Shrugging Towards Superman
I watched Superman in a packed New York City theater, expectations comfortably low, hopeful that I would at least be entertained. I left with the uncomfortable feeling that we had all been tricked.
The movie opens in medias res with Superman having just intervened in a fictional geopolitical conflict, stopping a “close US ally”, Boravia (presenting as white, militarized euro/slavic-centric people), from invading its neighboring country Jarhanpur (presenting as poor brown villagers). And as the internet has surmised, it’s hard not to immediately see parallels to Israel’s war on the people of Gaza. Within the first 30 minutes of the movie, Superman’s girlfriend and reporter, Lois Lane, convinces him to do an on-the-record interview, where she grills him on the consequences of his actions, of acting with US government consent, of potentially making a geopolitical conflict worse. Her line of questioning drives Superman to a point of frustration that can only be expressed from a core feeling so many of us have had since October 2023.
“PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE.” And nothing else matters.
I was surprised we got here so quickly in a $225 million Warner Bros. movie that is set to launch a franchise and new era for the struggling DC cinematic brand. And it gave me hope - would we be unpacking the role that individuals can play in stopping a genocide? Would we be exploring Superman’s immigrant solidarity with the people of Jarhanpur? I was caught off guard so quickly that I wasn’t really sure where this movie would take us.
From here our story follows Superman across the United States and into pocket universes developed by sad, jealous, high school-esque villain Lex Luthor. Meanwhile, the conflict at the Boravia/Jarhanpur border is heating up, with shots of Boravia’s president preparing to “free the people of Jarhanpur” while simultaneously telling his warmongering army to “fill the streets with their blood.” It would all feel too cartoonish if it didn’t immediately strike parallels to the urgent piece of nonfiction still unfolding via Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.
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I just finished reading Omar El Akkad’s, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Admittedly, I’ve struggled to read more literature about Israel’s war on Gaza - I understand the geopolitical history, I keep up with the news (though I really need to take a break sometimes, and you probably should, too). And yet this book captured my heart and anger, giving words to feelings I’ve held onto for the last few years.
In it, he writes “A world that shrugs at one kind of slaughter has developed a terrible immunity.”
What does it mean to shrug at slaughter? Is he talking about the desensitization we often experience from an overflow of “the-world-is-burning” content? Is he talking about normalization of death and destruction, because we stop looking at the horrifying images so we can sleep better at night? Or is he talking about something else entirely?
Writer, poet, curator Hanif Abduraqqib recently posted online, “I have tried to personally move away from language/ideas that center any form of individual cost of witness. Not because there ISN’T an individual cost, but because about too much of that veering into witness of genocide as the ACTUAL crisis, and not the genocides themselves.” Could shrugging be less about ignoring or disengaging, and more about compartmentalization, allowing someone else to tell us how we feel and where we put those feelings?
Superman never makes it back to Jarhanpur, despite a group of young children raising a homemade flag with his unmistakable S-insignia, and starting a “Superman! Superman!” chant as their entire community wields Soviet-era AK-47s, axes, hammers and bats, in the face of an overt military threat of tanks and advanced weaponry some hundred yards away.
Who, then, comes to the rescue? The “Justice Gang”, a group of corporate funded superheroes consisting of Mr. Terrific, Green Lantern (not the one you’re thinking of, there are many), and Hawkgirl. With backstories and context we’ll get someday in the DCU, this odd trio shows up in the nick of time to save the people of Jarhanpur from total annihilation. All because Superman’s moral compass of “let’s all be nice” seems to have infected his sometimes-allies, the Justice Gang.
I’m watching all of this unfold and my stomach is turning. I should be happy that a big blockbuster is not so subtly calling out the warmongering of Israel against the people of Palestine. Is it the white savior-ism embedded in Hollywood that is leaving a bad taste? Truthfully, no - it’s what I’ve come to expect and it’s sort of what Superman’s IP is built around (even if he IS an immigrant). We know what we’re getting when we are asking him to save us.
But there’s something off with this staged production of a war that has taken the lives of 60,000 Palestinians since October 2023. There’s something off with the heroes stepping in to save the poor villagers of Jarhanpur. And there’s something off about Netanyahu’s stand-in, the leader of Bohravia, a cartoonish villain who at best reminds us that villains are real, and very much not cartoony.
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When asked about Gaza comparisons to Season 2 of Andor, creator Tony Gilroy intentionally dismissed a direct comparison to the current war in Palestine and redirected with: “How many moments are there just like this, that are constantly–how many different people could say, ‘Oh, that’s mine. That belongs to me. This is my issue.’”
Andor is a show about rebellions and empires, bringing nuance and depth to the Star Wars franchise which has historically been wrought with oversimplifications and contradictions in its distillation of good vs evil, Jedi vs Sith. The show dismisses the romance of rebellion and recognizes it for what it really is - an honest and often brutal reaction to the over reach of empire.
In doing so, it creates a universality of all past rebellions, all future empires. Gilroy expands: “The Empire is not just blowing up Alderaan, which is an abstract idea. It’s literally sniping people in the town square. All the heinous things are just as small and just as real. You don’t get one without the other....We’re going as low and molecular and as specific as we can. Everybody’s behavior is gonna come under scrutiny. And this is what revolution looks like. Welcome to the rebellion.”
Andor had the privilege of 24 episodes to examine the depths from where revolution can emerge, the extent to which an empire will go to exert control. The show’s depiction of galaxy-spanning action and entertainment is balanced by a philosophical exploration of the war between freedom and tyranny. As Nemik, a freedom fighter in the show, writes in his manifesto, “Freedom is a pure idea…tyranny requires constant effort.”
In this world, in this revolution, what does it mean to be saved? To save ourselves?
We know that Disney, the corporate behemoth behind Andor, would never allow for an explicit parallel to Gaza. But as Patrick Marlborough writes for Overland, “Author and studio intent have nothing to do with it: the show arrives within this reality, fully armed to aggressively tackle it.”
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Meanwhile, when asked which countries are being alluded to in Superman, director James Gunn says “Oh, I really don’t know…But when I wrote this the Middle Eastern conflict wasn’t happening. So I tried to do little things to move it away from that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East. It’s an invasion by a much more powerful country run by a despot into a country that’s problematic in terms of its political history, but has totally no defence against the other country. It really is fictional.”
The world is making this obvious comparison, yet the creator denies its existence (maybe for political reasons or fear of Hollywood blacklisting, but also it seems like James Gunn didn’t give it much thought). Ignore the fact that the conflict in Gaza has been going on for over 75 years and the current genocide is just the latest in a long string of atrocities committed in the name of power.
Instead, we are fed a cartoon interpretation of a very real war, a very real people who are being systematically destroyed, children killed by the thousands. And yet, the people of Jarhanpur feel like a painted backdrop to the stories of the superheroes and supervillains. They aren’t given an identity beyond victim, they don’t even raise their own flag to assert their right to exist, to live (the only flag raised by them is the makeshift Superman flag).
After watching Superman, the public sees this fictional cartoon conflict and says “This is Israel-Palestine, it’s so clear.” What happens when we start to use this weak depiction of war as a proxy for the real atrocities happening. In real life, there are no chants for Super to come save us, no corporate sponsored heroes who will arrive in the nick of time. The real story doesn’t wrap up with an apology to the hero for doing the right thing, despite public backlash.
No, in real life limbs are strewn across bombed hospitals and homes. Children are emaciated from a famine that’s been warned against for months. The corporate heroes of real are a US and Israel-backed private organization that bottlenecks aid into Gaza, in the name of profit.
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When I search “Superman + Palestine” in Google, the media is skewed into two buckets: unsurprisingly, one is claiming that Superman, created by a Jewish man and supposedly designed after Moses, has been corrupted into an anti-semitic cultural vision. The other celebrates how woke the movie is for “going there”. An article on Mondoweiss read, “Superman doesn’t only challenge the long-held, false image of innocent Israel, it also challenges Americans’ fecklessness, the ease with which its government is manipulated, and its blind, greedy, self-serving arrogance. Of course, it treads lightly on this point; again, there is only so much Gunn wanted to dive into political issues. It is, after all, a light-hearted fantasy movie that is expected to launch a series that will bring in a ton of money.”
It’s Hollywood baby, so we should just be grateful that Superman even got close to “there,” and fans can still clap at the end of the movie (I saw the movie 2 weeks after it was out and my theater did indeed clap at the end, my stomach still unsettled).
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The obvious counter point here is that Superman, a Hollywood blockbuster, intentionally or not, is being perceived as pro-Palestine and against Israel’s genocide on Palestinians. And that’s a huge shift from where we were even 6-12 months ago. But what does Superman going “there” really do for the movement?
Many of us have felt helpless in trying to find ways to support the Palestinian movement, and, for that matter, all the revolutionary movements that are thrust into our line of sight without necessitating anything of our bodies. Our only power it seems is to be loud and vocal about the horrific reality of what is happening in Gaza. We have to avoid the normalization and rounding of edges in the name of a palatable narrative. I can’t help but think our shrug will become more comfortable and complacent if we allow Hollywood to tell us what this conflict looks like, and how we should feel about it.
Omar El Akkad writes, “After decades of such thinking, decades of respectful prodding the condition one arrives at is reticent acceptance of genocide, is it not at least worth considering that you are not changing the system nearly as much as the system is changing you?”