‘Superman' Is MAGA Kryptonite

New York Times

3 days ago

I've grown to dislike the word assimilation. When we talk about immigration, the better word is adoption, and it took a superhero movie to help me understand why.
That movie is 'Superman.' Like virtually everything else in America, 'Superman' got caught up in the culture war. In the days before the movie's release, its director, James Gunn, warned that not everyone would love his film.
'I mean, Superman is the story of America,' Gunn told a British newspaper. '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.'
Let's pause for a moment.
From the beginning, the Superman story has been a story of an interstellar immigrant who becomes so fundamentally decent and courageous that he is the fictional ideal of 'truth, justice and the American way.' So when Gunn says that his story is about 'basic human kindness,' the first thought I had was, 'Yeah, sounds like he made a Superman movie.'
Cue the outrage on the right. In a segment on Fox News, the chyron read 'Superwoke.' Jesse Watters, a Fox News host, joked that Superman was going to wear an MS-13 cape. Another Fox News host, Greg Gutfeld, said that Gunn was trying to build 'a moat of woke, enlightened opinion around him.'
(When it comes to MAGA bodies of water, I think I prefer 'moat of woke' to 'Gulf of America.')
A popular X account called End Wokeness, which has 3.7 million followers, posted a headline with part of Gunn's quote about immigration and kindness and wrote, 'Hollywood literally never learns.'
What should Hollywood learn? That kindness and decency are for suckers, and the best place for Superman isn't with his family in Kansas or in his Fortress of Solitude, but rather behind a fence, trapped in Alligator Alcatraz?
I saw the movie on opening night. I have a longstanding tradition — I see every new superhero movie as soon as I can, on the biggest screen that I can. I enjoyed every second of it — it was funny, it was fun, and it absolutely celebrated decency and kindness. But as the credits rolled, I had a single dominant thought: 'Superman' is a movie about adoption, and if adoption is woke, then consider me woke.
I'm going to share spoilers, so you might want to save this newsletter and read it after you watch the movie, but one of the pivotal revelations of the movie is that Superman learns that he wasn't sent to Earth to serve humanity, but to rule over us all and to preserve the Kryptonian race by forming a harem of human women.
In most versions of the Superman story, including the 1978 Christopher Reeve 'Superman' and the 2013 Zack Snyder version, 'Man of Steel,' the titular character is sent from the dying planet Krypton explicitly to help and protect us. Superman's parents are good and decent people who love their son.
That's what you believe at the start of this movie as well. To calm him in times of crisis, Superman watches a partial video clip salvaged from the wreck of his spacecraft that seems to depict his parents as kind beings who direct him to serve the people of Earth. But the movie's villain, Lex Luthor, and his allies recover the rest of the footage — in which Superman's parents direct him to conquer Earth — and share it with the rest of the world.
All at once, he loses his sense of self. A mob gathers in Metropolis, and the same people he's loved and served now scream for him to go. So he flies away, back home to Kansas, to his adopted family.
In many versions of the Superman story, his earthly father dies when Superman is a child. In this version, his father and mother are still very much alive. They embrace him, and his father tells him that only Superman can define his character. He is not destined to follow the path his biological parents set.
In a confrontation between Superman and Luthor, just when Luthor is trying to treat him as inherently dangerous and inescapably alien, Superman responds with a passionate declaration: 'They've always been wrong about me. I love. I get scared. But that is being human, and that's my greatest strength.'
In the movie, Superman did everything we could ever ask of an immigrant. He assimilated. But had he been adopted? By his family, yes, but what about by his nation?
Think for a moment of the immigrant experience. If you're a child, you come without your consent. You find yourself in a place that you've never known. Even if you're an adult, and you want to make America your home, you start out in a state of isolation and vulnerability.
Is it any wonder that new immigrants often create or seek out ethnic enclaves? From the Irish and Italian quarters of cities in the 19th century to the barrios of the 20th and 21st centuries, immigrants can ease into their new life by holding onto remnants of the old.
We look at immigrants and often demand that they assimilate. Be like us, we say. Conform to our culture. And that's usually an easy ask — after all, adult immigrants want to be here. They want to participate in American life. For children, assimilation tends to happen quickly. Immigrant children who grow up in America quickly become more American than they are Mexican or Nigerian or Polish.
Assimilation doesn't mean abandonment. There are millions of patriotic Americans who are also proud of their national heritages. When the waters of the Chicago River turn green on St. Patrick's Day, we celebrate with Irish Americans. Should Mexican Americans experience any less joy on Cinco de Mayo?
When I served in Iraq, I served with immigrant soldiers who expressed pride in their homelands but fought in one uniform under one flag, and no one in our squadron ever questioned where their ultimate loyalties lay.
But if we ask immigrants to assimilate, then our nation has its own obligation. We must adopt them. If we want immigrants to love us, then it is our sacred obligation to love them back. Nations can't love immigrants like adoptive parents love their children, but there is a parallel — a nation can tell a person, 'You are one of us.'
That doesn't mean that we open our borders to anyone who wants to come. Of course we should regulate the flow of immigrants into our country. Too many people arriving too quickly can overwhelm social services, strain local economies and create the conditions for rivalry and conflict that destabilize our politics.
But our default posture should be one of open arms. We should take immense pride that people want to come here. And we should welcome as many as we can reasonably absorb. This is our national heritage, marred though it is by sometimes-long periods of backsliding.
This is all very personal to me. I'm an adoptive father of an immigrant daughter. And when I watched 'Superman,' my mind went back to one of the most important and touching moments of our lives.
In 2010 — when America felt like a kinder nation — my family and I traveled to an orphanage in Ethiopia to pick up our Naomi, our beautiful, precious daughter. Families who have adopted internationally know that there are really two adoptions that take place — one is personal and one is national.
I'll never forget either. The personal adoption happened when a nurse handed Naomi to us. Courts had already declared us to be her parents, but the adoption process is long and grueling, and you can legally become a child's parent before you've even met. It doesn't seem real until that moment when you first hug your child, and she hugs you back. That's a moment that imprints on every adoptive parent's heart.
When you adopt a child overseas, America also adopts her as a citizen. When we adopted Naomi, she didn't just become a member of our family; she also became an American. But that's a cold legal fact. How can a nation love?
A nation loves through its people. In the movie, Superman can't truly feel whole again until he feels the love of his neighbors. When did this nation love our Naomi? On Day 1.
After the five of us left Ethiopia — we'd also brought our two older kids — we arrived at J.F.K. in New York about as tired and emotional and jet-lagged as a family could be. I was nervous about Customs. The paperwork for international adoptions can be astonishingly complex, and the slightest mistake can lead to very long delays.
I walked up to a very serious-looking immigration officer and handed him a pile of documents. He went through them carefully and looked up. But he didn't look at me. He looked at Naomi, and his serious expression changed to a smile that radiated tenderness and warmth.
'Hello, little one,' he said. 'On behalf of the United States of America, welcome home.'
Some other things I did
Before I get into all this, I want to thank you. Last week, my newsletter was about the plight of young men in America, and I want to thank you for flooding my inbox with thoughtful, heartfelt and kind messages.
I can't respond to them all, but I read them all, and you gave me much to reflect upon. I'm amazed at the depth of your knowledge and wisdom, and many of you shared powerful personal stories.
Please keep your thoughts coming. Your words make me a better columnist and a better person.
On Sunday, I wrote about the Epstein files, and the astonishing spectacle that we're witnessing as MAGA is tearing itself apart, and expressing concerns — serious concerns — about President Trump. Why would the Epstein files cause this chaos?
The Epstein story mattered so much in MAGA circles because it was a key element in their indictment of America's so-called ruling class. Trump's appeal to the Republican base isn't just rooted in his supporters' extraordinary affection for the man; it's also rooted in their almost indescribably dark view of the American government.
Why are they so keen to burn it all down? Well, if you believe your government is populated by people so depraved that they'd participate in and cover up the systematic sexual abuse of children, then you wouldn't just want them out of office; you'd want them prosecuted, imprisoned and maybe even executed. And you'd want all the power you'd need to make that happen.
And if you believe that the ruling elites would abuse children, then they'd certainly be the kind of people who'd gin up a Russia hoax or try to steal an election in 2020. People who are that terrible are capable of anything. And if you wonder why MAGA turned on the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice, well, it's not just about the Russia investigation or the F.B.I. search of Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago. MAGA America also believed the F.B.I. was protecting pedophiles to preserve the status quo.
On the right, the Epstein story became the thinking man's version of the QAnon conspiracy theory — the idea that American society was led by a gang of cannibalistic pedophiles. Whereas QAnon was rooted in the imaginary revelations of a shadowy figure who claimed Q security clearance, at least the Epstein story was rooted in some very grim, very real facts.
On Saturday, we published my conversation with Michelle Cottle about Elon Musk's idea for a third party. My conclusion was simple: Musk has a good idea, but he's not the right person to execute it. Besides, wouldn't it be easier if the parties healed themselves?
French: Well, of the third-party ideas, one part of the concept of the America Party is actually smarter than a lot of the other third-party ideas. I would then say Elon Musk is exactly the wrong person to implement it because he has a bipartisan sense of revulsion now. Because he has taken on Donald Trump and taken on MAGA. So a lot of Republicans really hate him. And when he switched from being a green techno-futurist to being Donald Trump's wealthiest acolyte, the left turned on him. So he's in many ways the least appealing person possible to start a third party because he's alienated both wings. He's been driven out of both wings.
Cottle: He's a uniter, David. He's united everyone against him.
French: Yes. It's the uniting against is the problem.
However, this idea that we're not trying to sweep away everything, but win targeted races, so that there is a third party to contend with in the Senate, so that you can't have atrocities like the big, beautiful bill that just passed, where you can have some independent voices — I think there's actually some real promise to that idea.
In part because it doesn't depend on, as many third parties do, with the man on the white horse coming in with all the fame and all the resources and triggering the last thing we need, which is yet another kind of populist revolution.
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