NS: Gods, the Ubermensch, and the "Unrelatable" Nature of Superman

[grazzt]

I recently found an interesting video essay on Superman that I thought the community would like. The author normally does videos on art films and film theory, but he has a sideshow where he discusses pop culture icons in intellectual contexts.

"Gods, the Übermensch, and the "Unrelatable" Nature of Superman" (Watch on YouTube)

Thoughts? I think I understand Nietzche a little better after watching that, but that might just be me.

Comments

[doodleboy]

Yeah I enjoy Kyle Kallgren's videos a lot, did a good one on Avengers too.

[q99]

Very solid piece. Kyle's normally good, and that one had some insights I didn't realize.

[locuatico]

I think the one about the Avengers complements it nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Naaz_JzTz_4&list=PLjP6Gt_QLgX6ovmnJTlYnc4P7klnBZ2Y5&index=4

[rainspirit]

God, I love the old Max Fleischer cartoons.

[owlbrigade1]

I have a DVD box set of them (sadly including the racist Japanese saboteurs ones) and I feel I really ought to watch them again. I need to buy a DVD player first though, I no longer have one since my last tech splurge. When did DVD become the new VHS?

As for the video. I don't know what to say other than I find it disturbing that Zack Snyder cannot comprehend that people might just think killing is wrong. That is worrisome, and perhaps the FBI might want to match his movements against any unsolved murders, you know, just saying. Not surprising that he is a major Ayn Rand fanboy really.

[richardak]

I actually thought this was pretty silly. First of all, the word "super" in English certainly can mean "above" or "over", which was its original Latin meaning, and which is most commonly retains in English when used as a prefix. For example, to superordinate one thing to another is to place it over or above that thing in order or rank. The superstructure of an edifice is the part of the structure over or above the sub- or infrastructure. To supersede something is to sit on top of, that is, over or above, it. Likewise, the English word "man", itself a cognate of the German word "mensch" is or can also be gender neutral, as in the expression "all mankind", and was entirely acceptable in that usage in the past, although that usage may have fallen out of favor more recently. So certainly in the thirties, "superman" would have been an entirely appropriate translation of "Übermensch."

Then he goes onto say that Superman cannot be Nietzsche's Übermensch because he is not a man, but a god, comparing him to Moses, Hercules, Apollo, and Jesus. Kids, it's time to play "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong." Problem: Moses was not, and was never purported to be, a god. He was a man. Now guess which of those figures Siegel and Shuster were actually drawing upon in creating Superman and writing his origin story.

And why, do you suppose, they picked Moses? I submit that it was because they were mocking, or perhaps it might be better to say deconstructing, Nietzsche's Übermensch. Nietzsche's whole argument was that values had always been created by man, but that those who had created those values had done so in the name of G-d or a god. Nietzsche makes clear, incidentally, that he viewed Moses as the religious value-creator par excellence. In the present, however, as man had ceased to believe, they had ceased to believe in religiously derived values; Nietzsche's solution was the Übermensch, a man who would create values for himself, knowing that he had created them for himself, but who would live and die for those values anyway. In other words, what Nietzsche wanted, in effect, was Moses without his G-d.

The whole point of Superman is that, for all his power, he accepts the law, that is, if you like, the categorical imperative. Unlike Luthor, who was really the Ultra-Humanite by another name (and what is "Ultra-Humanite," but yet another translation of Übermensch?), who insists that his brilliance places him above morality, above good and evil, Superman accepts that there is right and wrong and that he must try to do right. On that score, the video is of course correct. But the point goes deeper: what Siegel and Shuster were saying was that Superman, for all his power, was not a god, and knew it. He did not try to create his own standard for right and wrong, because he understood that that was the province of G-d, not man, no matter how mighty.

Finally, as for the issue of Superman killing, I think this is sillier still. I have always said that the issue of Superman where he executed the Phantom Zone criminals (this was John Byrne's last issue of the series in the eighties), was for me, his finest hour. He was never more heroic. Doing the right thing sometimes means making the hard calls, getting your hands dirty to save others, or to do justice. I will never understand the people who were upset that Clark killed Zod in the movie (there were other problems with that movie, sure, and Warner Bros. really needs to stop hiring Zachary Snyder, but that's for other reasons). What should he have done? Stood there and let Zod murder more innocent people? How many people's lives could have been saved if the Kryptonians had executed Zod in the first place? If Clark had spared Zod, what prison on earth could have held him? Moreover, to say that Clark was wrong to do what he did is to again try to make him a god instead of a man. We all acknowledge, I hope, that any police officer in an analogous situation, confronting an armed psychopath about to gun down innocent people, and with no other way to stop him, would act analogously to Clark: draw his sidearm and shoot to kill. All Clark did was act like a human being, like a man. And that is the real problem, our problem: it is we who will not forgive him for not being G-d.

Sorry for the long comment.

i thought that was his point?

[deh_tommy]

Mr. Oancitizen here talked about how Clark was simply acting human, presumably due to people not enjoying him as a protagonist - in that, he's become more man than super, hence how the Superman is dead and we have killed him.

Re: i thought that was his point?

[richardak]

No, we haven't killed him, because he was always human. He is a human character and always has been. Some people have gotten upset because they want him to be a god. They want Hercules, Jesus, or Apollo instead of Moses.

[torporish]

Now guess which of those figures Siegel and Shuster were actually drawing upon in creating Superman and writing his origin story. And why, do you suppose, they picked Moses?

Also, they were Jewish...

[richardak]

Yes, I am well aware of that. That was actually the point, or very close to the point, I was making.