Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Gospel of Superman

Man of Steel has garnered some theological reviews:



http://godawa.com/movieblog/man-of-steel-jesus-was-an-ancient-alien/

2 comments:

  1. I would contend that most comparisons of Superman to Jesus are forced and ineffective, not least because Kryptonian hubris leading to planetary demise is a key narrative thread in most tellings of Superman's origin. The temptation to view any cosmetic narrative resemblance as typology is too strong for many.

    That said, it may be worth nothing that Paul Dini (who has helmed animated adaptations of superheroes aplenty in the last twenty years) stated that the big three heroes "everyone" recognizes are Superman, Batman and Spiderman. To this it can be observed that each one is an orphan who refuses to kill and is motivated by the desire to honor father and mother. In other words compared to the deliberately neo-pagan Wonder Woman Superman, Batman and Spiderman can all be traced back to a Judeo-Christian ethical tradition (Stan Lee is ptobably not an observant Jew but of Jewish background, for instance) and at least a nominal reference to the Decalogue. Maanwhile Wonder Woman fans wonder why there's never been a feature length Wonder Woman film and Grant Morrison theorizes that removing the bondage and sexual element from the original comics series drained the character of anything that made her even slightly interesting.

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