"Superman Returns" is escapist fantasy to be sure, but the fantasy it offers is a hopeful vision of a better world.
Bringing a Yale art undergrad to Superman Returns was a terrible idea. Minutes after the final credits rolled, phrases such as "reification of the white male oligarchy" and "unrepentantly jingoistic imagery" were hurled like popcorn to a screen. Admittedly, Bryan Singer's film is an anachronistic throwback; beyond the Marlon Brando cameos and lines like "Remember, flying is still the safest way to travel", Superman hasn't been deconstructed for contemporary audiences. He doesn't have a secret drinking habit, his near pathological need to be humanity's savior is accepted as a fait accompli and most shockingly, nobody dies—and I loved every shlocky, unrepentantly moral frame of it.
The biggest criticism my undergrad buddy hurled at Superman Returns is that it poses the question, "Does the world really need Superman?" and answers with a resounding "Yes" without ever considering what a world without a caped do-gooder Christ figure might look like. To him, it's the kind of logic employed by right-wing Republicans, not openly gay Jewish directors; and he took Singer to task for kowtowing to America's need to see itself as well— a caped do-gooder Christ figure. As he went on about how Superman's desire to help people is a clear psychosexual desire to please Lois Lane, I could see how this was going to get ugly once the keyboards of the critics started clacking. Superman is a notoriously difficult superhero to make appealing. He's not so much a person as the idealization of humanity. His purpose is simply to be the receptacle of our collective vision of what we seek to become: all-powerful, intrinsically decent, moral, at the service of the greater good, rather than ourselves. He's infinitely powerful, but pathologically selfless, which is what makes him so enthralling as a hero, and of course, so infuriating to Lex Luthor. We live in a pomo world in where cops are crooked, priests are predators and politicians fools or madmen, so Singer's choice to depict the man of steel as an old-timey Apollonian god is the biggest twist of all. The son of Krypton may not have the pathos of Wolverine or the boy-next-door accessibility of Peter Parker, but he does have the ability to inspire.
Singer and his screenwriters Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris were clearly moved by Brando's catchphrase from the first movie, "They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way." It appears over and over again in the new film, both in dialogue and plot. Brandon Routh doesn't have to be a great actor -- his character is pure symbolism, though he's hardly a stand-in for "the man". Time and time again in the movie, Superman is saved and aided by those around him, making him a God who needs us as much as we need him and though he doesn't approve of smoking, his only paternalistic message to humanity is "You will become me, and I will become you."
Singer's film is an argument for the values of "truth, justice, all that good stuff" that our post-modernist world so abhors. It says, "Look, up there, in the sky— it's what we could become" and while most superhero and action films are content to spoon feed you their moral and political messages ("Beware of technology", "Gay people are people, too", etc…), the message of Superman Returns is more lofty and less didactic: "Serving humanity and each other is intrinsically good and will reward you, serving your own selfish needs will get you nowhere". It's a message that transcends politics. While films like Crash and The Passion pander to particular demographics, Singer's film speaks to the value of universal truth. We're told day in and day out that we live fractured lives, intractably separated from each other by neotribalism, consumer demographics and postcolonial history, but Superman, watching us from high above the Earth, conflates our divisions until we are, through his bulletproof eyes, one people, capable of great things. Maybe this isn't such an anachronistic view after all: As globalization makes us ever more alike and ever more connected to each other and as our resources dwindle and our economies grow ever more interdependent, Superman looks less like a hokey Boy Scout in a cape and more like an urgent and timely reminder that we are all on this planet together. You can dismiss him as a savior, but he's also the sole survivor of a planetary holocaust that's determined not see it happen again on his watch.
We (by which I mean "humanity") narrowly escaped our own worldwide conflagration not too long ago and after a fifty-year reprieve of tense (relative) prosperity; we're suddenly facing challenges on a scale that we are only beginning to comprehend. We've got a planet whose environment is changing rapidly, biotechnology that could turn us all into docile servants, religious extremists gaining power across the globe, unchecked corporations dissolving democracies and all these problems are so massive in scale that they seem beyond anyone's control, so we give up and consign ourselves to watching the latest apocalyptic action flick, certain doomsday is an inevitability.
Superman Returns is escapist fantasy to be sure, but the fantasy it offers is a hopeful vision of a better world. Instead of awing us with carnage and nihilism, it inspires us with our own collective potential to be 'a great people'. Considering the alternatives, this isn't such an awful thing; after all, we don't need to imagine what a world without Superman would be like; we live in it.
