Supermen, so many to choose from...

According to this article on the CNN web site Warner Brothers are actively marketing the new Superman movie to church pastors in the USA; their logic seems to be that "Superman is like Jesus". To the more sceptical among us this looks like blatant commercial exploitation of a particular local market segment, but I wonder?

Clearly elements of the superman story are superficially like the Jesus story, both "men" are obviously "supernatural" beings with super-powers and in part at least, both are supposed to wander around the place doing good and promoting a certain set of values. In Superman's case those values are derived from the fight for a simplistic "mom and pop" form of social justice in 1950s USA and in Jesus's case the values seem to be those of a prophetic, rebellious and establishment-fighting first century Jewish preacher, to most of the religious right in America those two sets of values may merge and become indistinguishable. So far so good, but philosophically this is an odd alliance, some would argue that the majority of media moguls in Hollywood are of a political leaning more to the left than the right and would probably also conclude that there are more liberals than literals living along the palm lined boulevards of Beverly Hills. When I think about possible motives for this then money is clearly top of the list but could there be more to it?

Perhaps what's happening here is part of some kind of Trojan horse deal by which the secular liberals of tinsel town are attempting to counter the grass roots political momentum of the religious right? A supplanting of a central concept in the main monotheistic religions with an atheistic and secular idea, the idea that scripture is entirely man-made, i.e. a work of fiction.

Any parishioners listening to a preacher espousing the analogies of the two stories cannot possibly miss the most obvious conclusion and perhaps the subtext of this alliance in the first place, i.e. both Jesus and Superman are inventions of humans. Both superhero's were invented in the minds of men living in insecure times by cultures seeking comfort in the idea of an all powerful patriarchal figure that could protect them and fight a perceived evil force in their world. As evidenced by the beauty queen video I linked to earlier today  remarkably, there are still billions of people out there in the 21st century who believe in a literal interpretation of ancient philosophy books like the Koran and the Bible; losing this perspective is clearly a step towards a more tolerant and reason based approach to life, if more people get there via Superman then all hail Kal-El!