Superman’s quite naturally a story that’s a tragedy. As someone who is very powerful but wishes to be vulnerable but not vulnerable in anyway that strips away his being powerful but in a way that actually would be for him making him more powerful, he is a tragedy because he is not and cannot be powerfully vulnerable in this way, and so he and all of it is tragic and the story is a tragedy.
For someone who is super-human and who wants to also be just human, but who knows he also has to be someone super-human and so knows that he can only just pretend to be someone who also is just human, this is a tragedy.
For someone who is anybody’s saviour who’s wants and needs to be someone who’s saved, but who cannot save himself and cannot be saved by someone else, this is a tragedy.
Clark Kent is really Superman, while Batman really is Bruce Wayne. This is something that I know that Bryan Singer thinks about, and it’s something that I think about, and it is important to remember when thinking about either Superman or Batman (and then there’s Spider-man, who is different from either Superman or Batman because his condition is like both and neither of those two, plus he often is reluctant, and he’s not sure who or what he is, and he’s driven more by circumstance, which makes him much more human, but that is all another longer story to be told some other time).
And for Superman it is important that everybody does remember that Superman returns (Superman always is returning because he always goes away and then returns to save the day, but this time he has gone away for long enough to wonder if he really would return), and Clark Kent also does return, (and he is always someone who is always disappearing suddenly) – but it is not important much to anyone that Clark Kent does return (or that much that he is always disappearing) because he’s never really there that much in any way that really makes all that much of an impression.
And there’s another tragedy because Superman pretends to be someone he thinks is how a normal human could be and who is vulnerable that way in being human like any human could be, but of course it is play acting, and it is more deeply a deception, and it is only just his wishful thinking, which is complicated by his own desire to be a human who is loved by someone that he loves, which isn’t going to happen because the girl he loves is actually in love with the Super-human that he is, but she does not know, incredibly, that Clark Kent and Superman are really the same person. This really is a crisis of identity and a story of an unrequited love and about the perils of a secret life, and it is all about the failure of a wishing to be loved for who you wish you were, and all of that is a tragedy.
Then there is the searching for some sign. Superman is always looking for a sign when he is pretending to be human by playing he’s Clark Kent. A sign of course, in this context, always is an artifact of hope. Because anyone is hoping that something will manifest or will be shown to be the truth, and especially a truth that anyone is hoping can be true in order that they can be saved. If Clark Kent can be loved by Lois Lane then he or his humanity will then have been saved.
But would it? in any moment when it ever has been shown that Lois Lane hooks up with Clark, it is because she knows that Clark is really Superman. In loving Superman and then ending up with Superman, Lois also will then know that Superman pretends to be Clark Kent, and in this way gets to know who really Clark Kent is, but it nearly isn’t anywhere so interesting to her as knowing more about who Superman is really, and it is then only just another aspect of the character of Superman that she is knowing when she is knowing that he does pretend to be Clark Kent, because Clark Kent has only ever been a curious disguise for Superman to use, in order to pretend that he is human, and to hide the fact that he is not – and all of this tragic. Superman, you see, is from start to finish one big tragedy.
Whenever Superman ends up as a husband anytime, the story starts to be a different thing. It’s not a tragedy from that point on. From that point on it is another kind of story about power and about what it means to be a husband and a father, but that is not too much so much something that’s much pursued because that isn’t really interesting to any understanding about any superhero and their story overall. In the comics now they’re married but the marriage isn’t really much of anything at all, and all it does is take away the heartbreak of the story and introduce the possibility of some deeper hurt that can occur, which is to say it introduces in some way the possibility of anything that Superman can fear, but it doesn’t dwell on that, it really doesn’t do a lot with that, or with the marriage in a way that could be ever interesting to understanding how an alien is trying to fit in with all these humans anyway.
It adds a wrinkle to his vulnerability, because his heart then is exposed, and that is very much a thing that is important obviously, because once his heart has been exposed, then his heart is vulnerable and his heart is always something that is hurt more easily than mostly any other part of him. And when you hurt his heart, then of course you hurt his spirit, and once you hurt his spirit, then you really have hurt him, and you can destroy him that way also.
Of course Batman does begin that way, with a broken heart, and so he cannot be broken in that way again, only more can he be feeling it, and each time that he’s feeling it, he is becoming more and more like Batman is and what Batman’s all about which is a transformation of Bruce Wayne. But Superman’s an orphan in a different sort of way then Batman is, and it didn’t break his heart because his surrogates took care of him and also of his heart, and so unlike Batman, Superman has fallen into love.
But that is why Superman is a tragic story. Batman is a tragic story too but it is a different one because the possibility of love is immaterial to Batman, which might be to anyone who thinks about it, really, even much more tragic, but that is something that is for anyone to figure out.
They both are tragic stories but with Superman the tragedy is that he wants to be something that he can never be, and Batman’s tragedy is that he has become something he wants to be, but his wanting to be that is a consequence of his never being really able to mend his broken heart.
Where does the justice come from? Justice is a thing that anyone is feeling has to come and has to be delivered, but from where does it come and in what way is it delivered and really most of all by whom?
Superman is just, and just how is it that he’s just? It seems as though he just knows what it is that’s just. But how much justice does Superman dole out? He does not really dole out justice like other superheroes do, and no way in the way that Batman does. He helps out a lot, and mostly what he does really is he is saving people from disasters and the dreadful plans to make them suffer in any monumental way by anyone who has those plans and tries to realize them.
Superman’s not interesting as someone who is solving petty crimes because those things really are too small for him to focus on. He is more interesting as someone who is needing to be saving someone falling than stopping someone robbing. If someone robbing happens to be killing lots of people, then he will stop the person who is robbing from killing all those people, and he will in that way stop the crime of robbing too, but the main thing was the saving of the people that the person robbing was going to be killing.
Superman may stand for justice in a way, but really in a much more bigger way he is standing for someone who is saving anyone. He is a saviour in this way.
He is not the same as a religious saviour because he doesn’t really show the way by saying what the proper way is meant to be and he doesn’t really talk a lot about what he’s doing all that much at all or the reason why he’s doing it. He is just doing it and no one is quite sure what the reason is, but they are happy he is doing it, and really everyone believes that mostly they believe that he is doing it just because he’s good. He is doing it because he’s good and he can do it, he has the power to be doing it, and he cares enough to do it, he cares for them so much that he is doing it just because he can and he thinks that it is right and it is necessary that he does because it is the right thing to be doing and he cares enough to do it.
Superman does not get paid for what he does. He is a kind of public servant, like a priest or doctor or a politician, but he does not get paid for it, and it is not in any way his job, and it even is debatable to say that what he does is his vocation. Any superhero is of course more or less like this.
Clark Kent has a job, although of course, he doesn’t really need one, because he’s Superman, and it isn’t necessary that he work in order to survive. Lucky for Bruce Wayne, he’s very rich, and can pretend to be a playboy and just live off his money, and invest his money and his resources into solving crime and being a detective and a techno-savvy superhero. But Spider-man of course, always has a hard time trying to make money, and has a hard time making just enough of it to always make ends meet.
So again the fact that Clark Kent works is really just a tragedy, because the only reason that he really works is to be next to Lois Lane in a way that’s not a danger and so that he can be vulnerable with her, but it is a tragedy because of course she does reject him, and does not care that much about him, and in some cases doesn’t even really think that much about him or really notice him at all. And when she hooks up with somebody else, that someone else she hooks up with doesn’t even know who Clark Kent is, because he’s never met him, and Lois never spoke of him, although Jimmy Olson did.
He does have selfish moments. Because he goes away he can return. Because he can be selfish he can then go away. He can go away for five years, say, and not be saving anybody during all that time that he is gone. And that could be the story about how Superman did try to save himself, and of course it didn’t work, and of course that is the tragedy all over, and now he has to also deal with how he didn’t save himself or anyone for all that time and what were the consequences of his leaving and what now does it mean that he deserted everybody and now he has returned? The tragedy in all of that just continues on.
Superman Returns is a movie that is sad and it is exciting too, and the way that it is done is very much well done, although perhaps it is a little long, but that helps to make you feel that although it is exciting, it is really, basically it’s sad, and really kind of tragic. And where does that leave you?
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