Superman After Liberalism

 From Daniel McCarthy at Modern Age:

Superman is a product of the New Deal. His creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, were Jewish teenagers from immigrant families (Shuster was a Canadian immigrant himself) who became friends and creative partners in Cleveland, Ohio. The origin they would eventually craft for Superman echoes the story of Moses, with a newborn placed not in a basket but in a rocketship and set adrift not on the Nile but among the stars, his destiny to bring righteousness to a new land. Coupled with the immigrant and Jewish aspects that contributed to the creation of Superman is a Middle American sensibility. The Ohio of Siegel and Shuster becomes Superman’s Kansas, where his rocket crashes and the alien child is adopted into an all-American family. What unites Superman’s contrasting elements—foreign and native, rural and urban—is a New Deal–era confidence in liberalism as a form of patriotism, with America itself as a Moses-like lawgiver unto the world yet still a place of its own.

Superman, like America, is all-powerful. And being all-powerful, Superman and America can afford to be idealistic. Superman doesn’t kill because with power as great as his killing is never necessary, much as liberals would come to see the death penalty as abhorrent in a land where well-meaning government and enlightened social science could overcome any antisocial threat. Although liberals would not become truly “soft on crime” until after the New Deal, the idea of beneficent power that Franklin Roosevelt’s administration represented pointed the way to ever more beneficence accompanying ever more power. The “golden age” comic book characters of the New Deal and World War II years were also more violent than those of the 1960s, and Superman himself reached his final form by stages. But the template of what was to come, for liberalism and the superhero alike, was set in the 1930s.

The prehistory of Superman suggests the limitations of that template, however. Before Siegel and Shuster created their superhero, they wrote and illustrated a 1933 science-fiction tale called “The Reign of the Superman” about a very different kind of superior being. The story involves a mad scientist performing an experiment that gives a lowly man superhuman intelligence and telepathic powers, which this “superman” intends to use to subjugate the human race. Serious literature and genre fiction alike had been exploring the implications of “supermen” and master races more evolved than humanity since the late nineteenth century. These tales were often warnings or tragedies, such as the 1930 novel that prefigured Siegel and Shuster’s superhero Superman in many ways, Philip Wylie’s Gladiator.

What made the comic-book Superman a defender of humanity rather than an outcast (like Wylie’s protagonist) or would-be conqueror (like Siegel and Shuster’s first sci-fi superman) was his assimilation into Kansas and America as the land of the free. But today’s left-liberals don’t think of Kansas or Middle America as metonyms for decency and simple goodness. Nor do they believe that assimilation is an ideal worth pursuing—identity politics instead prescribes maximum alienation from any traditional model of Americanism. An immigrant from the planet Krypton would today be told by activists in what was once the party of the New Deal that America is a place to be ashamed of and “truth, justice, and the American way” a contradiction in terms. Instead of confidence that American liberalism will overcome any foe at home or abroad, the modern left-liberal fears that fascism has already taken over this country.  (Read more.)

From Direct Line News:

Last night I did what every red-blooded American comic nerd and cinephile did: I went to see the latest Superman movie—James Gunn’s grand reboot of the Man of Steel. You know, the one he’s been hyping for months like it’s the Second Coming of Kal-El himself. And while I was prepared for lasers, capes, and Jonathan Kent’s folksy wisdom, I wasn’t prepared for this much immigration propaganda dressed in spandex.

Because, folks, we need to talk. We need to talk about Superman. We need to talk about Martian Manhunter. About Wonder Woman. About Hawkman. Hawkgirl. Starfire. The Green Lantern Corps. And how, under James Gunn’s visionary eye, they’ve all become something a little more… political. A little more symbolic. A little more like a glowing endorsement of open borders wrapped in the American flag.

Let’s get this straight: Superman is an illegal alien. So are most of his Justice League friends. And if you thought this new movie was going to treat that fact with a bit of humility, maybe even acknowledge the complicated nuances of being an outsider in a nation of laws, then you’re in for a rude awakening. Because Gunn doesn’t just double down—he celebrates it.

Superman: The Undocumented Messiah

It’s no secret that Kal-El is an alien. That’s been canon since 1938. The last son of Krypton crash-lands in Kansas, gets adopted by the Kents, grows up into America’s Boy Scout, and becomes a symbol of truth, justice, and—nowadays—whatever the politically fashionable version of “the American way” happens to be.

But here’s the thing: Superman didn’t go through immigration screening. No asylum process. No refugee vetting. Not even a space-themed green card. If he landed in 2025 instead of the 1930s, he’d be met with border patrol drones, a media circus, and probably a congressional investigation.

Yet James Gunn wants us to treat him as a role model—a cosmic DACA poster child in tights.

And don’t tell me “He’s just a metaphor.” Because that’s exactly the problem. In Gunn’s version, Kal-El doesn’t just fight for humanity—he represents all immigrants. Illegal or not. The movie all but shouts: “If you’re against Superman, you’re against immigrants.”

Which leads us to the uncomfortable question that James Gunn doesn’t want you to ask…(Read more.)

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