Return of Superman
Scott Brown of Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch just managed to do something unheard of: he made Superman sound interesting to me. Check out his summary of theories about Superman: Superman as gay (parallels to recent X-Men conversations), Superman as Jesus, Superman as American Jewish immigrant, Superman as Nietzschean Übermensch, and Superman as American hubris.
Personally, I find the last three most interesting. (Superman as Jesus doesn’t do much for me, especially because one of Jesus’ main characteristics is his humility, which isn’t a notable feature of Superman’s—or Clark Kent’s—personality, as far as I can tell).
One of the links from Brown’s post leads to an article describing how Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel first drew his inspiration from Nietzsche’s Übermensch, and how this first Superman was “as evil mastermind with advanced mental powers.” That was 1933. Also the year that Hitler came to power. Thus, as Hitler began advancing his own twisted vision of the Übermensch, Siegel and Shuster revised Superman into a force for good. Fascinating.
I don’t know anything about the Superman of comics, but as for the 1978 movie, I can definitely see Superman as American hubris. That whole last bit in which he changes history to get Lois Lane back from the dead? “I didn’t get what I wanted! Therefore, I’m going to spin the entire world around backwards until I can have things my way again.” And what bothered me most was that there were no consequences for breaking the “laws” of how things work, despite Marlon Brando’s dire warnings to the contrary. Porpoise tells me that his may be because the director envisioned Superman and Superman II as one movie, and he says that there actually are consequences for some of Superman’s prideful actions in Superman II. I’m not sure I have the patience to find out.
Anyway, Brown’s post concludes in a way I think we all would approve, given the previous discussions about X-Men: “So who/what is Superman? It seems pretty certain that Superman, like every icon, is all of the above, and more. The test of a good icon is its ability to absorb a multitude of interpretations.”
5 comments June 15th, 2006