Lies, Injustice and the American Way

I was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition called Chronic Superhero Fatigue Syndrome. This illness was only discovered about two years ago and so far there is no known cure. I pray to the Great God Gherkin that it is not terminal. There are still a lot of non-superhero movies I'd like to watch before I die. This terrible disease has infected movie watchers all over the world. It has even claimed one of America's national treasures, Mr. Tom Hanks. A lot of us are just over superhero movies.

But as the book says, "we may be through with superhero movies, but superhero movies ain't through with us." It is impossible to escape the mythology of one's own culture. The genre has been churning out flops for the past couple of years but Sisyphus just keeps rolling that boulder up the hill. And so it shall come to pass that yet another Superman reboot, which is also yet another attempt to establish a DC cinematic universe, will soon emerge from the creative wastelands of capitalism.

Warner Brothers has been choking on Marvel's dust like a Mad Max stuntman for more than a decade. In 2008 they reached peak Batman with The Dark Knight, and it's been mostly downhill since then. Meanwhile, the MCU was just warming up with the release of Iron Man that same year. The "The DC Extended Universe" didn't officially launch until 2013, a full year after The Avengers had cemented the "shared universe" concept as the business model de jure for the big studios. The DCEU kicked off with Man of Steel, starring DC's most popular character, the most popular superhero of all time, Superman.

So here we are again, 12 years later, and Warner Brothers has hired James Gunn to reboot the DCEU into DC Universe. You probably know Gunn as the writer of the 1996 classic Tromeo and Juliet, but he also happens to be the writer and director of an obscure but influential Marvel movie called Guardians of the Galaxy. Gunn is kicking off the new DC Universe with a movie called... wait for it... Superman. I feel like we've been here before, except this time around audiences have already been subjected to a decade and a half of superhero pop culture dominance. But there is a super-powered dog now, so it's not all bad.

The Superman I grew up with claimed to represent Truth, Justice and the American Way. Christopher Reeve's Superman tells Margot Kidder's Lois Lane those are the values he fights for, to which she replies, "You're going to end up fighting every elected official in this country!" It was a throwaway joke but it hits a lot different in 2025 than it did in 1978.

The tagline wasn't from the original comics, and it has come and gone over the years. That didn't stop some professionally outraged people from being outraged when DC changed the motto to "Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow" in 2021. Those same outraged people celebrated when the "American Way" part of the phrase was mentioned in a press release about Gunn's upcoming film. But don't worry, when Superman debuts this summer I'm sure they'll find something in it to be outraged over. It is their job, after all.

Regardless of the ever-changing catchphrase, Superman has always reflected American values of the time. When Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 his story is titled, "Superman, Champion of the Oppressed." In one of his earliest stories he realizes that poverty is a root cause of crime and then destroys the slums so the government will build new low-cost public housing. He fights greedy capitalists and corrupt politicians. Superman originated at the tale end of the Great Depression, so this version of the Man of Steel makes sense, given the public mood of the time. As the times changed, so did Big Blue. The WWII era version had Superman justifying America's concentration camps for descendants of Japanese and trafficking in racial slurs to sell war bonds.

The closest Superman has come to being part of counterculture was probably after the war and into the 50s and 60s, when he campaigned against racism and prejudice. That Superman would probably be decried as "woke" today. And therein lies the problem. We live in a world where American values all feel like they are up for grabs. How can any character adequately encapsulate the many, often contradictory, constantly shifting values of modern America? Such a feat would require some brilliant writing. If we resurrected Shakespeare and set The Bard himself to writing a Superman script, I'm not sure he could accomplish the task.

Marvel's latest Captain America movie managed to stir up controversy with the faintest whiff of tepid political commentary on our new monarch, despite being well into post-production by the time of Orange Hulk's coronation. Even Captain America can't figure out what America means anymore. Shakespeare's Superman would reflect Shakespeare's worldview just as Gunn's Superman will reflect Gunn's worldview. No matter what that worldview is, controversy is sure to follow. But that certainly won't stop him from attempting to remain politically neutral, regardless of how impossible such an endeavor may be in this polarized age.

I believe that most people in this country, despite their ideological beliefs [or] their politics, are doing their best to get by and trying to be good people, despite what it may seem like to the other side and what that other side might be. I think this movie is about that. It’s about the basic kindness of human beings. And that it can be seen as uncool, and it can be seen as under siege when some of the darker voices are some of the louder voices. That’s what happens when you let the Internet seem like it’s the world—when it’s not the world. The world is us.

- James Gunn

Yes James, the world is us. It just so happens that most of us, especially in America, are on the Internet. Call me a cynic but I've grown weary of this Pollyannaish view that we are actually better than we appear to be on social media. More than 80% of the country watches YouTube. Close to 70% of America is on Facebook. Yes, those platforms have deliberately amplified our worst tendencies for profit. That's capitalism. But capitalism isn't a force of nature, it is an expression of our collective political will. Capitalism is us. Algorithmic malfeasance doesn't change the fact that it's still "us" the algorithm is amplifying.

So Gunn's Superman may be defined by kindness. But is kindness still an American value? As we bully Ukraine into handing over their precious minerals, are we being kind? Are we being kind when we prop up dictators all over the world? Is it kindness when we send billions of dollars in advanced weaponry to a genocidal nation-state? We arrest people who protest this, label them antisemitic terrorists, hold them without charges or due process. We've done the same to people accused of wrongthink in the past. We have a healthcare system so bad that when someone guns down an insurance CEO like a rabid dog, people (including yours truly) celebrate and start putting the vigilante's picture on t-shirts and coffee mugs. Where is the kindness in any of this?

The incongruity here is the difference between an ideal and a value. While kindness might be an American ideal, something we believe we should strive for, our actions reveal our true values. No culture ever truly lives up to its ideals. But America isn't just failing to live up to its ideals; it seems hellbent on tossing them into a wood chipper. Lex Luthor is supposed to be the villain but in reality America doesn't punish evil billionaires, it gives them government contracts.

This isn't just a Superman problem; it's a problem with superheroes in general. The disconnect between the ideals they ostensibly represent and the cruelty of our current reality is a big contributor to my own personal case of superhero fatigue. Some people might find comfort in the fantasy of these spandex saviors but I just find it tiresome. In real life the powerful aren't coming to save us. If anything they are coming to enslave us.