"Why did Superman consciously choose to disguise himself as the newspaper reporter, Clark Kent?... Superman, of all the great superheroes , is best positioned to defend or rescue anyone in his inner circle who might be threatened with harm of any kind. With super-senses and super-speed to go with his super-strength, he can track what's going on, get there, and deal with it like no one else. Perhaps part of the secrecy about this identity is meant just to cloak his background in mystery. After all, the less people know about him and his origin, the less access they can have to information that might be compromising to him, such as the fact that he's vulnerable to Kryptonite. Any less-than-omnipotent being has to be on the defensive, and part of any good defensive involves guarding information that might give an enemy an advantage. But I suspect there is even more going on than this.
Superman knows he is an alien. He feels like an alien. He is the ultimate outsider. But he has tasted enough of human life and the human condition to feel very attracted to it, and deeply drawn into it. Jonathan and Martha Kent were good and loving parents, and Clark grew up experiencing friendship, sadness, excitement, happiness, hope and all the normal emotions and relationships of a genuinely human life. At some level, it seems that he wants desperately to be human, or at least to know what it means to be human in the deepest, most intimate possible way. And he understands enough about human reactions to realize that this will not be feasible if he's perceived as being who he really is. He has to fit in. He can't stand out in the way that he would if the whole truth were known about him...
That's the difference the "other-ness" of celebrity can make... In the Bible, we are told that God the Son, a literally divine being, took on the form of a man, and the fullness of our condition, in order to experience what we experience, suffer what we suffer, and save us from the deepest consequences of our heedlessly selfish ways by transforming us, as one of us, and as more. But the New Testament is full of what theologians call "the messianic secret' -- the reluctance of Christ to reveal the fullness of what and who he really is until the people around him are ready to understand and accept it. These themes are reflected in various ways in many of the best Superman narratives over the decades. The greatest guardian, defender, and savior must be one of us, while also being more than us.
Superman doesn't aim to serve the world exactly as the alien Martian Man-Hunter might, or even as Alan Moore's Dr. Manhattan, in all his aloof other-ness, would. He doesn't want to be a nearly Aristotelian God, an unmoved mover of the world, isolated in his own autonomous independence. He craves an existential connection to us. He wants to serve us as really one of us. His secret identity as Clark Kent isn't just a normal superhero ploy, one more tool or weapon in the super-arsenal. It's a crucial part of a real quest to live the human adventure and guard humanity from within. And I can't help but believe that this desire is the result of the love he was given by his human parents, and even by some of his childhood friends. The transformative power of their total acceptance of him and commitment to him has elicited within him a desire to share mutual acceptance and commitment with more of the people of this world."
From The Secret of Secret Identities by Tom Morris in Superheroes and Philosophy an Open Court book, Chicago 2005
So what Morris here is saying is that for Supes to embody humanity and all that is good, he has to be an alien because only as an alien is Superman a source of the Other. But to turn this around, how do we create alterity for Superman? In that he is surrounded by us, we may not be the Intruder to his experience, but we are outside his alien origins.
"He [Patocka] speaks of a supreme being, of God as one who, holding me from within, in his hands and within his gaze, defines everything regarding me, and so rouses me to responsibility." - The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida
Apply this thought to Superman and we see him in a new light. In placing himself above humanity, in this godlike position as a Super-man, he inspires humanity to be better. He is an example to which we aspire in his position as Superman, but he in turn is aspiring toward humanity, to live and experience a human existence. So we work to emulate this higher level of being that in turn is working to emulate us.
There's a paradox in that. There is a jump in desires in which we find that in reaching for the higher order, we are reaching for our own humanity. To emulate Superman is not to try to become Superman, but to reach the pinnacle of humanity that he has come to represent. We are reaching to become the best that we can be of ourselves.
In the realm of comics though, there is the potential for something other than the big blue boy scout, we find a dark underside that reflects this very same creation of identity from quite a different direction. And here I think of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.
Here we find part of the core storyline revolving around one creature's search for self. As we begin the series, we find that he does not know who or what he is any more than we do. He has the mind and memories of the deceased Alec Holland, but he is not and never was Holland, and this revelation shatters him and sends him to a dark swamp land that he can only return from once he accepts that he can live despite this.
It is in this acceptance of a Self that is not himself, or not the Self he thought he was, in accepting the alterity of his very existence, Swamp Thing grows. He becomes a power beyond anything he could have achieved in his existence as Alec Holland.
"It is from the perspective of death as the place of my irreplaceability, that is, of my singularity, that I feel called to responsibility. In this sense only a mortal can be responsible."
For all intents and purposes, the Swamp Thing and Superman are immortal, and so it would seem they counter Derrida's argument by being responsible. But they are not Gods. They face their immortality and invulnerability as mortals and sacrifice their lives in a greater sense. They cannot live as mere mortals. By their very existence on earth they must submit to Godhood and a place above and beyond humanity. The must accept the death of their mortality and so gain responsibility.
And it is this unasked for quality that makes them Heroes. They did not want this and would be far happier to live without this power that has been thrust upon them, but they accept it and (often times grudgingly) incorporate it into their being.
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