Superman Is a Mirror Reflecting America's Ideals, Flaws, and the Immigrant Dream

From Krypton to Kansas, Superman exposes the tension between America’s ideals and its realities.

This movie review is a guest contribution from Joseph Holmes.

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James Gunn, director of the new Superman film out this weekend, recently made headlines saying, “Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” James Gunn got in trouble when he admitted this was partly “about politics,” even if he wanted to stress that it was about deeper things than that.

But of course, James Gunn is right. Superman, particularly the movies, has always been fundamentally a character about the battle between American ideals and American realities.

Of course, Americans sometimes disagree about what the ideals and realities are. And because Superman has been in cinemas off and on for over half a century, that means we can track the American conversation of ideals vs. reality.

When we look at the Superman films as a conflict between American ideals and American reality, we find both inspiring and disturbing things. America seems to really like the idea of balancing immigration and assimilation, and using power for good while maximizing human freedom. But we also seem to want to believe in an all-good, all-powerful mortal human we can give no accountability to and trust he’ll always use it rightly.

In Superman’s movies, Superman typically functions as an expression of American ideals, while other characters function to express cynical or darker realities of America. Lois often functions to give voice to the more cynical view of American society even as she–because she loves Superman–wants to believe in what Superman represents. Lex Luthor often exists to represent and fan the flames of the worst in Americans, and Superman’s triumph over him is symbolically a triumph of American ideals. (Spoilers to follow.)

Superman and the Mole Men (1951), starring George Reeves, was technically the first Superman feature film. It featured Clark and Lois finding oil drillers accidentally creating a hole allowing underground creatures to come to the surface. These “Mole Men” then experienced bigotry and violence from the small-town surface dwellers who thought they were monsters. Superman had to then defend the Mole Men and protect the people when the Mole Men fought back. It’s no surprise that during the civil rights era Superman represented the American ideal of tolerance coming up against the American reality of racism and prejudice.

The first Superman movie people typically think of, Superman: The Movie, also features this contrast between Superman and the world he lives in, although it’s more general and less about a particular issue like racism. Superman is sent to Earth by his alien father Jor-El to save humanity by inspiring them to be better without ruling over them. Superman is portrayed as a pure and good character who just wants to help. Lois is portrayed as a jaded cynic. When Superman says “I’m here to fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” Lois laughs, “You’re going to end up fighting every elected official in this country!” Superman replies, “I’m sure you don’t really mean that, Lois.”

This movie came out in 1978, in the aftermath of the ’60s cultural revolution, Watergate, and Vietnam. People were cynical about powerful men being trustworthy. Despite this, the critical and box office success of the film shows that people–despite the cynicism of the day–were ready and wanting to believe in that ideal. Two years later Americans elected Ronald Reagan: a man who promised you could trust him to bring “morning in America” by making the government smaller and thereby voluntarily limiting his own power.

But by the time Christopher Reeve’s tenure as Superman ended with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), the American reality seemed more powerful than Superman’s ideal. This film’s plot followed Superman trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear war. But by the end, Superman realizes that he can’t stop humanity from war, because it has to come from people deciding to do it themselves.

Fittingly, we wouldn’t have another Superman movie for 19 years. By then, faith in American ideals and institutions was in consistent decline. This was particularly true of the church and religious identification. The “nones”—those who did not identify with any particular religion—rose sharply. Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens rose to prominence. The next Superman film would note explicitly the connection between our loss of faith in God and other American ideals.

Superman Returns (2006) follows Superman returning to Earth after 5 years in space. When he comes back, the world has moved on without him—including Lois, who is engaged with a child. In their rooftop interview—paralleling the one from Superman: The Movie—Lois tells him, “The world doesn’t need a savior, and neither do I.” Superman replies, “You wrote the world doesn’t need a savior. But every day I hear people crying for one.”

Like Superman: The Movie, the dream Superman represents in Superman Returns is that our need for a savior—a good and powerful man who would save us in the ways that we need to be saved—would be validated. Unlike the Christopher Reeve films, though, the response to Returns was deeply lukewarm critically and financially. This could be because of the film’s artistic flaws. But it also may represent how the culture was rejecting the film’s answer. Faith in American institutions—faith and otherwise—continued to decline.

In Zack Snyder’s Superman films—Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League—the dreams and realities of all the other Superman movies are brought together and confronted. Superman’s status as an alien and an all-powerful savior is front and center, and the question is whether humanity will accept him. America’s ideal of being a welcoming country to immigrants, and a country that believes in a savior, are therefore put into question. In contrast to other movies, Superman confronts Lois with doubts about his ideals and she supports them. In Man of Steel he says, “I let my father die because I trusted him. Because he was convinced I had to wait. That the world wasn’t ready. What do you think?” Her embrace of him is ultimately his answer. In Batman v. Superman, Superman is depressed after humanity seems to be rejecting him. He tells Lois, “Superman was never real. Just a dream of a farmer from Kansas.” Lois responds, “That dream is all some people have. It’s all that gives them hope.”

Since Lois is a Superman cheerleader in these, her role of the cynic is taken by Lex Luthor and Batman. Both Lex and Batman give voice to the fact that they don’t believe an all-powerful alien can be trusted. Lex accuses Superman: “If God is all-powerful, he cannot be all good. And if he’s all good, he cannot be all-powerful. And neither can you.” Batman likewise says, “He has the power to wipe out the entire human race and if we think there’s even a 1% chance of that we have to take it as an absolute certainty.” It’s Superman living out his values and dying for humanity that eventually converts Batman into one of his followers, who brings together the Justice League and eventually Superman back from the dead.

These movies fit the times in the latter Obama years, where the hope of a post-racial America was shattered by increased racial and political division, and faith in institutions continued to decline along with belief in God. Like with Returns, response to the films was lukewarm, which may have had to do with the film’s quality, but also due to the critics’ and audiences’ rejection of Superman’s answers to the questions it raises.

And now this year we have James Gunn’s Superman. While everyone is saying this film is a departure from Zack Snyder’s version because of its brighter tone, its themes are largely identical. Once again, it wrestles with the American dream of a good man using power to exercise good in the world, and whether America will accept immigrants. Superman is under fire for intervening in an international conflict to protect people who were going to get killed. Once again, it’s Lois Lane in an interview confronting Superman’s ideals with her view of the reality. “I would question my actions if I were in that situation and consider the consequences,” she argues. Superman interrupts, “People were going to die!” Meanwhile, Lex Luthor uses Superman’s alien heritage to gin up anti-Superman sentiment. He reveals that Jor-El actually never sent Clark to help people, but to rule us and replace us.

Where it’s different is its absence of religion and its rather radical promotion of American assimilation at the expense of old-world immigrant identity. Religion, whether it’s treating Superman as a messianic figure or featuring positive Christian characters, has been a mainstay of Superman films since Superman: The Movie. But they are entirely absent here. Likewise, Superman’s discovery of his father’s plans for him causes Superman to reject his Kryptonian heritage in a way he hadn’t done previously.

The return to a brighter and more optimistic tone for Superman reflects a desire to return to sincerity after a long time of society’s irony and cynicism. But the absence of faith is odd in an era where secularization has actually peaked and there are some reasons to think it will be on the upswing. The film does reflect the growing concerns in the Trump years about immigrants replacing native-born American citizens. But it’s sort of surprising that the way it addresses this is to villainize those who fear alien replacement, while arguing that this was indeed Jor-El’s plan and Superman is good because he totally assimilates to American culture and values. It’s unclear what the long-term response will be to this version of Superman, but so far the film has an 83% critic rating and 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes—indicating there’s enough in step with what Americans want from their heroes today.

When you look at all these movies together, they reveal some interesting patterns. First, the Superman movies consistently show the American ideal of immigration and assimilation. As Roy Schwartz (author of the book Is Superman Circumcised?) discussed with me on the Religion Unplugged podcast, Superman is an immigrant who learns how to bring the best of his own alien heritage to Earth while also assimilating to its culture and values. Different movies have a different balance of which ones are important. But all of them work to find that balance. They do this through the identities of Superman and Clark Kent, and by the different fathers of Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. (Or, in the case of Superman, at least his powers and Kryptonian technology.)

Superman also (usually) shows the American ideal of benign neglect: to protect people from hurting each other, but otherwise not forcing your beliefs on them. This is a very Enlightenment-era idea in the tradition of John Locke that heavily inspired American thought on religion and politics. The government’s job would be to protect people from each other, but it would not establish a religion. Religion would work by inspiration rather than coercion to help people live well.

But in other ways, the American ideal Superman represents is troubling and arguably un-American. Federalist 51 clearly lay out that the reason the American system has a separation of powers is that no man can be trusted with absolute power. In Superman’s films, these concerns are either never addressed (such as in Superman: The Movie or Superman Returns), or put in the mouths of Superman’s villains and critics (such as Batman v Superman or Superman). These criticisms are never answered—they’re merely brushed aside. “We obviously can trust Superman because Superman is obviously good because he’s Superman.”

Also, increasingly, Superman in these movies does impose his will upon the world, picking and choosing what laws he obeys, enforcing his morality on the world. This is particularly clear in the later movies, where Superman regularly gets involved in armed conflicts on foreign soil. In Superman, he and his superhuman friends actually torture and topple foreign dictators because they’ve decided they’re the bad guys. In effect, they have become our rulers. And we cheer. Because we trust them—because in this story, we know they’re the good guys.

It’s easy to say that this is a harmless fantasy. But I’m not so sure. Firstly, it’s a waste when you bring up really interesting and important questions and you answer them with an answer that doesn’t actually answer the question but avoids it. It takes an opportunity to help us wrestle with the problems of our world in fantasy to help us understand our world better—and gives an answer that we cannot apply in our world. In the same way that Superman flying around the world doesn’t help us deal with death because we can’t turn the world back, saying we don’t have to worry about giving a good man power because he’s Superman doesn’t help us deal with powerful men in our world.

Secondly, we can’t help but try to turn our ideals into reality. It’s hard not to notice that we do this in the real world too. When a politician or president is on “our side,” we don’t really care if he takes on more power than he should or breaks the rules, because we trust him to use it well—because he’s the good guy—because he’s on our side. Superman typically skirts this by associating him with Jesus, who is God and therefore can be perfect. And yet because it won’t commit to him actually being God and actually being flawless, it actually feeds our temptations to turn normal humans into messianic figures. But James Gunn’s Superman doesn’t even have that, because he claims to be just as flawed as anyone.

Superman is easily one of my favorite superheroes. I love the way he celebrates and forces us to wrestle with American ideals and realities. But because we are flawed, even our ideals are going to be flawed. Our only hope is to continue to wrestle with them, and hope that will make them better.