Dean Cain's ICE role stirs debate over Superman's legacy of hope

San Francisco Chronicle​

14 hours ago

Superman broke new ground in his 1938 debut in Action Comics not just with his extraordinary powers, but by being a hero who didn't hide behind a mask.
When the Man of Steel was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, characters like Zorro, the Lone Ranger and the Phantom all concealed their visage. For these mortal men, the disguises made sense. But the superpowered son of Krypton has never needed the protection of anonymity.
'He doesn't wear a mask so you can see his face. He wants the innocent to feel safe and protected around him,' said Andrew Farago, a writer and the curator of the Comic Art Museum in San Francisco.
Indeed, as Edward Gross, author of 2024's 'Superman: The Definitive History,' told me, Batman 'wears a mask because he wants to scare the hell out of you. Superman doesn't wear a mask because he wants you to trust him and believe in him.'
So when actor Dean Cain, who portrayed Superman in the ABC television series 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' (1993-97), gleefully announced in a recent video that he had joined the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as an agent, the image that immediately came to mind was the new breed of ICE officers concealing themselves in masks, hats and sunglasses. It's a disguise they claim is necessary to protect them from public reprisals. But the result is an intimidating, anonymous figure of terror — the polar opposite of what Superman has long represented.
Cain's new role risks perverting the image of the character by association. Three decades after his run as the caped hero, it's horrifying to imagine someone recognizing the face they remember as Superman not coming to rescue them, but as an ICE agent sent to take them away from the life they know. In that aspect, the masks worn by ICE officers might be a sick blessing should the 59-year-old Cain ever make it out into the field.
Public backlash to Cain's announcement was swift. In response, the actor — who's touted that he's a sworn deputy sheriff and a reserve police officer — contends he's simply 'standing up for the men and women of ICE."
'You're going out and you're villainizing myself — you're going out and you're villainizing these ICE agents who are trying to uphold the law,' he said on 'Piers Morgan Uncensored.'
Even if this career move isn't surprising for Cain, who has let his hardline conservative positions be known for years, the idea is incongruous for the Superman character he portrayed. The image of Superman carries enormous cultural and emotional weight. He's a character woven into our childhoods and further immortalized in pop culture by musicians like Eninem, artists like Andy Warhol and even in comedy by Jerry Seinfeld.
The character relaunched in the zeitgeist this summer in the James Gunn-helmed 'Superman' movie, which has earned widely positive reviews by fans and film critics alike since its release last month so far.
But the film was also criticized by right-wing media when Gunn described the character as an immigrant, given his origins as an intergalactic infant sent to Earth to escape his exploding planet.
'Superman is the story of America,' Gunn told The Times U.K. 'An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.'
Among those on the right with objections was Cain, who called it a 'mistake" to refer to Superman as an immigrant. He said the approach was "woke" and would hurt the film's box office. It's an ironic statement — not only because of the film's box office success, raking in $670.1 million at the box office so far — but also because of Cain's own family history.
Cain, born Dean Tanaka, is of Japanese descent and has talked about his paternal Japanese American family being incarcerated during World War II at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho.
'That was a horrible injustice,' Cain said in a July interview with Variety about his family's incarceration. 'But I don't think that I deserve any sort of reparations.'
For the record, both Farago and Gross confirm that, canonically, Superman is an immigrant — a refugee more precisely. The character's creators were also the sons of Jewish immigrants, a fact that's been noted amid the recent controversies.
What's more, Farago pointed to an episode of Cain's series 'Lois & Clark' that involved an immigration agent asking Superman for his green card that has become a popular meme since Cain's announcement.
'I find it unsettling that Dean Cain is so publicly announcing that he is going to be joining ICE like it's this wonderful thing, and he feels he's being a patriot,' said Gross. ' He may feel on some level that he identifies with the ideals of Superman, but I don't see it — not when you're doing things like that.'
That disconnect is especially stark when measured against the way others see Superman. For many fans, it's not the character's extraordinary powers that keep them returning to Superman, said Farago.
'For all his elevated abilities, I think he feels more human,' said Farago. 'He takes his humanity to that next level as far as his endless capacity for hope that people can be better, that they can live up to their better angels.'
If only Cain could do the same.