Man of Style (Not Substance)

Zack Snyder’s current Superman reboot obviously began production long before the recent surveillance controversies, but it’s remarkable how topical the film is on questions of freedom and privacy.  Near the very end of the film, Superman smashes a satellite to pieces, and then chides an army general that he has a right to remain anonymous.  Such a scene might be a proud assertion of American notions of liberty—until he undercuts that statement with a voice-over noting how he’ll “protect the American people” by “keeping an ear to the ground.“

What’s the point of smashing satellites if you’re still going to engage in surveillance practices?  Superman finesses the issue by making his “ear to the ground” the hero’s reasons for joining Lois Lane at the Daily Planet, but in some sense this is even worse—once journalism is infiltrated by unparalleled and unaccountable individuals, democratic balance of power has lost the important counter-presence of the Fourth Estate.  Indeed, Superman’s contradictory position on surveillance is only one of the many hypocrisies within the film, which demonizes military coups while showing the army leader commanding the Earthly response to General Zod without any apparent consult by elected leaders.  (The film also presents a eugenicist as villain but assumes only the genetically unique offspring of a “leader” lineage can effectively combat that power.)

Neoconservative ideology implicit within Hollywood actioners is nothing new, but it’s always depressing.  Like the moody Batman revisions in the Dark Knight series from Man of Steel producer Christopher Nolan, the grainy, bleached out look of the new Superman aims to reinvent the prewar superhero by tainting his New Deal optimism with a cynicism and moral ambiguity resonant of the post-9/11 era of Homeland Security.   This innovation, however, is stylistic rather than substantive.  If we read the new Superman as closely, apparently, as he’s watching us, his unapologetic destruction of the “twelve trillion dollar satellite technology” is actually a covert apologia for the inestimable human cost of today’s untrammeled surveillance.