On Die Hard, Religion, Death and Resurrection

In Funny People (2009), Adam Sandler, after diagnosed with cancer, ridicules his oncologist for looking like Karl, the blond henchman in Die Hard (1988) who apparently comes back from the dead at the end of the film for a final confrontation with John McClane (Bruce Willis), only to be finally killed by the black police officer, played by the dude who would later portray another officer in Tom Hanks’ Turner & Hooch (1989). (I’ll spare you my thoughts on the subliminal racism of how all “honest police officers” are black, as if such characters were some liberal provocation to the more common implicit stereotype.) In Hollywood, people can be anything, and Apatow is aware of the satisfaction we procure in getting the reference, the fickle yet rooted memory of Karl, as Willis and McClane are similarly treated with the same sense in this regard. (“Where you try to kill Bruce Willis” is Sandler’s punch line.) Did the screenplay requested for an actor who looked like Die Hard’s Karl, or was the scene deftly altered, improvised even, once they noticed the resemblance? The answer is less significant than the initiator. Karl since has been resurrected twice, a dubious Lazarus, just with a lustrous head of Aryan hair.

On Dec. 22, 1988, a troop of European terrorists infiltrated Los Angeles’ Nakatomi Plaza  attempting to shut down a christmas party, until one particular American citizen took second amendment matters into his own hands. On yippee ki-yay muthafucker, only the last word is Freudian, and we still speculate whether screen writers are arse or breast men. A little over twelve years later, Hollywood would not be able to portray an aeroplane, or any vehicle, crashing into a building. All that is known about 9-11 is what the handheld camera phones told us, jogged around by an innocent public fleeing the other direction. I was “off sick” at home from school looking after my mum on September 11, 2001. I came down to make lunch but instead was met with “big fire in building just now,” to which I replied, “Mama, it’s a movie,” note exasperated italics, I said without even turning on the television. “No on news,” she said. “No it’s not,” I said. When I did turn on the TV, the second plane had already hit, the blossom of smoke as Satan’s bouquet, and I apologized to my mother that movies were so realistic these days.

In Kill Bill 2 (2004), it is expressed that Clark Kent — sheepish, timid, disquiet, self-conscious — is Superman’s critique of the human race, that such a character is employed by our hero to disguise himself in society. We are told to compare this to Batman or Spiderman, who, inversely, are the costumes themselves. McClane is the costume around the viewer, at home on his backside making his way through some homemade chili. I need to throw an ergonomic chair out the window. The emphasis on McClane’s feet evokes biblical symbolism (Jesus washing feet of Apostles; his footprints in the sand; nailed feet to the cross, etc.), how it all started by the self administered foot rub of a tired man. In the beginning of the film, McClane and his wife are going through a separation, but by the end gets her back in bed. Resurrection or not, he’s second coming all right.

Even raised a Muslim, I’ve always thought Christianity was the most endearing religion to others because God is not a concept, but a father. God, too, in flesh, is also a son, a man, and a ghost. Shit’s anthropomorphic, science-fiction and a family soap opera, powerful marketing. The Crucifixion, with its carnal fetish and transparent narrative, is not the story of the Almighty, but humans. 

My ex’s father was a pastor at the church down the road, near my old primary school. After our break up, he happened to find me ordering lunch at a local chicken shop. He knew about our relationship and me being a Muslim, but not practicing and being generally confused about the concept of religion. Two minutes at the counter he says it’s his responsibility to tell me about Jesus. He was respectful, which is why I am now. He invited me to ask any questions I had, any qualms. I offered an example of an African baby born with AIDS and dying, without believing in Jesus as his saviour, less than a month old. “Will the baby go to hell?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. I said something like that’s not fair or shit. He then said if the baby were entirely ready for Jesus, then it would somehow — by the irrational grace of faith — come to know and believe in Jesus on some immaterial plane. I said thanks, but I don’t buy it. He did the Christian thing and insisted on paying for my order.

My mother, before diagnosed with schizophrenia, never prayed unless whenever she wanted something really bad, a good wife for me and my brothers in the future, the father we had in the past, or just that new spring coat she spotted in the high street. She still doesn’t pray now, instead curses God in front of me and my brothers and wishing she was dead. I tell her that maybe Buddhism is for us, it’s essentially self-death, but so masochistic you can’t even kill yourself. Of course, I don’t say it in those words. “Mama, it’s about letting go, not holding on,” I say, in arabic with condescending italics. She looks at me distantly and absent from love as one would expect from a mother to a child, the word stranger branded on my forehead. We don’t understand each other, which is where food comes in. “Let’s go call Doonald’s” (McDonalds in my mum talk), she says, a sad hunger in her eyes. We make the five minute drive, courtesy of my brother, through streets named after people long forgotten, a microcosm of England in your weekly activities, but for my mother this is the furthest she’s travelled out the house for two months. She shouts from the back seat struggling through the intercom, eagerly leaning on me towards the window with a Sudanese accent. I see her long lamented muffin-tops around her waist, the near-perfect blue sky of what should be happy, and want to cry. Death is not the end, I say, etc. etc. On the drive home, me holding the warm bag of McDonald’s, she reaches in for a french fry or two, fingers finding fingers.

So the baby from Africa with AIDS doesn’t die but grows up into an actor. He plays the part of a good honest officer, Sgt. Al Powell, who develops a walky-talky acquaintance with a barefoot renegade, also another honest officer. They solemnly talk about past life failures. Powell tells McClane he once accidently killed a child, and has never since pulled a gun on anyone, until at the end the camera pulls in focus behind the smoking barrel which killed our Karl for the final time, Powell’s face. You don’t need a river or religion to be born again, just a good script. Movies are the way the world should be. This is why we regard romantic comedies with such disparagement, the liability of finding happiness.

When my last girlfriend (not the one above) was very ill (out of respect I hope you’ll understand why I won’t disclose the ailment,) I stayed at the hospital one night after her parent’s had gone home to rest, I held paper cups into which she spit brown mucous. Looking at them on their way to the bin, only twenty-two years old, I knew what love was: when disgusting is tolerable. When it pained her to breathe, literally, she looked at me with fearful eyes, the way a baby gazelle looks at the beast who’s eating it alive. Eyes are not windows to the soul, but pinholes to the cosmos. When it pained me to breathe, figuratively, I went outside. In the hallway, far away by a cleaning closet, I prayed to God for her to get better, and so made a deal with him: I would rather lose her to another man and for her to live a full happy life without me, than for her to die with me as her man. It seemed reasonable, and I cried so hard with my forehead on the wall. Stepping back into the room was like cheating. I had a secret I would never tell her, a relationship with another. I hold a cup under her chin. Like is spit, love is swallow, and she only really liked me. Why are my eyes red, she asks? Must be hay-fever, I say. She ends up leaving the hospital and recovers fully. Last I heard, a dapper young gentleman had taken her to Rome. I guess God does exist.