A recent posting in The Humanist from Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association:
I love going to the movies – and I see most of them with two of my best friends, Matt and Shereef. We’ve been seeing movies together – and vigorously debating them afterward – since high school. Same movie theatre as always. Shereef mixes Sour Patch watermelons in with his popcorn. Variety is the spice of life, I guess.
This week, we saw James Gunn’s Superman, starring David Corenswet. Not only is it, in my view, the best superhero film since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy – funny, thought-provoking, and intense, with thoughtful characterization and great action sequences…
…but it’s also a deeply humanist message. Perhaps more than in any movie I’ve seen in a long time.
I’ve seen a number of incarnations of Superman, and one of the reasons I find him a bit boring is that he’s always driven by an unshakable sense of moral duty. No flaws or wavering, no internal turmoil – he’s a self-justifying source of moral authority and acts accordingly. A bit too robotic, and Godlike, for my tastes.
Corenswet’s Superman is different. I’ve never seen a Superman so driven by a sense of love and empathy for humanity, a desire to protect that comes not from the noblesse oblige imparted by his parents but a sense of fondness and solidarity.
Consider his argument with Lois Lane, played by Rachel Brosnahan, in the film’s first minutes – one of the smartest and tightest sequences of dialogue I’ve ever seen in an action movie. Superman has intervened to stop a war between two fictional countries, and Lois, ever the reporter, is grilling him on his…shall we say, extrajudicial methods. (He flies the dictator of the aggressor country out to the desert and has a frank conversation with him after sticking him to a cactus.)
“You illegally entered a country…did you consult with the President? You’re seemingly acting as a representative of the United States – ” she questions him.
“People were going to die! I’m not representing anyone except for me, and – and doing good!” he explodes – the first time I’ve ever really seen a Superman vulnerable, testy, defensive. He didn’t have a high-minded defense prepared about the necessity of protecting civilians over respecting the norms of global diplomacy. His frustration was about something more primal – the gnawing, fiery belief that the highest good is looking out for and protecting one another, and a frustration with the abstractions that our world often puts in the way.
At the end of the day, the moral core of this Superman is not about an abstract conception of right and wrong that can be easily analogized to a religious text or political ideology. It’s a belief in people, that they are worthy of love and saving and protecting, that no one’s worth is conditional.
It’s humanist.
You see this come out clearly in his final confrontation with his archnemesis, Lex Luthor, played brilliantly by Nicholas Hoult.
Luthor, according to Gunn, is driven by an obsession with being replaced and having his gifts overlooked – a jealousy of Superman’s abilities. “His strength illuminates how weak we really are,” he seethes.
Luthor’s a great foil for Superman, because if Superman represents the humanist ethos – that people are fundamentally worth valuing and helping because of their basic humanity, and that they can be elevated through our belief in them and love for them, Luthor represents the Calvinist ethos of viewing people – including himself – through a deficit-based framework, emphasizing their flaws and failures. He belittles his employees, maintains a private underground prison of disloyal associates and ex-girlfriends – because he has internalized the idea that the world changes through shame, threat, coercion, and violence.
In their final battle – the outcome of which must be seen to be believed – Luthor angrily refers to Superman as an alien, who responds:
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that’s being human. And that’s my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.”
What makes us human, he asserts, isn’t that we’re a particular configuration of cells and DNA. It’s the fact that we are imperfect and vulnerable people on a quest to try and find the good in ourselves and the world. Our imperfection isn’t a flaw to be stamped out, and our striving and struggle isn’t the result of insufficient optimization – those things are the foundation of our humanity.
And how we change, how we get better – whether we’ve got super-strength and laser vision or are humans with regular fragile bodies and nearsightedness? The movie posits that our journey towards our own heroism comes not from Luthor’s vision of cynical control, but when we lovingly support each other’s autonomy and growth. As Superman’s father says to him at a critical moment in the film:
“Parents aren’t for telling their children who they’re supposed to be. We are here to give y’all tools to help you make fools of yourselves all on your own. Your choices, Clark. Your actions. That’s what makes you who you are.”
That’s what makes us who we are. There’s no fundamental nature of sin or depravity that a Supreme Being can assign, no spiritual essence residing within our bodies or souls. We’re flawed people in a flawed world doing our best, loving and learning, but the thing that’s majestic and exciting about this life is that we have the ability to become the best versions of ourselves – become super – by choosing to do good in the world.
People are worth fighting for simply because they’re people, and nothing matters more than that.
Our flaws don’t make us unworthy and our struggle is what gives us something in common.
We grow into our best selves by being lovingly called to a higher purpose.
It’s humanism at its finest and purest.
Go see it if you haven’t – and tell folks about the humanist message you think it carries.
For humanity,
Fish
