Superman’s Parents Are A Product Of Their Time Who You Shouldn’t Judge By Today’s Standards
Don’t remove their statue!
Superman’s backstory as an illegal immigrant/alien refugee usually aligns him with the desperate people who come to the U.S. fleeing violence and poverty from their homelands. No wonder so many right-wingers struggle to accept it. They insist he’s not like those illegal immigrants — he’s from an advanced race, after all, and he’s able to seamlessly assimilate into the dominant culture (i.e. he’s “white”). Director James Gunn confronts that view head on with a compelling twist in his new Superman movie. Suffice it to say, spoilers are ahead.
It turns out that Superman’s Kryptonian parents Jor-El and Lara sent him here for reasons that were less than noble but have a clear historical precedent. In a message that Lex Luthor decodes and shares with the world, Jor-El and Lara tell his son that he should conquer the planet we’re currently destroying and take lots of wives so he can spread his Kryptonian seed. (If you believe a man can fly, you should probably go along for the ride and accept successful mating between alien species.)
This reveal has had a mixed response, as fans argue this makes Jor-El “evil.” However, a Superman with imperialist ancestors is truly American. It’s not a new concept, either. In the 2003 Smallville episode “Rosetta,” which features Christopher Reeve, Clark translates a message from Jor-El in his spaceship: “On this third planet from this star, Sol, you will be a god among men. They are a flawed race, rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies.” (Watch below.)
The Jor-El AI interface was originally so alien and ruthless that fans speculated he was actually the Superman villain General Zod. (Terence Stamp, who first played Zod on film, voiced Smallville’s Jor-El so this wasn’t a huge stretch.) Eventually, though, Jor-El became a less antagonistic figure and more in line with Marlon Brando’s version from 1978’s Superman.
John Byrne’s 1986 Superman reboot Man of Steel opens with a Krypton that was no longer inspired by old Flash Gordon serials. This wasn’t simply an advanced human civilization. Byrne’s Krypton is cold — not in the literal sense like the 1978 movie with all the ice buildings but devoid of human warmth and compassion.
Jor-El tells Lara that Krypton is doomed and they’re all going to die. So, she’s probably not in the best mood to consider Earth as a new home for her child. She’s not impressed and while Jor-El tries to sell her on how Earth’s “not unlike Krypton of millennia past,” Lara isn’t so sure it’s a neighborhood in transition.
“It looks so … so … wild, so uncontrolled, what manner of beings could dwell on such a world?” Even though she’s just looking at a holographic image, you can tell she wants to roll up her windows and drive through the area quickly.
When Lara sees an image of a human man from her son’s future home, she’s horrified: “Th-that savage. He … he bares his naked flesh … his hairy flesh … bares it to the air! He touches unprocessed soil. Oh, Jor-El, what kind of hell do you seek to send our child into?”
Lara’s reaction isn’t so much alien as it is all-too-human. In 17th Century England, the Duchess of Useless might have responded in a similar fashion if she’d seen images of native people in the “undiscovered” (by Europeans) new world.
Jor-El reassures Lara that they’re not sending their child to a “hell” but “for him at least more of a heaven,” because “in time, he will become the supreme being on that planet, almost a god.” Lara replies, “Then … he will rule them? He will shape them to proper Kryptonian ways?”
Kal-El is not even born yet, and already Lara has saddled him with the Kryptonian man’s burden. Note that Jor-El doesn’t shut down Lara’s manifest destiny chatter. He doesn’t say, “No, our son will live peacefully among humanity, maybe even pursue a career in print journalism, which will always remain a stable industry.” Instead, he says simply “perhaps,” as if conquest is the most logical action.
Although different from past depictions, Byrne’s Jor-El remains the exception among Kryptonians. That’s always been the character’s consistent trait. Superman exists because his biological father wasn’t as arrogant, obstinate, or inhuman as other Kryptonians. For now, at least, Gunn’s Jor-El is not unique among his race.
Questions do remain: If Jor-El’s a jerk, why would he stay on Krypton to die rather than journey to Earth himself and rule as a god? Other versions of Krypton’s demise have come up with reasons to keep Jor-El and Lara from making it a family road trip to Earth, but if European imperialists crossed rough seas for spices, surely their Kryptonian counterparts would’ve crossed space for cool powers and effective immortality.
Smallville and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel both promoted a “great man” narrative where Clark is destined to become the world’s greatest champion. His only real “choice” is to finally accept that he’s the chosen one. Gunn avoids the “destiny” trope. Superman is a hero not because of his heritage or any grand design, but because chooses to do the right thing. Superman isn’t a Christ figure, and Jor-El isn’t God. That was always a clumsy analogy — sorry, Richard Donner — because Krypton is a doomed civilization. Jor-El didn’t send us his only son to Earth to “show us the way.” He wanted to save his son from destruction. He sent him to a better life. People have left their homelands for many reasons — fleeing persecution or famine, but they also left to plunder, to exploit, to conquest. America has named cities and entire states after those who’ve done the latter.
Gunn has recast Superman as a child of Columbus, and few Fox News viewers would ever declare him “evil.” Yet, after Christopher Columbus’ fateful arrival in 1492, 90 people of the Indigenous population died from violence and disease in a little more than a century. That’s 55 million human lives gone.
There’s no evidence that Gunn’s Jor-El and Lara don’t love their son or aren’t nice people by Kryptonian standards. They just don’t think much of humans, a perceived lesser race. We should easily recognize this moral contradiction. Former Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson enslaved human beings. Jefferson once declared “the blacks … are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” Supreme Court Justice John Marshall ruled in 1823 that indigenous people only had “occupancy” rights, which meant their homeland could be seized by powers that “discovered” them. “The Doctrine of Discovery,” as it was called, served as a rationale for conquest and attempted genocide.
Setting the stage for the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson said in his 1833 address to Congress: “[That tribes] can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
L. Frank Baum, author of the classic Wizard of Oz, called for the outright extermination of Native people. He wrote in 1890, “The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.”
If Kal-El turning Earth into a “New Krypton” strikes us as an evil endeavor, we should consider the circumstances that led to “New Amsterdam” (now New York City).
Gunn’s change to the Superman mythos also challenges anyone who might judge a person based on the misdeeds of their ancestors. No one’s genetic inheritance makes them fundamentally good or bad. Too often, supposed liberals will dismiss someone who steps out line as a “typical white male” or “just another ‘pick me’ white woman.” That’s the exact mentality that Lex Luthor weaponizes against Superman.
Interestingly, Superman has a distinctly “woke” approach to learning the truth about his Kryptonian parents. He acknowledges that they existed but he no longer celebrates their memory. He now fully identifies with the “backward natives” he was meant to conquer. This will likely set off MAGA more than a depiction of Superman as the idealized immigrant. After all, Republicans have passed laws that seek to restrict children from learning the nation’s full, unvarnished history. They fear that their kids will follow Superman’s example — siding with the oppressed and marginalized of today rather than embracing the glories of powerful but flawed ancestors who are long dead.
I think this is the change I liked most about the Gunn reimagining.
Superman in this isn’t driven by destiny, history, or a sense of moral superiority. He at his core is just a regular guy who tries to do the right thing because he’s a kind person, not because he’s told to or is trying to impress anyone.
That may be the message that resonates most of all in these horrific fascist times.
Gunn's "Superman" movie sounds like a great movie - entertaining in a thoughtful way. I am not a big fan of superheros, but I would watch this movie.