Follow-up on "Man of Steel"

I just discovered this piece on CNN and thought it was relevant to the issue of religion and SF.  http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/14/superman-coming-to-a-church-near-you/

Christ imagery is not surprising, of course, but I was put off by the fact that the studio was so blatant in marketing the movie as a Christian allegory. To my mind, there is a profound difference between religious symbolism (employed in many great SF novels, such as Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" and Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris") and religious propaganda. The former employs the vocabulary of the numinous and the sacred to ask profound questions about man's role in the universe. The latter is anti-scientific, anti-rational and politically dangerous. So now I have a justifiable reason to dislike the movie!

I have to confess, however, that Superman IS a Christ-figure. What were those Jewish creators of him thinking? Well, the same question applies to the Jews who wrote the Gospels...  I guess we're our own worst enemy. 

Man of Kleenex?

I have to confess: I have not read many Superman comics. I have not read many comics, period (may my students forgive me!) So when I went to see "Man of Steel" yesterday, it was not a reunion with a beloved character from my childhood as it was for my husband who grew up in Iowa, on a farm similar to that of Clark Kent's adoptive parents (where, as he told me, you learned to fly out of sheer boredom). So I watched Zack Snyder's newest reincarnation of the American Savior as if it were just another SF movie. In that capacity, it sucked. The plot made no sense, the special effects were impressive at first but grew repetitive, and when Metropolis was being destroyed, I reached for my popcorn, only to remember that I don't touch the stuff, ever.

But even for my superheroes-blank mind, it was clear that there is something wrong with the American mythos. It was not dark, as in Batman movies. It was pathetic. The invasion from Krypton represented nothing at all except nostalgia for yesterday's enemies (one evil Krypton lady spoke with a sexy Russian accent and the general's rotating eyebrows reminded me of Brezhnev but it was probably unintentional). Superman stared blankly into the distance as if trying to summon some worthier adversary, Godzilla perhaps. Or else he was hungover from the beer he drunk at his minimum-wage job at IHOP. The corn farm was plowed under by Monsanto; the "Daily Planet" is now a website and employs a staff of one; and Louis Lane is - or should be - dieting and applying for a position as a waitress.

Superman was invented by two Jews, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, as an American answer to the Nazi Ubermensch in 1938. But the Ubermenschen are long gone; and the echoes of eugenics debate in the movie, unattached to anything in the real world, sound as quaint as the idea of a full-time, secure job. Reinventing its mythos is necessary if American culture is to remain vital. But the Man of Steel is not it. Toss him into the waste-basket of history and start anew.

Just another family romance...

 Why does it take an apocalypse to mend a broken family?

American SF is famous for killing gnats with a hammer: destroying worlds to bring together estranged spouses or separated lovers. In Greg Bear's Blood Music, for example, people are eaten by their houses (read the book), our planet is draped in bloody rags - and it all ends with a couple lounging at the lakeside. But that book was written in more innocent times when couples mattered. Nowadays, only parents and children matter. Especially fathers and sons. Especially black fathers and son, considering that the proportion     of single mothers in the black community is around 70%

"After Earth" could have been a great movie. The premise - a boy's odyssey on an alien planet - is timeless. The fact that the alien planet is Earth is very attractive. I have always loved the alien Earth trope, and the fact that the movie was apparently shot close to home - in the redwoods of California - does not hurt. The redwoods are beautiful, and populated by strange mutated animals, even more so (they could add more animals, by the way). The slimy alien who tracks you by the scent of your fear is a great idea.

But it was all lost in the endless close-ups of the  father (Will Smith) and son (Jaden Smith), apparently meant to express profound emotion but only inducing boredom. The fact that the actors ARE father and son is very commendable but does nothing to dispel the impression that each of them has had more than enough of the other before the film even began.

The bigger question it all raises for me is: why can't SF be about ideas? Why can't it just be satisfied with evoking wonder? Why do we need to tack on "human interest" to the genre which is not supposed to be about humans at all? Instead of unleashing ecological apocalypse

to bring black fathers back to their children, maybe we should try family tax breaks first.