#i find its depiction of kryptonians as invaders and superman as a weapon disturbing

[cantsayidont]

Another dilemma with centering stories around the idea of Superman-as-immigrant is that while Superman is certainly an immigrant, and there is a substantial body of older Superman stories (mostly from 1958–1986) that present his homeworld and its culture as generally noble (and frequently Jewish-coded), it has become very common since the 1986 reboot for Superman media to treat Kryptonian culture as either decadent and corrupt (as in most of the post-Crisis comics) or actively invasive and evil (as in MAN OF STEEL or MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN).

In these stories, Superman has avoided this decadence or evil mostly by virtue of having been raised by white Americans in Kansas, and his nobility lies in his express rejection of his evil/corrupt heritage in favor of (white) American culture. These are intrinsically anti-immigrant narratives (and sometimes antisemitic as well), regardless of how much feel-good gloss the story may attempt to apply to it.

The first season of the current SUPERMAN AND LOIS TV show, for instance, plays out an alarmingly literal "Great Replacement" plot in which Superman's half-brother Tal-Rho attempts to carry out a genocidal scheme devised by Superman's eugenicist mother to resurrect Kryptonians in the bodies of living humans, while MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN presents Kryptonians as brutal invaders who have attempted to militarily conquer the Earth more than once. Neither of these series departs from the general details of Superman's origin, but they assert unequivocally that Superman being an immigrant from Krypton is of moral value only because it gives him super-powers that enable him to defend the American Way from others of his kind, and to uphold white culture in ways other Kryptonians do not or would not.

#comics #superman #it would of course be possible for superman to have #a complex relationship with kryptonian culture #but the modern stories have been very reluctant to do that #this is a major flaw of superman and lois #which tries to avoid talking about clark's feelings about his heritage as much as possible #in ways that don't seem realistic #(that show also suggests that clark and lois's sons are weirdly incurious #about the fact that their father is literally from another planet) #as for MAWS #i find its depiction of kryptonians as invaders and superman as a weapon disturbing #for these reasons #and because it's an homage to the iron giant #a movie i strongly dislike