Understanding Superman

There have been many who have derided the character of Superman as a character that can't be done effectively on screen because he is too powerful and therefore has nothing to lose, and no one to match him as far as a villain goes.  While this may be true, the key to understanding Superman is not in his power.  That is just the popcorn part of his character.  No, Superman is more complex than that.

The key to understanding Superman is in his isolation.  The son of Krypton was raised to be the same as everyone else in his little farm community.  He was not one of them.  He had all of these abilities that he had to hide, and all of that power in a struggling lonely boy isolated him in a way that no one could really reach him.  No one could understand.  Yet with this great power that he did not ask for, comes the great responsibility that he never wanted.  But being raised by great foster parents, he was taught of goodness, truth and justice.

Recently, movies have realistically shown how the world would react if the man of steel showed up in our world.  You would start with some thing pure and exciting in the wonder of all that this being could do.  Some would probably worship him as a God, others would give way to fear that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and believe that one day he would turn into a villain.  It would get political and rubbish really fast.

So here we have not a god, or a devil, but a farmer from Kansas that wants to do what is right, and because he is a good person, he goes out and helps many, but he has to live with the idea that even he with all of his strength, cannot save every child that cries out in fear.  He can't defeat every bad thing or take away every heartache.  He has to hear the outcry of "Why didn't Superman save my (insert loved one here)?"

Personally I would want to run away from it all.  Not belonging and having that kind of guilt riding on your shoulders would be difficult.  Of course he is taught through recordings of his birth father that it is not necessarily his job to solve all of humanity's problems.  He is there to be a light or an ideal to strive towards, that one day after their stumbling and pitfalls, they would join him in the sun.  There is a certain metaphor that could be made there about him being a Christlike figure, but I would like to focus on what really makes Clark Kent a compelling character.

He is in every way that matters, human.  He wants to make his family proud.  He loves his girlfriend.  He has a job.  He has friends.  He wants to sit in front of a television once and a while.  He wants to go out and have fun.  He wants to have a family some day.  Yet every moment he takes to be human, and do human things, people are dying that he has the ability to save, but he chooses not to.  I could see him one day becoming very frustrated with the guilt of it all.

Clark has the ability to put the world under his thumb and conquer it should he decide that humanity cannot be trusted with it's own freedom.  He has the power to tear the whole thing down if he chooses to.  He doesn't because he was always taught to believe in people.  But the potential for destruction is there.

In essence, Clark is a man without a home.  He is not really part of his Kryptonian ancestry, as he never grew up in their ways, and never knew that life, but he isn't human either.  He is separate from the rest of humanity in ways that he cannot ever reconcile.

The key to understanding Superman is Lois Lane.  As was recently stated in the most recent movie, she is his world.  She is the place he calls home.  She is that place he feels accepted.  She is the place he finds peace in a world that expects too much of him.  She is his link to humanity.  She is the reason he is able to get out of bed in the morning and do as much as he can for ungrateful and sometimes evil people.  She is the reason he is able to go out an be a symbol of hope.

The biggest problem with this is she is always wanting to help people as well, and always throwing herself into trouble in the hopes of helping him.  It would be wise, I think to have her out of harm's way so that Clark could never lose his link to humanity.  What would become of him if one day he was too late to save her, and he lost everything that he cared about?  What if he lost the reason he found to live.  What would a person with that much power bursting out of him become if he was suddenly fresh out of empathy.

Of course, if Lois was willing to put herself in a cage and let Superman save the day, she would not be Lois Lane, and Clark Kent wouldn't love her.  So they are locked in this dance, this limbo.  Superman is busy doing his thing, saving the world, and he has to pause and place a premium on saving this woman who is constantly getting into trouble.  If it were a choice between Lois Lane and the world, Clark would choose Lois, because she is his world.

Therein lies the danger of Superman, and therein lies the key to understanding the boy.  The world around him and the responsibilities on his shoulders is too much for anyone to handle.  The guilt of not saving everyone, and the frustration of being misunderstood, has to be swallowed up by the most human thing of all.  He loves this girl, and that is all he can think about.  Can anything more be asked of a simple farmer's son from Kansas?  Much less the very last lonely son of a family and people he never knew.  Give the boy a break.