Superman and American imperialism

The roots of the American urge to global dominance also feed Americans' insatiable appetite for comic book heroes.

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

The people of the United States seem unusually susceptible to delusions of national grandeur. How else can we explain the rapture so many Americans feel when talking about their national identity, or their inability to comprehend the catastrophe they've unleashed in the Middle East, or their unwavering faith in America's moral superiority in spite of its horrific human rights record?

To understand America, we need to understand these delusions and the needs they meet. Since the delusions express themselves through the products of American popular culture, let's examine one of the most influential pieces of Americana: the superhero.

Superheroes are as American as televangelism. In his 2000 movie Unbreakable, M Night Shyamalan points out that over 62,780,000 comics are sold in the US every year, and that the average collector spends approximately one year of his life reading them (forgive the masculine pronoun: comic collecting remains overwhelmingly a male pastime).

While this is impressive in its own right, superheroes have spread well beyond the coloured pages to colonise nearly every corner of American popular culture. Starting with Superman, scores of superhero comics have been successfully adapted to the big screen, while series like Smallville and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have staked out impressive territories on the small screen. Even shows that aren't explicitly part of the genre are strewn with superhero references: in Kill Bill 2, David Carridine lectures Uma Thurman on the Superman mythos, and an image of Superman can be found in every episode of Seinfeld.

Mainstream bookstores are now selling literary analyses of the genre, like Will Brooker's Batman Unmasked (Continuum, 2000) and Gerald Jones' Killing Monsters (Basic Books, 2002). The collectors' market for superhero paraphernalia, from action figures to lunch boxes, is exploding. The American mythosphere is swarming with capes and tights.

Let's look at the defining features of the superhero genre. Superheroes are set apart from the common crowd by virtue of unusual origins, bestowing ethical destinies that lead them beyond the constraints of conventional law and morality. They live in a Manichaean world, a world where good and evil are sharply divided and in constant conflict, a world where, without their intervention, evil's victory is guaranteed. They're fantastically powerful: even Batman, a hero without any superpowers, can repeatedly and violently take down entire criminal syndicates without ever suffering debilitating physical or emotional trauma. When they go into action, they often wear costumes resembling flags; in the case of superheroes like Captain America, the flag's a familiar one. At other times, their superheroic identities are kept secret, hidden beneath mundane disguises.

There's a point-for-point correspondence between this scheme and the myth of American national identity embraced by many Americans, and particularly by American men. These Americans have long believed that their War of Independence bestowed a special destiny upon them, making their nation the planet's foremost defender of liberty and justice. Their beliefs are often couched in millennial language, as though America was cosmically ordained to be the "world's policeman," unrestrained by either the community of nations or international law.

America's enemies are stereotyped as utterly wicked: when they aren't "terrorists" they're an "evil empire" or an "axis of evil". Most Americans view the US as a "superpower" whose mightiness can overcome any obstacle. During national crises, these citizens feverishly "wrap themselves in the flag." At other times, they tone down their patriotic fervour, and act as though they're simply normal mortals, unburdened by the glories of their national identity.

In other words, the relationship between Clark Kent and Superman is a marketable metaphor for the psychological relationship between many American men and their patriotic delusions. This may be the primary driving force behind the superhero genre. By infusing a human image with the superhuman splendour of "America the beautiful," superhero fantasies make it easier for American men to believe that, deep down, they're embodiments of mythic America.

If I'm right, then the question remains: What need does this identification serve?

According to Jay Martin, author of Who Am I This Time? Uncovering the Fictive Personality (W W Norton, 1988), people who identify strongly with fictional characters have typically experienced a loss of self-confidence and trust very early in life. Children normally develop stable and healthy personalities by forming nurturing, positive, and long-lasting relationships with adult mentors. Besides providing guidance and support, mentors help children see themselves through older, wiser and compassionate eyes. If the adults in the child's life are abusive or emotionally unavailable, or if they haven't achieved emotional maturity themselves, then the attachment process is derailed. Without a real person to positively bond with, children will choose, as a default option, either a fictional character or someone they'll never meet, like a celebrity or a religious figure. They then try to recreate themselves in the image of their role models.

Unfortunately, these role models can never form relationships with their admirers. They can neither guide nor comfort, and children never see themselves reflected in their beloveds' eyes. Such children develop idealised, grandiose, and fragile self-concepts, preventing them from integrating their personal imperfections and limitations. Their human failings become threats to the false self's integrity, and are therefore denied, repressed, and projected onto other people. Because ethical maturation requires more sophisticated self-knowledge than this, they rarely mature beyond a starkly black-and-white morality, one that encourages judgmentalism and discourages empathy. As they age, the false self takes on an aura of sanctity, as though it were a precious spiritual core hidden beneath the silliness of everyday life. They continue to live fragmented lives, constantly fending off threats to the illusory perfection of their two-dimensional self-images.

American public services have been capsizing since the early 1980s, multitudes of parents have been pulled down by the economic undertow, and communities have been torn apart by the riptides of the marketplace. Few children find healthy attachments in such a turbulent setting. They turn, therefore, to fictional or inaccessible role models, with life-long consequences. Having never known worthwhile mentors themselves, as adults they're hard-pressed to mentor anyone else. Oblivious to what they've been denied, they don't support public policies that would help other children receive it.

For a lot of American boys, superheroes are the default role models of choice, and these caricatures of power, majesty, and virtue continue inspiring them long after they grow up. Of course, children in other English-speaking countries love superheroes, but they don't live in heavily militarised superpowers, and their cultures aren't permeated by ultra-nationalistic Christian fundamentalism. In America, these factors feed into each other.

Given this, it's not surprising that on a deep psychological level so many American men see the US as a superhero, see themselves as America's secret identity, and see foreign enemies as supervillains.

The problem isn't with the superhero genre so much as with the social factors that block attachment for American children. The genre simply exploits the consequences and helps fuel the imperial psychosis. Other genres do the same: consider professional wrestling and Hollywood action films.

By exposing the attachment disruptions within the hearts of the US citizenry, these genres teach us a great deal about the American psyche. If the failure of bonding reinforces American imperial delusions, if bonding depends on the stability of American families and communities, and if this stability depends on the vitality of America's income assistance, health care, social service, and education systems, then the condition of the American welfare state has global significance.

If we truly want Americans to abandon their imperial fantasies, we need to encourage them to re-weave their social safety net. To do this we first have to resist their pressure to unravel ours, and we have to help other countries defend theirs. If we fail, America's nationalistic delusions will probably deepen, international conflicts will escalate, and, I fear, our world may well go the way of Krypton.

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