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Superman happens to be good, was good even as Superboy. But he can afford to be good, for no one can harm him, no one can touch him. It takes no special effort of will or courage for him to do the right thing, as for a human hero. The fact that he is not tyrannical is, of course, in some way commendable-yet it seems to tie in with his deep naiveté that makes good seem rather foolish by comparison with evil. What the impact of Superman's good on small viewers will be is hard to predict. Perhaps the fact that he, with his superpowers, is unequivocally committed to the good will impress them and encourage them to imitate him in doing good. Will older viewers get the message that good is a luxury possible only for those with impossible superpowers?

The Superman phenomenon is a mystifying one, and I must confess to being perplexed by it. If Star Wars was an old-fashioned heroic tale not unlike Homer's Iliad, showing uncomplicated good in virtuous (manly) and successful combat with uncomplicated evil, and Close Encounters a drama of enlightenment through contact with alien good, it 'is not clear what Superman is. It would be convenient to say that it is a satire on true heroism and on the good; that may be true, but it seems unlikely that it is a deliberate satire. It is more likely to be a true reflection of the situation of modern man, in which man—with the image of God ineradicably planted within him—somehow longs for something and someone good, but has become so cynical that he can postulate good only in an impossible person and situation.

If the anti-hero was a denial of the claim that any human acts like a hero, Superman and the superheroes, which show heroic qualities only in superhumans, may be a denial that heroic qualities exist at all. If they can manifest only in unreal persons, then they can hardly exist.

Perhaps the fundamental difference between heroes and superheroes lies in this: The tales of heroes, from Homer to the present, have been told by bards who knew men they regarded as heroes and honored them for it, who believed in heroism, and who hoped that their hearers, young and not so young, might one day perform heroic deeds themselves. The superhero phenomenon seems to be a catering to the deep-rooted human desire to have heroes and heroic qualities to admire and emulate. The catering is done by those who are fundamentally cynical and who do not believe in what they are presenting. Soren Kierkegaard once wrote that the way to destroy true gospel preaching was not to prohibit it, but to subsidize a thousand bad preachers in a thousand pulpits. Is it inconceivable that one way to destroy any stirrings of true heroism is to spread fundamentally unbelievable examples, impossible to imitate, on tens of thousands of movie screens and eventually on millions of television screens?

There is another aspect of unreality in the Superman story that is worthy of some thought, particularly by those concerned for the deteriorating relationship between the sexes. In Superman, as in Star Wars and Close Encounters, there is a modern, liberated woman—essentially, a very sympathetic character. Yet, unlike Helen of Troy and Andromache in the Iliad, or even Princess Leia in Star Wars, Lois Lane's independent, individual life seems almost extinguished as she takes on the role of Superman's votary. Lois makes this quite explicit when, after her celestial piggyback ride, she speaks of having been "with a god." Even Hercules was but a demigod, and Achilles a mortal man. Confronted with supermanliness, the tough, cynical, and liberated Lois Lane is speechless with a wonder that seems less like sexual love than reverential awe. Why has Lois's conduct and attitude not been mocked in the circles of women's liberation? Can it be that a large part of women's ire at men stems not from male prerogatives but from the pretense on which those prerogatives are based? In other words, that if there were some substance undangirding them—as there is in Superman's case—women would not refuse to admire admirable qualities? Lois Lane's reaction to Superman may be seen as the expression of the way men, even less than super-men, wish women would react to them. On the other hand, the lack of outcry at the figure of Lois Lane indicates that women can recognize genuine virtue and admire it.

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51