Superman is Jewish. Not Jesus.
In which I get very loud about how Superman is in no way a Jesus narrative and how no American filmmaker seems to be aware of this.
Ahem. So what with the lovely square jaw of Henry Cavill departing the DCEU, the problems with Zack Snyder's vision of Superman have once again reared their ugly heads.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
Namely that almost anyone who has adapted Superman (Mr. Snyder really is the latest in a long line of offenders in this regard) thinks of Superman as a Christ figure.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
Superman, otherwise known as Kal-El of Krypton, is NO SUCH DAMN THING.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
Kal-El was the brainchild of two Jewish men. He was dispatched from a dying world in a sealed rocket. He comes to know his origins later in his life, he is raised by strangers.
Gee, I wonder who that sounds like? Not Jesus, that's for sure.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
Kal-El is Moses, Moshe to those who wrote him first.
NOT JESUS.
He is a stranger in a land not his own. He is raised by those strangers, he comes to love them. But he is always apart from them.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
His story is an immigrant story. His story is a Jewish story.
IT CANNOT BE A JESUS STORY WITHOUT STRIPPING ESSENTIAL DNA OUT.
Now the average American filmmaker can't be expected to make a Jewish story. The bones don't make sense. So they take a hand shortcut and borrow from another famous story archetype.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
They take Campbell's Hero's Journey.
Which most people think of mapping onto King Arthur. Except, SURPRISE, it's ALSO A CHRIST ALLEGORY!
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
And so you end up with Superman, an essentially Jewish character, as a stand in for Jesus.
This tends to make Jewish comic book lovers a bit shirty. We know who Kal-El is in his bones (we also know who Captain America is in his bones, and while Steve Rogers isn't Jewish, he damn well isn't a Nazi - and I need to stop this before I lose the thread here).
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
I would be remiss in not mentioning here that while to *me* Snyder seems the most egregious offender, we really do have to go back to the 70's and the actual lines of dialogue calling Superman Jesus to find that.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
With Marlon Brando all lit up in white.
That one may be the actual worst offense.
The point of all of this is that Superman isn't Jesus. That's not where he started, it's not who he's supposed to be.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
And the overwhelming Christian normativity of American filmmakers and comic book writers have twisted him out of true.
For a minute I was going to say that I wouldn't complain if we had better Jewish representation elsewhere, but I thought better of that.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018
We deserve good current representation AND not to have our stories rewritten KTHANXBAI
Here endeth my rant.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) September 12, 2018