Superman has always been a favorite of mine. To a point. I loved (and always will) the Christopher Reeves portrayal of Superman on screen, and I collected Superman comics as a teenager, including the death of Superman series, which I still have. Although I must admit that I haven’t watched all the reboots on the big screen, I did watch the one that is out now. My children wanted to see it and asked me to come along (which means, ahem, pay for the tickets, Dad), which I happily did. Although I like some of director James Gunn’s other movies, I didn’t particularly like this one.
Reviews have been largely positive, but the style, the storytelling, and the pacing were all off for me and my cinematic tastes. It was fine, for the most part, and I was grateful that Gunn included musical elements from John Williams’ original theme. My dislike of the film was not for some of the political reasons that now pop up in relation to everything. Is Superman too woke? Was there political undercurrent in the story? Maybe/probably. Some of the answers to those questions will always be subjective based on what we read into a story, just as our preconceived notions color our assessment of just about everything these days.
Superman’s malleability has been a reality over the nearly ninety years that he’s been running around faster than a speeding bullet. At different times in our collective history, Superman has meant different things to different people, and not by accident. The writing of Superman’s storylines has changed from generation to generation to a certain extent, sometimes for artistic reasons and sometimes because the realities of the day demanded or at least warranted it.
Take the Superman motto we all know so well as an example: “Truth, justice, and the American way.” Superman’s motto has changed many times over the last nine decades. For much of that it has only been “truth and justice”. “The American way” was added in 1942, at a time when Superman was conscripted into the war effort like many characters and superheroes. He played a role in the propaganda machine that inspired Americans during those difficult days. It was dropped after the war. It came back in the fifties for the George Reeves TV show but was again dropped after that series. Christopher Reeves’ era brought it back yet again. It’s been in the lexicon often enough that it’s perennial at this point.
But, at other points in Superman’s history his motto has seen slightly different configurations building off of the truth and justice foundation. Over the last sixty years “tolerance,” “freedom,” and “peace” have all filled in the third part of his motto. “Tomorrow,” and “a better tomorrow” are more modern takes on Superman’s mission statement, too. Some of the flap about this newest movie’s inclusion of “the human way,” as the conclusion of the motto doesn’t really get me excited, especially in a time when “the American way,” has such a muddy and contested meaning. If we stop five people on the street and ask them what “the American way” means, we will likely get five different answers. As much as we might like to claim truth and justice AS the American way, “the American way” was always something in addition to truth and justice, not a shorthand for it.
Superman has always been an aspirational figure for us. The original comics really were an attempt to show the strength of character and physical might required to stand up to the worst parts of life in the 1930’s. When Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster created Superman, he was their ideal defender of the weak. As the children of Jewish immigrants, both men were sensitive to the antisemitic winds blowing across Europe. For decades, scholars have noted that an ongoing element of the Superman storyline is his attempt to fit in as a human and as an American despite technically being neither. Being an alien and an immigrant was a storyline that resonated not only with his creators, but with millions of Americans whose personal or familial storylines were similar.
Superman has also always stood up to the powers of this world that prey on the week. On the first page of Action Comics #1, the first comic book he appeared in, Superman was described as “Superman, champion of the oppressed! The physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!” (Sound familiar?!) Early Superman stories show him standing up to corrupt businessmen who put profit over people, particularly their safety. He defends women against violence at the hands of men and brings slumlords to justice. He goes on to punch Hitler in the mouth and we also see him in many other fictionalized real-world situations shaped by the events of the day. Superman has always been a mirror held up to provide an opportunity for reflection.
Superman first came about in an era that initially had a very different concept of what a super-man was. Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch was one of the early idealizations of what a super-man could be. The Übermensch wasn’t a political animal, he was simply a person freed from the false, “backwards values” of this world to pursue his own greatness. For Nietzsche, religion was the cause of the backwards ways of the world. Jewish and Christian ideals of caring for the weak and tempering the powerful were unnatural for Nietzsche. He thought strength and dominance were the default, whereas the ethics of religion had made them sinful. Hitler and the Nazis coopted his concepts and twisted them into something that doesn’t truly fit his philosophical intentions, but their idea of the super-man that fulfills the “might makes right” mentality had undeniably colored that phrase super-man. (Lex Luthor, Superman’s chief nemesis, is probably a cartoonish version of the Übermensch, although perhaps not consciously. And, the first time Siegel and Shuster used the name “Superman” in 1933, the title character was a bald villain – not a superhero - who wanted to dominate the world – a concept more in line with Nietzsche.)
What an amazing turn of history that those two Jewish men redefined the concept of a super-man by creating Superman. No one (apart from Philosophy majors like me) thinks about Nietzsche anymore when we hear that name. Superman, a comic book character, showed that superpowers are most effective when they were offered in service to the goodness of truth and justice and the weak – not used for personal power and control. Somehow, we’ve entered another era in which the pursuit of truth has become a secondary goal, and justice has become a bad word – a word not to be used in some circles. We hear people speak of empathy as weakness, and we see trends swinging back towards a mindset in which the poorest and most vulnerable being left to fend for themselves. This goes against Superman’s spirit (let alone the Gospel of Jesus!).
If you want to go see the new movie because you like Superman, don’t be scared off by anyone’s reviews – even mine. I do like that Gunn’s Superman is back to being a paragon of goodness and kindness whose driving force is to do what he thinks is right. As he has been in every age, Superman will be a figure against which we can measure ourselves, and that’s not a bad thing. What we react to in the storylines over the years says as much about us as it does about Superman (or his creators/writers). I think we’ll fare better comparing ourselves to Superman in any age than we would if comparing ourselves to our Lord, and I would need several Ramblings to reflect on how the latter is going these days. Thinking back to Superman’s motto, asking whose truth, whose justice, whose tolerance, whose freedom, whose peace, whose better tomorrow, and whose American way are all good questions to wrestle with.
