In the new Superman movie, the hero wears frumpy red trunks – with belt loops – over blue tights. Someone call the fashion police. Or Edna Mode. Then again, Superman has long been unfashionable in more ways than one.
To some, Superman is a fuddy-duddy in a cape. His alter ego, Clark Kent, is “mild-mannered” – a euphemism, perhaps, for boring. The character’s wholesomeness, morality, and invincibility lacks the edginess, complexity, and danger of other superheroes. He’s not cool like Batman. Great hair, though!
“Superman, in many ways, is Mr. Establishment,” says Jorge Santos Jr., a scholar of comics and an associate professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. “He’s the ‘anti’ of what everybody who reads comics is.”
Why We Wrote This
When a new “Superman” movie debuts this weekend, it will embrace America’s icons – and its cultural debates. The Man of Steel, it turns out, often offers a mirror on society in the U.S.
The new Superman movie (in theaters July 11) and the recent “Absolute Superman” comic book series reframe how we view the Man of Steel. The Kryptonian hasn’t changed. What has shifted, according to director James Gunn, is the culture. The world has a lot of meanness in it. That’s especially true, he told an interviewer, of online discourse. Moreover, there’s been a rise in hostility toward immigrants once again. The film and comic each explore how an unauthorized “alien,” raised on a farm in Smallville, attempts to reconcile his heritage with his human assimilation. In this modern context, the caped icon is actually an edgy and rebellious superhero, Mr. Gunn said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. He’s standing up for core values – kindness and goodness – at a time when the world most needs it.
“Superman is a hopeful character,” says Julian Chambliss, a professor of English at Michigan State University and author of “Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience.” “Superman is the character whose hopes, I think, can correspond very directly to particular moments.”
Mr. Gunn, who also wrote the script for “Superman,” told the Times of London that his movie is a political story about America. Specifically, it’s about an immigrant. That drew criticism from some conservatives who dubbed the movie “Superwoke.” But Mr. Gunn added that the movie is “mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
Origin story of the original superhero
After the Man of Steel first appeared in a 1938 comic book, the trajectory of his popularity was faster than a speeding bullet. By 1940, Macy’s had added Superman to its annual Thanksgiving parade. (“Look up! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … a balloon?”) Thanks to radio serials, TV shows, and movies, non-comic book readers became familiar with Superman lore. He looked after the little guy. He fought bad landlords, corrupt politicians, and corporate tycoon Lex Luthor. And he exercised restraint, sparing the lives of his enemies.
The appeal of the superhero, Dr. Chambliss says, is a kind of fantasy wish fulfillment. Namely that an ordinary person can transform into a mighty being and take on the world’s wrongdoers.
“The solution relies at some level on collective action,” says Dr. Chambliss. “But we can’t always agree on what the collective action is and so we personify a character that can do something right away.”
Michigan State University
Going back right to the beginning, Superman’s storylines have defined good versus evil. Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel, a Jewish writer, said the rise of Nazism made him feel “the world desperately needed a crusader, if only a fictional one.” In the 1940s, a radio serial came up with the tagline that Superman fights a “never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.” Its intent was to promote America’s involvement in World War II.
“It really boils down what it means to be an American in basically three phrases,” says Robert Greenberger, co-author of “Superman: The Definitive History.” “Just as ‘the American dream’ is this ever-evolving term, ‘American way’ is what Americans are striving to be as good citizens.”
In 2021, DC Comics tweaked the motto to “Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.” The publisher said the change reflected more global storylines as Superman inspires people around the world.
The new movie echoes that idea. It includes a scene of a young boy waving a flag with the “S” symbol during a conflict between two nations. Superman (David Corenswet) then intervenes to stop the war. Journalist Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) questions the superhero’s decision. She asks him whether he first consulted the U.S. president.
Superman, whose costume complements the colors of the American flag, is a great allegory for America’s role in the world, says Dr. Chambliss. Should he, and by extension the U.S., act like the world’s policeman? It’s a question that Americans are grappling with right now.
“The character becomes infused with the idea of what we are, as a country, as an idea,” says Dr. Chambliss. “That character gets infused with a lot of ambiguity.”
The search for truth and justice
Superman stories have, from the very beginning, also explored what it means to be an American. It’s an allegory about immigration, and assimilation. Kal-El’s parents saved their baby son by placing him in a pod and dispatching it to Earth. Mr. Siegel and co-creator Joe Shuster were from Jewish families who’d fled antisemitism in Eastern Europe. Superman’s original home, Krypton, was a doomed planet. There’s a scene in “Absolute Superman” where Superman is separated from his earthly parents, the Kents, by a militarized force due to an “immigration violation.” It isn’t the first time Superman has reflected changing attitudes toward immigration. In 1986, a comic miniseries tweaked the character’s origins. He’s sent to Earth in an artificial womb inside a pod vessel. But he’s only born once it lands on United States soil. It gives him birthright citizenship.
“Superman’s origin story prompts us to consider why it is so easy for society to quickly alienate and judge individuals based on their ethnicity rather than their character,” says Grace Gipson, an assistant professor and Black pop culture futurist scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University, in an email interview.
Establishing that perspective allows readers and viewers to appreciate the full story of Superman, she says, both in terms of his Kryptonian and Earth-based roots.
“I would even argue that Superman’s two identities as Clark Kent and Kal-El trouble the ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’ tagline, as it speaks to this tension between assimilation and cultural preservation,” says Dr. Gipson.
“However, both identities, which are seeking truth and justice in America, can also be seen as a counternarrative, suggesting that instead of hiding a part of one’s identity, we should embrace our dual identity.”
The 2025 “Superman” presents the hero as down-to-earth. He even has a dog. One who can do really neat tricks – like fly. But the storyline also examines how Americans are suspicious of the superhero because he’s an alien. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) refers to Superman as “it.” In response, Superman says, “I’m as human as anyone.”
As much as the character’s superpowers are otherworldly, so is his sense of character.
“He’s one of the few characters who will turn the other cheek,” Dr. Gipson says. “As much as people would do him wrong, he still does what’s right.”
That narrative about the line between right and wrong is at the heart of “Superman.” Indeed, Clark Kent and Lois Lane have differing views of morality when it comes to protecting an imperfect nation from its aggressive neighbor.
“Superheroes are at their best,” says Dr. Santos, “when they help us work out our cultural anxieties.”
