DONNER UNCUT

In Superman: The Movie, Lois Lane scoffs after the Man of Steel declares:

‘I’m here to fight for truth and justice and The American Way’.

Members of the audience at every showing I attended joined her.

But I knew that he was being serious.

And understood what he meant.

Or thought I did.

RAISING CAIN

A few years ago, Dean Cain –

The actor who played the hero in the 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman –

Stated:

‘I promise you, as Superman, I wouldn’t today be allowed to say truth, justice, and The American Way’.

Some might challenge Superman’s claim to fight for Truth.

After all, he lies every day.

To everyone he meets.

So much so that the tagline for Richard Donner’s 1978 movie might have been:

You’ll believe a man can lie!

To be charitable, we might say that he doesn’t practice full disclosure.

Towards those who call him Superman, but have no idea he’s Clark Kent.

And those who call him Clark Kent, but don’t know he’s Superman.

Let alone Kal-El.

Justice?

Pursuit of that has always been his responsibility, unquestionably.

As reporter, he uncovers corruption.

Petty, corporate, governmental, international, interplanetary.

As god, he combats it.

And The American Way?

Few would deny the hero’s right to fight for it.

Fewer still could tell you what it is.

Some talk as if truth and justice are The American Way.

The nation’s principal contributions to global culture.

But all peoples have had conceptions of truth.

Forms of justice.

So, it has to be something else.

What?

PRESENTING THE TRANSCRIPTION FEATURE

The mission statement was introduced –

Like much else that became canon –

In the The Adventures of Superman radio series.

During the opening episode of The Wolfe saga.

First aired in September 1942.

Is it a coincidence that this was shortly after the first of the US Department of War’s Why We Fight films was released?

Frank Capra’s propaganda shorts were commissioned to help American soldiers understand why the United States was involved in the war.

Later, President Roosevelt decreed that they be distributed to the general public too.

To underscore what they were fighting for.

Against.

Time’s arrow has shown itself to be Janus-headed.

So, it’s hard to imagine that happening now.

What some Americans would advance to distinguish themselves from similar opponents.

Whether they’d want to, even.

What did it mean then?

The American Way –

It has to be something exclusive to the United States.

And unique in history.

THE RIGHT’S STUFF

Something came to me –

Somewhere in the back of my mind, actually –

When I first heard Christopher Reeve deliver the line.

But it can’t be what Cain and his fellow travellers believe it represents.

Why?

It’s everything they’re against.

What must they assume The American Way means, then?

All the things they stand for, probably.

Would stand up for.

Clap a hand to their chest for.

Not take a knee for.

Like Supes, I’ll strive not to be party political.

Though that doesn’t matter much.

Republicans today are roughly where the Democrats were when the phrase was coined.

And visa versa.

A bit like Cain himself.

Who’s travelled from Left to Right.

But claims to be where he was on certain issues.

So, there’s an autonomous Americanism that ignores party names.

If not party lines.

Befitting Superman.

Who’s never been a particular government’s agent.

Only expressed small p political concerns.

What does the American Right stand for?

I DO FORGET YOU GET AROUND, DON’T YOU?

First, America – Americans – first.

Like Cain, Kal-El values the nation that fate’s rocket-ship landed him in.

Grown to manhood, he chooses to keep an apartment there, after all.

Unlike Cain, he doesn’t assume, on that basis, it offers the best of all possible world-views always.

Must come first every time.

He’s swooped to the aid of the distressed outside its borders from the start.

Against the interests of compatriots occasionally.

In issue #2 of Action Comics –

Cover dated July 1938 –

He flew a home-grown munitions magnate to a fictional South American country.

Then forced him to enlist in the army he’d tried to embroil in war.

MY COUNTRY RIGHT IS WRONG

Nationalism can’t be what The American Way stands for.

Every other nation inspires that.

Can it ever be justified?

If what you love about your country is unique.

But often it’s an expression of egoism only.

What is mine is prime because mine.

Be aware, then, that others will regard the accident of their birthplace equally.

DEMOS CRAZY

Maybe The American Way is the little guy getting a say?

America prides itself on being a liberal democracy.

Used to do so.

Direct rule of the people originated in classical Athens.

Women, slaves, foreigners and men below the age of military service were regarded as unpersons.

America championed a representational offshoot on gaining its independence.

Granted the vote to white, male property owners mostly.

Many Americans share Aristotle’s reservations about it.

Must do.

How else to account for their support of policies deplored by the majority of their fellow citizens?

Their efforts to redraw political districts into rotten boroughs?

Dismiss the votes of those who don’t agree with them?

Undermine the least corruptible method of voting developed to date?

Demonstrate that they are for democracy only when the demos is behind them?

And not when they’re not?

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM

The first use of the term in a political context originated in 1818.

When the Bourbon Restoration attempted to reverse policies blown in during the French Revolution.

This isn’t anything new, too, then.

Can’t be, by definition.

American Conservatism sounds oxymoronic.

There’s no more hidebound institution than monarchy.

Nothing more reactionary than royalty.

That is: all that the American Revolutionary War was fought to liberate its people from.

REPLAYING REPUBLICANISM

Republicanism goes back to the Ancient world.

LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF PROPERTY

Like Christ, Superman doesn’t preach the prosperity gospel.

Instead, he rarely squanders an opportunity to prove that money means nothing to him.

Among the methods he hasn’t abused:

The strongest person on the planet, he might seize whatever he wants whenever he needs it.

Mine precious metals/gems/minerals with his bare hands.

Compress coal into diamonds.

Utilise super-intelligence to publish patents at a rate that would give Apple the pip.

Swipe inventions from the distant worlds he visits.

Instead, he accepts no reward for his super-feats.

Only a journalist’s wage as his alter-ego.

And always pays his way.

There’s no evidence he’s an anti-capitalist.

But he doesn’t appear to be a cheerleader for consumerism either.

CAPITALISM ORDINATE AND CORPORATE

Modern capitalism originated in Renaissance Italy.

The East India Company –

The world’s first commercial corporation proper –

Was formed in 1600.

However, state being in hock to elite goes back further.

All the way probably.

So, it’s hard to discriminate a clan that didn’t incorporate a form of it.

Supes offers a clandestine critique of the rights of the corporation over the worker.

How?

His nemesis, Lex Luthor, began life as a mad scientist.

But didn’t require eons to devolve – inevitably – into a barmy businessman.

Then there’s the meta matter.

An immorality tale itself.

Superman’s creators –

Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster –

Had their creation finagled from them by their publisher.

Legally but amorally.

A fable cautioning big ideaists how corporations might filch their spondulix and kudos.

LOBBYING SMASHING

The mythos challenged what is now a mainstay of American politics in Action Comics #1.

(Not only Superman’s but the archetype’s first appearance.)

The hero combatted a lobbyist keen to persuade a senator to drag the US into a war with Europe.

FREEDOM TO SPEAK OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The virtues a nation prides itself on are rarely challenged.

Inquired into even.

America claims to the freest nation on earth.

Freer than any other in the Free World.

Is this true?

Those championing the claim never provide evidence for it.

One of the freedoms they believe they enjoy over all others is of speech.

True.

If we discount the rest of the Free World.

Rather, this was true until recently.

Oddly, the party certain that their country is superior to all others seems bent on repealing this foundational right.

Prevent fellow citizens from making counterclaims about aspects of its history.

Limit the entitlement to the shouting of sweet nothings in the nation’s ear.

A freedom shared with the people of North Korea.

What does it amount to anyway?

The right to say yah boo sucks! to the strong.

Then stand aside as they do as they will.

And the rest suffer what they must.

THE WORST DAY IN AMERICA IS THE BEST DAY ANYWHERE ELSE

A human being said this.

If he were alone in so doing, we might dismiss it as the mental effluvium of a diseased maniac.

But it’s only a succinct form of what others declare every day.

Albeit more prosaically.

Why would someone say it?

Feel the need to do so?

The dread realisation it isn’t true?

It’s easily falsified.

Is the United States A number one in the world on any widely accepted hit and miss parade?

Yes.

For illegal drug use.

https://www.verywellmind.com/us-has-highest-levels-of-illegal-drug-use-67909

For drug use deaths too.

https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/drug-use/by-country/

And also for incarcerating its citizens.

(Above China; a nation boasting 4.35 as many citizens.)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country

It tumbles to the number two position for highest gun deaths.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country

These figures may not be indicative of anything particular.

Prove nothing conclusively.

But are suggestive of something, surely.

What?

All is not well in the garden of the city on a hill.

Some might argue this is the price to be paid for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But we’ve already seen how badly it fares regards the first two.

Then, maybe there’s another way of weighing life.

Perhaps Americans enjoy the best healthcare in the world?

They pay through-the-nose for it after all.

At source.

No –

They’re at spot eighteen on that list.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world

Happiness, then –

Maybe they’re at the top of that ranking?

The stats scupper that hope too.

Situate the USA at position nineteen.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world

KINGDOM COME FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH

Tasked to list things that the United States excels at, I’d do nothing else for weeks, months, years.

But the belief that they have the best of all things –

Must have –

By definition –

That their country is exceptional is –

Well –

Unexceptional.

And this one can’t be dismissed as parti pris because it’s heard as often from Left as Right.

Indeed, it’s one of the few things they agree on.

That they’re the best at everything.

Even when they aren’t.

Have the best of everything.

Even when they don’t.

And without recourse to proof.

Indeed, despite there being plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Those touting America’s exclusive freedoms often champion attitudes shared by repressive regimes.

Political, theocratic.

Consequently, exceptionalism reminds those beyond its borders as the posturing of an undemocratic state.

Proclaimed when least merited.

Precisely.

Causally.

In authoritarian regimes love of Big Brother is induced from without.

From the top.

At the point of a gun.

In free America it emerges from within.

From the bottom up.

And often inspires its Winston Smiths to point their guns.

The old joke about Catholics in the after-life comes to mind.

Similarly, exceptionalists might be corralled in a gated community in heaven.

So, they may continue to believe that they’re in there exclusively.

IT’S DREAMTIME IN THE USA

America’s belief in its pre-eminence is as unshakawakable as its faith in The American Dream.

A construct as elusive as The American Way.

Perhaps all it amounts to is that America is a dream.

Eternally unrealisable.

Insubstantial as a shaft of light on a wall.

Or screen.

Hollywood perpetuates the dream.

Is its propaganda machine.

Conjuring myths for national and international consumption.

Projecting how the nation imagines itself.

What it aspires to be.

Not what it is.

Where it is.

Take a toke off these tropes:

Anyone can become president if they so wish.

But haven’t so wished to date.

Only the privileged.

Powerful.

Similarly, everyone can become wealthy if they but will it.

But choose not to, for reasons unknown.

Challenged, dreamers fall back on the type of arguments advanced by apologists for repressive regimes.

Regarding, say, the rights of women.

No, you don’t understand –

It’s not us –

It’s them.

They don’t want to drive.

Vote.

Show their faces in public.

Recalling Hippolyte in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot when he says:

‘Whose fault is it if a man hasn’t got millions, like Rothschild?

If he has life, this is in his power!

Whose fault is it that he doesn’t know how to live his life?’

Or like the unwilling-to-be-dubbed-executioners of the Second World War who insisted –

Maybe even believed –

That the system couldn’t be at fault.

Only the dummkopfs practising it.

And that all would be well were the man at the top to see what was being done in his name.

BENDING STRONG BORDERS WITH HIS BARE HANDS

In life, Superman was created by the sons of Jewish immigrants.

In myth, he is not a super man merely, but a super immigrant.

A super illegal immigrant, moreover.

Most illegal, for being most alien.

Not even hailing from countries the ancestors of 98% of his compatriots came from.

(That is, all those not native.)

As such, he is a symbol for what strange visitors may bring to the mix.

The mettle in the crucible –

Precious.

Priceless.

BLACK LIVES REALLY MATTER TO HIM

The 1940s most popular radio show championed racial acceptance, equality, harmony.

Regarded racial tolerance as one of the factors that made the United States great.

The most well-known season –

Clan of The Fiery Cross –

Had Superman combatting the KKK.

(Near as dammit.)

But racism was challenged head-on in other seasons too.

In the in-show ads even.

One had Superman himself commending the US Tennis Association for permitting black players to compete.

Hard to imagine Cain’s confreres – who berated Kaepernick for taking a knee – applauding that.

Issue #106 of Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane, published September 1970, is entitled:

I Am Curious Black

Often dismissed as ham-fisted, it was an earnest attempt to reflect race relations in the nation.

In it, Lois is desperate to pen an ethnography detailing everyday life in a black ghetto.

Superman grants her wish to engage in gonzo journalism.

Utilises Kryptonian technology to transform her into a black woman for a day.

Her new skin colour alters others’ perceptions of her immediately.

Made wise through conversion, she appreciates the plight of minorities.

At one point, she asks Superman if he would marry her if she remained:

‘An outsider in a white man’s world’.

Offended by the insinuation, he reminds her that he is a universal outsider.

INTOLERANT TO INTOLERANCE

Superman has always protected the rights of friendly aliens.

Those who appear different – even outré – but prove to be benign.

The moral?

Perhaps The American Way is the Founding Fathers’ belief in toleration.

Originalists will object that they had slaves –

So, would have been against gay marriage, say.

In practice – as men of their time, in their own time – perhaps.

But, in principle, never.

If they were alive today, they’d defend the rights of minorities.

Have to do so.

Otherwise, their way would be indistinguishable from that of the majesty they opposed.

IF YOU’RE NOT WOKE YOU’RE ASLEEP

Action Comics #1 has the hero rescuing a woman from her wife-beating husband.

An attack on chauvinism that some might dismiss – chillingly – as an instance of woke-ism.

GUN CRAZINESS

Rebounding bullets, crushing or melting firearms –

Superman has always expressed contempt for shooters tacitly.

The 1940s radio show championed gun control explicitly.

Made Daily Planet editor Perry White an anti-firearms advocate.

In one episode, he agreed to go on a hunt –

But only if he could trade rifle for camera.

(I fear being horribly topical.

Unfortunately, this would probably be the case whenever I published this post.)

Another statistic that places the United States in poll position is its mass-shooting record.

Some refuse to draw a line between this and the prevalence of firearms in society.

Claim that it’s a mental health issue.

(The party against free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare propose a fix that depends on same.)

Here, I have to agree with them.

Those who champion ease of access to firearms –

Ignore the evidence provided by every other nation that has suffered the consequences of same –

These people are twisted.

JUSTICE FOR ALL ALREADY

Superman’s first adventure –

In April 1938’s Action Comics #1 –

Had him preventing an innocent woman from being executed.

Such critiques of the justice system would later be proscribed by the 1954 Comics Code.

(Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.)

Republicans support similar sentiments.

Until and unless justice –

The process –

Seems not to support them.

Then, it may be labelled fallible.

MY CONSTABULARY, MILITARY RIGHT OR WRONG

Cain became a reserve police officer shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement –

Formed in 2013 –

Gained global support.

What does his solidarity signify?

Presumably, that officers must be considered right even when they’re wrong.

Supported even after they prove to be criminal.

The police and miliary are the state’s enforcers.

So, this is a roundabout way of asserting that the state is right even when it’s wrong.

If this were The American Way, it’s hardly exclusive.

Most nations have suffered that at a point in their histories.

Every totalitarian regime certainly.

If Superman were defending that American Way, pray that Batman has his cache of kryptonite to hand.

Cain’s allegiance might be better suited to The Dark Knight.

A super-rich super-cop who revenges himself on criminals.

(In life, often dragged-up from the working-classes.)

A modest proposal:

Policemen and soldiers should be regarded as heroes when they do their jobs.

Not when they prove to be corrupt.

Thus, they enjoy the consideration society extends to all professionals.

Their responsibilities are greater than most.

But not exclusively so.

Medicos work long hours under similar stresses.

But no one argued that Harold Shipman, say, should have been cut some slack on that account.

FORBIDDEN TO INTERFERE WITH HUMAN HISTORY

Individualists to the last, some Americans blame single men for unpleasant episodes in their history.

No matter how far-reaching or catastrophic the consequences.

Thus, the Communist witch hunts, for example, were the work of Senator McCarthy.

And no one else.

In this fashion, Hollywood champions the nation in a story about oppression –

(Storm Warning, Roots, Glory, 42.)

Though its institutions were complicit.

How is this achieved?

The banking industry performed a similar trick to avoid prosecution after the 2008 crash.

Dematerialised into its status as abstract entity.

Possessing not only invisible hands but heads.

The moral hazard?

The concreto men and women complimenting the abstracto recommenced grifting once the heat dissipated.

Grew more brazen.

Certain that they could profit from their profligacy personally –

Then, retreat behind the American wall of collective –

Sans eyes and ears –

Should their shit splat our fan again.

MAN OF STEEL VERSUS IRON JOHN

Right-wing men fixate on Victorian conceptions of manliness.

That hark back to the Roman virtue of virtus.

Best exhibited by emperors whom they would regard as beyond the pale.

Would make them pale.

At some point, these institutions invariably require butch blokes to absent themselves to forest retreats.

Remove clothing.

And bond with like-minded lads.

Thus, they prove they are mucho macho.

The creators of Superman Returns –

(A film that I, alone, rate.)

Presented a non-threatening hero.

The premise?

The most powerful being on earth would have no need to assert himself.

In a sense, this had been lore from the outset.

Kal-El chooses to walk beside us as a milksop, after all.

Embodies turn-the-other-cheek humility.

Like Christ again.

Brings to mind the hero of the 1982 comedy Tootsie.

An unsuccessful actor who masquerades as a woman in order to land a role on a soap.

(And learns how to be a better man as a consequence.)

At one point, he cautions his acting protege:

‘Have the strength.

Don’t show it.’

Of Superman it might be said:

He has the strength –

So, doesn’t need to show it.

TRUCK WITH CUCK

Right-wingers are fond of the term cuck.

Shorthand for a weak man.

With disturbingly Christian political views.

The traditional meaning of the word cuckold is a man whose partner is unfaithful.

Who may submit to a stronger male.

Siegel and Shuster embroiled their hero in a love triangle with Lois and his altar-ego.

He may be, then, the only man in all culture who cucks himself.

MAKING A SPECTACLE OF THEMSELVES

Clark Kent – a deity in disguise – goes about in eyeglasses.

Some regard the wearing of same as a sign of weakness.

Ocular?

Also of character.

So, few let themselves be caught on camera sporting specs.

(Though they’ve been spotted wearing them off.)

Consequently, they present expressions to their teleprompters appropriate to the passing of a prize stool.

SCIENCE FICTIONALISM

The Big Blue Cheese was created as a science-fiction hero.

By two scienti-fiction fans at the birth of the genre.

As such, he’s always championed the scientific method.

This can’t be reconciled with the anti-science stand of the Right.

Exemplified by their response to the COVID epidemic.

After everything, most believed that the United States would follow the science, surely.

Lead us all on technology, certainly.

Instead, the richest of First World countries proved to be a Third World wannabe.

Behaved like the poorest of theocracies.

Not the adult in the world’s room but its teenager.

And not a reasonable adolescent either.

More a coke-addled rebel without a course.

Determined to go down fighting.

Go down certainly.

GOD’S GOD

Superman isn’t a Christian.

As character or believer.

He was created by two Jewish-American kids.

Appeared in a magazine run by a Jewish-American editor.

Owned by a Jewish-American proprietor.

Kryptonians have their own religion.

If it has an earthly counterpart, it’s Judaism.

All the markers are there.

Kal is descended from the House Of El.

(A Semitic word meaning deity.)

He floated to earth in Moses’ space-basket…

BE JUST TO SOCIETY’S WARRIOR

The first ten issues of Action Comics showed the hero combatting:

A corrupt mine owner –

Football coach –

Talent manager –

Circus owner –

Slum landlord –

And prison superintendent.

If Superman isn’t the Right’s bête noire –

A social justice warrior –

I don’t know what he is.

Or what it means.

The idea of an individual who does right by others for no personal gain is woke.

Can the archetype be anything else?

It’s hard to see why an objectivist super-friend would enter the game.

Do anything but happen across a crime scene, shrug, and inform the victim:

‘You’re on your own!’

Or, as Rorschach – Alan Moore’s revision of Steve Ditko’s randian creations – confesses at the beginning of Watchmen:

‘The world will look up and shout:

“Save us!”

And I’ll whisper:

“No…”’

LEAVING LIKELIEST TO LASTIEST

Progressivism.

That’s what I thought The American Way meant when I first heard the phrase.

Or something like it.

Why?

Although it originated in The Enlightenment –

And didn’t become official policy until the late 1800s –

It was written into the Constitution.

Not written into it, rather.

But expected.

Extensibility was anticipated from the start, I thought.

This reading seemed to be confirmed by a recent discovery.

The radio show had Perry White state that The Daily Planet newspaper is progressive.

Had always been so.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND – BUT A NATION?

Superman is sometimes dismissed as a character unlikely to earn empathy.

Why?

Well, he’s perfect, isn’t he.

A god.

I disagree.

Like Cary Grant –

The actor after whom Curt Swan’s incarnation must have been modelled –

(Whose own superpowers are beauty, charm, and self-deprecating wit.)

What repels repulsion is the realisation that he doesn’t know he’s perfect.

Almost every Superman story has him discovering how vulnerable he is.

Reflecting on his failings.

Learning from the revelation.

Improving himself.

Only to fall short again next issue/episode/sequel.

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE OR PHANTOM ZONE?

Powerful, humble, considerate –

Valuing mind over muscle –

Science over superstition –

Tempering absolute power with self-analysis –

Self-criticism –

Superman?

The American Way too.

It’s the only way it can be redeemed.

As principle.

If not practise.

Without a term in a Fortress of Solitude –

A self-imposed Phantom Zone –

Super-strength, speed, et cetera are lumbering encumbrances.

As for the character, so for his chosen nation.

Totalitarian regimes get stuck in stasis.

Why?

Without progressivism there can be no progression.

This is the reason why it can’t – mustn’t – belong to any single group.

Or party.