It's A Bird! It's A Plane! No, It's ... Us!
One of the TV shows that I watch is Smallville. It's an
adaptation of the Superman myth, retelling the story of the teenage
Clark Kent set in present day Kansas (though on the show, Kansas looks
suspiciously like British Columbia). The easy malleability of the story
reminds me of the Arthurian myths, which have been continually remolded
for every age; from the Mabinogion to Le Morte d'Arthur to
The Once and Future King to the Mists of Avalon. As long
as you leave intact a few key touchstones, you can faithfully rewrite
the story for each new audience. It's reinforced the feeling I've long
held that Superman is the myth of modern America; the personification of
our postwar self-image.
Boiled down, the Superman story goes as follows: An alien baby falls to
Earth where he develops amazing powers while being raised in the
heartland by quintessentially American parents who teach him that his
powers should be used for good. On a mythological level I feel that
this corresponds to America's identity as a nation of immigrants that
introduced democracy to the modern world (an alien concept in a time of
monarchy) and developed great power in our new land (overwhelming
economic and military strength) which we (ideally) use only for good
because that's just the American thing to do. I believe that's why
Superman is such a universal icon to us. He's the avatar of the
idealized America.
Not that this is the only mythological correspondence for Superman in
the American experience, nor even the first. Far from it. I believe
that the original roots of the story had more to do with the experience
of jewish immigrants to America in the early-to-mid 20th century. In
this case, the alien child with special powers dropped into America
represents the Jews as God's chosen people arrived on these shores. The
pressure and desire to assimilate to the new culture is represented in
Clark's adoption by prototypically waspy parents in the American
heartland, and in the fact that he hides his true identity in plain
sight behind a waspy name and a pair of glasses. He always remains
Kal-El, Son of Krypton, meanwhile becoming as iconically American as
America itself.
7:50:45 AM 
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