Masks and Mirrors

Anakin, Eric, and Matt all seem to have two lives. Eric lived as a loving boyfriend before become a cold-blooded killer. Matt is a lawyer, supposedly helping justice by day, while simultaneously taking the law into his own hands at night. Anakin, as a Jedi, is sworn to uphold the ideals of the Order, yet he killed in rage and later married, something no Jedi should do. Which side is the real side? Are both sides of their personalities integral to their being, or is one of them a mask?

Matt is the best candidate for someone who wears a metaphorical mask; he already wears a real one. He wears it to both hide his identity and strike fear into the people he pursues. Matt, though, is not Daredevil at the same time he's Matt Murdock. Matt can have a sense of humor about things, like when he knew his best friend, Frankie Nelson, gave him mustard instead of honey for his tea. Matt's response: he switched the cups when Frank wasn't watching. As Daredevil, though, Matt is both brutal and methodical. When he went after Castada, a crooked cop accused of rape, Matt not only left him to die on some subway rails, but he took out an entire bar filled with, what we can only hope, were criminals. However, the movie hints that Daredevil is simply a front that Matt must put on in order to do his job. After Castada's trial ended, there is a brief scene in which Matt puts on his costume. From this point on, until he returns to his apartment, he is strong and a symbol of fear for anyone who crosses his path.

Once he returns to his apartment, though, and the mask comes off, he becomes Matt Murdock. Aside from his hyper-senses, he has no super powers: he is simply athletic. After he removes the outfit, we see scars and wounds from previous battles. Matt even pants, short on breath from running across half of New York. Then he takes several medications: vicodine, percodine, and something else, probably darvon or darvocet. All of these medications, though, are prescription pain-killers. Obviously, Matt hurts from his vigilante work. The next day, at a coffee shop, he normal Matt again, having a cup of tea with his friend.

Daredevil's adversary, Kingpin, also serves to show that Daredevil is simply a front for Matt. Before the final battle sequence, Kingpin waits for Daredevil and removes his jacket, cufflinks, and vest. He dressed down for the fight, while Matt needed to dress up for it. Kingpin, though, can kill someone, regardless of who they are, and works only for his own agenda. He exposes the cold, brutal self he hides beneath his suave, cool public face. Matt, though, needs to cover his own good nature in order to fight. During the final conflict, after loosing his mask, Matt could have easily killed Kingpin, but didn't. This is the only scene where he fights without his full costume on, symbolic of his truer, better aspects coming through. Daredevil is, for Matt, both a physical costume and an emotional mask.

Eric Draven has a similar mask. For him, though, it is a painted theater comedy mask, similar to the ones his fiancé, Shelly, had over their bed (actually, the irony mask or a similar pattern is adopted by all the people who are resurrected as Crows). He puts the make-up on after the flashbacks let him know that he is dead and Shelly was murdered. Once he puts the make-up on, the background music plays:

Just paint your face, the shadows smile

Slipping me away from you
"Oh it doesn't matter how you hide
Find you if we're wanting to
So slide back down and close your eyes
Sleep a while
You must be tired..."

The song, "Burn," by the Cure, embodies the scene perfectly. Eric is leaving his former life behind, which he does so to a greater extent later in the movie as he burns pictures in a fireplace. The make-up and the rock show attire Eric chooses for his quest are symbolic. They hide who he really was. During the flashbacks to his former life, he never once wore black. In fact, the only black he wears during the film are the clothes he is buried in and the Crow costume he cobles up. The rest of the flashbacks he is dressed in casual white, red, and patterns. As the Crow, his new face stays on no matter what. His first kill occurs while it rains, and even then the make-up doesn't even run. Shortly thereafter, when he tries to find the pawn-shop where Shelly's engagement ring was sold at, the comedy mask is still perfect. Only at the end of his quest, when his powers are taken away, does the make-up come off. The rain manages to clean it almost completely off, and by the end of his battle as a mere mortal his true face shows again.

James O'Barr, who created and wrote The Crow comics, said, "With every one of the people Eric kills who perpetrated the crime against him and his fiancée, he is erasing his reason for being" (O'Barr). Someone brought back as a Crow only remains on Earth while their task is incomplete. In The Crow: Salvation, another Crow, Alex Mabius, is tricked into thinking he's avenged his lost love and subsequently looses his powers. With Eric, after the battle royale at Top Dollar's hide-out, he goes back to his grave, but doesn't return until after he rescues Sarah and kills the last of Top Dollar's gang. At that point, Eric returns to the land of the dead. Eric's mask, therefore, is both real and metaphorical, like Matt's. It covers his own human nature with a primal anger drawn from his ordeal that allows him to do his job.

Anakin, though, doesn't wear a mask so much as he sheds one life for another piece by piece. Unlike other Jedi, Anakin was taken into the Order at the age of ten, whereas most Jedi were brought in as infants. Anakin, therefore, knew of a life outside of his present duties. The life he remembered, though, was as a slave. His thirst for power, along with his mother's death at the hands of Tusken Raiders, help him to move towards the Dark Side of the Force. As the Republic is split and people take sides, Anakin loses an arm in combat, replaced with another, cybernetic one. Then, after the Battle of Geonosis, he marries Senator Amidala, further moving away from the Jedi Order. After the Empire is formed and Obi-Won Kenobi leaves him for dead, he is rebuilt as Darth Vader, now almost entirely machine. As Obi-Won's ghost later commented to Anakin's son, Luke, "He's more machine now than man." According to the Star Wars novels, Vader required reinforcement on his spinal cord, the replacement of at least one limb, and augmentation of severely burnt flesh from his last battle with his former master.

For the next twenty years, as the Empire grew, Anakin became Lord Vader. Even when Luke confronted the Dark Lord with his past, Vader simply remarked, "That name no longer has any meaning." As Kenobi saw, Anakin was metaphorically dead, but Vader was very much alive. As the Galactic Civil War wound down, though, Anakin Skywalker resurfaced. Onboard the Death Star II, Emperor Palpatine finally killed Vader after the Dark Lord saved his son from his master's wrath. With his cybernetic systems failing and his biologic structure compromised, Vader asked his son to remove his mask so he could see him with his own eyes.

Masks help to hide our identities. For Matt, Eric, and Anakin, they also serve as ways to move between lives. Neither side is truly whole without the other, but the trick is to figure out which part is the dominant personality: the mast or the person beneath it.

Heavenly Rights

The War in Heaven