The Superman Problem
Is the Man of Steel's heart of gold too far-fetched for today's cynical culture?
The year is 1938. The Great Depression is in full swing; Hoovervilles, makeshift villages of tents inhabited by those who lost their homes, litter cities across America. In the Great Plains, storms caused by the cataclysmic Dust Bowl crisis suffocate unlucky travelers and leave thousands to die of pneumonia. Across the Atlantic, antisemitism spreads like a cancer throughout increasingly fascist nations. Europe is a powder keg set to explode.
People could use some hope.
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the children of Jewish immigrants from Cleveland, write a comic about a hero named Superman.
In the 1930s, Clark Kent wasn’t fighting the intergalactic, time-splitting wars that we see him in today on the big screen. Instead, he worked to protect those most vulnerable on the homefront; some notable storylines from Superman’s original comic strip include him saving a woman from her abusive husband, rescuing a miner from a collapsing cave, and busting a corrupt senator. Superman saved everyday people from everyday injustices. It was fantasy enough for the time that comics flew off the shelves as Americans sought escape from the stress of the world around them.
In the following decades, the world continued to appreciate Superman for his camp sense of style and the cyclical sense of relief and joy he brought the citizens of Metropolis. Readers could trust Clark Kent to do the right thing; it was an unspoken rule that Superman represented all that is good. His adventures were formulaic, but effective stories.
Superman’s biggest appeal is his simplicity. However, in today’s cynical world, that simplicity can never be accepted for what it is.
Superman in the 21st Century
The “S” on Superman’s chest is infamously not an English letter “S,” but the Kryptonian symbol for hope. In all recent major interpretations of Superman, writers and directors today seem more interested in how this symbol can be corrupted instead of appreciating its purity.
Zack Snyder’s 2013 film Man of Steel is a far cry from the Superman of the 1930s. It is a gray-scaled saga deprived of virtually any sense of joy. As a movie, it lacks the camp and flamboyance given to Superman by Christopher Reeves, who perhaps had the most successful portrayal of Superman in film. Man of Steel tries to be an epic spectacle of a film that places the loner, Clark Kent, in a humorless world that desperately seeks hope. This Clark, though, doesn’t do much to instill hope as much as he does wariness and distrust.
All the following DCEU films portray Superman as the stoic, smoldering alien man he was in Man of Steel. When he crosses paths with Bruce Wayne in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, he is abrasive and callous. There’s no balance between Clark’s personality and Bruce’s; instead of complementing each other, they collide like two brick walls.
Superman’s abysmal lack of personality continues in Justice League, where the idea of Superman being a Christ figure is used to beat the audience over the head. Despite all the Christ imagery, though, the movie fails to give Clark a soul. We know that he loves Lois Lane because he tells us he does. But the relationship isn’t built on much besides the fact that they were married in the comics, so they’ll be married in the movies, too.
Zack Snyder’s cut of the film shows an after-credits scene wherein Superman has given into rage and Darkseid’s manipulation and brought about a global apocalypse. While watching, I couldn’t help but feel that this looming betrayal would feel more impactful if fans were ever given a reason to connect with and trust Superman in the first place.
Media in today’s world is so fascinated by the gritty and realistic. This fixation serves figures like Batman very well; it allows audiences more insight into how the pain he suffered as a child molded him into the cold, yet morally upstanding man he is today.
However, these fatalistic settings only drain the life out of heroes like Superman. They effectively make Clark his own antithesis; Superman was created to be the hero that Americans could look to for a sense of escape from their harsh reality, while Snyder’s Superman only brings them more of that bleakness.
Who is Clark Kent Meant to Be?
In 1932, Jerry Siegel’s father died of a heart attack when a burglar robbed his clothing store at gunpoint. The earliest sketches of Superman that Jerry drew in the following years saw his hero rescuing a man from an armed robbery. The man looked very similar to Jerry’s father.
So what does this tell us about Superman’s raison d’être?
Superman was created to protect the oppressed. He represents the idea that injustices can and should be fought against, and that no evil is stronger than a pure heart. It’s a fantasy, yes, but it’s one that continues to give people hope while navigating the world around them.
The Clark Kent that was created in 1938 is not the brooding hunk that the DCEU continuously pushes on its audience. Clark Kent is the boy next door who helps get cats out of trees. He picks up litter when no one’s looking. He’s a good person, not for any political agenda, but because that’s how his parents raised him to be.
The year is 2022. Stagnant wages and rising rent are pushing more and more people to live out of their cars. Thousands continue to die every day by succumbing to the COVID-19 virus, a disease that’s killed millions within the last 3 years. Corruption in Washington DC is at an all-time high, leaving thousands of Americans to feel as though they don’t have a voice.
People could use some hope.
Why not revive the Superman of old and let him deliver it to them?