Shazam! and the Myths of Foster Care
I like stories. Good storytelling communicates big ideas in a way that enables greater understanding. Jesus did that with parables. Timeless truths. The deepest theology. Communicated through stories about farmers, beggars, and lost sheep. You can ask the most biblically illiterate person on the street and they’ve probably heard of Jesus’ Good Samaritan. A story invites us into another person’s perspective. When done well, this can help us embrace truth we would otherwise be resistant to. But that incisiveness is the very reason why we should be careful about stories that don’t accurately communicate truth.
Stereotypes and Antitypes
Shazam! is an entertaining movie. And I’ll be upfront with my bias. I don’t think the lives of foster kids make good fodder for entertainment. I’m not saying movies should never deal with foster care. On the contrary, a good story can communicate a lot about their lives and get us to pay attention. But using their lives just to entertain us feels disrespectful to me. So, take my opinions with a grain of salt.
Shazam! is another entry in the superhero genre. 12-year-old Billy meets up with a man who gives him the power to become a superhero — complete with a 25-year-old body! Suddenly he is bulletproof, insanely strong, tall, fast, good looking, and he can fly. Basically, everything a 12-year-old might dream of.
Billy is a foster kid in search of his birth mom. He’s run away from homes looking for her but is basically a good kid. But his tendency to run away has landed him in a group home. The group home is a very large home with two extremely caring adults and 5 other children. He is first met by a cute little girl who hugs him and is eager to show him around the home. There is a smart girl bound for a good college, a handicapped kid with a plucky attitude, a quiet kid with a heart of gold, and a young Asian kid who loves to play video games. Other than the fact that these kids don’t have their original families, this is paradise — if Billy can just learn to accept this as home.
If this sounds familiar, you might recognize a similar setup from Annie. A house full of just the cutest little kids who were all eager to sing and dance with the plucky hero. Sure, their house was run by a sadist who was really only in it for the money, but even that doesn’t get our kid down. What’s not to love?
On the other hand, foster kids are often the boogiemen in other stories. Horribly abused, they grow up to become the most fearsome serial killers. As Rachel tells Murella says in Anne of Green Gables, they’ll stab you in your sleep. And Foster parents are either the angels of Shazam! or the Miss Hannigan of Annie. They are perfect people who love children and want nothing but to help them. Or they are evil people looking to make an easy buck or possibly are perverts looking to abuse kids.
Out of Myths, Some Truth
The reality isn’t quite so good — or so bad. Foster parents are rarely angels. They really do get into it because they want to help children. But they aren’t ethereally patient and good and caring. They lose their tempers occasionally, they make mistakes, they get really frustrated with kids who are obviously acting out because of the trauma they’ve experienced.
And those kids. They are not Anne of Green Gables. They are not Billy. They are not Annie. They are real kids. Think of your kids, or your niece or whatever. They have good days and bad days. Okay, it’s true their bad days can be worse than most kids’. But they don’t often break out into songs about Tomorrow — or knife you in your sleep. They’re kids. They get hurt. And thanks to an imperfect (understatement!) system, they get hurt again and again. And they don’t have the mental or emotional maturity to handle that well. That usually means temper tantrums or sullen moodiness.
These are kids that often don’t have the best homes to start with. So, they may not behave well in the best of circumstances. They also come from very different homes. Think how differently your in-laws do things. Their spaghetti tastes funny, they have weird shampoo, they have completely different shower handles that you can’t figure out how to use. Literally every moment of the day is like living in a foreign country where they speak the same language, but never seem to mean the same thing. This could make you cranky.
The movie Instant Family came out in 2018. It presented a fairly realistic look at the whole thing. Good kids making bad choices from time to time. Imperfect parents doing their best, failing at times. A system trying to help kids but making things worse at times. This is a better story. It’s real.
If you’ve ever thought about getting into foster care, please look into it. You won’t likely find Billy who turns into Shazam! You’ll find real kids that you will love more than you can imagine. And you might occasionally find you can’t stand them. But they need you. They are real kids who need a real family to love them and protect them for a while.
