We’ve all become Lex Luthor: In defense of Superman

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

― C.S. Lewis

*Before I start, I would like to make a small point. It seems that the loudest critics of Superman are people who readily admit that they don’t read his material, because he’s a boring Superhero. Which is a hilarious when you process it. In any other avenue of life, to admit ignorance of something and yet speak authoritatively on it would be shamed, and the speaker would feel at least a hint of irresponsibility and fraudality. Yet here, and I understand the smallness of the situation, this doesn’t happen. In fact, the critics are proud to showcase their ignorance on the subject. It’s like a badge of honor! The most they admit to knowing is just the general descriptives: that he’s overpowered and that he’s a goody-two-shoes. We’ll get to the second point later, but the first is a weird one. Considering who his villains are, Darkseid, Zod and Doomsday for example, you could almost argue that he’s under-powered for these fights. Which most heroes are in order to create situations where they must out-smart their opponents as well. But looking at his circumstances, he’s powered relative to who he has to deal with, just like any other hero is. It’s not as if he’s fighting the Penguin, he’s fighting Bizarro.

Anyways, I’ve always thought that what separates Superman from most comic book heroes and makes him the best of them all is that he’s under no obligation to actually be a hero. He does it because he wants to. Think of Catwoman telling Batman that he doesn’t owe the people of Gotham anything in TDKR. That’s he’s given them everything. Which he refuted. But he never owed the people of Gotham anything to begin with. He could have easily followed an easy path to life after his parents death, spending his days running Wayne Enterprises, donating money to charities, fighting poverty through governmental systems and helping those same people in the best ways that he could. But he was obligated to himself and the dark feelings inside of him. He wanted the villains to feel fear as much as he wanted to protect the citizens of Gotham from those same evil-doers.

Superman didn’t have such a tragic event at a malleable age. When his planet was destroyed, he was too young to even remember. And when his adopted father died, he was old enough to process the loss in a healthy way and had his mother to help him through it.

He grew up in a small town and really only had to deal with the general problems of youth for most of it. Batman or rather Bruce Wayne’s upbringing was the opposite. He dealt with the worst of the world, from the death of his parents to his training with the League of Shadows. And I think because of this, there’s some envy of Clark Kent’s innocence. And why his worldview is seen as naive.

But the fact remains that Clark grew up relatively untroubled and left Smallville of his own vocation to seek a way to help the world. Thus traveling to Metropolis, choosing to be a journalist because the profession hides him as much as it allows him to uncover truths, and becoming Superman to save the city from the bad guys. Bruce Wayne couldn’t help but to become Batman, his tragedy and the loneliness afterwards had transformed and twisted him after that it would have been insincere to pretend to be Bruce when he had become Batman.

This, I think is a huge difference between them beyond the powers and lack of. Bruce Wayne is Batman’s alter ego. He has to keep up the facade of the billionaire playboy etc in order to be Batman. Doing what he must in order to do what he wants. Superman isn’t Clark’s alter ego, nor is the opposite true. Superman instead is just an extension of him. And he’s also Kal-El of Krypton after discovering the truth of his origin and family. He doesn’t deny or fight against any of these parts of himself. He’s as much of Clark as he is Superman and Kal-El. It’s such a wonderful illiteration of identity not being a static thing but performative or at least, an indication that a person is capable of holding multiple selves.

So he performs how he should depending on the situation. When he's Clark, he behaves as Clark Kent the farm-boy has always done, even as a journalist. He was always the meek kid. It’s hardly an act. When he’s Superman, he’s as confident and assuring as any hero should be. Even in his worst moments, with people watching, he never shows fear. Not because he’s not afraid but because the people draw their hopes from him and if he breaks, they will panic. It’s like watching your parents when you were a child and thinking that everything will be okay for no other reason but because they either told you so or didn’t show the worry on their face. Now imagine the worry if you walked in on your father crying after losing his job and how it would have panicked you.

His not wearing a mask also lends itself to that. You can’t inspire hope from behind a mask. They need to see his face to believe. But that again is a difference between their ideologies here: Batman relies on fear, Superman relies on hope.

All of this means that he embodies the greatest aspect of goodness. True kindness and compassion. Mainly because everything he does as a superhero, he does it because he wants to. Because he, free from childhood trauma, under no obligation from being ‘the chosen one’ or drive to prove himself, wants to help people. And it’s so damn cheesy because it’s an honest thing and any true honest thing isn’t ‘cool’, it’s cheesy as fuck.

This is why Lex Luthor, the non-Joker Lex Luthor, hated him. And why he’s uncomfortable for many people as well. Given his powers and his origin, he has the capability to rule the Earth. He could easily be a god if he wanted to be. But he doesn’t, and in fact, contrary to what Batman v Superman supposes about the fear of his powers, he’s more afraid of what he could do than Batman could ever be. Which is why he could never be the god that most imagine him as, because he’s incredibly self-aware and constantly reflects on his actions and results. He wants to do good and it hurts him when he doesn’t.

So Lex of course interprets this as if he’s pitying human beings. And sees Superman as this naive, whiny child. Akin to how Zack Snyder and his Batman see him. Lex sees his unwillingness to embrace his superiority as an insult and twists reality to suppose that Superman could snap at any second and kill everyone. It’s unfounded anxiety. Being more well-protected than any other time, Lex believes that he and human beings are just seconds away from imminent death. It’s almost like he’s the United St…anyways.

That original Lex is now Batman. And the new Lex is a fake Joker. But the disdain for Superman remains, and it can’t be ignored that the distrust for him because he is good but has the power to be bad isn’t much different from the way we generally treat kind people. And I think this is because we see the world as we are, not as it really is. And so we’re uncomfortable with genuinely kind individuals because we’re not like that ourselves. And Batman/Lex Luthor sees Superman as a menacing force because they think he would or should act as they would in his position.

The other side of this distrust for the kind is that we embrace and value sociopathy. To the point that we’re beginning to love heroes that are indistinguishable from the villains. We love people who are willing to compromise more and more of their morality for their goal. It happens in our political systems: the qualities we champion in our elected officials to ‘make the tough decisions’ are things that we abhor in regular human beings. We link selfishness, greed and coldness to success. We want them to play the game, to get to the top regardless of how they do it, but yet we’re shocked, utterly shocked, that the sociopaths that we have cheered for all these years only look out for themselves.

How could we be surprised at the current political climate when we have built it and encouraged it for years? And on topic, how could anyone be surprised that Batman is now willing to mortgage his moral code when we’ve egged him on to do it from the beginning?

Superman has never been like that. He’s never compromised on what he thought was right. Even as the tragedies of the world asked him to, he stood firm. That was the admirable part of him, and even when him and Batman would work together it’s an attribute that Bruce loved. It’s what made him such a great leader because he didn’t feed into our deepest fears or the fears of those around them, but instead he challenged them to be better. He made them question themselves. And he also challenges himself. He has never thought that he could save everyone, or destroy evil completely. That’s impossible. His challenge was to save as many as he could. To do as much as he can, and for him that was much more than everyone else. His burden was already greater than theirs, yet no one besides Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman knew what was on his shoulders. To the rest, he always seemed at ease because once again, he knows that they look to him for hope.

And he was like that, till now. Snyder has dragged him into the underworld. He’s mocked the character of Superman, his morality and even his power. He’s turned him into the naive, uncontrollable child that Lex Luthor saw him as. And he’s had Batman — to exalt the Bat’s ideology as well — pummel him to show that anyone believing in the same code of goodness needs a good beating to snap out of it. He’s had him play out the ‘problem of evil’ on-screen because they see him as a god who can either be all-powerful or malevolent, when Superman never saw himself as that to begin with. A god should know that he/she is a god. He turned one of the best Superheroes into a joke, and one has to ask why a director who openly hates the character would be given such power over him.

And it’s such a shame because Superman is such a fascinating and exciting character. His villains challenge him in ways that the Penguin or Bane could never. His back-story and his isolation as an alien/immigrant is filled with told and untold stories. He doesn’t need the Frank Miller treatment — God, let it die already — because his character doesn’t ask for it, he needs a sensible person who has actually read his comics. Just glance once at Kingdom Come — I know! — Peace on Earth, All-Star Superman, Earth One, Last Son of Krypton, On Our Special Day, Secret Origin, Must There Be a Superman? For All Seasons, BIRTHRIGHT! and you’ll notice that he’s such an incredible story.

The problem again is not with Superman the hero, it is the projection of people’s own ills into him and their distrust for someone who is genuinely kind. He’s not a child that has to be beaten and shown how bad the world is. He knows it, he’s seen it and he’s tried to save and has saved countless people from it. He just refuses to give in it to it and that’s much more powerful than mortgaging your morality and calling it being realistic.

This is probably the most trivial shit I’ve ever written about so I’m not even going to edit it.