Supermen Not Wanted in Leftist Bizarro World | The American Spectator

I haven’t seen the new Superman movie. I plan to — as a Superman comic-book fan since boyhood. However, I’m sensing bad vibrations about this film.

Hollywood rarely gets the Man of Steel right. It did so only three times in screen history. In a series of 17 technically and artistically brilliant cartoons made by (Max) Fleischer Studios between 1941 and 1943. In the juvenile yet well-crafted and endearing TV series, The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958). And in the 1978 feature, Superman. Despite their excellence, none of the three incarnations of the hero would be conceivable in Hollywoke today. Even if all three present the same strong, smart girlboss character. Lois Lane isn’t the main obstacle to the modern Left; it’s Superman.

But Lois is a problem. She demonstrates her independence in her very first appearance in the first cartoon. When Perry White assigns Clark Kent to back her up on a dangerous story, Lois balks, “But, Chief, I’d like a chance to crack this story on my own.” Taking Perry’s hesitation as a yes, Lois rushes off. In the next scene, she’s piloting a small airplane to the villain’s lair. So far, so good in feminist fantasyland — apart from the fact that this Lois is a little too hot for comfort, the Male Gaze and all that, but what follows would get a contemporary screenwriter fired, though he would never be hired in the first place. Lois is captured, bound, and gagged, and she can do nothing while Superman foils the villain and rescues her. Feminist grade: Unacceptable.

The fifties TV Lois Lane shares her animated predecessor’s liberal virtues — and no-nos.  As initially played by the sexy Phyllis Coates, she also made her mark as a tough reporter in a man’s world. Of course, being a girl, she frequently got into trouble and had to be saved by Superman. Which boys enjoyed, obviously, fermenting their toxic masculinity. Feminist grade: Unacceptable.

Coates’s replacement for the subsequent five seasons, Noel Neill, lacked her beauty and edge, being more damsel-in-distress than hard-driven journalist. Worse, she harbors an all-too-obvious crush on Superman throughout. Feminist grade: Unacceptable.

Margot Kidder’s Lois in the classic 1978 Superman falls somewhere between the two previous versions. She’s witty, spunky, pretty yet not beautiful — check. But also, feminine, glamorous, and romantically inclined toward Superman. The fact that Christopher Reeve’s Superman returns the feeling — literally sweeping Lois off her feet in a now green hair-raising sequence — disqualifies the picture for lefties. As does Superman saving Lois more than once. Feminist grade: Unacceptable.

I’ll reserve judgment on Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane until I see the movie, other than to make two observations from film clips and the trailer. Brosnahan is neither beautiful nor sexy, and — judging by the pantsuits and drab attire she wears in every shown appearance — definitely and intentionally not glamorous. This includes an aerial kissing scene that draws unfavorable comparison to the famous flying love montage from the 1978 movie.

The difference becomes even starker in the official trailer, which is framed by Lois Lane interviewing Superman, a key moment in the original. In the Richard Donner film, Lois questions Superman on her penthouse balcony wearing a provocative evening dress. That itself initiates cute banter around Superman’s X-ray vision (“What color underwear am I wearing?”).

In the new James Gunn picture, Brosnahan is all business — which I can accept as a former Washington Post–USA Today reporter — and makes Superman squirm (“People were going to die!” he screams) — which I cannot accept as a fiction writer. You don’t make Lois Lane stronger by her making Superman weaker. Unfortunately, girlbosses debilitating white men is the Hollywoke rule, to which Earth’s greatest hero is not invulnerable.

And this is where the new film sounds my alarm. The trailer shows Superman being pelted with cans thrown by an angry crowd, getting arrested in handcuffs, having his face batoned while on his knees, and having a rough time fighting a superwoman. Maybe he recovers enough dignity to save the day, and the movie. I hope so. But it shouldn’t be a question. It should be a given. Because Superman must be the hero boys look up to, as I did long ago. Even if this goes against the male-blocking wall that Hollywood erected. This wall is collapsing, along with the political party that helped build it.

A new Democratic poll shows men abandoning the party at, yes, super speed. Not just white men but Hispanic and working men across the board say the Democrats are “out of touch,” “woke,” and “weak.” New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall suggested Democrats have failed to recognize the “revolutionary change” in the societal order they have championed since the mid-1960s, which has given Republicans the advantage based on “race, religion, and sexual identity.” And they can blame the entertainment industry for much of it.

Real men aren’t lining up to see Superman. They’re enlisting in the military at record numbers, after a historic low under Joe Biden. They’re flying incredible missions to take out subterranean Iranian nuclear weapon sites. Or they’re saving victims from the catastrophic Texas flood, like 26-year-old Coast Guard swimmer Scott Ruskan did — 165 and counting. It’s not too much to expect Superman to stop whining and inspire the future generation of supermen. But it may be too much for Hollywood.

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