Superman Stops Shoplifter and Other Stories

Luke Junior, real life Superman?

In England, this happened:

Luke Junior, 24, was wearing the distinctive blue and red caped outfit as he took part in a charity fundraising event outside a shop.

When he spotted a thief running out of the store and being chased by staff, he grabbed hold of the shoplifter and made a citizen’s arrest.

The kicker:  

Mr Junior, who was already nicknamed Superman after previously pulling two men from a car accident.

So, this guy was dressed as Superman to raise money for a Sheffield hospital, saw a crime, and stopped it. As they carted away the criminal, the store's DJ played the Superman theme. This story couldn't possibly be better.

In other news:

Apparently that scene in Man of Steel where everybody hides beneath the overpass did cause some concern at the national weather service. The story rightfully point out that, no matter how much Warner Brothers points out that their movie is not intended as an instruction video for how to survive tornadoes, people will still pay attention to it.

Also, I haven't mentioned the marketing of Man of Steel to Christians much, or at all. Here's a response to it, by a minister who didn't care much for the overwrought allusions and references and parallels.

The desire to tie Superman to Jesus seems to run deep. I have even been invited to special clergy pre-screenings of the movie and have received emails, sponsored by the movie, with tips and notes on how to preach on Superman on Father's Day. The effort to tie the movie to Christianity is not what I would call subtle.
Now, I love Superman but I will not be preaching about how Superman is like Jesus. There won't even be a children's sermon. Why?
Violence. That's why.

 There's more to it, about the nature of salvation and the like. It perhaps warrants further exploration on this blog some day.

Morality

So I found this today and thought it was worth noting. It's an essay about Superman and Jesus, from a site called At the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's interesting stuff, though I disagree with a basic point.

The author, Jack Kerwick, agrees with the common notion that heroes must be relatable. By which I think he, and others, mean that they have to be flawed so that we can see they are human, finding bits of ourselves in them. Now, he's talking about Superman and Jesus. Sure, we can look at their psychologies and see some evidence of humanity there, but I think there we need to consider that there are different rules when thinking about gods.

When it comes to heroes, sure, we need to see their lives as basically similar to our own, different in degree but not in kind. But gods are different in kind. This is, to me, the most interesting intellectual component of Christianity. How is Jesus both human and divine? It's an old question, and it sparked quite the controversy in the early church. I'm not going to even try to answer it here. But...can we ask a similar question about Superman? How is he both human and alien?

John Byrne answered that question in his Man of Steel series. Superman may be genetically Kryptonian, but he was raised on earth and has chosen to stay here to make it a better place. So he's born alien but chooses to be human.


On a related note...

Here's a link to an essay on Superman, Batman, and morality. The author is a Superman supporter, finding that the character's optimism is preferable to Batman's pessimism; that the unattainable ideal is a better model than the lower bar set by Batman. I generally agree, but then he gets into some specifics that I can't agree with. Such as...

Batman is certainly a more tempting role model because his is an attainable standard...

I've heard this argument many times. Batman is better than Superman because he's human. He doesn't have super powers, so his heroism is all the more impressive. Leonard Finkelman, the author of the above piece, doesn't agree that Batman's better because he's human, but he's making that part of the argument. The thing is, Batman's no less superior to humanity than Superman. He's just as imaginary. To be Batman, you've gotta be the strongest, fastest, smartest, richest, and toughest human being on the planet. You've got to have the several lives' worth of time to perfect your mind and your body to that point. You have to have the incredible luck to be born into a phenomenally wealthy family. That's not quite as impossible as being from another planet, but when we get down to it, there aren't degrees of impossibility.

Anyway, there are some great insights in the essay. And he ends on a great, mythological note:

Like Kant, I am continually filled with wonder by the starry heavens above and the moral law within, and to be a Superman is to bring the one closer to the other.

Religious Interpretation

Superman may or may not be Christ, depending on who you ask.

There are perhaps more books and articles concerning Superman's connection to Christ than there are on any other Superman topic. It all seems to have begun with John T. Galloway, jr.'s The Gospel According to Superman, fixing a title that has probably frustrated other authors since it's 1968 publication. This book set out to prove once and for all that Superman is certainly not Christ, and that claiming him to be so is damaging. It explores the character's actions and history and ultimately concluding that Superman is in no way like Christ.

This was before the 1978 movie.

After that movie, articles began springing up proclaiming Superman's Christ-like-ness. It was all very deliberate on the part of director Richard Donner and one of the writers, Tom Mankiewicz. They saw the parallels in the stories and made them explicit, most famously during Jor-El's speech to Superman as the baby travels to Earth:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I send them you, my only son."

As a kid of 1 when this movie came out, I completely ignored the subtext there.

So soon after you've got Sarah R. Kozloff's "Superman as Saviour: Christian Allegory in the Superman Movies" (from the Journal of Popular Film and Television, 1981). People saw the parallel, and it either made them happy or mad. Apparently the director got death threats.

Then there's The Man from Krypton: The Gospel According to Superman, by John Wesley White. I haven't read it yet, but it's on its way to me even as we speak.

More recently, there have been lots of these. I suspect the more obvious Christian imagery in Superman Returns and the widened audience for it provided by the internet has sparked the books and articles.

Anton Karl koslovic's "Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah" came ahead of the rush in 2002 in the Journal of Religion and Film. He's all for the subtext, as it points toward Christ.

There's Stephen Skelton's The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero. There's Ken Schenck's "Superman: A Popular Culture Messiah" in the book The Gospel According to Superheroes, edited by B.J. Oropeza. There are chapters in books such as Holy Superheroes by Greg Garrett, and H. Michael Brewer's Who Needs a Superhero? about this sort of thing.

Sort of Related are books such as Christopher Knowles Our Gods Wear Spandex and Don LoCicero's Superheroes and Gods. Both of these books look for early parallels (which they see as forerunners) to superheroes in myths and legends, not specifically in Christ. They both devote some pages to Superman. Also in this category I'd put Josepha Sherman's Once Upon a Galaxy, which does the same thing with various films and has a chapter on Superman.

Aside from a score of newspaper articles and hundreds of blogs and other websites, that's about it. People like to point out how similar Superman is to Christ, and then they like to argue about it.

I actually have a lot more to say about this, as you may expect. I sat down to take what I thought would be a page of notes and found myself with eight pages of a chapter, and I hadn't even gotten to Christ yet. So, no real commentary or analysis here, but there will be a bit in the book someday, I hope.

Superman vs. Tarzan

So there's the Crash Test Dummies' Song:

Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man

He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm

Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle

But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent

He would not be caught sittin' around in no

Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[chorus]Superman never made any money

For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

And sometimes I despair the world will never see

Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job

Even though he could have smashed through any bank

In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not

Folks said his family were all dead

Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself

To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

[chorus]

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes

But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes

I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back

On man, join Tarzan in the forest

But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes

In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through

And nothing to do but go on home

And there's Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle.

That's not a whole lot to work with, I suppose. But there's something to be learned from the comparison between the two characters. Let's start with the obvious:

The began in the early twentieth century.

They're both orphans.

They're raised by adoptive parents.

They wear distinctive outfits.

They're far and away superior to everyone around them.

They rescue people.

I recently read Tarzan of the Apes, the first Tarzan novel that Burroughs wrote. I liked it a lot. I was surprised, since the other Burroughs books I've read have been disappointing. But in this book, he doesn't shy away from the difficulties of the character. And he makes Tarzan learning to read by himself pretty acceptable. He gives Tarzan a real moral dilemma at the end, and then resolves it in exactly the way you wouldn't expect a pulp novel from the '30's to resolve itself. I imagine that the rest of the novels in the Tarzan series have to undo Tarzan's decision to give up Jane and his title as Lord Greystoke, but reading that first one is quite a surprise.

I was also surprised by how superhuman Burroughs makes Tarzan. He's clearly past the potential of even the most physically capable human being. Burroughs acknowledges, though, that even Tarzan is no match for the strngth of the creatures of the African jungle. He has to outsmart them, and this even proves to be an important realization for Tarzan when Western Civilization finds him. He has to come to terms with his humanity.

Isn't that what Superman had to do as well? Is that what the show Smallville was all about for a while? (this is a sincerely asked question. I stopped watching a while ago because of my work schedule) But Superman isn't human. I return again and again to a characterization of the two most important comic book heroes, made by Josh Walgenbach during an interview I conducted with him last year. He said,

"Batman is a man trying to be a god. Superman is a god trying to be a man."

I come back to that again and again. It seems apt.

Sons of the Jungle

It's not so much a good comic as it is interesting. The overall point, possibly not intended by the writer Chuck Dixon, is that we have a destiny, so to speak. It may be written in our dna. It's certainly not a product of our environment. the story begins as in Burrough's first Tarzan novel, with a mutiny that would strand Tarzan's parents (Tarzan is already conceived at this point) on the coast of Africa, far from human settlement. In the novel, the baby is born and the parents subsequently die. The boy is raised by apes (on a side note, I was at first disappointed that Burroughs seemed to have no concept of actualy ape anatomy or behavior; then I realized that he had invented a new species--the apes that raise Tarzan are neither gorilla nor chimpanzee; he calls them anthropoids), etc...

In this comic--a joint effort by Dark Horse and DC--Superman's ship flies across the sky to crash just inside the tree line as Tarzan's mother prays for their salvation. The mutineers see it as a sign to spare the couple, and Tarzan grows up with back in England. He's morose and unhappy. Though he still exhibits the same superiority of physique and intellect that allowed him to survive in the jungle, he hates his life and begins exploring. He makes his way to the jungle where he finds happiness. He journeys with Jane and a reported from Metropolis named Lois Lane. They're on an expedition to find a lost roman colony. I can only imagine that this is a plot from one of the other Tarzan novels (Tarzan and the Lost Empire seems to be a prime candidate).

Superman, on the other hand, grows up among the apes. He's out of place, rejected by both the apes and the few humans he finds. He's confused about his Kryptonian heritage, thinking that all humans are Kryptonians. That's an easy mistake, I suppose.

Anyway, he meets up with Lois and Jane and Greystoke and Greystoke stays and Superman goes back to Metropolis. They each find where they're "supposed" to be.

Crash Test Dummies

This was a bit of a surprise. I hadn't realized that "Superman's Song" begins with most of the first verse about Tarzan, which is why I started thinking about it in the first place.

This song plays more on the "mythological" conceptions of the characters than on actual stories. That's what makes it interesting. Tarzan is the inarticulate brute who starred in the movies. Superman is lonely and unique, not one of several revenants of Krypton, which at the moment in the comics include an entire city that has been saved and placed on a planet near earth. maybe I'm just getting the "lonely" characterization from the tone of the song. It's a funeral dirge (which I thought even before i saw the video).

Note what the song opposes about the characters. Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man, but Kent (notably not Superman at this point) was a real gent. More than just rhyme scheme, this reveals a lot about the conception of the characters. It sets the civilized Kent against the jungle-dwelling Tarzan. However, in Burroughs' novel, Tarzan comments on the lack of civilization among all the humans he meets, thinking that they are no better than the apes and lions he's had to fight for most of his life. When given the chance, he reveals himself as more civilized than the highest levels of western society. And he can still kill lions with nothing more than a knife and a length of rope. He's the master of two worlds. Nonetheless, the inarticulate Tarzan dominates the popular imagination. The movies win out over the books every time. And yet those who adapt books into movies say that nothing they can do will alter the book one bit. Right.

The most interesting thing is that the song removes the "destiny" aspect from Superman. It makes his story all about the choices he makes. He chooses not to rob banks, not to turn his back on humanity. That's what makes the character great, and what is removed in the reading of the character as christ that permeates the current interpretations (stemming, I think from the 1978 movie).

In the end, the afterword to the comic series reveals Burroughs' distaste for Superman. He thinks its a silly character, and he would never put Tarzan in the city as editors asked him to do. But the characters aren't all that different. Tarzan is even once referred to as 'superman.' in the first novel (how in the world did I not write down that page number?).

Yep, I'm about out for today. Here's a picture by Frank Frazetta:

The Origins of Superman

The novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie may or may not be an inspiration for Superman. It was published several years prior to Superman's first appearance in Action Comics #1, and sources I cannot cite from memory indicate that Jerry Siegel read the book before coming up with the character. The characters share many of the same traits, though not the same genesis, and the stories explore many of the same themes. If I were to make an argument that they are in fact the "same" story, I would have to found that argument on the despair that Hugo Danner (the Gladiator in question) must fight off throughot his life.

Yet Superman does not despair. Does he? The only reference to this that I can point to comes not in a Superman comic or movie, indeed, it's to a comic book in which Superman does not even appear. It's Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman, and in partular to the story "The Heart of a Star" drawn by Miguelanxo Prado. In it, in the early days of the universe, the stars and nebulae and the things that come before gods get together to have a meeting. In one conversation, Despair tells the star Rao (around which Krypton orbits):

Wouldn't bringing life onto a planet that is inherently unstable add to the beauty of the life? If at any moment it would explode...Truly it would only be perfectly beautiful, a perfect piece of art, if one single life-form escaped. To remember, to mourn, to despair. (Endless Nights, "The Heart of a Star," pg. 76)

This would have us believe that Superman's defining characteristic is not flight or morality, but mourning and despair. He is alone among people who are like him.

Interestingly, I interviewed a woman named Jodi Chromey, whose affinity for Superman echoes this interpretation. She has two half-siblings, whom she is like but unlike in origin and appearance. So she feels an affinity for Superman and even got tattooed with the S-Shield because of this element of his story.

Danner in Gladiator spends his whole life trying to reconcile himself to his powers--gained because his father performs what would no doubt be considered genetic enhancement if the novel were written later in the cnetury. They cause him trouble and pain at every stage of his life, and the novel is a series of explorations of how Danner tries to cope with each new stage and the troubles it brings. It's a great book.

Hugo realized at last that there was no place in his world for him. Tides and tempest, volc anoes and lightning, all other majestic vehemences of the unverse had a purpose, but he had none. Either because he was all those forces unnaturally locked in the body of a man, or because he was a giant compelled to stoop and pander to live among his feeble fellows, his anachronism was complete. (311)

There's no place in the world for him. He spends a lot of time searching, and we have to wonder why he never finds one. Perhaps it is because he is given no clear agenda by his father, whose experiments created Danner's condition (which, by the way, is not hereditary, which actually separates it from genetic). Perhaps it is because he generally keeps his condition a secret, save for a few times. And when the revelation of his nature does not instill disgust or fear in his confidant, Danner retreats from the potential friend. He keeps expecting greatness, so much so that he does not allow himself to attain it. I'm reminded of a line from one of my favorite stories, Mefisto in Onyx by Harlan Ellison. The protagonist, Rudy Pairis, is also gifted in that he can read minds. Instead of a boon, the horror and ugliness that Pairis sees in others essentially keeps him unemployed and mostly friendless. Ellison says that Pairis "couldn't get out of his own way." I think that applies to Danner as well.

But it doesn't apply to Superman. I think first of the Richard Donner movies, in which Superman is given clear purpose by Jor-El, who sends him to Earth as protector and "light to showthe way." In contrast, Siegel didn't, as far as I know, give much reason for Superman's choice to fight crime and social injustice. Later, Mark Waid's Birthright would spend a lot of time exploring Superman's choice and giving sound reason for it. He does not dwell on despair, but on the fact that Superman comes to the decision himself, after seeing the injustice of the world (particularly in Africa).

For both Danner and Superman, the decision as to what they must do with their lives comes at the onset of manhood. This is when despair is most possible, especially without direction. Danner tries being a soldier, a lover, a laborer, a political "lobbyist", a banker, and other things. Always, his strength proves an obstacle that he cannot overcome. Superman, on ther other hand, splits his life into two parts: super hero and journalist. He chooses not one, but two paths. This may be the real need for the secret identity, which many writers have decried as unrealistic and unnecessary save for the tension it provides the relationship with Lois Lane.

What I have learned reading Danner's story is that the difference that comes with such great strength brings with it not merely responsiblity (as Stan Lee would have it) but also adaptation. Such power is not the provenance of mortals, but of gods, which Wylie's narration repeatedly invoke. The rest of us simply cannot handle it in one of our own. We require not equality, but at least the potential for a level playing field. We resent it if someone rises too high, and we must impugn their perfection. Thus the many jokes that subvert Superman's moral rectitude.

We may just look at Superman and Danner as two explorations of the cost of power, one optimistic and one pessimistic. But that's not all that's going on here. Superman is the story of an optimist, and certainly Danner can't get out of his own way, but their stories (their story?) are actually about adaptation to one's lot in life. Superman devises a way to live by disguising himself so that he may present the world his true face in two aspects. Danner tries to hide his nature, but gives himself no outlet. He reveals his powers only grudgingly, and then rejects anyone who offers solace. Superman does just the opposite. Again, Mark Waid's take on the character rings true: his Superman insists that he cannot wear a mask--if he shows his face, peopel will trust him. Danner hides, and his dishonesty is rejected.

A last thought, on gladiators: they're slaves. More to come.

Religion

So a friend, and sort of a collaborator on this Superman project, sent me a link to this site, which delcares 10 Reasons why Superman is better than Jesus. That article links to another, in which a father recounts his daughter's reaction to Superman. According to the daughter, Superman is better than God.

It is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Superman, that he is simultaneously conscripted by Atheists and Christians as an important character, one which points toward all that is good and right about the respective belief system.

Here's another site: "S" for Superman or Savior?

I'll leave you to figure out the specifics of the religions of the two writers above. But in published books, the comparison works out more favorably. Take Greg Garret's Holy Superheroes. Or Steven Skelton's The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero. On the other side of that issue John T. Galloway points out all of the ways in which Superman fails to live up to the ideals of Christ. There are others.

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the on-line articles are the comments, in which things can get pretty heated. What we learn most of all is that people really think this through. And both sides conclude that Superman is or is not for them. (I think there may be a parallel to this article, in which Superman is cast as a liberal opposed to Batman's conservatism.)

I think the Superman as Christ thing really took off with the Richard Donner film in 78. He and the writers made the parallels (which weren't always in the comics) too obvious to miss--or to ignore. For my own part, I dislike the blatant mapping of one character onto another. But I still loved that movie.

This article shows a bit of how the plot of the Superman story fits in with Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero. Rank's is a psychoanalytic sort of study, one which begins with the reduction of the story to a basic structure, but goes on to interpret it in interesting ways that the author of this article never really deals with in his brief analysis. Alan Dundes, freudian folklorist, edited a version of it a while back that is probably the most interesting one to examine.

Rank's study is an interesting one to combine with Lord Raglan's The Hero, which takes the hero's whole life instead of merely the first adventure. He, too, reduces it to a series of episodes and demonstrates that a great deal of heroes will experience many of the 22 episodes he chronicles. I think Oedipus scored the highest. Back to Dundes, I think he determined that Jesus scored 19 of 22. Pretty good score, though not quite up there with Oedipus, if I recall.

So, to sum up...Superman is Jesus to some people, and the anti-Christ to others?

A place for thoughts

Ok, so I'm writing a book about Superman, and I need a place I can store all sorts of links. That's what this blog is about.

I'll start with this movie that acts out a joke. I've been studying this joke for some time now, mostly because of its parallels to the story of Christ's temptation by Satan on top of the temple of Jerusalem. When I started, I saw these two stories as close. Not so much anymore.