Superman spent his childhood baling hay on a farm, he’s a working class hero and people don’t like that. Whereas Batman is a billionaire who sleeps until three in the afternoon, puts on a rubber suit and beats the shit out of poor people. Now that’s a wish fulfillment fantasy.
Grant Morrison during a panel at the Edinburgh Book Festival (via operationfailure)
Funny because I just argued about this point about Batman only a few short days with a guy who, otherwise, is intelligent and well spoken. Yet, this idea that Clark is an “othered” figure was totally lost on him.
This is why it doesn’t just make me angry but actually makes me uncomfortable when dudebros get super excited about Batman beating the shit out of Superman.
The last 3 live action adaptations of Superman—-all of which found huge audiences—-have particularly focused on this idea that Clark Kent grows up feeling othered. (In one of those adapations, Clark Kent was actually played by an actor who is bi-racial and was abandoned by his father at a young age btw.)
In several of these adapations, Clark Kent learning to accept his body and accept his heritage balanced with his intense love and identification as a human is not only a right of passage but the driving force of his identity and self-discovery. The fact that a lot of this self-discovery also often includes a human female who accepts him fully and without fear or persecution for his “otherness” is vital and important. Superman is not supposed to be “wish fufillment” for all of your white, male privileged bullshit, guys. He’s also not supposed to be wish fufillment for those of you that believe that if you had Superman’s physical power and looks you would obviously use them to bang the hottest girl in the world AKA Wonder Woman. He’s not supposed to be wish fufillment for your shallow, macho BULLSHIT. He was wish fufillment for two Jewish men who longed to be accepted in a world torn with bigotry and oppression and longed for the love of a human working woman that worked one desk over.
So when I see people talking about how “awesome” it would be for Batman to come into Superman’s movie and “beat the shit out of him”….I’m not just annoyed with you. I’m not just angry at you. You actually make me uncomfortable. Your thoughts about fictional icons and myths make me uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable with you taking a unique and special male icon that actually is meant to challenge oppression and bogging him down with your god forsaken privilege.
1. all of this is wonderful and good and ghostorballoons actually enlightened me to the fact that superman’s original basis was the strong man, who is pretty important in jewish american iconography so even taking away his “stupid underwear” as so many people have wanted to do for so long (and succeeded) is actually an effort to remove superman from his roots as a jewish figure.
Dean Cain. His background looks mostly flavors of White, but his paternal grandfather is Japanese. He was born in 1966 as Dean George Tanaka, but his wikipedia page says his mother married film director Christopher Cain in 1969, so… (Also Christopher Cain adopted Dean and his brother)
Also Superman himself is adopted and an illegal alien. Let’s not forget that. He accepts both his birth family and his adopted family as family and doesn’t make one family more important or “real” than the other. He has both parents and they love each other and their son very much. It’s not the typical adoption story that we tell, where the birth family is called the “real parents” and either the child or the adopted family is vilified.
