One thing that annoys me about Superman in particular is that everything seems to come easy for him. He ‘gets the girl’, he’s one apparent weakness is Kryptonite, the public loves him (minus lex). I love Ma and Pa Kent, but Clark rubs me the wrong way. Its easy to be the man of tomorrow when there is nothing holding you back, so to speak.

notbecauseofvictories:

I think it’s a different kind of story than we’re used to. From Blade in the 80s to the lurid Batman of the 90s to the Marvel era today, we’re accustomed to trauma-driven superhero arcs. Your parents died or you were brainwashed to be an assassin; you were kidnapped or an experiment went wrong or you were splashed with a chemical, you’re half-vampire or a teenage slayer or or or–

And rather than the trauma of that eating you alive, you rise. It’s what differentiates the villains from the heroes, in this cinematic era we’ve created. The heroes react to trauma by taking it and rising above, either because they have to atone for their past self or because they want to prevent others from going through what they went through. The villains react by sinking to the level of.

It’s a good story, I’m not knocking it. It’s a very human narrative about limitations, asking ourselves “what can I do, even after this?” And if that’s what you’re looking for, Superman isn’t going to fit. 

But Superman is also a story about fragility. Not trauma, but fragility–because even if you are a near-godlike alien who can beat Olympic weightlifting records at seven, travel at the speed of light, and take a hail of bullets like a morning shower, you are on a planet full of people that can’t. You are a god on a planet of squishy backwater bipeds, and worse, you’ve been raised to love them and see the best in them, even at their worst. Even when you yourself have to stand against them.

The question of Superman becomes not “what can I do?” (everything) but "what won’t I do?”

Will you kill your enemies? (you can) Will you force people to abide by your moral code? (you could) Will you declare yourself a god and enjoy the adulation? (why not?)

The answer from Clark Kent is “no”. He recognizes that there is a responsibility inherent in his power, in all power, because the world is easily broken. Superman story about choice, and choice as a response to the fragility of the world.

Maybe that choice comes to him easily. An instinctive moral knowledge that the rest of us mere mortals don’t possess, as we muddy the waters with equivocating and selfishness. And maybe that kind of unblinking, unswerving honor is out of fashion when compared with the our current crop of superheroes, who struggle with shades of grey in the fallout of the cold war bleeding into the war on terror. Our secular pantheon is awash in gods and demigods questioning their origins, longing to get away, doubting their moral compasses.

But imagine–just imagine–how terrifying Superman could be if he doubted his. 

To quote Joe Gross, “Imagine God sulking and floating above the United States, looking at our petty bickering and our brutal economic inequities and wondering why he shouldn’t just pass judgment on the whole planet with his heat vision and start over with the microbes. In 1996, DC published an end-times-ish story called Kingdom Come….In the story, Superman has long since retreated to the Fortress of Solitude, unwilling to make ethical compromises, unwilling to kill his enemies. Time has passed him by. Without his moral vision, superhumans run roughshod over humanity. Scores have died. Superman has had it with humanity and goes to the U.N. to lay waste to the leaders of the world. A minister named Norman McCay, humanity’s POV in this story, suggests to Superman that his greatest power is his instinctive knowledge of right and wrong. Superman ponders this, considers his legacy and the weight of moral leadership, and spares us.”

The right path a man should choose is what is honorable to himself, and to others. Superman is not dealing with any external limitations, you are right. But to say that there is “nothing holding him back” is absolutely wrong–he is holding himself back.

He’s the only one strong enough.