By Jason Bailey / Bloomberg Opinion
Few movies this year have as much riding on them as James Gunn’s “Superman.”
First and foremost, it attempts to relaunch the Man of Steel onscreen after the grim slogs of Zack Snyder’s iterations. But the movie, perhaps more importantly, is also a reboot of the entire world of DC Comics on film (in the midst of seemingly endless upheavals at Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., which controls the screen rights to those properties). Gunn has plenty of skin in the game; he’s not only the writer and director of “Superman,” but also the new co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios, the public face of the DC Universe’s reset.
So, unsurprisingly, Gunn is doing a lot of press, detailing the picture’s inception, creation, themes and messaging. “’Superman’ is the story of America,” he recently told the London Times, “an immigrant who came from other places and populated the country.” Those seemingly innocuous comments have kicked off the kind of backlash we’ve come to expect from the far-right rage machine. This is something of an ongoing trend in MAGA world, where any film, television show, book or music video that doesn’t conform to their narrow worldview is seen as suspect and reactive; even if, as in this case, it’s as steeped in decades of iconography and mythology.
And that’s what makes this particular controversy seem even more calculatedly ginned-up than your typical “[insert cultural product here] has gone woke!” backlash. The idea that Superman is a previously apolitical character who has been co-opted by the political left for cultural indoctrination is comically ignorant. The character’s creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, were both children of Jewish immigrants. Before the U.S. even entered World War II, they crafted a two-page story for Look magazine called “How Superman Would End the War,” in which the Man of Steel literally takes Adolf Hitler by the throat.
After the war, the Adventures of Superman radio show presented a 16-episode arc called “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” in which Superman took on the Ku Klux Klan. It used real inside information about the KKK, gathered by undercover activist Stetson Kennedy, and exposing the terrorist organization’s secrets and methods to a nationwide audience. These aren’t ideological one-offs; throughout his history, the character has stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” and for diversity and against racism.
But the “anti-woke” crowd isn’t much for historical precedent or ideological consistency. This isn’t even the first time in recent years that it’s been up in arms about this specific character. A 2017 edition of Action Comics, in which Superman saves a group of undocumented immigrants from a murderous white supremacist, prompted Breitbart to sneer at “Social Justice Supes” and Fox Nation to decry the character’s use as “a propaganda tool for the defenders of illegal aliens.”
Gunn knew what he was getting into with his “Superman,” predicting in the London Times interview, “it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.” Fox News hosts have predictably gone all in; on Monday’s edition of “The Five,” co-host Jesse Watters sneered, “You know what it says on his cape? MS-13,” referencing a criminal gang. His co-host Kellyanne Conway insisted, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us.”
Culture wars are nothing new in mass media; the well-documented histories of the Hays Office, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the National Endowment for the Arts could fill volumes. But the current culture wars, many agree, are rooted in the charged public battles over representation in video games and their coverage (also known as “Gamergate”), which kicked off in 2014.
The moment served as an unexpected rallying point for a subculture of young, white, cishet (cisgender and heterosexual) men. The cohort took to message boards, YouTube videos, social media and podcasts to sniff out and decry any hint of “wokeness” in popular culture. The introduction of perceived left-wing ideology and the mere presence of characters who didn’t look like them led to exhausting discourses over ostensibly straight-down-the-middle, uncontroversial works. This included the female-fronted “Ghostbusters” reboot and the racially diverse “Star Wars” sequel “The Last Jedi.”
Yet many conservatives seem to have no issue with the most vocal critics of perceived left-wing messages in art actively promoting — and even producing — explicitly right-wing works themselves. The Daily Wire, for example, has produced and released action movies, comedies and documentaries proudly espousing far-right views. The far-left has also criticized those films and their underlying ideologies, but the comparison isn’t exactly fair. Progressives often fault the Daily Wire for producing overtly ideological projects aimed at its far-right audience, whereas conservatives tend to focus their outrage on issues like diverse casting.
When anyone calls for apolitical art, they’re merely showing their own ignorance of how art works. Art can often be political, either through inclusion or exclusion of the world around it, and Gunn’s choice to address the current demonization of immigrants is valid, responsible and inevitable because of who Superman is meant to be.
Moreover, the “anti-woke” crowd’s calculated tantrums may generate clicks, but they rarely impact box office numbers. Even the wailing and gnashing of teeth over “The Last Jedi” didn’t dent its $1.3 billion worldwide gross, while “Barbie,” which conservative commentator Ben Shapiro lambasted as “one of the most woke movies I have ever seen,” brought in $1.4 billion.
At the end of the day, those who cry “woke Superman” might want to read up on the character; not only for his history, but to see the crowd they’re potentially aligning themselves with.
Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Vulture, the Playlist, Slate and Rolling Stone. He is the author, most recently, of “Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend.”
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