Any version of a thing can always be contested, because it is a version, and it is therefore not the thing.
And anything that anybody knows and knows in anyway that does have meaning or is interesting for them, to them, is something anybody can make up or create a version of that suits themselves more perfectly than anybody else’s.
It is very difficult to say that something just belongs to only just one person, when so clearly really very many people all have made up their own version, which can vary just a little or a lot, or not that much at all, from any other version.
And that is why ownership can always be contested, and can only then be specified, and it is largely only then successfully controlled in order that there be someone who more than anybody else gets paid in some way or another for their version of the ownership, because like any myth or story or understanding of a figure who is prominent in anybody’s understanding of a myth or story, the definition of any sort of ownership is also usually contestable in some way or another, because it’s always subject to a version, which is always in some way defended because of course it is a thing that anybody can contest.
Whether it makes sense to do so to somebody or does not, it will or will not then make sense to anybody else, and that is why there usually will be someone who must decide who owns what version in what way and in whatever context it is relevant to be defending ownership.
Think of Superman. There are many different versions, which have been sanctioned in some official way as valid variations of the myth, and so it has a history that shows an evolution of the character and his situation. This evolution is dynamic and full of contradiction.
Think about Clark Kent. He has been different in many different ways of being how he is, and how that being who he is, is always meant to signify the way that Superman is not.
Anyone can like or not any version of how Superman is made to be and how Clark Kent is made to be, particularly in the way that Clark Kent is made to be the way that Superman is not, and doesn’t look that way, apparently.
I don’t like the way that Clark Kent has typically been made to be the way he is, and made to be the way that Superman is not, when he is made that way in any of the movies that were made just before this one, Superman Returns. This newest one is better, but still, I do not like the way that Clark Kent is made to be Clark Kent. In the comics it has never been the way it ever has been in any of these movies, this one or the 4 before, not that I recall.
In the TV show they made during the 1950s, Clark Kent was nothing like the way he’s made to be in these more recent movies, and in the movie serials before that TV show, he wasn’t made to be the way that he has been made to be in these more recent movies either.
Clark Kent is made to be rather conspicuous in the recent movies about him and Superman. He is such a clown. The clownish suit of Superman is turned, in a certain way of speaking, outside in and then back out into the form of Clark Kent’s personality. They make Clark Kent’s personality be the thing that does disguise the fact that he is really Superman. They make Clark Kent into a bumbling buffoonish clown, which of course is not at all what Superman would ever be, although his costume is a thing that anybody says is clownish and ridiculous and say it makes it hard for anyone to take him seriously completely, unlike with someone say like Batman, which is probably a little funny in some way, because his costume also is ridiculous, even though it’s meant to be imposing – well, at least it’s black and grey, and it isn’t blue and red.
This is not the way that I would ever do it or would ever want it to be done. I would prefer it if the Clark Kent in the movies was like the Clark Kent in the comics.
One of the things with any superhero is that anybody can be able to imagine and to dream that they are them and feel and know that really they are only really more like any superhero’s alter ego. But it can be entertaining to imagine that you are more powerful and more capable of anything you actually can do or really are, and that you could transform, and how it would be good for you, but maybe also for somebody else, or lots of other people, if you were capable of that. And if you were a superhero, would you hide the fact that it was you, or would you go on being you and then disguise yourself when you were being super, which is a way that’s more than anyone who knows you as not being really all that super could imagine you could ever really be?
Anyone can put themselves into the place of any superhero and try to think of how they would disguise the fact that they are super from anyone who knows them as just an ordinary person. I would never like to think that I would want to be the way that any movie’s making Clark Kent want to be Clark Kent in any of the movies that were made more recently.
This new one though is better than the other ones. Those other four do have their charms, but I do not like the way that Clark Kent is made to be the way he is, and the way that Superman is not.
There is a way in which the new one wants to be imitating what was done by someone else as a way of paying tribute to that person, and that is very kind and nice and honorable as well. But I do prefer it when it moves away from that and starts to be a person doing it a little differently.
I really do prefer the way that the current TV show is making Clark Kent be someone who is becoming Superman, but really isn’t yet defined as Superman, and who is also trying to define himself, and trying to be just an ordinary human, which of course he never can achieve, and so thus does show the tragedy of Superman as the story of him really always is, and does so without making anybody needing to be somebody laughing at the way that Clark Kent is acting like someone who isn’t anyone like Superman, but rather is a bumbling buffoonish clown.
Making Superman be someone who has lost the person who had raised him like a father, and be someone who still does have the one who raised him like a mother in his life, and to make him feel a little guilty about the fact that the one who raised him like a father would, be passed on, is making Superman be something more like Spider-man, and I don’t think that is interesting. The TV show and the recent movie both do that, and I don’t favour that.
Spider-man is interesting, and Batman of course is interesting, and Superman is interesting, and there is no need to make them, any of them, be something more like any of the other one, in order that they then become a little bit more interesting, because they are already interesting enough being who they are.
In the movie Superman Returns I really like a lot the way that Superman is flying. And the point of Superman, what became the point of Superman, in the movies and the shows, in any case, has always been the fact that he can fly. He couldn’t always fly. He started off just jumping – leaping, as it were. But once they made him be someone who flew, that became what was really the most important thing about him in the movies and the shows.
In the newest TV show, he isn’t really flying yet, just only when he gets a preview of the person he’ll become. And he is worried and afraid of that. And so of course he then suppresses that. And so he hasn’t really done a lot of that so far.
But in the other show, the one done in the 50s, and in all the movies there have been, and to some extent the cartoons too, it always has been a detail that is most significant about what Superman is all about for anyone, especially for anyone who ever wants to be someone who could be flying just like that.
And that is why it is so important when Lex Luthor says to Superman, in a mocking tone, in Superman Returns, when Superman clearly is not able to, Lex Luther says to him, now try and fly. It is important that he says that, because that is the central point of Superman, more than any other skill he has, it is his ability to fly that is the thing that is the most Super thing of all. I think so, anyway.
What I do really like the most about the movie Superman Returns, is the way that Superman is flying. Every time he flies it is the heart of what the story really is.
I really like it most of all when he is flying standing up. This is very critical. That is the way that Lois Lane is taken up into the sky. That is the way that he is listening to everyone and sorting out the anyone who does need help. That is the way that he is going to the sun to gather up its energy. That is the way that he establishes his relationship with Earth and everyone upon it.
It makes his flying be something to see as his ascension and it signifies more clearly his return. And that is why it is so satisfying when he lands – because now he has big boots that make a sound, a sound that is remarkable the way it sounds, so subtle but you find yourself perhaps saying wow those boots seem heavier than I remember them – in fact, I never really noticed them before – which helps to indicate and underline that he has landed and has weight, and registers his being there upon the ground as something with some sort of import, and that signifies great meaning, like some great sacrifice, because he could just stay up there flying in the sky, and go quite far away to other worlds, and could do anything, but he does come back to help and hang around pretending that he is some sort of fool, for some reason that does not make any sense to me.
If he really wishes that he could just be an ordinary human and blend in, then it doesn’t really work that well to be some sort of fool, the way he is. I don’t think so, anyway. I think that Clark Kent should be more ordinary really, because that is certainly not what Superman can ever be, because he’s so extraordinary clearly – I mean for heaven’s sake, the man can fly.
The flying is the best part of this movie, and it is the heart of what the movie is. Even when it’s hard to understand how Superman is doing what he’s doing, given certain circumstances that ought to make him be unable to be doing it, it doesn’t matter much, because it’s clear that it is his flying that is doing it, not him.
His flying is beyond him, even him, and that is very clear and most important that the power that he has, in it’s most apparent form, which is to say that which does provide the most important view or illustration of it, which is his flying, is something that is rather quite beyond him, and that again is why Superman the story and the myth always is a tragedy.
His power is beyond him, and it shows that it’s beyond him by doing what he ought not really be under certain circumstance able to be doing until the work it needs to do is done, and then it leaves him, and Superman is left out there in space depleted and unable to call upon his power, because it’s done and it is beyond him, and so of course he falls out of the sky.
You know the rest if you have seen the movie. What happens once his flying does the necessary job, what happens to him then. It has to play that way because his power, we discover, is more than what he is.
The Clark Kent in the TV show suspects this is the case, and that makes it very interesting. But the Superman who’s in the movie is not aware of this. He’s not that much aware of who or what he is at all, only just the things he wants to be but knows he cannot be. He knows his history a bit, but he doesn’t have that much self awareness – not that is apparent, anyway.
Superman, though really, in the movies is all about the flying, and in this respect Superman Returns really is superb.
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