I have never really found my identity in a theater, or even on the television, whether watching something on cable, local channels, or rented movies and films . But I think some people have.

Watching pre-teens and teenagers define themselves by paraphernalia and attitudes from the movies and TV shows is daunting and discouraging at the least. I don’t know how they can do it. Stores like Target and Walmart capitalize on these trends and then have a feeding frenzy. As a result of (or at least an uncanny correlation with) the recent Superman movie, I have seen too many boys wearing t-shirts and sweaters with the near-universally-recognized S symbol. Creativity has been malnourished, and is crawling to the door of its cell, breathing with pain, only kept alive by the remnant’s discreet care packages.

Is it a wonder that the postmodern, non-gendered “person” is griping about the difficulties of the search for identity? Boys can’t be boys unless they choose to be boys. Likewise with girls, except girls are encouraged to be more of boys than girls. Maybe we should realize that identity isn’t as elusive as we think it is. Reality and identity don’t come in bottles, and you can’t buy them at IKEA, so maybe we should look for them in other venues.

Jason Bourne found his identity three days ago. And he generated more than seventy million dollars in that time. Amnesia and many, many injuries hindered his identity-search, but he found it, and his case of amnesia is the best used in Hollywood in decades, to my knowledge. Leonard Shelby comes close, except Memento didn’t deal with any kind of amnesia—it was anterograde amnesia (Shelby’s mind could not translate short-term memory into the long-term memory banks). Jason Bourne, though, had the foggy and reverb-filled flashbacks little by little, the standard treatment.

Seven years ago Bourne started making his income, which is rising as I write this, and is right now somewhere around three hundred million dollars. Shelby tried hard, but only made twenty-five million; he doesn’t mind, though, because his audience is mainly among the college students and curious, older, intellectuals, and, of course, the immature kids who get a rush from hearing swear words. Bourne’s audience is who used to be called Everyman, but who has since been neutered, because those who speak this language forgot that the masculine pronouns and such have always been neuter unless specifically referring to a male. Everyperson watches the Bourne movies with triumph, and walks out of the theater or turns off the DVD player with confidence, saying, “I, too, can be Jason Bourne.” But then they catch themselves, saying, “But I cannot be Jason Bourne, because he is already someone, and I am not yet anyone, and if I become Jason Bourne then I will only be one of them.”

Bourne may be the new James Bond, or the new, better-groomed, better-mannered Walker, Texas Ranger. But he is so much more to the postmodern journeyperson (silly me, I almost wrote “journeyman”). He is the epitome of the Search with the capital S. He is the hero of our cause; we have lost our identity down the rain-gutter of our discontent, and he has swam through the oceans to find it. Of course, on the way to his swim, he had to jump off of a twenty-story building.

Leonard Shelby lost his identity and can never recover it. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before he’ll wake up in prison, not knowing how he got there, and won’t believe the guards who insist that he was proud to have killed several “John G’s”. There will be Polaroids of Shelby with blood on his chest, happy that he has once again (for the first time) avenged his wife’s death. But he will burn them if he can because his identity cannot be at rest.

Jason, on the other hand, had to do what he could to get his identity back, and that was his goal. He is the cheerleader of the power of identity; he woke up with holes through his whole body, confused, but soon realized that he has all the identities that he needed to shift around the world as needed. And soon enough he found out that he could run really fast, jump across rooftops, kill people with ordinary household objects, and speak at least four foreign languages. I wish I could wake up and speak Italian. Everyperson wants to wake up and have the training to elude fifteen police cars until they have all either given up, crashed, or blown up.

And driving away from the theater, Everyperson thinks, “Maybe, even though I cannot be Jason Bourne, I too can drive off of roofs and weave through traffic like a crochet needle. Or maybe I can at least feel the triumph in saying, ‘I remember everything, and now I am who I am!’” Now, I wrote that for effect, but I believe that anyone would like to make that claim. Jewish people, at very least, will realize the danger and gravity of making such a statement, and would, at least traditionally, condemn such a statement as usurping YHWH’s identity.

I hope that we are wise enough to know that idols can be made out of thought bubbles as well as wood. That glorious identity over on the other side of the stream, where the grass isn’t as whithered as it is over here, is a god. But just because Jason Bourne remembered everything doesn’t mean he’s a pagan. In fact, his dogtags said he was a Catholic. The fact still stands, though, that people can make an idol (an inferior, vastly inferior, image of the real thing) of a picture of Jesus. Bourne is no real Messiah, but he is a literary and visual character, not inherently evil, and has become a Messiah for Everyperson, who has made its pilgrimage to Edwards Cinema to find its nirvana.

Nirvana, though, is the wrong term, because the idea of nirvana is losing all identity. So this, therefore, is an inverted nirvana. But Everyperson is content to rebel against all preconceived religious standards, because Everyperson also has a trusty sidekick, Anycreed. Anycreed is the shadow cast behind Everyperson, changing with every step that Everyperson takes, and growing and shrinking depending on the time of day. And Anycreed pants and pines for the success of Jason Bourne.

Shelby is the failure of the identity god, the dismal view of the 90s, drinking beer and mucus while Everyperson sits at the bar and laughs or pities him. But Bourne is the champion, the model, the type.