Why do people want to think Superman is a fascist with absolute power?

[charliehustle415]

It's not that people want Grim dark hero.Clark is generally a dad(Father in the sky..I love everyone yata!yata!..Be nice or i will be disappointed in you).Who wants that?when you can have someone with personality of the rock playing superman.Someone with actual charisma.Someone with a sense of humor.Someone who isn't talking down.

When has has ever talked down to anyone?

And this is what I mean, when we view someone who is Good - no one wants it because they have "the personality of a rock" or they are viewed as judgmental.

Which Superman has never been.

[manwhohaseverything]

When has has ever talked down to anyone?

And this is what I mean, when we view someone who is Good - no one wants it because they have "the personality of a rock" or they are viewed as judgmental.

Which Superman has never been.

Sorry mate, don't view it as good.Just cringey.Sometimes fake.
I didn't mean " personality of a rock".i meant,the rock-the wrestler,the actor..

Dude!Clark lectures people all the time.where have you been?This basically treating people as children.

https://www.dccomics.com/sites/defau...3.76112626.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...aZFuQ&usqp=CAU
They even took grant Morrison's superman's simple,elegant and sweet "you are stronger than you believe" and made it into paternalistic nonsense.
Clark tries to lecture ww and gets shut down.
wonder woman shuts superman up
And anyways,this is an old discussion..i been stuck in this dogmatic discussion bowing out.

You know what i think? superman would be better of with a good writer who doesn't know crap about superman ,clark kent or superheroes in general .Only writes his idea of a superman.

[The Frog Bros]

They are, but people have to be shown something consistently for it to stick. And for the most part, the takes that DC has given us (in media outside comics as well) haven't shown enough of that (hopefully "Superman & Lois" continues to shine in this regard, because it's been pretty good about this). It doesn't help that, in this day and age, things are seen in much more relativistic terms; what looks like fascism to one looks like anti-fascism to another. But, imo, that's partially a decades(plus)-long failing of both the education system and those at the top of nearly all power systems in general.

Me personally? No. If anyone who tries to push their views on others is a fascist, then everybody is a fascist and the word has no meaning. But a lot of people don't recognize any gradients and like to throw the term around loosely.

These two points go hand-in-hand. The term itself has become something of a catch all that is used rather ubiquitously. Anyone on a given side of things thinks people on the other side are fascists.

Hmmm, I wonder what pre-Snyderverse Kevin Costner thinks…

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Well played, Crash.

[Agent Z]

I've seen way more Superman fans complaining about people seeing him as fascist than any evidence that he is widely seen as fascist.

[Jim Kelly]

I see your point. I am sorry because english is not my first language. I am not even in english-speaking countries.

I am sorry. It's my fault, not yours. I should have written more clearly. Your English is quite good--much better than my attempts at other languages.

Why does stuff happen in comics? The answer with the fewest assumptions is usually the best (Occam's razor).

Why do the things in comic books happen? Because they look good.

Comics are visual. It's all about creating images to excite the reader. Of course, they could just have page after page of cool pictures, with no story--which some comic books try to get away with. But if there's a story, then the pictures need a purpose.

If a story is only eight pages, it can't waste its time. It has to get to the cool pictures fast. So characters are pushed into actions they wouldn't normally do, in order for the spectacular visuals to happen.

Often it's Superman using his powers to push other characters into those scenes. But it can also be an outside forcing pushing Superman into the spectacle. Either way, the characters do what they do for a cool looking scene in the story--which is also often featured on the cover or the splash page in old school comic books.

You don't need to invent a more complicated answer. Just the same, people invent complicated reasons for why the characters are so hell-bent on doing weird stuff. Since the characters are forced into these weird situations, some people decide there's a fascist forcing the characters to do these things.

Really the "fascists" are the people creating the visual story. They are forcing characters to do things they wouldn't normally do. They have authority over the story, so you could say that's fascist. Of course, that's a silly thing to say. The creators are just trying to give readers a thrilling experience--in a cheap ten cent comic book.

Form follows function. The function is to provide visual entertainment. The form has to provide spectacular images. To do that characters and things have to be mashed up in a scene. It all has to be pushed together. That pushing can be remixed and remastered to look like fascism.

[NaVi]

It all started with a Batman fanboy, who turned Superman into the government's dog, then Batman gained popularity and Superman lost it, that's why every time they faced each other in one way or another Superman was the bad guy, a video game where Superman is the bad, a movie where Superman fights following the orders of the bad guy. people do not think that Superman is a fascist, nowadays in one way or another (parallel universe, control, etc.) Superman is a fascist.

[RobinGA]

I think the word fascist is thrown around so loosely, that most people who use it have only a vague idea of what it
really means. It has become a phrase for an authoritarian. But you can be authoritarian, without being a fascist.

People are uncomfortable with the amount of power that Superman can wield. We don't live in the 1940s when
there were ostensible threats to the liberal democratic order that a Superman was needed to defeat actual fascists. Superman
in reality is far removed from a fascist or an authoritarian, his basic impulses are for fair play, economic justice, racial, gender
equality. Krypton was the kind of society far removed from individualistic, capitalistic America -- his values are in that sense in tension
with those of the free market system.

But I also think that we see those cycles, these circles of time where we go through these stages. Superman will be cool again.
It just takes the right writers who can remind people of the good that he represents.

[DochaDocha]

But I also think that we see those cycles, these circles of time where we go through these stages. Superman will be cool again.
It just takes the right writers who can remind people of the good that he represents.

I wonder if Superman will be cool again before 2033.

[DABellWrites]

Well, you got a man that cannot be stopped by high-grade military weaponry, a man that can punch a mountain to dust, use his heat vision to dry up the oceans, and freeze people with his breath, and fly into space with no problem. Also, he can hear and see everything on Earth.
It's pretty easy to think Superman can be a fascist, however you define the word.

[manwhohaseverything]

I wonder if Superman will be cool again before 2033.

give it a few more years of extension period..Make it 2038.

[Ra-El]

Because it's easy. Making Superman evil makes the writers job easier.

Superman is one of the most well known characters in the world, everyone knows he is supposed to be a good guy and very powerful. Making him evil sets 2 things up, first the shock value, a good guy is now evil, and second that whoever is the hero of the story is "screwed" since he is so powerful.

It's why we don't see a story where Green Arrow is the bad guy, or Batman for that matter. Yes, Dark Nights happened, but look what it needed to happen, a multiversal threat, with a Bruce/Joker stand in stealing the power from gods and a bunch of other convoluted stuff. With Superman you just have to kill Lois and/or brainwash him. Like I said, easy.

[Jim Kelly]

That a man is so powerful and yet uses his power responsibly and doesn't set himself up as a dictator--that's the hook. It would be so easy for Superman to be seduced into using his powers for his own self interest. But he resists that temptation. Yet he's no saint. He's a real flesh and blood person who has desires, wants, needs. He struggles every day to do the right thing. And his struggle is what we identify with.

All the super-villains provide the counter example. They show how easy it is to let power lead you down the wrong path. We don't need Supernan to provide that example. It's redundant to have him become evil, as well. But he sees in them how he could go wrong--they keep him on the straight and narrow by proving what a disaster it would be to let the power run his life.

[Ascended]

I wonder if Superman will be cool again before 2033.

All it takes is that one right story that hits at the right time. Or at least, I'd like to think so....but DC has spent a lot of years doing stuff that looks an awful lot like they're actively trying to hold the character back. You don't put a sexual predator in charge of a franchise you give a shit about. But new owners and new people in charge so who knows? This time next year we could be talking about the new HBOMax series that's getting ready to launch with movie sized budgets and a cast that's made the fanboy in all of us squee like kids seeing Reeves for the first time. Anything is possible.

But I suspect it'll be Clark entering public domain that ushers in a new golden age for him. Assuming Disney and WB don't successfully lobby for an extension in the law again, there are a lot of people out there who would love to get their hands on Superman, people always seem ready to give him a chance no matter how badly the last attempt went (people are predisposed to love Clark, and have to be taught to hate him...much like Mandela's observations about hate), and the Golden Age version (which is all that'd be hitting public domain initially) is arguably more relevant today than he was when he was created.

[DABellWrites]

All it takes is that one right story that hits at the right time. Or at least, I'd like to think so....but DC has spent a lot of years doing stuff that looks an awful lot like they're actively trying to hold the character back. You don't put a sexual predator in charge of a franchise you give a shit about. But new owners and new people in charge so who knows? This time next year we could be talking about the new HBOMax series that's getting ready to launch with movie sized budgets and a cast that's made the fanboy in all of us squee like kids seeing Reeves for the first time. Anything is possible.

But I suspect it'll be Clark entering public domain that ushers in a new golden age for him. Assuming Disney and WB don't successfully lobby for an extension in the law again, there are a lot of people out there who would love to get their hands on Superman, people always seem ready to give him a chance no matter how badly the last attempt went (people are predisposed to love Clark, and have to be taught to hate him...much like Mandela's observations about hate), and the Golden Age version (which is all that'd be hitting public domain initially) is arguably more relevant today than he was when he was created.

While I agree it's time for Superman and all the other golden age and silver age heroes to enter the public domain, pastiches work better than actually using Superman. We get cool ideas like Brightburn and Mega Mind every so often.

[Ascended]

While I agree it's time for Superman and all the other golden age and silver age heroes to enter the public domain, pastiches work better than actually using Superman. We get cool ideas like Brightburn and Mega Mind every so often.

I don't think we can say that proxies work "better" since we've never had a public domain Superman to make the comparison before. If and when the character enters the domain, it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out, whether successful adaptations come of it or not (and some of the failures might be more entertaining than the ones that pull it off!). The original Superman bears little resemblance to the Superman the average person knows, and in many ways is far removed from the archetype that those proxies and analogues play with. But it's still Superman, and that name carries weight.

And as far as I know, we've never had a character enter the public domain while trademarks and other rights were still held by a specific entity, so that's another wrinkle to consider (if I'm right, anyway).

In any case I don't wanna derail the thread. The idea of these characters entering the PD is intriguing to me, but this ain't the spot for it. I started a thread about this topic in the indie forums earlier in the year if anyone wants to revive it but let's not get off on too big a tangent.

It all started with a Batman fanboy, who turned Superman into the government's dog, then Batman gained popularity and Superman lost it

I think there were a lot of different elements coming together that created the modern idea of Clark as a fascist. DKR's popularity, yes, but other things as well. I suspect that readers in the 60's remembered Clark's conservative era in the 50's (or were at least aware of it, even if lifelong readers weren't much of a thing back then), and the rise of the counter culture movement probably didn't do Clark a ton of favors after spending the prior decade as more of an establishment man.

And the fact that "fascist" has largely lost its meaning. I imagine most of the people who throw that term around can't actually provide the term's definition, or know the history of the word.

Plus, as others have said, attempting to apply adult sensibilities to a guy created for kids.....you just can't account for that kind of dissonance.