Giancarlo Sopo writes for National Review Online about over-the-top reaction to a major new superhero movie.
Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane . . . no, it’s another round of America’s most exhausting spectator sport: the astroturfed cultural scuffle.
From listening to Clay Travis howl about James Gunn’s new Superman, you’d think Warner Bros. had just remade Myra Breckinridge, but in tights (yikes!). In a flourish that may have sent half of Floridians clutching their Life Alert buttons, Jesse Watters assured viewers that the Man of Steel now sports “MS-13” on his cape. Meanwhile, aboard the clown car formerly known as Twitter, some guy named Ben Owen — whoever that is — went viral claiming Superman’s iconic motto was swapped out in the movie for “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way.”
Of course, none of this is true, and all of it is tiring. Not because there aren’t cultural battles worth waging, but because it’s cheap clickbait masquerading as vigilance. It’s the handiwork of a Grift-Industrial Complex more interested in keeping Americans perpetually aggrieved than in conserving anything except their own paychecks. As Don Corleone once said, how a man makes his living is his own business, but this hustle is draining more than Grandpa’s Social Security checks. It’s bleeding conservatives’ capacity to engage with art, distracting us from genuine cultural ills, and training younger generations to believe that conservatism is just another word for screaming into the void.
It also makes the right look unhinged by association. As millions of Americans will learn this weekend, the politics of Gunn’s Superman sit squarely in the mushy middle. As Ben Shapiro rightly points out, Superman was conceived — and evolved — as an avatar of classical liberal American ideals. Think Atticus Finch in a cape. Here, though, he’s more of an idealistic Peace Corps alum. Kind? Absolutely. But that’s only part of the character’s ethos. Superman should also be wise, guiding humanity toward something higher.
If you can look past those philosophical stumbles, the movie’s a romp.
