SUPERMAN: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
He Keeps Popping Into My Life
Part 1:
I watched some of the 2006 movie Superman Returns one evening this week. It was early February 2014, mid-summer in Australia with Valentine's Day just around the corner. Watching the movie gave me a brief visit into fantasy-land, and the experience of some personal nostalgia. I had watched some of this same TV film nearly four years ago on 19 June 2010, so my notes informed me. I decided to write this prose-poem providing a personal perspective on this superhero.
Superman is a fictional character, a superhero that appeared in comic books first published in the 1930s by DC Comics. Superman is now considered, and has been for decades, an American cultural icon, and that means, of course, that he/the image has acquired an immense popularity.
Superman first appeared in a short story entitled: "The Reign of the Superman" in 1932. In that same year, in July 1932, a dozen years before I was even born, the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Faith was closed with the passing of Bahiyyih Khanum, the daughter of the Founder of the Baha'i Faith. I make this obviously somewhat tangential comment because of personal interests in my life that synchronize with the cinematic life of superman.
According to Baháís, every dispensation has one particular holy woman or "immortal heroine". In the time of Jesus it was the Virgin Mary, the time of Muhammad it was his daughter Fatima Zahra, and during the Bábs dispensation it was Táhirih. Baháís believe that Bahíyyih Khánum is the outstanding heroine of the Baháí dispensation. This, of course, has nothing to do with Superman. But the syncronicity of Superman's first appearance in popular culture with a particular aspect of the history of a Faith I have now been associated with for more than 60 years, was of more than a little personal interest. I do not expect this to have any special interest to others.
Part 2:
Superman was also created, so we are informed, by two high school students in Cleveland Ohio, in 1933. By then, the Baha'i community's 9 month period of mourning, which began with the passing of this holy woman, had ended. The comic character, Superman, was sold to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1938. By this time the formal and systematic teaching Plan of the Baha'i community had just begun.
Superman now has an 82-year history(1932-2014). He appeared in comic books, his central texts in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by the George Reeves' 1950 television serials. I was too young to remember those comic-books, but I do recall some of the episodes of that TV series back in the early to mid-'50s before my mother sold our TV to, hopefully, ensure her son was not tempted into triviality on a daily basis.
In the late 1970s and 1980s Christopher Reeve films rewired the entire Superman canon. The Lois and Clark television series of the 1990s was framed as yet another central Superman text. The Crisis on Infinite Earths(2001) and The Man of Steel (1986) comic book series rebooted the entire Superman-mythos, framing a range of sources. These resources were further extended by Superman Returns, as we are informed at that reliable source Wikipedia.
Part 3:
In 2001, the Smallville television series was launched, focusing on the adventures of Clark Kent as a teenager before he donned the mantle of Superman. I watched some of these episodes after I had retired from a 50 year student-and-employment life: 1949 to 1999. Adaptation to various media by any literary or art form depends on a dialogue or oscillation between those media. If I engaged in a cross-media study of Superman, I could look back at the more than three-quarters of a century genesis of this trans-media dialogue. But that is not my purpose in this brief prose-poem.
Part 4:
Superman was first conceived, as I say above, in 1932 and was arguably western civilizations first superhero. Superman was first portrayed as a villain named Bill Dunn who was later revisioned into a good guy for more popular appeal. Originally, Superman was produced as a syndicated newspaper strip, which ran from June 1938 until May 1966, before being revived between 1977 and 1983.
Until the 1980s, comic books had largely been ignored by media theorists, except as scapegoats in media-effects debates. But comic books are on the cards for analysis by culture theorists in this new millennium. -Ron Price with thanks to Richard Berger, Are There Any More at Home Like You? in the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Volume 1 Number 2, 2008.
Part 5:
Why hes been around since our Plan
began in the 1930s and 1940s. But no
one had any idea that the lifespan of
this superhero went along with the life-
span of this super-Plan that would, in
time, take the world by storm as the hero
Superman certainly did over the 82 years.
Why I remember those comic books,
and the TV programs way back in the
1950s when I was knee-high to those
grasshoppers....and the Bahais were
in that Ten Year program that took a
new Faith to where it is today in some
200 countries, the second most spread
religion on the planet, so they tell me.(1)
Part 6:
(1) The term "Superman" derives from a common English translation of the term Ubermensch which originated with Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, "Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen" ("I will teach you the Superman"). These words appeared in Nietzsche's 1883 work Also Sprach Zarathustra. Baha'u'llah was released from strict confinement in the prison city of Akka in that same year to begin the last decade of His earthly life, as Charismatic-Founder of the newest, the latest, of the Abrahamic religions.
The term "Superman" was popularized by George Bernard Shaw with his 1903 play Man and Superman; this was the same year as the approval of the building of the mother-temple of the West in Chicago was given by 'Abdul-Baha. The character Jane Porter refers to Tarzan as a "superman" in the 1912 pulp novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The originator of Superman would later name Tarzan as an influence on the creation of his own Superman. Abdul-Baha went on His Western tour that year, a super-human effort by a 68 year old man in the evening of His life. I saw one or two, or more, of the Tarzan films starring Johnny Weissmuller back in the 1950s.
Ron Price
14/7/'09 to 17/2/'14.
Note: First updated after watching Superman Returns on Australian TV 19 June 2010, and finalized, I trust, on 17/2/'14.
