Forcing tolerance down this stupid state’s throat…

…one super-hero movie at a time.

So The Missus, The Boy and I are out on a playdate over the weekend at a local bowling alley with this beautiful but somewhat withdrawn little girl, Malaika, and her dotty mom... uh, Sue? Sally? Fuck it, we’ll call her what she is; Dottie.

We’re swapping life-story thumbnails (the kids know each other, we don’t) and Dottie reveals that Malaika’s step-dad is a “total gun-nut” (Dottie’s words) with rage issues, no patience, 15 years white-knuckle sobriety under his belt and oh yeah, he doesn’t like kids, including hers. According to Dottie, he literally puts earplugs in at home to blot Dottie and Malaika out.

Dottie seems nice enough, but she’s one of those gals who a) just never stops talking—thus the earplugs, I suppose—and b) is always in the middle of a run of bad luck. This week, she says, her face got infected and swollen (some bruising remains) and her car broke down and she couldn’t afford to fix it but her husband doesn’t want her working and we’re only going bowling because she fell into a couple of free bowling passes. She loves the Lord and “just believes” in the Bible.

I immediately think about her rage-monster, dry-drunk second or third husband and assure her I barely even noticed the residual bruising left by her unfortunate “infection.”

Being me, by this point, my heart is bleeding for these people, by which I mean the little girl. (Sorry, adults, you’ve made your own bed.)

After a while, the conversation moves on to gossiping about some of the kids’ other classmates. Dottie and I both volunteer in the classroom when we can, so we’re well familiar with the cast of characters.

There’s one little girl The Missus and I always notice. Her name is Danica, and besides her huge green eyes and flaming red tresses, she’s drawn our attention because every day, she is dressed in a different outfit that is kind of Annie Hall-meets Goodwill-meets an explosion at a rainbow factory. This kid’s breathtaking fashion sense hits you farther away than one of Ted Nugent’s elephant guns.

Plus she’s this extremely together, centered kid. She approaches (familiar) adults and starts conversations way above her grade-level. She’s never out of control, even when the rest of the room is in chaos. She comes up and gives brisk, sincere hugs out of the blue. She’s just a superstar, waiting to happen. Apparently she has a sister in sixth grade who already is.

Anyhow, The Missus mentions Danica’s unique attention to couture, and Dottie’s eyes darken and her voice goes all hushed, “Well, you know about Danica’s family situation, right?”

We go “no,” preparing for the worst. If it’s spooked Dottie, it must be pretty fucking horrible.

“Danica’s parents are divorced and her Mom...” (I’m thinking cancer) “...her mom moved in with a woman,” she gasped, her voice falling even lower.

And oh my God, apparently they think they’re happy!! What are they going to do without an inarticulate, uncommunicative, emotionally distant male to head their household as the Bible instructs?!

Et cetera, ad nauseum. Thinking about how this quiet little girl’s mom was putting her daughter in potential jeopardy on a daily basis while listening to her bad-mouth a mutually loving relationship that is producing startlingly well-adjusted children just worked my nerves on so many levels.

Somehow, The Missus and I both kept our umbrage to ourselves—I’m especially proud of The Missus, who lately has been hanging her hat on gender-equity issues—but this is, in a nutshell, what I hate about Idaho.

Dottie would be an outlier in California, out here she’s the official State Archetype.

Which brings me to The Avengers.

And the geek in me cannot resist issuing a quick review… I’ll keep it spoiler-free, assuming that not everyone played the movie’s game and ran right out saw it already.

Had to see it twice, as the idiots at the local IMAX completely destroyed our family’s first attempt to enjoy the film with their epic bungling of the pressing the “on” switch in the projection booth. But I’m digressing from my digression and that is never good…

Man, does The Avengers nail it. This is the movie I’ve been seeing in my head since I was a little kid, reading the source material in the ’60s. The smartest thing the filmmakers did was getting fellow fan-boy and TV auteur Joss Whedon to write and direct it. On paper, it was a big gamble. None of Whedon’s previous projects have made anything more than chump change at the box office.

But all his properties have wildly devoted cult followings, and now the world knows why.

With the kind of budget they threw at this thing, it would have looked good even in Ed Woods’ hands. So the cheesy production values of Whedon’s previous efforts isn’t really an issue, and it becomes all about insight and instincts, and both are spot-on. Avengers is that rare comic-book film that is great because it plays like a comic book. The Dark Knight is a greater film, but it (deliberately) didn’t feel at all like a giddy comic book joyride, whereas The Avengers is an E Ticket to a good time from the first moving image.

I think that’s partly because the usual tortured exposition necessary to the genre has been dispatched with in the heroes’ individual films, and this one can start off like a bullet fired from a gun without leaving the audience behind.

But it’s mostly Whedon’s obvious love for the characters and ease with the conventions of the genre that lifts this ship’s sails. For instance, unlike every other previous screen appearance, the Hulk is a highlight of this film, not a millstone around its neck. And that’s only because Whedon knows exactly how to use him; he gets a couple of the best scenes in the film. The character went from being a Hollywood in-joke to its hottest new property overnight.

The extensive action sequences are full of clever “how come I’ve never seen that on the screen before?” moments. The movie also succeeds by keeping the breezy air of the Iron Man movies intact throughout. Every scene is just plain fun, even the talky ones, and the throwaway gags (you will know them when you see them; keep your eye on the Hulk) are destined to be movie touchstones for a generation.

And the way Whedon writes Captain America... Cap has a scene about 3/4 of the way through the film that gave me goosebumps and has drawn applause at both of the screenings we’ve been to.

And I haven’t even gotten to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Scarlett Johanssen sewn into a black catsuit yet.

So what the hell does any of this have to with intolerance in Idaho?

The fulcrum around which The Avengers pivots is Nick Fury, world’s top super-spy, played by the world’s top movie bad-ass, Samuel L. Jackson.

In case you’re wondering, Jackson’s casting was not a pander to the PC-crowd, or a marketing ploy to exploit “diversity” in an effort to fill as many seats as possible. A decade ago or so, British graphic artist Bryan Hitch helped relaunch the Avengers comic, and he cast well-known actors as his super-heroes, including Brad Pitt as Thor (!) and Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, who had always been Caucasian in previous incarnations.

But Sam Jackson and Nick Fury were such a perfect fit that it stuck, and the franchise is much improved for it. The last Caucasian thesp to portray Nick Fury onscreen? Sir David of Hasslehoff. Need I say more?

Anyhow, the second time The Boy and I saw the movie, part of the fun for me was watching the family to our left watch the film. A mom and dad in their 20s and a kid about The Boy’s age, and mom and the kid loved the whole thing (couldn’t see dad that well). The kid caught me looking, and after that we shared grins at cool moments in the movie. At the end when they were about to leave, I took a chance and touched his elbow. He looked over at me, and I said, “Hang on, there’s still one more bit to come.” He turned to his mom and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back into their seats. And we all got to see the “tag” at the end. After it, the kid looked at me questioningly. I leaned forward and told him the name of the tag’s mysterious villain in a confidential voice and watched his eyes light up.

It was only after getting back home that it occurred to me that, after living in Boise for two years now, this is the first time I can recall sharing a screening room with any person of color, let alone three. And I wondered how much of that had to do with Sam Jackson.

Then it occurred to me that, even in Idaho, that kid in the seat next to my son is growing up in a country where the President has always been Black, and so has Nick Fury. There’s no reason in the world he can’t go home and dream of growing up to be the most powerful man in the world. Ordering super-heroes around, or killing real-life terrorists from an office chair in the White House Situation Room.

We’ve come a long way since I was a kid, when the best a young Black kid could reasonably dream of growing up to be was a Harlem Globetrotter, or maybe a doorman at a really swanky condo uptown.

As the Trayvon Martin case illustrates, the issue of race isn’t anywhere near resolved, but like terror, racial bias will never be completely stamped out. Hate lives in the heart of man, and hate always needs a target. It and its effects are here to stay.

But this kind of hate, race-hate, has in my lifetime become the exception rather than the rule. Even in Idaho.

And it gives me hope that by the time my son and the kid next to him at the movie are adults, we’ll have seen a gay President or two as well as some openly-fabulous super-heroes at the cinema, and gender-orientation discrimination will seem as ugly and archaic as racial bias does today.

Even in Idaho.