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The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

CNN

26 minutes ago

CNN

The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

A baby arrives in America from a home in turmoil. A family in Kansas raises him. And he struggles to balance two identities. Comic books, TV shows and films have repeatedly recounted these details from Superman's backstory over the past 87 years. But the director of the latest big-screen adaptation drew backlash recently when he stated something that's been said many times before: Superman is an immigrant. 'I mean, Superman is the story of America,' director James Gunn told The Times of London. 'An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.' Coming as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdowns, the comments quickly sparked criticism from right-wing media personalities. A Fox News banner blasted the new movie as 'Superwoke' as pundits offered their takes. 'We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,' said former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. Dean Cain, an actor who starred for years on TV in 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' and is now a conservative commentator, told TMZ he didn't like Gunn's comments and speculated that the director's decision to invoke immigration while promoting the film could be a costly mistake. So far, it hasn't been. The movie, released by CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, finished No. 1 on its opening weekend with $122 million in domestic ticket sales and continues to draw large audiences. And longtime fans and historians of the comic books note that Gunn's comments weren't superimposing a new storyline on the beloved hero. 'The idea of Superman being an immigrant, or maybe a refugee, has been part of the character's mythos since the very beginning. It's not something he invented or tried to shoehorn in,' says Danny Fingeroth, author of 'Superman on the Couch: What Comic Book Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.' The first Superman story, published in 1938, stated he was sent to Earth from Krypton, a fictional doomed planet. 'It makes him not an immigrant of choice. It makes him an immigrant of necessity…a refugee,' Fingeroth says. 'He's someone who comes to Earth and to America, to then blend in and become as American as mom, the flag and apple pie.' And, Fingeroth says, there are a lot of good reasons why these details are such a key part of Superman's story. Take the comic's creators, for example. Artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel were both the children of Jewish immigrants who'd fled rising antisemitism in Europe. 'Just given their backgrounds and their sympathies, I think it's always been important that Superman comes from somewhere else,' Fingeroth says. The Cleveland-based duo wrote Superman's story as World War II loomed. The first page of his story describes him as 'champion of the oppressed.' 'The clouds of fascism are rolling through Europe. There's echoes of it here in America … and Superman's early adventure are fighting for the little guy, fighting for abused women, fighting for exploited mine workers, fighting against corrupt politicians,' Fingeroth says. Even before America was fighting Nazis in World War II, Superman was fighting them on comic book pages, he says. Through it all, 'Superman is the immigrant embodying the best of American qualities, even though he's from somewhere else.' It's a connection historians and immigrant rights advocates have made, too. More than a decade ago, comic book historian Craig This organized a panel at Wright State University highlighting the immigrant backgrounds of Superman and Wonder Woman. The idea resonated with the college students he was teaching at the time, he says. 'People were coming to this large public research university, maybe thinking that they were an outsider, and then said, 'Oh, wow, look, I can see these individuals as role models. I want to try and fit in. But really, it's going to be my differences that make me survive and be successful, not just here on a college campus, but also here in the United States.'' In 2013, the organizations Define American and the Harry Potter Alliance launched a social media campaign inviting people to share selfies and their family's immigration stories with the hashtag #SupermanIsAnImmigrant. Last week that campaign's creators pushed back against critics who've been accusing Gunn of politicizing his take on Superman. 'You can't politicize the truth,' Define American founder Jose Antonio Vargas and narrative strategist Andrew Slack wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'Superman has been an 'illegal alien' for 87 years.' A one-time undocumented immigrant himself, Vargas says today he sees an even more important message in the superhero's story. 'I think for the first time, because of this movie, because of what's happening in the country … I have people who have never talked to me about immigration talking to me about immigration,' he says. 'So we have people's attention. Now I think the question is, what are they going to do?' Of course, Superman's origin is just one part of his story. And in the initial comic, it was also a convenient plot device, Fingeroth says, allowing the authors to explain his powers. In some versions, Fingeroth says, 'Superman's immigrant status is not mentioned.' The hero could be from Metropolis or Kansas or anywhere, 'depending on the era, depending on the creators.' Each version of Superman comes with its own plot twists. In the new film, for example, the backstory of the superhero's parents takes an unexpected turn. Superman sometimes changes with the times. And sometimes different audiences perceive him differently. Many superheroes are outsiders. And one common thread that gives them such staying power is that people from many different walks of life connect with the characters, says Fingeroth, a longtime editor of Spiderman comics. 'Their mythos and storylines and origins speak to various aspects of the human condition, and that makes them appealing. Their adventures are enjoyed by people from a wide variety of political and social and religious backgrounds,' he says. 'And yet, the myths are so powerful that they all take it as their own.' In other words, all of us can see ourselves in Superman. And that may be a reason why so many people have such strong opinions about the character even today. Last week the White House's social media accounts shared an AI-generated image based on the new movie's poster, depicting President Trump in the title role. A few days later, though, it wasn't the Man of Steel that the Trump administration referenced on social media when it drew a connection between a beloved sci-fi character and today's undocumented immigrants. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security shared the iconic image of ET's bicycling silhouette. The text superimposed over the moon: 'GO HOME.'

In her gripping whodunnit ‘Fox,' Joyce Carol Oates jolts with a superb twist ending

Hamilton Spectator

39 minutes ago

Hamilton Spectator

In her gripping whodunnit ‘Fox,' Joyce Carol Oates jolts with a superb twist ending

Have you ever wondered why turkey vultures are bald? The answer is not pleasant. Turkey vultures feed on the viscera of dead animals, and sliding their heads into and out of carcasses — preferably through the anus — is easier without feathers. Turkey vultures are scavengers; they see opportunity where others can't bring themselves to look. In this they bear some resemblance to serious novelists, like Joyce Carol Oates , who, at 87, has made an astonishing career in part by turning over what others wouldn't touch, sliding into the darkest orifices, pushing forward until she's found all the tenderest bits. Her novels can be hard to stomach, but for this she can blame reality. Some truths are revolting. Oates's latest novel is 'Fox' (Hogarth), which begins at the Wieland Swamp in southern New Jersey, where turkey vultures circle ominously over what turns out to be a human corpse. At first, the corpse is unidentifiable — due to 'significant animal activity,' as the police chief puts it — but is found alongside a vehicle belonging to Francis Fox, a popular new teacher at the prestigious local prep school, the Langhorne Academy. 'Fox,' by Joyce Carol Oates, Hogarth, 672 pages, $42. In an interview with People , Oates described the novel as a 'classic whodunit,' and the unfolding of the police inquiry — and multiple related storylines — is mostly propulsive, despite the novel's 672 pages and some tiresome stylistic tics ( so many words are in italics ). The most impressive structural feature is the superb twist ending. This is a book that continues to change shape until the very last page. But the novel's real interest lies in its anatomy of the crimes of Francis Fox — a predator, as his name implies, who preys on his middle-school students — and the institutions and norms that make his behaviour possible. Oates does not seek out the origins of his conduct in some childhood trauma or — as in the case of 'Lolita''s Humbert Humbert — a thwarted erotic encounter, but in Fox's own sense of superiority. Fox is the product of a partial Ivy League education — he was ejected from a Columbia PhD program for plagiarism — and the heir to a Romantic tradition that insists on the individual's right to transgress convention in pursuit of his own personal ideal of beauty. Fox quotes Blake and Thoreau as his grandiloquent authorities — 'God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages' — as he flatters himself that his obsession with prepubescent girls is a sign of esthetic refinement. Fox keeps a bust of Edgar Allan Poe — who married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia — on his desk, and fills his apartment with the paintings of the controversial French Polish painter Balthus, best known for his prurient portraits of very young female models. In this way, Oates's analysis of child abuse goes beyond the psychology of the criminal to indict American society, where every educated child is expected to know Poe's poems and where Balthus's portraits hang in the Met. On a more immediate level, the adult characters in 'Fox' are guilty of extreme neglect. In the same interview with People, Oates described Fox as a 'charming con man,' but the novel has no sympathy for the adults who let themselves be conned. Teachers on hiring committees neglect to look into Fox's past, though several red flags call out for closer scrutiny. Later, rather than raising alarm bells, the attention Fox receives from his female students elicits jealousy from his petty colleagues. Parents, too, are fooled by Fox, and lulled into a moral stupor by their reluctance to believe the worst. Even those who harbour suspicions prove unwilling to jeopardize their professional status by levelling accusations against a teacher who has made himself a favourite of the headmistress. One of the few adult characters to see through Francis Fox is a lawyer Fox hires to help him through his first scandal with a student. (Fox tries to quote Kierkegaard to the lawyer: ' The crowd is a lie … The individual is the highest truth. ') The lawyer has nothing but contempt for Fox, but professional pride makes him pursue the best possible settlement for his client — an outcome that all but ensures that Fox will be able to continue teaching. How did things get so bad? The novel hints that the community's (almost complete) failure to stop Fox has something to do with the fragmentation of the community itself. The rich and the poor of 'Fox''s Atlantic County have almost nothing to do with each other. Instead, the locals — 'poor whites,' 'old families that have failed to thrive in the twenty-first century, left behind by the computerized, high-tech economy' — are filled with resentment for the smug nouveau riche who try to ignore them while enjoying a much more comfortable existence, one they seek to make hereditary by sending their children to Langhorne and onward to the Ivy League. Political scientists like Katherine Cramer have been warning of the growing rents in the American social fabric caused by the increasing distance between the well-off and the hard-done-by. As Cramer and her co-author put it in a recent piece in the Hill , 'Constitutional democracy flourishes when people feel common purpose with one another, and it is impossible for people who never come into contact to build that common purpose.' The institutions depicted by Oates serve not to advance a common purpose — or enforce a shared morality — but to prop up the strivers while grinding down the rest. This is an unflattering portrait, but not a hopeless one. Over a long and illustrious career — including a National Book Award for Fiction (1970), a National Humanities Medal (2010) and a 'by the same author' page in 'Fox' that looks like the sides of the Stanley Cup — Oates has sometimes been accused of trafficking in moral turpitude for its own sake. A 1991 review of 'Heat and Other Stories' claimed that 'Ms. Oates … is as cavalierly cynical as a teenager. Her stock in trade is precisely not to be shocked, and she pretends to be equally, mildly, analytically interested in all forms of human behaviour, however grotesque.' But 'Fox' reads more like a quiet jeremiad against complacency and hypocrisy, masquerading as a coolly analytic murder mystery. In a 1972 article about the role of literature in America, Oates claimed that the serious writer must recognize that his or her destiny is inescapably 'part of the nation's spiritual condition.' More than 50 years later, Oates has become an integral part of her nation's spiritual condition, circling its revolting truths as the tireless turkey vulture circles a kill. A weak stomach is no excuse for looking away.

CNN

39 minutes ago

CNN

The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

A baby arrives in America from a home in turmoil. A family in Kansas raises him. And he struggles to balance two identities. Comic books, TV shows and films have repeatedly recounted these details from Superman's backstory over the past 87 years. But the director of the latest big-screen adaptation drew backlash recently when he stated something that's been said many times before: Superman is an immigrant. 'I mean, Superman is the story of America,' director James Gunn told The Times of London. 'An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.' Coming as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdowns, the comments quickly sparked criticism from right-wing media personalities. A Fox News banner blasted the new movie as 'Superwoke' as pundits offered their takes. 'We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,' said former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. Dean Cain, an actor who starred for years on TV in 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' and is now a conservative commentator, told TMZ he didn't like Gunn's comments and speculated that the director's decision to invoke immigration while promoting the film could be a costly mistake. So far, it hasn't been. The movie, released by CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, finished No. 1 on its opening weekend with $122 million in domestic ticket sales and continues to draw large audiences. And longtime fans and historians of the comic books note that Gunn's comments weren't superimposing a new storyline on the beloved hero. 'The idea of Superman being an immigrant, or maybe a refugee, has been part of the character's mythos since the very beginning. It's not something he invented or tried to shoehorn in,' says Danny Fingeroth, author of 'Superman on the Couch: What Comic Book Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.' The first Superman story, published in 1938, stated he was sent to Earth from Krypton, a fictional doomed planet. 'It makes him not an immigrant of choice. It makes him an immigrant of necessity…a refugee,' Fingeroth says. 'He's someone who comes to Earth and to America, to then blend in and become as American as mom, the flag and apple pie.' And, Fingeroth says, there are a lot of good reasons why these details are such a key part of Superman's story. Take the comic's creators, for example. Artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel were both the children of Jewish immigrants who'd fled rising antisemitism in Europe. 'Just given their backgrounds and their sympathies, I think it's always been important that Superman comes from somewhere else,' Fingeroth says. The Cleveland-based duo wrote Superman's story as World War II loomed. The first page of his story describes him as 'champion of the oppressed.' 'The clouds of fascism are rolling through Europe. There's echoes of it here in America … and Superman's early adventure are fighting for the little guy, fighting for abused women, fighting for exploited mine workers, fighting against corrupt politicians,' Fingeroth says. Even before America was fighting Nazis in World War II, Superman was fighting them on comic book pages, he says. Through it all, 'Superman is the immigrant embodying the best of American qualities, even though he's from somewhere else.' It's a connection historians and immigrant rights advocates have made, too. More than a decade ago, comic book historian Craig This organized a panel at Wright State University highlighting the immigrant backgrounds of Superman and Wonder Woman. The idea resonated with the college students he was teaching at the time, he says. 'People were coming to this large public research university, maybe thinking that they were an outsider, and then said, 'Oh, wow, look, I can see these individuals as role models. I want to try and fit in. But really, it's going to be my differences that make me survive and be successful, not just here on a college campus, but also here in the United States.'' In 2013, the organizations Define American and the Harry Potter Alliance launched a social media campaign inviting people to share selfies and their family's immigration stories with the hashtag #SupermanIsAnImmigrant. Last week that campaign's creators pushed back against critics who've been accusing Gunn of politicizing his take on Superman. 'You can't politicize the truth,' Define American founder Jose Antonio Vargas and narrative strategist Andrew Slack wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'Superman has been an 'illegal alien' for 87 years.' A one-time undocumented immigrant himself, Vargas says today he sees an even more important message in the superhero's story. 'I think for the first time, because of this movie, because of what's happening in the country … I have people who have never talked to me about immigration talking to me about immigration,' he says. 'So we have people's attention. Now I think the question is, what are they going to do?' Of course, Superman's origin is just one part of his story. And in the initial comic, it was also a convenient plot device, Fingeroth says, allowing the authors to explain his powers. In some versions, Fingeroth says, 'Superman's immigrant status is not mentioned.' The hero could be from Metropolis or Kansas or anywhere, 'depending on the era, depending on the creators.' Each version of Superman comes with its own plot twists. In the new film, for example, the backstory of the superhero's parents takes an unexpected turn. Superman sometimes changes with the times. And sometimes different audiences perceive him differently. Many superheroes are outsiders. And one common thread that gives them such staying power is that people from many different walks of life connect with the characters, says Fingeroth, a longtime editor of Spiderman comics. 'Their mythos and storylines and origins speak to various aspects of the human condition, and that makes them appealing. Their adventures are enjoyed by people from a wide variety of political and social and religious backgrounds,' he says. 'And yet, the myths are so powerful that they all take it as their own.' In other words, all of us can see ourselves in Superman. And that may be a reason why so many people have such strong opinions about the character even today. Last week the White House's social media accounts shared an AI-generated image based on the new movie's poster, depicting President Trump in the title role. A few days later, though, it wasn't the Man of Steel that the Trump administration referenced on social media when it drew a connection between a beloved sci-fi character and today's undocumented immigrants. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security shared the iconic image of ET's bicycling silhouette. The text superimposed over the moon: 'GO HOME.'

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The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

In her gripping whodunnit ‘Fox,' Joyce Carol Oates jolts with a superb twist ending

The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

Who Is Rachel Brosnahan's Husband, Jason Ralph?

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Related Articles

The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

In her gripping whodunnit ‘Fox,' Joyce Carol Oates jolts with a superb twist ending

The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'

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