Superman, a “super-woke” hero?

“You might not believe this, but the superhero whose credo is 'truth, justice, and America' is quite politically charged,” warns the American website Vulture .

Because just because he walks around in red briefs and blue tights doesn't mean Superman isn't taken very (or even too) seriously.

James Gunn, the director of the latest installment, has pointed out that his hero is an immigrant. Across the Atlantic, the idea “seems to scandalize conservative media, which are outraged by a 'super-woke' film whose goal is to inoculate viewers with a liberal 'ideology,'” reports Vulture .

(This article contains spoilers from the Superman movie, released July 9.)

It all started with an interview published on July 4 in The Sunday Times . James Gunn (re)affirmed that Superman is “an immigrant who came from elsewhere and settled in this country.”

He continued: “His story reminds us that kindness between humans is a value, and a value that we have lost.”

For anyone with a passing grasp of Superman's history, the conservative outrage "seems ludicrous," Vulture notes.

Born in 1938, under the pen of Jerry Siegel, son of a Jewish immigrant couple born in Cleveland, and Joe Shuster, an immigrant from Toronto, The superhero is presented, from the beginning, as “a refugee sent to Earth by his extraterrestrial parents, when he is still only a child” .

“Since we're talking about kindness, there will obviously be idiots who are hostile to this idea and who will be offended by it on principle.

Let them go to hell!”

American director James Gunn to the British newspaper The Sunday Times

The pitch for this new Superman is as follows: “The Man of Steel (David Corenswet, seen for the first time in Spandex) stops one country from invading another. He feels he did the right thing and saved lives,” summarizes The Economist . So far, so good.

“It is then,” continues the British weekly, “that Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan, who brings a welcome touch of bite to this role) questions this very one-sided behavior: does Superman take the time to reflect on the consequences of his actions when he interferes in the conflicts of other countries?”

“These geopolitical questions may seem out of place in a superhero movie, which is usually just a pretext for showing off muscles and performing great stunts. Yet many of these films are also parables that speak volumes about how the United States positions itself

in the world.”

The British weekly The Economist

Comics and films of the late ^20th and early ^21st centuries depict a Superman who is a bit nervous about overstepping his bounds regarding foreign intervention, According to the British weekly, “His original scope is national – in his first adventure, he saves an innocent woman from the electric chair – not international.” But “Man of Steel follows the political developments of the time.”

“The new Superman features the usual cardboard dialogue about global threats. But this time, we discover that the conflict our hero rushed into was a trap. Which roughly fits with the Trump administration's belief that the United States has everything to lose by intervening in other people's quarrels.

nations.”

The British weekly The Economist

Other viewers saw it as an “anti-Israel” film. The director denied this.

“He wasn't thinking about Israel and Palestine when he wrote his script, and the film doesn't really explain the political reasons why the fictional state of Boravia would attack,” Vulture says.