Spoilers ahead – Beware!!

Rating: ★★★★☆☆

It has been almost two weeks since the release of James Gunn’s Superman, and let me tell you that it was great! It had some really awesome fight scenes, which means something since I sometimes find them hard to enjoy or follow. As someone who doesn’t watch many superhero movies anymore since my tween years, Superman was a feel-good and heart-warming watch. It was arguably a quite simple movie to follow, and I have no issue with that, but it felt at times a bit on the nose. 

Art is always political, regardless of its form.  In Superman, a much more militarily advanced nation, Boravia, was about to commit genocide against Jarhanpur, a much less technologically advanced country made up of “simpler” people. By destroying the Jarhanpur population, Lex Luthor and the president of Boravia can conquer the land through violence. It’s obvious to many that they are parallel to the U.S.A., Israel, and Palestine. So much so that many Israelis are boycotting the movie, this single-handedly, I think, is the most laughable boycott of a film, ironically because they identify themselves with a genocidal power in a superhero movie. That’s got to be a new low. Although strangely enough, James Gunn responded to these comparisons: “When I wrote this, the Middle Eastern conflict wasn’t happening. So I tried to do little things to move it away from that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East. It’s an invasion by a much more powerful country run by a despot into a country that’s problematic in terms of its political history, but has totally no defence against the other country. It really is fictional.”

Art imitates life? Or does life imitate art?

Now, it’s been a few days since I watched Superman, but there is a nagging feeling I get every time I think about it. Did I just pay to watch the Israel-Palestine conflict repackaged into a neat format with cool superhero fight scenes? Did DC Studios spend a budget of $225 million to show me the conflict, but with a rating of 12 and up? Sometimes when we think about watching the news, we have this feeling of being overwhelmed by watching others suffer and believing that the world is a dark and bleak place. So, we redirect our attention to other things, which are much less awful, such as reality TV or Hollywood blockbusters, and we enjoy them so much more. How ethical is it to create a movie so closely comparable to a conflict that is going on right at this moment? 

I belive that this resemblance to the conflict could benefit box office sales. Although it seems that the film might have not been a huge success internationally, to which, Gunn blames that international audiences are not as familiar with the character. I definitely find that hard to believe. But we are also talking about it; the conflict, and reacting to it in a nuanced way. There are two distinct ways of interpreting the “issue” of creating such a film. Perhaps, making the conflict more easily digestible can subliminally or even explicitly influence audiences to be more sympathetic to the cause and struggle of the Palestinian people. We might just live in a world where we truly need to look at ourselves in a “mirror”; it being a large projected screen with the beloved Superman. 

What do you think?