Superman: American Icon Or Global Icon? A Superman Article

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The nature of Themyscira and what the Amazonian fight against is very primordial. Issues between man and women are practically as old as time, and that sets their landscape.

I think if Jesus represents the plight of man by the temple, you can say Wondie represents the plight of humanity in the face of the preceding time.

[phantom000]

Making Superman a Christ Allegory is already in poor taste and doesn't work well. Calling him New Testament is, yeeks.

I don't think you understand what an allegory is.

The thing about art, and literature especially, is that it is very much open to interpretation. Superman can be seen as an allegory for Jesus, Moses or even just immigrants.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Making Superman a Christ Allegory is already in poor taste and doesn't work well. Calling him New Testament is, yeeks.

I don't think you understand what an allegory is.

The thing about art, and literature especially, is that it is very much open to interpretation. Superman can be seen as an allegory for Jesus, Moses or even just immigrants.

It's not necessary to view it as a political representation, at least so far as such semblance suggests. I think the major breakdown happens when the overall stories themselves aren't supposed to be linear reinterpretations of each biblical work.

[Frustration]

The thing about art, and literature especially, is that it is very much open to interpretation. Superman can be seen as an allegory for Jesus, Moses or even just immigrants.

They're right: you don't know what an allegory is.

In an allegory, one story is disguised to appear as another, but a one-to-one correspondence exists between the apparent and the concealed narrative. It's something like encryption: the coded message doesn't obviously seem to contain meaningful information, but knowing the key allows recognition of the relationship between the data and the message it hides.

A classic modern example is George Orwell's Animal Farm. The novel's storyline and morals are clear, and valid literature in themselves, but if you know enough about its historical context, you can recognize the characters and setting as allegorical representations for Russia's transformation into the Soviet Union, and the way the surface story is told makes it clear in hindsight what Orwell's positions regarding the key players of that real-world story.

Superman might be an allegory, if you can establish a one-to-one correspondence between his story and another. But he can't be an allegory for more than one story unless they're also allegories of a single tale.

Superman would correctly be considered to evoke, or to make reference to, other stories and characters - including yes Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the biblical patriarch. But he's not an allegory for any of them.

[TGLS]

In an allegory, one story is disguised to appear as another, but a one-to-one correspondence exists between the apparent and the concealed narrative. It's something like encryption: the coded message doesn't obviously seem to contain meaningful information, but knowing the key allows recognition of the relationship between the data and the message it hides.

Only if you treat allegory as synonymous with roman à clef and categorically reject death of the author. You can't pin down The Giving Tree to any particular person because it isn't an allegory to a particular person. Many stories have had readings for allegories their authors never intended, most famously the Lord of the Rings.

[Frustration]

Tolkien pointed out that, not only did he not intend LotR to be an allegory for anything, it is a spectacularly bad 'allegory' for WWII - and then wrote what would have needed to happen in the story in order to qualify as such an allegory. We don't need to invoke death of the author, because his intent isn't necessary for the counterargument.

People are using 'allegory' and 'allegorical' to refer to correspondences that are merely emblematic or similar to some degree.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Making Superman a Christ Allegory is already in poor taste and doesn't work well. Calling him New Testament is, yeeks.

I don't think you understand what an allegory is.

He sucks as a Christ Allegory because his defining characteristic is invulnerability, while one of Christ's most defining characteristics is surely his vulnerability. Movies that try to make a Christ allegory out of him also kinda tend to suck.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Making Superman a Christ Allegory is already in poor taste and doesn't work well. Calling him New Testament is, yeeks.

I don't think you understand what an allegory is.

He sucks as a Christ Allegory because his defining characteristic is invulnerability, while one of Christ's most defining characteristics is surely his vulnerability. Movies that try to make a Christ allegory out of him also kinda tend to suck.

Well I never said he's supposed to be a Christ allegory. Just an embodiment of what the New Testament teaches in lieu of what the Old Testament does. Remember that Batman takes up his own version of the New Testament. It's a context of each story from a historical standpoint and the principles they espouse.

No one complains about Richard Donner sending his last son to Earth to save the hoomans. The point of it is more to draw upon aspects of Jewish culture and not to be a spiritual retelling.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I think looking at it from a "new testament vs old testament" perspective is pretty Christocentric and not very respectful of the character's origins.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think looking at it from a "new testament vs old testament" perspective is pretty Christocentric and not very respectful of the character's origins.

Actually yeah that's consistent with what I'm finding, specifically between those two. Thank you. I was beginning to wonder if Hebrew Bible would be more fitting, though I'm honestly at a loss at connective tissue, and the scope is just narrow enough to be ambiguous as to wonder why Superman would just fit there. Again it's as a response to the works in historical sense not a representation.

Working backwards from the King James interpretation, you can designate Wonder Woman as Catholicism, especially considering the Vatican is its own sovereign international territory. Superman would just be overall Abrahamic. Then again you could also liken Amazon to Buddhist monks or Islam as a development itself.