Superman and America.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

People sometimes ask me why I care so much about America when I'm not even from there. There's a lot of complicated reasons behind my deep affection for America, but a lot of it could probably be traced back to my childhood love of Superman, who soon came to represent what I consider to be the very best of what America represents.

Created by two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland and Toronto, he was an immigrant raised in the heartland by poor farmers who felt strange and different from everyone around him, but still embraced American values without ever forgetting his heritage. Despite his massive power, he chooses to use them only to help others and works as a journalist to pursue truth and justice against the powerful and corrupt who oppress others, from businessmen to governors to the President of the United States.

He is my favorite fictional character and I cannot think of a pop cultural figure more relevant to today.

[HeroVladimir93]

I'm not from America either and I'm not ashamed to admit that Superman is my favorite literary character. He really represents the best ideals of America; truth, justice, benevolence and kindness, and those ideals transcend nations and anyone can identify with them.

[Lightning Rider]

*USA pls..

[Kuwagaton]

I did grow up preferring Steve Rogers, mainly because of backflips, but I think Superman is the greater American hero. Aside from being a few years older, his story includes being brought here from somewhere else for a better life and being adopted. Also he chooses to represent the country instead of being made by it.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I did grow up preferring Steve Rogers, mainly because of backflips, but I think Superman is the greater American hero. Aside from being a few years older, his story includes being brought here from somewhere else for a better life and being adopted. Also he chooses to represent the country instead of being made by it.

Steve Rogers is my favorite Marvel character, but I love him because I don’t think it was his country that made him into a hero. I think Erskine's super-soldier serum just brought out who Steve truly was all along. If anything, Captain America is there to remind his country to never stop trying to become it's best self, no matter how flawed it may be.

[Kuwagaton]

True, but I think Superman translates better to different eras and areas because the association isn't so strict. You see a kind of question come up with Steve like, "how can you wear that flag when...?" I mean Superman has that freedom as more of a privilege than a character trait.

I remember going into the John Ney Rieber run, a big question people had was what Steve's response to 9/11 would be and we got much of that. Superman... not really. He doesn't even live in a real city.

[marhawkman]

Steve Rogers is my favorite Marvel character, but I love him because I don’t think it was his country that made him into a hero. I think Erskine's super-soldier serum just brought out who Steve truly was all along. If anything, Captain America is there to remind his country to never stop trying to become it's best self, no matter how flawed it may be.

this is actually something they talk about in some media. The super soldier serum actually had highly variable effects because it brought out who you were on the inside.

[Flash Gordon]

I prefer Superman to not be explicitly patriotic.

A healthy dose of Americana, sure- but not Americanism.

[Myskin]

I am not from America and I don't really like Superman when he is explicitly patriotic, or makes paternalistic or bombastic speeches. What I would have really liked to see (but no writer or director really took advantage of this opportunity) is Superman as an epitome of Americana. That is, a mix of some American myths with no really patriotic subtexts. One of the many missed opportunities in Snyder's MOS is making Superman a Jack London/Jeremiah Johnson-like hero in Alaska.

[jb681131]

People sometimes ask me why I care so much about America when I'm not even from there. There's a lot of complicated reasons behind my deep affection for America, but a lot of it could probably be traced back to my childhood love of Superman, who soon came to represent what I consider to be the very best of what America represents.

Created by two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland and Toronto, he was an immigrant raised in the heartland by poor farmers who felt strange and different from everyone around him, but still embraced American values without ever forgetting his heritage. Despite his massive power, he chooses to use them only to help others and works as a journalist to pursue truth and justice against the powerful and corrupt who oppress others, from businessmen to governors to the President of the United States.

He is my favorite fictional character and I cannot think of a pop cultural figure more relevant to today.

I'm not American, but have lived there a few years and I can tell you Superman represents in no way Americans. On the contrary, he is what Americans will never be: Respectfull, Generous and Open hearted.
True American values are awfull: Guns, Big Cars, Alcohol (mainly beer and whiskey), Money and an obsession with Religion. In America you can by bullets at the supermaket and look at with big evil eyes if you ever say "god" in public.
Don't imagine Superman represents America, he is only what American wish to be. Superman only represents an ideal.
I could go on about how America is disillusion, but this is not the topic. The only thing I want to point out, is don't idealize America too much.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I'm not American, but have lived there a few years and I can tell you Superman represents in no way Americans. On the contrary, he is what Americans will never be: Respectfull, Generous and Open hearted.
True American values are awfull: Guns, Big Cars, Alcohol (mainly beer and whiskey), Money and an obsession with Religion. In America you can by bullets at the supermaket and look at with big evil eyes if you ever say "god" in public.
Don't imagine Superman represents America, he is only what American wish to be. Superman only represents an ideal.
I could go on about how America is disillusion, but this is not the topic. The only thing I want to point out, is don't idealize America too much.

I also lived in America and I can sympathize with your dim view of some Americans. Like anywhere in the world, there are people who represent the worst aspects of their country, be it America or Canada or Mexico or China or England or France or wherever. The important thing is to remember that they are not the majority. The majority of Americans do not own guns or big cars. The majority of Americans are not obsessed with alcohol, money and religion. The majority of Americans do not believe in the many injustices committed by their elected officials.

If you had read my post more carefully, you would have seen that I said Superman is about the best of what America represents, not who they are right now. He is a symbol of what America can be. America has never been and never will be about how horribly imperfect it is in the present, but about how there will always be Americans trying to make the country live up to its own ideals. To create a more perfect union. To be the shining city on the hill.

America is not about idealizing the present, nor the past. America is about making a better future, and so is Superman.

[Agent Z]

edited post.

[Jim Kelly]

It used to bug me so much when I was a kid growing up in Canada--when I finally figured out exactly what the countries and borders were--that not all people living on the continent of America can get away with calling themselves American. Only people in the United States can--because U.S. citizens don't want to call themselves United Statesmen or United Staters.

This is the only continent where this happens. People in Europe can call themselves Europeans, people in Asia can call themselves Asians and people in Africa can call themselves Africans, regardless of which nation on those continents they come from. But I can't call myself American--I can maybe get away with saying I'm North American or someone from Brazil can say he's South American--but we can't call ourselves American without being mistaken for people from the United States. This confused and angered me as a kid.

It's one of the reasons now that I try to avoid referring to the United States as America. Most Canadians just say the States, for short. Or else the U.S. Sometimes the United States (which usually comes out sounding like "Nited States"). If I'm being generous, I'll write U.S.A. or U.S. of A. Afterall, Canada has the greater land mass--there's more America in Canada than there is in the United States.

This is why the American Way part of Superman's coda kind of bugs me. Not because I object to Superman espousing U.S. values and patriotism--even given he's from Krypton and has some Canadian in him--but it perpetuates the confusion over what American should mean.

When they extended the coda for Superman, instead of adding "American Way," they could have said he fights for "Truth, Justice and the U.S.A" and it would have had that patriotic ring.

[GreatKungLao]

I'm from Russia and Superman is my favorite superhero, even though I was growing up in a surroundings that taught us to hate USA (and some other countries), because their interests contradicted interests of my homeland. It's still toxic like that, especially on news and some political and ecomonical debates on various TV channels. Which is why I came to hate everything that was political and I liked Superman because I came to know him as superhero of Earth, not of a country. His heroics go beyond our planet, sometimes he deals with Multiverse, with other galaxies, other planets, other people and a hero like that shouldn't be political in my opinion, he should represent best personality qualities such as kindness, goodness, virtue, heroism, honor, etc. that doesn't come from a single nation, everyone can posses those regardless of their origins. One of the reasons why I like Captain America as my Superman of Marvel is because he values human qualities over the duty to his government and if they contradict human decency, he doesn't tolerate that and neither should Superman, which was shown in BvS and why I liked that News Feed scene so much. You see him saving people all around the world: a girl in Mexico, a rocket with people in Russia, ship with people in Antarctica and others, while all that people could do instead of supporting such kindness keep debating how it affects Earth politically. It was awesome to hear how one of the speakers said "We should start thinking beyond politics". That's what Superman represents to me: a destruction of political boundaries that separate us. He can't be that if he belongs to government.

[marhawkman]

that actually touches on part of why Lex fears him. He represents a level of power that makes national squabbles seem puny and unimportant.