who believe charity is condescending. In fact, I love them.
Anyway, I have recently had this experience again, reading Alan Moore’s flawed, messy, questionable, and (to me) quite moving Promethea (ca. 2000).