The Relatable Insecurity of Superman

On Clark Kent, ‘Man of Steel,’ and My Father

Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash

I

It’s the summer of 2013 and I’ve just purchased two tickets to the opening midnight showing of Man of Steel for myself and my girlfriend at the time. As I walk away from the ticket booth and head back to the car where Caity is waiting for me, I can’t help but smile. I am ready to believe a man can fly.

I return to the car, my excitement palpable, and Caity eyes me curiously. “I didn’t know you even liked Superman,” she says.

I balk. “What do you mean? It’s Superman! How do you not like Superman?”

Caity shrugs as she drives away from the theater. “I don’t know. Isn’t he kind of, y’know, boring?”

I frown but don’t respond.

Caity sees my frown. “I just mean, he’s not, I don’t know. He’s no Batman.” She pats my leg. “But it’s cool you like him,” she says in a way that lets me know it’s really not.

II

When Man of Steel releases, I am nineteen and like most kids my age I am uncertain of my place in the world. I’ve left home, a small town in Florida, to pursue a writing career and obtain a college degree in New York City; neither of those pursuits are going well. I regularly skip class to make money doing delivery jobs, bored by the confines of the classroom when there is a great big city outside of it to explore.

I pass my freshman year by the skin of my teeth. My writing professor calls me “gifted but unfocused.” He sits me down for my end of semester review and asks me if I really want to be in college. I hesitate to answer — I’ve never actually considered if this is what I wanted to be doing, only that it was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

When I don’t answer, he frowns, but not unkindly. “I get a kid like you every year,” he says. He takes my final paper from me and flips through it mildly. “I allow two missed classes before outright failing my students. You’ve missed seven. According to the syllabus, that’s enough to hand you a big fat F right now. Understand?”

I nod.

He is quiet a moment. My mind is racing — how will I tell my mom? my friends? Caity? Anxious thoughts rattle back and forth before something else settles in: relief. For the briefest moment actual relief overcomes me as I realize that maybe — just maybe — this whole school thing is the absolute last fucking thing I want to be doing with my life, and perhaps Professor Hallberg here was going to give me a way out.

That’s not quite how it happens, as it turns out. “However,” he says. “This is what I’ll do for you. I’m going to grade your final paper. And if it blows me away, if it’s the best thing you’ve written all semester, I’ll pass you with a C-, and you can take time to figure out if this is what you want to do.” He leans forward. “But only on the slim chance this paper absolutely blows me away.”

I thank him and leave, certain he’ll fail me.

He doesn’t.

III

Superman is my father’s favorite superhero.

He has boxes full of Superman comics, piles of Superman graphic tees, and boxes of Superman collectible action figures. From ages four through fourteen there is no strong discernible difference between the character of Superman and my actual father.

My father is soft-spoken; he never raises his voice to me. He abstains from alcohol and any form of drug use. He attends church weekly, and prays semi-regularly. My mother divorces him when I am seven. “Your father doesn’t yell back at me when we argue,” she tells me when I am older. “He just nods silently and keeps his voice steady. It’s infuriating.”

When I am fourteen, he leaves. He moves halfway across the country to raise a new family. He does this, seemingly, without much hesitation, as if he is immune to all conflict, even internally.

Superman and my father share a lot in common as far as my generation is concerned: they are both pretty vanilla, a touch boring, and completely unconcerned with anything challenging.

To ask my peers, Superman is a representation of an entire negligent generation, of an outdated societal establishment. Whereas a superhero like Batman is worshiped among my high school friends as someone fighting against the Man and the Establishment, Superman is often criticized as being the Man, the one fighting to uphold the status quo.

I am fourteen years old and my father is leaving me behind, and I understand with a spark of teenage rebellious philosophy why Superman is my father’s favorite superhero, why the character is so woven into the fabric of his personality.

My father is a tall, handsome, white man. In the America he grew up in (and really still to this day, to be fair), he was akin to Superman: what could challenge him? Privilege was his from day one.

The only kryptonite my father ever encountered, it seems, took the form of his children, whom he fled from as if they harmed him.

IV

I return home to Florida from my first year of college in something of a mini-existential crisis, the kind you can really only have when you’re nineteen and a touch dumb.

I am uncertain now about my future in a way I have never been before in my life. Throughout high school, I knew I would go to New York City for college, I knew I would be a great writer, and I had a pretty strong feeling I was going to end up marrying Caity.

All of that has now been thrown into doubt.

College is seemingly not for me; I have an attendance problem that I cannot foresee myself fixing, I am bored by the rigidity of the syllabuses and the Catholic trappings of the university I attend, and I really must now admit that despite doing above average in school until this point I have simply coasted by on charm. I have never been a good student. Professor Hallberg opened a door by asking me to question my own wants, and, by passing me, he refused to give me the easy way out.

I haven’t written a single piece of anything beyond what was assigned to me in class since I left for school the previous fall. I’ve been so enthralled by the city, so enamored with its speed and its people, that I have not once taken a moment to stop and reflect and write about any of it.

There is a great coming distraction looming before me: Man of Steel is due out in theaters in three weeks. I have long treated summer superhero movies as events, every year gathering together a group of friends and purchasing tickets to the midnight Thursday premiere well in advance. That this year’s movie is to be about Superman excites no one but me.

I am at a crossroads with Superman. He represents, of course, the betrayal of my father. But he also represents something else I believe I am sorely needing right now: strength, confidence, certainty. The Superman in the Justice League cartoons of my childhood was a confident leader, leaping into any situation without hesitation.

June 13th arrives, and I enter the theater that evening holding Caity’s hand — now uncertain if I’ll be holding it much longer — ready to enjoy two hours of Hollywood escapism starring the Big Blue Boy Scout.

V

Man of Steel is not about a Superman who is confident or certain. Instead, he’s unsure when to aid those in need, failing to step in to save his father from a tornado, a decision that torments him. He grapples with revealing his identity to Lois Lane. Hell, the Clark Kent of Man of Steel is not even strongly committed to the idea of being Superman.

This is not the Superman I had been exposed to by my father. He is unrecognizable; his indecision is foreign to me. It is odd to see Superman struggle with anything, and here he is grappling with his own sense of identity.

I went into Man of Steel hoping to gain wisdom from a hero with a sure sense of self, and instead I gleam hope and inspiration from watching a god struggle with his decision to be a man.

I thought what I needed was to be shown the perfect example of confidence, but I think I gain infinitely more from seeing this paragon of certainty stripped of that exact trait: if Superman is allowed to be unsure of his place in this world, then aren’t I?

VI

Man of Steel sends me to the comic books, and in them I discover a universal truth about Superman hitherto unknown to me: Clark Kent is almost always defined by his constant internal struggles. Chief amongst these struggles is Clark’s continued wondering, “Who am I?”

The most celebrated Superman stories are always explorations of the theme of identity. Who is Superman? Who is Clark Kent? Who is Kal-El? Are these three separate people, or are they all one and the same?

My favorite Superman story, Superman For All Seasons, examines Clark’s first year as Superman through four different narrators: Pa Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Lana Lang. In it, Clark struggles with the knowledge that he’s different from others, with the responsibility of what that means, and ultimately with the fact that maybe he isn’t capable of being Superman at all. When I finish reading it, I flip back to the front cover and read it again.

I am nineteen and a touch dumb, uncertain of my path or my place in life. But now, I know, I am in good company.

VII

When I think of the decisions I come to make — leaving college, leaving NYC, leaving Caity — I think of Clark Kent, the weight of his decisions resting on his shoulders. If Clark can struggle with all the insane super-powered shit he deals with, then I, of course, can make it through my own smaller scale crises of identity.

My father, I think, misunderstands who Superman is; Superman is one of my favorite superheroes not because he is inherently bold, or confident, or strong, but because he is the opposite of these things. Even with all of his powers, Clark Kent is conflicted, insecure, and uncertain, and yet he still chooses to put on the cape and be Superman anyway.

Superman stills remains a symbol of hope: hope that no matter what I am going through in life, I, too, will find the inner courage to put aside my insecurities and my doubts and boldly decide my future.