House of Eratosthenes

There is a meme out there about the last one-third of Superman’s never-ending battle for “Truth, Justice and the American Way” being sliced off and replaced with “that other stuff,” and the meme is gathering mass and momentum, or at least trying to. It goes like this: The debate is stupid. Another one says this is not a departure from Superman’s roots, but a return to them. It would appear these are distant cousins, growing from a common ancestor which would be a column Erik Lundegaard wrote that appeared in the New York Times on June 30: Truth, Justice and (Fill in the Blank) (link requires registration). According to this, and I see nothing that factually disputes it with any credibility, fighting for the American Way was just an add-on in the Superman stew that was tossed in after he was started cookin’. However, the notion has taken hold that this was bolted on after Superman had matured and had gathered all the momentum he needed to grow out of relative infancy, a Johnny-Come-Lately, a complete afterthought. And you can’t blame busy and distracted New York Times readers for thinking so…

It wasn’t until Superman came to television in the 1950’s that the phrase became codified in the form most of us remember it: “a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.”

This is the Lundegaard column, paragraph 3. To come to what seems to be the entirely reasonable conclusion that the phrase never appeared until then is to starkly contradict the fact in paragraph 7, that Superman was fighting his battle as early as 1942. American Way…and all that other stuff.

…in fall 1942, fans of the radio show became the first to hear about Superman’s battle for “truth, justice and the American way.”

At that time the war in Europe was not going well. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was sweeping across Africa, and the German Army was driving toward Stalingrad. The Japanese had been turned back at Midway but they were still invading Pacific islands. We were all fighting for the American way. Why shouldn’t Superman?

As the war turned in our favor, though, the additional phrase didn’t seem as necessary. By 1944 it was gone, and for the remainder of the radio show, Superman devoted himself to the fight for tolerance � as in the 1946 episode, “Unity House,” in which Superman battles the Ku Klux Klan.

It took the paranoia and patriotism of the cold war era to bring back “the American way” � this time in the “Adventures of Superman” television series, which ran from 1952 to 1958. Every week, young, impressionable baby boomers were greeted with the phrase as they sat down to watch the Man of Steel combat crooks and communist spies.

Like I said, the facts of Lundegaard’s column do not seem to be in dispute, and there is no need for them to be. What he’s saying is that fighting for the American Way is something that Superman’s picked up, and put down, and picked up and put down again…as real-life threats to his homeland came and went.

This is a story as old as mankind itself. We, here, at The Blog That Nobody Reads, talk about it a lot. A threat comes up, we embrace certain ideals and think in certain ways. Once the threat is removed, we indulge in the luxury of expurgating those ideals and ways of thinking; we shift our allegiance to new ideals, new ways of thinking, that only work for us when we are comfortable. And once the danger becomes an even tinier speck in our collective rear-view mirror, living on only in stories told by wrinkly old people with brown spots on their hands, sometimes we further indulge in the fantasy that said ideals & ways of thinking were unnecessary at any time. Deep down, we all know this to be untrue. We all know that you can’t afford to behave, during a crisis, the same way you’d behave in security and comfort, and survive very long. That is part of the appeal of a Life of Leisure. We’re drawn to it, like a moth to a flame, knowing that it doesn’t always work for us.

I suspect we also know, deep down in the recesses that are exposed to consciousness and articulation only with some amongst us, that there’s nothing wrong with staying vigilant when a crisis is no longer imminent, and that there’s a lot wrong with remaining complacent once a crisis starts to threateningly emerge. Our very instincts block us from doing the latter of those two. Nobody’s interested in staying in the water when a fin breaks the surface. Nobody wants to throw more gas on the bonfire when the flames get close to the house.

Lundegaard concludes, “Superman is right back where he began: fighting a never-ending battle for truth and justice. That should be enough to occupy any man. Even a Superman.” And yet, the facts of his column solidly establish that Superman consistently fought for 50% more than that, in the toughest of times during America’s darkest hours. They further establish that not far into his fifth year, Superman came to realize that extra 50% was vital. Vigilance, it seems, has a lot to do with fighting for The American Way, and complacency has a lot to do with dropping that part of the fight.

I think people of all ideologies would agree that right now, America needs all the friends she can get. It seems extravagant to the point of surreal, to me, to suppose that Superman is all about kicking a friend when that friend is down, especially a friend so critically important to his history, inextricably intertwined with same, indeed, a friend to whom he owes his very existence. And it seems even less Superman-like, to me, to indulge in such a snub just because the current political climate determines that it can be afforded cheaply.

Come to think of it, it strikes me as the kind of behavior we’d see in the Man of Steel only in some complicated storyline concerning Red Kryptonite, or perhaps Mr. Mxyzptlk.

Thing I Know #113. A crisis precedes logical thinking. Logical thinking precedes a solution to the crisis. Too long a time without a crisis, precedes indulgence and sloppy thinking. Indulgence and sloppy thinking precede the next crisis.
Thing I Know #130. The noble savage gives us life. Then we outlaw his very existence. We call this process “civilization.” I don’t know why.

Update: Just a round-up of the earlier mentions of this “and all that stuff” stuff. Malkin; Jeanne Wolf’s Hollywood; The American Thinker; What Would Tyler Durden Do. The last is the best of the bunch, I think.

As I’ve noted in the comment section, this will be revisted in yet-greater detail later. I’m looking forward to it; it’s a debate for our times, and not a silly one at all.

and what, exactly, is this “american way” that superman should fight for it? should he not also fight for the british way? the canadian way? the FRench way? the israeli way? the palestinian way?

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/16/2006 @ 20:23
First question: That’s good. Damn good. So many good beefy answers to that one, I’ll have to work up something just for that alone. Thanks for inspiring me.

Second question, answer is much, much simpler: Nnnnnnnope.

Third, fourth, fifth questions: nope, nope, nope. Sixth question: Hell no. We’re not talking “people worth saving,” we’re talking “ways” for which to fight. He’s our guy.
- mkfreeberg | 07/16/2006 @ 21:05
[…] Okay, now you know the background. My order should be here Thursday at the latest, and I’m thrilled. It’s a whole lot of bang for the buck, for one thing — all the Superman stuff ever to hit the big screen, back to the first Christopher Reeve movie where he makes the world spin backwards. Fourteen discs, with good movies, awful movies, that brand-new one, this long-buried “Donner Cut” and a bunch of other related stuff. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/29/2007 @ 22:35

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Truth, Justice and the Complacent WaySunday, July 16th, 2006

Truth, Justice and the Complacent Way
Sunday, July 16th, 2006