| “Sorry, God Is My Boyfriend.”
— Jenna Fuller (to Jearold Hersey)
In high
school my friend Jearold asked out a girl he met at church
only to be rebuffed with what is still my all-time favorite
tonally incomprehensible turn-down (see above). There was
enough overt Jesus shit — crucifix-posture shout-outs,
unironic use of the term ‘savior’ (by just about
everybody), the digi-ghost of Brando paraphrasing ‘my
only begotten son’ in Yahweh-like voice-over —
in Superman Returns to make me remember this vicarious
anecdote as Supes and Lois Lane fly off together over the
Metropolis sky in a reprise of the really boring and kind
of embarrassing “Can you read my mind?” reverie
from the first Superman.[1]
No said reveries this time, just the uncanny hesitance evoked
by the return of any metaphorical-made-literal event, e.g.
your long lost Love walking through the door and acting like
no irreparable temporal lapse ever happened. Kate Bosworth
looks enough like Rachel McAdams here to make me wonder why
they didn’t just get the McA to play Lois Lane opposite
Brandon Routh’s circa 1978 Christopher Reeve. Kevin
Spacey avoids Gene Hackman as one might Jack Valenti at a
post-Oscars® bash. Sam Huntington channels Jimmy Olsen
by way of Ethan Embry in Can’t Hardly Wait.
Hanging over all these actors-playing-actors characterizations
is Reeve’s metatextually ironic fate and the knowledge
that somewhere Margot Kidder is quivering naked and out of
her mind behind a neighbor’s suburban bush. This is
both absurd and deeply sad, as is the world to which Superman
returns and out of which Superman Returns is made.
That his first act after pointedly stating “You wrote
that the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day
I hear people crying out for one” is to foil an armed
robbery suggests a topical merging of Christ and Capitalism
under the rubric of American interests —
as if Superman’s red, yellow, and blue costume is a
thinly veiled (or veiling, as the case may be) U.S. flag that
somebody[2]
pissed on. We can argue as to the self-implicatory complexity
of this kind of commentary in Hollywood, but it pops up again
in po-mo dialogue that rewrites Truth, Justice, and the American
Way as “Truth, Justice, and all that stuff.” The
dismissive substitution of “all that stuff” for
America is intended as a nudge-nudge to the audience’s
cultural savvy, but it also echoes an implicit proxy within
the title of Lois Lane’s Pulitzer prize-winning article:
“Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman” can
be read as “Why the World Doesn’t Need America”,
or, more specifically, “Why the World Doesn’t
Need America Acting According to Its Idealized Version of
Itself”. Yet by the end of the movie it’s clear
that we’re to regard Lois’ sentiment as compensatory
and false, since the rebuttal to her article and its geopolitical
subtext is given in Superman/America’s Atlas-like feat
during the movie’s climax (foreshadowed earlier in the
form of Media as The World, when Supes hefts the fallen Daily
Planet on his shoulders) — that is to say, it’s
the cynics who need to change, not the ideological demiurges
who place themselves above a law they swear to protect.[3]
Though I’m not sure how to interpret the “the
father is the son is the father is the son” platitudinal
nonsense Superman and Superman descend into at the
end (beyond some vague notion of “Go Patriarchy!”)
before Superman, graciously, flies off into the void while
still somehow aiming for the sunrise. I liked the first two
Superman movies, but I also agree with movie companion
Harris’ post-IMAX[4]
assessment that Superman Returns is just as boring
as the Richard Donner[5]
films it canonizes, and that the non-canonized Superman
III is the only honestly entertaining Superman
since it’s the only one with Richard Pryor.[6]
________________________
[1]
Which reverie is here reproduced in its textual entirety:
Can you
read my mind? Do you know what it is that you do to me? I
don't know who you are. Just a friend from another star. Here
I am, like a kid out of school. Holding hands with a god.
I'm a fool. Will you look at me? Quivering. Like a little
girl, shivering. You can see right through me. Can you read
my mind? Can you picture the things I'm thinking of? Wondering
why you are... all the wonderful things you are. You can fly.
You belong in the sky. You and I... could belong to each other.
If you need a friend... I'm the one to fly to. If you need
to be loved... here I am. Read my mind.
[2]
That somebody being Us — U.S. dissenters, proponents,
indifferent participants, etc.
[3]
As Lex Luther sensibly points out (as movie companion
Harris pointed out).
[4]
Portions of which were in some seriously low-fi 3D that as
per usual (see Space Station 3D, narrated by T. Cruise)
blew my mind. I should note that we sat dead center in the
very front row, so much of the mind-blowing may be due to
the abstract projectiles and immersive sense of chaos as opposed
to any specific “holy shit that plane’s coming
right at us” Captain Eo-ness.
[5]
For those fanboys mentally interjecting here: yes, Richard
Lester took over Superman II filming duties after
Richard Donner was inexplicably fired, but the groundwork
(and much of the film itself) is Donner’s doing.
[6]
Which reminds me — I bought a copy of The Toy
on the street the other day for $5 that I’ve yet to
watch – which reminds me — did anybody else know
that the freckly kid from The Toy is now some kind
of failed porn star?
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