We need to have a talk about Superman
In a world in which Superman exists, what have we lost?
Look, I admit it. I was the most excited out of anyone when it turned out Superman was real. When that video of the flying man went viral, I was an early adopter. I believed before the reporters tracked down everybody who was there when the video was shot. I believed because what does cynicism benefit you? What do you win if you look at a video of a flying man, deem it a fake, and be proven right? The satisfaction that life is ordinary makes a boring door prize. I didn’t want the world to be like that one house that gave out raisins on Halloween. You know me. There are two things I can’t refuse: mint chocolate chip ice cream, and false hope. I had always hoped there was more to this world than it appeared. If there were miracles in biblical times, then there should be miracles now. And all of a sudden, there were, or was one. Superman was real.
Granted, it took some of you longer to believe your eyes. Other videos popped up which had either not been noticed, or the witness was too scared of being labeled crazy to upload it. And then when the military started acting really scared, that caused that whole Supertruther movement, but that was going to happen. And weirdly, the deniers brought a lot of people off the fence into Superman’s camp. If the people who believed that COVID was a hoax thought this was, too, then he had to be real.
Of course, he’s not Superman from the comics. He’s got lots of Superman’s powers, but for a long time he was just flying around in his jeans, a white T-shirt, and a Carhartt jacket. I liked what he said, that if he was flying around in blue tights and a red cape that people would see him and think, “Superman.” And if he was just a dude wearing a brown work jacket flying through the air, people would look right at him and not believe a second of what they were seeing. But eventually the FAA impressed upon him that he needed to be more visible, and since everybody was calling him Superman anyway, he just started wearing the outfit, which is when things started to not feel right.
I’m not talking about the congressional bailouts of the reinsurance industry due to the admittedly less-than-infrequent times when Superman levels a major metropolitan city in a fight. And while I don’t like paying the Superman Tax every time I buy something any more than you do, the constant need to repair and rebuild streets and buildings has forced local governments to streamline permitting and zoning. And let me tell you, once demand for construction skyrocketed, that whole immigration debate took a turn for the better. Now when people cross the border, they’re still put on buses, but now they’re dropped off at redevelopment centers and handed tool belts.
Not everyone thinks all this change is great, of course. More people have been displaced by Superman than have been rescued by him. He says he’s working on that. And there’s a definite downside to having a super man focused exclusively on the American Way versus, for example, the Russian or Chinese one. Suddenly their space and weapons programs are in hyperdrive. They need a super weapons system to defend against him… or to take him down. He’s over here rescuing little old ladies, and Russia is apparently working on something that will make the Manhattan Project look like a lawnmower. So we’ve got a bunch of people who are yelling for Superman to leave Earth, and we’ve got another bunch of people yelling at them.
And then there’s the school shootings. Also the mass shootings. And the suicide by cop, and all the other ways Americans kill themselves and others with guns. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy when Superman swoops into a school and grabs the shooter’s gun, but he can’t be everywhere at once. The police have gotten so used to Superman coming to the rescue that they’re making Uvalde a habit, sitting around and waiting for him to show up. I get their reasoning, I do. But I’m getting a little tired of them blaming their unhurried response to a shooting in Eugene on Superman being busy in Tulsa.
That gets closest to what disappoints me about Superman. The difference between Superman and an ordinary one is a matter of degrees. It’s kind of like Jesus taking human form. Sure, He turned water into wine, but He turned it back into water like the rest of us. Everybody poops, even Superman. He’s just a dude who does cool stuff. Superman is a man who can fly and punch things really hard. He doesn’t have any special wisdom about what it means. As a moral philosophy, truth, justice, and the American Way are fine, but it leaves more open to interpretation than it provides answers.
Apparently he grew up concealing his super powers. He lived with a regular family doing regular things, which means it’s more likely that Superman has a favorite football team than he does the answer to any of life’s questions, including this: If God loves us, why is there hunger, homelessness, and violence? And: If Superman is real… Screw it. I was going to say, if Superman is real, why do we have him spending all his time fighting crime, but really the same applies to God. If Superman is real, why does he allow hunger, homelessness, and violence? Why do we continue to suffer in the presence of a man with god-like powers?
And maybe your life is different. Maybe you’re cashing in on the construction bonanza. If you are, good on you. But my life hasn’t changed that much. Other than the alerts we all get when Superman is doing his thing and flights are grounded, or you happen to be in the city where he’s wrestling some alien and we all have to run for the Supershelters, life’s the same. A person with super powers exists, and I still watch Frasier reruns. The fundamental limits to life on Earth have been radically expanded for the first time, perhaps, since Jesus walked on water, and I floss. I wipe the shower down with the squeegee afterwards because while Superman exists, he ain’t gonna do squat about any soap scum.
And now, my life seems more ordinary. You can only say, “Look! Up in the sky!” so many times before they skip the bird and plane in favor of a resigned, “It’s just Superman.” And then someone chimes in with, “Again.” This is sort of like the time that the military admitted that UFOs exist, and no one cared. It was more fun to wonder and to imagine than to witness the magical become mundane.
Superman being real is like waking up on December 26 and not remembering what you got for Christmas. You remember, don’t you? It was that thing you said you wanted, now what was that again…? It was more fun to wonder about, wasn’t it? Now that it’s real, it just seems so ordinary.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
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