Pax in Terra: Superman and the Problem of Power in Superman Returns and Man of Steel

Abstract

On the May 19, 2017 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher's attacked the exponential rise in the popularity of superhero films and television shows over the past decade, citing 'superhero culture' as the cause of America's current socio-political apathy, disaffection, and complacency. The host's anti-comics monologue is a recent example of the superhero genre's protracted history of persecution and criticism that reached its zenith in the McCarthy Era, due in large part to Frederick Wertham and his sensationalist text Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Maher's sarcastic but ultimately erroneous remonstrations overlooked the genre's insightful and historically ongoing engagement with the philosophical tension between the onto-existentialism of being human contra Other and power, which comic book superheroes embody. In order to demonstrate this and counter Maher's reductive reading of the genre, this paper will explore the relationship between comic book superbeings, power, and Otherness to excavate and reassess the multifaceted dynamic between the onto-existentialism of being Other and power, using DC Comics character Superman as a case study. By analysing the character's diegetic power and Otherness as they are represented in Byran Singer's Superman Returns (2006) and Zack Snyder's Man of Steel (2013), this paper will illustrate how Superman, and comic book superbeings more generally, are inherently onto-existentially antithetical to uninvestigated sociopolitical, cultural, and theroetical/philosophical apathy and/or complacency.

Keywords

• Superman
• power
• otherness
• ontology
• existentialism