3 Life Lessons from Shazam!

Hi! I’m Dan, I’m here to walk you through some of the life lessons that we can pick up from watching Shazam! We’re going to discuss rejection, power is used best when it is shared, and allowing yourself to be loved by others.

My day starts at 7.30am because I couldn’t wait for what I had planned; you see, Saturdays are usually reserved for something very close to my heart. I found that when a film came on at the cinema it would just totally send me to another place for a couple of hours, I didn’t have to think about any anxieties, I could exist at the moment that I was in, and get lost into a story. I’ve always been a fan of comic books, and I’ll never forget the goosebumps on my skin as a kid when I would flick from page to page under my quilt with a torch at night when I should’ve been sleeping. I would see Superman catch an Arctic lorry in his hands and crush the metal between his fingers like it was aluminum. It’s safe to say I was hooked. Stepping out of my house on Saturday morning I crunch the gravel between my shoes as I anticipate and wonder about the film I’m seeing. Of course, you’ve already guessed what I’m seeing, it’s Shazam!

Superheroes are important in pop culture, especially in the last decade where there has been an avalanche of every comic book fan’s favorite names that have arrived on the silver screen. Beyond the awesome powers, the ostentatious suit, and fascinating dynamics between the different characters in the hero’s life, there is something more. There’s the journey. The journey of the hero isn’t always an easy one; sometimes there is a loss of life before the hero can rise, sometimes the hero rises out of a calling to the emergence of evil that they might not want to face, and most heroes have to make a sacrifice that can greatly impact their lives. We the audience, have a window into these stories which have the opportunity to show glimmers of wisdom and truth that we can reflect on our own lives. Let’s call these glimmers of wisdom “life lessons.”

*** SPOILER ALERT: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS! ***

If you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want any spoilers, then save, bookmark, or pin this post so you can come back to it later after you see the movie!

(illustration drawn by Bimo Maliki)

There are some overarching themes for me in Shazam! that were really hard to ignore.

1.    Rejection does not have to define us

There are some really different ways that the characters handle rejection throughout the first 30 minutes of the film. There’s a moment at the start where Thaddeus Sivana is being ridiculed by his brother and father. The car he is in becomes empty, the windows frost over, and the young boy finds himself in the Rock of Eternity where the powerful wizard Shazam resides. Thaddeus reluctantly wanders into the grand hall with a tall ceiling that leads towards a podium with 7 chairs, where he finds Shazam slightly slumped with his glowing staff. Shazam tests the boy to see if he has a pure heart; the Seven Deadly Sins seduce Thaddeus to grab the eye of sin and promise him that he will have the power to destroy his brother and father. Edging close to the periphery of the holding chamber for the eye, Shazam rejects the young boy and throws him back into the moment in time he was in with his brother and father, which then leads to a car crash which Thaddeus is blamed for causing.

Billy Batson, on the other hand, faces a different rejection as a child. He is at the funfair with his mother when he drops a prize that she won earlier, losing her hand as he wanders after the compass that she told him would always show him which way to go to get back home. Ironically Billy never finds his mother despite finding his compass which could be seen as foreshadowing events that were due to take place later in the film, for example through Billy’s constant search for his mother he lands in a foster home that will love him and look out for him like arguably his mother really should’ve done.

The two characters react very differently in the face of rejection. Billy runs towards rejection by finding his mother to seek answers and a home; Thaddeus wants to run towards rejection so he can gain power over what has rejected him and then push it away like he was as a boy by his family. Billy is on a path of repetition chasing down women in Philadelphia that have his mother’s name, he lands in a foster home where there are people that want to care for him, then he runs away to find what he has lost so that life can go back to how it was. When his friend and roommate Freddy Freeman are being bullied and they ridicule him for not having a mom, Billy loses it and seizes a heroic moment to dish out some physical punishment to them. This stands out for me as a key moment where Billy takes ownership and breaks the pattern of always running away from what is hard and taking a stand for what’s right.

In life we’ll all face lots of different rejections; that person might not say yes to taking you out on that date, you might not get the job you applied for, or the offer you make on the dream house you want to buy might get rejected. It’s often what happens next that is the most interesting; we can actually use rejection as a springboard to move onto the next best thing. It’s about how we can capture that thought in our head and decide how we want to think about our adversity; instead of defaulting into reacting, we can decide. Billy initially dwells and obsesses on his rejection until he takes ownership by using a new opportunity to take control of his life and choose to move in a new direction into a life of responsibility and purpose.

 

2.    Power is used best when it is shared

In the film’s penultimate scene where Shazam is fighting Thaddeus in full big bad mode at Chill-Adelphia (which looks a little like the carnival where Billy lost his mom), the Seven Deadly sins are able to round up his foster family and force Shazam to kneel before the enemy where it seems he is contemplating giving up the almighty power to save the people he loves the most. Billy remembers what the wizard told him in the Rock of Eternity about saying Shazam! whilst holding the staff and asks his family to say his name so that they too can have his power. It doesn’t escape me that Billy shares power and so gains from this in having a family to protect against a seemingly unbeatable enemy. Thaddeus gives into the same seduction that the wizard saw in him as a boy and gives all of his power away by giving into the sins and letting them go, thus becoming vulnerable again where he is captured by Shazam!

We can learn from this moment in the movie; when we have power, we can choose to use this to tear people down or build them up. Billy could’ve been self-serving like he was through some of the movie and try to take down the Seven Deadly sins alone. He would’ve likely lost to Thaddeus, and the Sins would have all the power they need to wreak havoc on the 7 dimensions. Billy showed a real moment of humility when he took a step back from the situation he was faced with and understood that he could endow his foster family with the awesome powers of Shazam. He became an enabler for his family so that they could fight their own battles, a bit like teaching someone how to fish instead of fetching the fish for them. We can empower the people around us by using the gifts we naturally have in abundance, so for me I’m a great listener and a good friend so I share my power by showing the people I care about that there is someone in their life that can sit and listen in a way that they can truly be heard. How can you share your power to build up others?

 

3.    Allowing yourself to be loved by others

There is some heart aching moments in the film; Billy just can’t seem to catch a break and as the audience, we build a lot of empathy towards his situation. There’s a real sense that Billy had his childhood scarred through the disappearance of his mother, he routinely uses his initiative and wit to find the most creative ways of finding women in Philadelphia that match his mother’s name, he runs away from anyone that does want to show him any love or affection, and he wears an attitude as a defense mechanism in order to push people away—probably so that he doesn’t have worry about making relationships that inevitably won’t last in his eyes. My heart really went out to his foster parents Victor and Rosa who could clearly see from Billy’s perspective what it’s like to want to find your real family; they just wanted to create an environment where he could belong in a loving home.

Sometimes our “stuff” can get in the way of us accepting love from others; we can become so overwhelmed and inundated with emotions or the trauma of something that has happened in the past that we become all consumed. It’s not until we have moved passed, accepted, or dealt with our stuff that we can begin to make changes in our life. For me, a lot of what happened in my childhood followed me into adulthood; I carried it around in my head like a cloud shrouding my thoughts, judgment, and outlook into the future. I had developed defense mechanisms that had prevented me from addressing what was holding me back; I was like a moth in a cocoon. It wasn’t until I went to therapy that I started to peel back the layers of my trauma so that I could understand and make sense of everything that went down. It took a while, but eventually I was able to make a meaningful relationship with my mother because I was ready to accept that love into my life once I had moved the past out of my way. Billy does this in the film; he finds his mom and is able to reconcile his story in his head. Billy decides that whilst it is amazing that he’s found what he has been looking for, there is a love that he is willing to accept that has been there the whole time from his foster family.

 

In this blog post about 3 Life Lessons from Shazam! we discussed that we can choose how we want to react to rejection, that power is best used when shared in order to build others up, and that allowing yourself to be loved comes from moving your “stuff” out of the way to accept love.

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Note from Anna: Comment below with which lesson you resonated with the most from Shazam! If you enjoyed this post from Dan, then I highly recommend you check out his podcast, the Know Yourself podcast. Dan is such a kind, caring, and wise individual; I know you’ll benefit greatly from listening to his podcast. Check out his author box down below to learn more about him and connect with him on social media.

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