Superman As Jesus - Christian Imagery in Man of Steel

20.7.2020. Superman as Jesus -- Christian imagery in Man of Steel | EW.
com
Superman as Jesus -- Christian

imagery in Man of Steel
By Jeff Jensen
Updated June 17, 2013 at 07:48 PM EDT
PHOTO: CLAY ENOS
Man of Steel
TYPE Movie
It is often said that superheroes are modern glosses on mythic heroes

of antiquity. Batman. Spider-Man. Iron Man. They are but many different
modern faces of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, and the whole metamorphic
Campbellian crew, and the stories of their Herculean labors contain
truths about human nature, heroic character, and our innate want for
freaky cosplay. Or maybe just catharsis for 9/11. Probably just that. Yes,
“mythology” sounds pretentious, like the rationalization of those who
need to justify spending so much time filling their imagination with weird
tales of fabulous people wearing outrageous clothes while engaging in
ridiculously violent or risky behavior. It’s a lot of weight to put upon the
colorful shoulders of these pulp fiction icons.
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20.7.2020. Superman as Jesus -- Christian imagery in Man of Steel | EW.com
But some characters carry the burden better than others. And one
character in particular seems to demand it. He is the superhero who
reigns Zeus-like above all others, and is more loaded than any other
with mythic significance, to a degree as daunting as it is inspiring. For
as the serial once said, Superman has powers and abilities far beyond
those of mortal men. His character – his moral code – is far beyond us,
too. As film critic/blogger Devin Faraci Tweeted this past weekend:
“Superman should be held to the highest standards. He doesn’t get to f
— up on any scale. That’s why he’s Superman.” (To some, this sacred
geek icon is not a text to be interpreted; he is a set of immutable values
to be evangelized.) In an interview with ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, Man of
Steel producer Christopher Nolan sketched the creative challenge of
dramatizing St. Superman the Comic Book Divine. “He is the ultimate
superhero,” says Nolan. “He has the most extraordinary powers. He has
the most extraordinary ideals to live up to. He’s very God-like in a lot of
ways and it’s been difficult to imagine that in a contemporary setting.”
Not that it stopped them from trying. Indeed, the new model Man of
Steel has a strong passing resemblance to a certain Son of God/Son of
Man described in The New Testament of The Bible. The Superman
Gospel begins a long time ago and far away in the heavens with an
exalted otherworldly Father figure, whose very special son is not only
proof of his awesome life giving creative powers but satisfy this story’s
condition of a miraculous birth, albeit ironically: Kal-El is the first
naturally conceived child on Krypton in countless years. Jor-El also
plays the role of Old Testament prophet, promising fire and brimstone to
a sinfully proud culture if they don’t immediately change their ways.
Having failed to save his world by convincing them to reform, Jor-El
executes a more radical redemption scheme through his only begotten
son: The father will figuratively and literally place creation on Kal-El’s
shoulders by imprinting the genetic record of his people on Kal-El.
Through The Son, Krypton will be born again.
From this point forward, Man of Steel mixes (to varying degrees of
success) superhero origin story, gay ‘coming out’ drama, and religious
conversion narrative. The alien messiah comes to Earth as a baby and
is raised by humble rural folk who are grateful for the blessing of a child,
but also a little confused and even frightened by the extraordinary
significance of the strange little boy. What child is THIS? Indeed. Kal-El
loses his heavenly name but not his supernatural power. But in contrast
Christ (and previous Superman stories), Clark Kent’s God-like identity is
smothered, not burnished, by the influence of his well-meaning parents.
They don’t want him acting like a Superboy, and more, have huge
reservations about him becoming a Superman. But Clark can’t help it;
it’s his nature to play savior. A moment when hyper-protective Jonathan
Kent argues the point with Clark evokes a moment from the life of
Christ, when Jesus’ parents discover him missing, go searching for him,
and find him teaching the elders at the temple with a wisdom beyond
his years. When Joseph scolds his adopted son for his actions and
causing them anxiety, Jesus barks back: “Knew you not that I must be
about my father’s business?” Jesus puts his parents in their place.
Clark isn’t so fortunate. He’ll spend the rest of his youth hiding his true
self from the world.
The Bible doesn’t tell us much about how Jesus spent his twenties: The
gospel narratives jump from late childhood to early thirties, when Christ
receives the Holy Spirit, comes into the fullness of his power, and
begins his public ministry. But we are told that Jesus continued to grow
in favor in the eyes of his family and God. To a large degree, Man of Steel
follows suit. After sketching Kal-El’s origins, the story leaps ahead to
Clark Kent in his early thirties doing good deeds, but anonymously.
Seminal moments from his Smallville days are presented as flashbacks.
His twenties? Undocumented. When Lois Lane tries to get the scoop,
The Daily Planet reporter only finds rumors and legends of a life lived off
the grid, under the radar. But after an encounter with a veritable Holy
Ghost – specifically, an aspect of Jor-El, presented as hologram – Clark
becomes the Son of God/Son of Man that his father intended him to be.
He accepts the suit the way Christ accepted the Spirit as electric Jor-El
beams with sunshiney pride. This is my son, with whom I am well
pleased. And with that, Kal-El explodes out of the closet and
commences with being about the business of his father in heaven.
(Because Jor-El is, like, dead. Technically.) The public ministry of
Superman has begun…
And it starts with an act of sacrifice on behalf of a world that he’s been
raised to believe will only fear, scorn and hate him. General Zod – the
film’s force of antagonism — demands that Earth surrender the last son
of Krypton incognito among them. Kal-El gives himself up, hoping that
by doing so, he can save Earth. He is 33 years old – the same age that
Christ willingly went to the cross for the sake of the sinful human
creatures that feared, scorned and hated him. Later in the movie,
Superman will assay the Christ-like movement of descending into hell
and rising again by flying to the bottom of the planet to stop Zod’s
“world machines” from remaking the globe and producing an extinction
event for the human race. Superman is pummeled into the depths, then
slowly ascends and obliterates the terraforming tech and then defeats
Zod, the embodiment of death for all mankind, just as Christ’s
resurrection was a victory over death and brought hope of new life and
procured a boundless future for humanity.
But Man of Steel is not Chronicles of Narnia. It does not express a

Christian worldview. Instead, the movie critiques aspects of Christianity
and God in general. Most Superman stories actually do: This god-like
superhero has always been made to behave in ways God does not — or
rather, in ways that contemporary peoples wish God would. Superman
always rushes to solve what theologians would call “the problem of evil”
wherever evil might be, whether that evil takes the form of a bad guy
doing bad things to good people or some “natural” catastrophe that is
actually an “unnatural” consequence of The Fall, which left man with
limited mastery over nature. Moreover, Superman does not subscribe to
what theologians might call the policy of “divine hiddenness.” Most
Superman stories that dote on his Smallville days give us Clark Kent that
was raised to expose his godhood publicly, to be a literal light to the
world: At age 18, the Kents – with not a little bit of worry – practically
kick the kid out the door with a Ma-knitted superman suit. Go get a job,
you good for something secular messiah! Superman usually serves the
world with joy in his heart, as Christians are supposed to do (2
Corinthians 9:7: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your
heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a
cheerful giver”), and with extraordinary internal discipline that allows
him to execute his mission without being tempted to violate one of the
great commandments binding Christians and superheroes – “Thou shalt
not kill” – and even receive the persecution of his enemies by turning
the other cheek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Especially when bullets
can bounce off their chest.
But the new era Superman of Man of Steel is uniquely different than the
surrogate deity of previous Superman stories. This Clark Kent was
raised by parents of the post-modern age. They are decent people of
uncertain beliefs. To them, the world is overwhelming and threatening
(especially if you’re “different”), something to be endured, even
avoided. Yes, the Kents tell Clark, you were probably sent here for a
purpose. Don’t know what it is, exactly, and you should take your time
to figure it out. But no pressure! Help people when you can, but be
discrete, never be seen, and remember: You can’t save everyone, and
sometimes, it’s okay to not save anyone, especially when it’s your life
on the line; it’s not a sin to put self-preservation over public service.
And don’t even think about using your powers to show up and vanquish
those who bully you. Let your freak flag fly to one of them or just some,
and they’ll all come after your Ubermenchy ass with pitchforks and
torches. The result of this fear-based parenting is a Clark Kent who is
conspicuously saddled with the limitations that the Gods of most
religions have apparently decided to give themselves. Clark adheres to
a frustrating policy of divine hiddenness. He does not tackle the
problem of evil that way we would want him to. As we meet him in his
early thirties, Clark is a Kung Fu-with-a-hint-of-Hulk wanderer who does
good deeds here and there, anonymously and as invisibly as possible,
trying reallyreallyreally hard from going ‘roid ragingly ballistic from an
increasingly untenable identity crisis. He is a metaphor, then, for the
God we have — or who doesn’t exist at all, for this “divine hiddenness”
and “problem of evil” are two of the biggest reasons why atheists are
atheists and agnostics are all shrugs. If God exists, why doesn’t He
show himself and abide with us the way He did (allegedly) with people
in the past? If God exists and good, why doesn’t He stop bad things
from happening, especially to righteous people?
The Superman of Man of Steel is bothered by these questions, too. From

an early age, The Man Who Fell From The Heaven struggles to square the
Kents’ teaching with what feels natural to him, what strikes him as
simple common sense. What do you mean I shouldn’t use my powers to
save a school bus that falls into the drink? You’re seriously telling me
that it’s okay to put this little light of mine under a bushel and not let it
shine?! WWJD, Dad? WWJD?!?! Just when Clark gets old enough to grow
a pair and tell his Dad to take a flying leap, Pa Kent does something that
seems to seal the deal on stunting Clark’s development from man to
Superman: He sacrifices his life so Clark doesn’t have to sacrifice his
secret, to protect Clark’s freedom to be – or not to be – whatever kind
of Superman he believes is proper. Some might think Jonathan did right
by his boy, but I’m not so sure: The Wanderer that emerges from
Smallville is a miserable, unfulfilled soul who still has no idea who he
really is or what he’s meant to be — problems Jesus never had. He is a
cheerless giver, and he seethes with passive-aggressive anger toward
the bad guys that he’s been taught not to fight.* He could change
course at any time. But he won’t let himself, because (and this is more
my interpretation of the text than anything else) behaving otherwise
would render his father’s heroic sacrifice for his sake meaningless. Guilt
and shame – or the fearful avoidance of either — are the crappy glues
that hold this flim-flam Man of Steel together. Some might say the same
thing about some Christians.
*Critics and fanboy purists have blasted the wanton destruction of Man
of Steel’s final hour for depicting the superhero as being oblivious to the
collateral damage threatening the lives of thousands of people. Never
once does the ultimate First Responder think of breaking from the
battle to help imperiled bystanders. I don’t completely disagree with
this complaint, although I do not share the “Superman should be
perfect” frame that other critics have put on it. This is simply a mistake
of storytelling or a problematic omission. By not having Superman deal
with or even acknowledge the mounting human cost of his brawl with
Zod, Man of Steel subverts its most provocative, emotional moment —
Superman’s uncharacteristic decision to kill in order to save the day. He
hates himself for doing it — he unleashes a yelp of grief — but the
moment is more confusing than powerful: Where was that same
anguish when he and Zod were trashing Metropolis and endangering if
not killing scores of its citizens with their violence? There could have
been a brief bit in which Superman barks at his military allies to
evacuate Metropolis while he devotes himself exclusively to putting
down Zod. Failing that, there needed to be a scene that showed us how
Superman felt about the danger he was helping to produce, or (more

provocatively) explained why he just didn’t give a shit. Which, given
what we’ve been told about this new take on Clark, is entirely credible.
Beyond the matter of Kal-El’s confused, Kent-futzed philosophy on
heroism and altruism, Superman just doesn’t know how to fight,
because he was raised to avoid conflict at all costs. Consequently,
Superman scraps without discipline, wages war without strategy. He
brawls panicked, like a rabid UFC contestant, trying to win the bout with
wild swings and dirty tricks, chasing after a knockout blow that he can
never land because his opponent is so formidable, and equally
desperate (especially when Zod comes into his own powers in the
middle of the final fight and goes mad). And let’s give this allegedly
flawed Superman this one benefit of the doubt: He knows the stakes. If
Zod doesn’t go down, Earth dies. Do we really expect Superman to
make himself vulnerable to defeat by turning his back on Zod just to
airlift a couple thousand people out of Metropolis to create a safer
theater of war? If you live at Ground Zero, sure. Me in Los Angeles,
sweating the prospect of what Zod will do next if he kills the only guy on
Earth who can stop him? Nope.
What this emasculated, closeted Son of Krypton needs (besides karate

lessons) is to wriggle free from the stifling false self of “Clark Kent” that
feels so unnatural, so, yes, alien to him and connect with a more
authentic, liberated identity. Clark finally gets the brass balls to break
from his adopted Dad’s way of doing business when he connects with
his biological father and his heritage. With a download of origin story,
Jor-El almost completely reprograms Clark’s buggy godhood operating
system to its original, intended, common sense settings. The Good
Father reveals that Kal-El has never been wrong to feel as he does, that
his impulse to respond directly to the problem of evil has always been
correct, that divine hiddenness is a bizarre counter-intuitive policy for
someone so innately good, who could possibly change the world for the
better by simply by being known. The alien no longer alienated from
himself, Superman is set free to be the superhero – and the foster God
– he was meant to be.
The final snare is broken when subtext becomes text in the scene in
which Kal-El returns to the small town that raised him/warped him and
goes to church. It’s his (ironic) Garden of Gethsemane moment; The

Man of Steel is steeling his soul in advance of going public and
sacrificing himself to film’s ultimate incarnation of the problem of evil,
Zod, who has threatened to destroy the Earth unless the world coughs
up the Superman secretly living among them. The encounter with a
minister roughly his own age is tense. (Is he the all-grown-up kid who
bullied Clark as a boy, seen in the flashback that immediately preceded
this scene?) Being in the presence of an almighty power that his religion
can’t explain makes the man of cloth nervous. He literally, loudly gulps.
Kal-El is anxious, as well: He is at the brink of a profound spiritual
conversion. He’s about to renounce the upbringing that molded him and
all of its strictures. No more hiddenness. No more hesitance and
ambivalence in his response to evil. Is this the right thing to do? Kal-El
and the minister arrive at logical resolution: If Superman takes a leap of
faith — if he reveals himself and demonstrates his goodness — then the
trust he wants from humanity might follow. Clark lives out the advice.
And so Superman at last enters into his fullness of his metaphorical
godhood.
The final book of The New Testament, The Apocalypse (or Revelation)
according to John, tells of a last battle between Christ and Satan in
which The Devil will be destroyed and afterward Jesus and his truest
believers will live together forever in a new creation. Man of Steel turns
this eschatology inside out to take perhaps its most veiled shot at
Christianity and all religions that espouse a final judgment that divides
humanity into sheep and goats, wheat and chaff, clean and unclean.
Zod wants Superman, dead or alive, because his generic material

contains The Codex, which would allow Zod to repopulate a terraformed
Earth purged of human beings with genetically engineered Kryptonians.
But maybe not all Kryptonians: In the prologue, Zod expressed a desire
to only see the “pure” bloodlines flourish. Zod’s the Sci-Fi Supremacist
is as a metaphor for racist or discriminatory ideology. But his philosophy
is also is a metaphor for any spiritual system that says Heaven is only
for the truest, most faithful of believers. Superman utterly Zod’s final
solution, and more, comes to a shocking conclusion about his
otherworldly heritage: He doesn’t want it. Declaring Krypton a dead
culture, Superman adamantly refuses to be the means to achieve Zod’s
New Genesis – a dream, it should be noted, which was also shared his
heavenly father, albeit sans genocide. The Armageddon of Metropolis is
now seen a culture war writ Marvelously, pitting the avatar of inclusive
secular humanism against the paragon of exclusionary fundamentalist
religion. Man of Steel’s ironic Super-Jesus stands with the former and
against the latter, and he takes The Adversary out once and for all with
a much-talked-about act of violence that represents shocking violation
of Superman’s storied turn-the-other-cheek, Thou Shalt Not Kill code of
ethics.
But this is not your father’s Superman, or his metaphorical Jesus. Man
of Steel is subversive mythology for atheists that exalts a Superman
who behaves the way they think God should but doesn’t. He is also
stands for a generation of emerging Christians who are more interested
in social justice, redeeming the culture and tending to the here and
now, and less interested in preaching turn-or-burn rhetoric, running
away from the world, and punching the clock until they can kick the
bucket and go to Krypton… errr, Heaven. Watching Kal-El draw upon the
natural energy of the Earth to soar sonic-boom loud and streak
colorfully proud through skies, watching him flex his extraordinary
muscles in the film’s (admittedly excessive) fight scenes, played to
these eyes as wanton celebrations of God-given identity, as if this new
generation Man of Steel was expunging so much pent-up frustration
from years of repression and proclaiming: I’m here. I’m queerly
Christian. Get used to it — because I’m the one who’s going to save your
damn planet.
Note: On June 18, this essay was updated by the author to clarify some
ideas and insert additional content.
Twitter: @EWDocJensen
Read more:
What ‘Man of Steel’ gets wrong about Superman (hint: that ending) —
SPOILERS
Box office report: ‘Man of Steel’ scores super $125.1 million debut,
breaks June record
Review: ‘Man of Steel’
Man Of Steel
TYPE Movie
MPAA PG-13
RUNTIME 144 minutes
DIRECTOR Zack Snyder

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20.7.2020. Superman as Jesus -- Christian imagery in Man of Steel | EW.

Superman as Jesus -- Christian

Updated June 17, 2013 at 07:48 PM EDT

PHOTO: CLAY ENOS

It is often said that superheroes are modern glosses on mythic heroes

But Man of Steel is not Chronicles of Narnia. It does not express a

The Superman of Man of Steel is bothered by these questions, too. From

Superman felt about the danger he was helping to produce, or (more

What this emasculated, closeted Son of Krypton needs (besides karate

goes to church. It’s his (ironic) Garden of Gethsemane moment; The

Zod wants Superman, dead or alive, because his generic material

Review: ‘Man of Steel’

RUNTIME 144 minutes

DIRECTOR Zack Snyder

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