July 25, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode I reflect on the symbolism behind Superman as a figure rooted in American mythology and post-WWII identity. I also discuss the new Superman movie by James Gunn, which actually has an interesting twist that can help us understand not just the superhero archetype, but also the crucial and relevant question of the immigrant or convert.
https://youtu.be/RByli5eMoP8
Rapunzel and the Evil Witch is coming in August—and you can pre-order it now. If you missed the first 1,000 copies (which sold out in 26 hours!), here’s your chance next to get it. Pre-orders come with the audiobook I recorded and a companion worksheet to explore the story with your family. Go to https://www.rapunzelbook.com/ and get ready—this is where the fairy tales start to weave together.
💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com
🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jonathanpageau
🔒 BECOME A PATRON: https://thesymbolicworld.com/subscribe
Our website designers: https://www.resonancehq.io/
My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/
https://youtu.be/RByli5eMoP8
Rapunzel and the Evil Witch is coming in August—and you can pre-order it now. If you missed the first 1,000 copies (which sold out in 26 hours!), here’s your chance next to get it. Pre-orders come with the audiobook I recorded and a companion worksheet to explore the story with your family. Go to https://www.rapunzelbook.com/ and get ready—this is where the fairy tales start to weave together.
💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com
🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jonathanpageau
🔒 BECOME A PATRON: https://thesymbolicworld.com/subscribe
Our website designers: https://www.resonancehq.io/
My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everyone. I went to see the Superman movie. I've
been kind of out of the superhero movie stuff for
a while now because it was so horrible, and you know,
I heard that this one was different, and because I
did like the James Gunn movies in Marvel, figured i'd
go see the movie. And I have to say that
I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a great movie. It's
(00:21):
pretty mid in general in terms of movies, but it
definitely wasn't woke. I have to say. It wasn't d I.
It wasn't It didn't have all of the the annoying
characteristics and the kind of preachiness that you see in
that you've been seeing in movies now for the past
two decades. It was a Superman movie, a basic Superman movie.
(00:43):
There was, of course, one trope that was changed, and
I'll mention that at the end of the video if
you don't want to get spoiled. But I wanted mostly
at the outset to look at the symbolism of Superman
and to kind of understand the symbolism of Superman, especially
in terms of it's a American narrative you could call it,
or you could also call it something like again post
(01:06):
World War two consensus narrative. Of course Superman comes from
before World War Two. But there is already that story
of the relationship, let's say, between two different types of
thinking of the excess of the one and the excess
of the many, was already there before World War Two.
It's just that because the Allies are the ones who
(01:27):
won during World War Two, that story, you know, you
could say, the Superman's story, the American story, became the trope,
or became the pattern for most storytelling, at least in
the West. And what is that story? This is Jonathan Pegel,
(01:54):
Welcome to the symbolic world. Now. The first thing to
understand about Superman, just from a conceptual level, I really
do believe that it is to understand it as a
(02:16):
reaction or as as a comment on Nietzsche's uber Mensh.
In some ways, Superman is very much not directly on
the uber mans per se, but on a vision or
an interpretation of the uber Mansh as was being developed
in Germany with the kind of slow rise of fascistic ideas.
(02:39):
The Superman character becomes in some ways a reaction to that,
to that, whether conscious or not, it doesn't really matter.
It's a different type of Superman. What's the difference between
the one Superman and the other. And so Superman is,
first of all, was created by two Jewish writers, and
in some ways I do believe that it does reflect,
(03:02):
if not their personal experience, but in some ways the
reality of the Jewish reality in Europe and the Jewish
reality in the world for the past few thousand years,
which is in some ways to be a stranger in
a strange land. You know. You can also of course
understand the destruction of Crypton and the exiling of Superman
(03:23):
into a strange land, as you know, the destruction of
Jerusalem and the exiling of the Jews into strange land.
And so that is the one thing that is important.
But that narrative of the let's say, the stranger that
is exiled and is now living in this strange land
gets in some ways tagged on to the very story
(03:45):
of the United States as a kind of federation, This
idea of a group of diverse people of different people
that kind of come into a place and decide to
make a project together and decide to ally themselves in
order to exist together. But this existence together is very
much focused on the individual on individual rights, on difference
(04:10):
as a kind of you know, a kind of power
that you can tap into, and multiplicity as a power
that you can tap into. Now, you know, these narratives
aren't completely clean, of course, you understand they are all
kinds of little counter narratives. But if you kind of
see it basically generally as a basic story that it
was especially becoming true in twentieth century America, especially, you know,
(04:36):
moving towards the second part of the twentieth century, with
the civil rights movement kind of becoming important and all
of these different things happening, the World War Two consensus
kind of setting itself down, Then the story of Superman
crystallizes as really an important story in American's America's mythology. Now,
(05:00):
which interesting about the superhero genre itself, and of course
Superman is the first superhero, and to represent it very
much is that there are a lot of things butting
up against each other. One is, of course, people talk
about the superheroes as the gods. That is a very
big mistake. The superheroes are not the gods. They're more
(05:21):
like demigods. They're more like they're more like Gargoyle's right,
they're more like these hybrid figures that protect the world
from danger. And that's why the superheroes look the way
they do, right, They're not the ones that participate in
(05:42):
the unitary identity of the world. They're always strange in
some ways. They always kind of come from the outside.
So you have Superman is an alien from another planet,
Batman dresses up as an animal, and the Scary you have,
you know, Martian Manhunter for Goodness Stake, you have Wonder
Woman who's in Amazon. You know, all of these superheroes.
You have this weird sense that in some ways they
(06:05):
are more like exterior things coming together, joining in a
kind of league in order to defend the world against
any So they have much more in common with protector
figures in that sense, more much more in common with
gargoyle type activities than they do with the idea of
(06:26):
the gods themselves. So maybe they're like little titular spirits,
but like titular spirits in the really in the apotropeic sense,
that is, in the sense of something strong and scary
that you put on the border in order to stop
the stop the invaders from coming outside. And in that case,
because that's what they are, they also have something in
(06:47):
common with that which is from the outside, right, And
so what does Superman protect us against? You see it
in Superman too, especially he protects us against the He
protects us against the the the Kryptonians, right, he protects
us against things that are similar to where he comes from.
You know. The stranger that enters in and then gets
(07:13):
joined to the unity of the group is the best
tool you have in order to fight that which comes
from the outside. If you think about how, for example,
the Byzantine Emperor had a Ringian guard. He had all
these Scandinavians that he hired in his service, and they
would come to Byzantium and then would owe everything to him,
(07:33):
of course, because he's the one who brought them there,
and so therefore became very loyal to the emperor and
was able to defend the emperor against outer threat and
also defend the emperor against people who would be corrupt
in his own organization. So this is of course the
model that we're looking at when we're looking at figures
like Superman or like the superheroes. In some ways, it
(07:55):
is the power of the convert, right, the power of
the convert who who comes into the church from the
outside and then becomes a Christian and then has a
kind of zeal to defend the church against heresy and
to defend the church against people from the outside. And
it's the same in some ways with the immigrant who
kind of really wants to come in and to join
(08:17):
into the nation. And once that person has joined, you know,
once they've been let in, you could say they owe
so much to the people that let them in that
now they become And also because they know about what's
on the outside, they kind of come from the outside,
they have the power of the outside, if you can say,
a kind of strength of the border, a strength of
(08:37):
the outside, so they can then turn that strength towards
the outer power. There are all kinds of stories like that.
There are insane stories that we use in God's Dog.
Legends that we use in God's Dog. For example of
Saint mer Curius who encounters the dog headed men and
then he converts these dog headed men to his service.
(08:58):
But then when he faced his monsters and when he
face his enemies, he can kind of turn the dog
headed men against the enemies. And so he has these
monstrous converts that come in and then they become the
best tool to fight on the outside. And so this
is what in some ways Superman represents. And so what
makes Superman, though, such a perfect superhero? Why is he
(09:23):
the perfect superhero? And it is because Superman in some
ways is the integrated stranger. He is the fully integrated stranger.
He is someone who has this identity from the outside
and in this sense also a very powerful identity, one
which is kind of a sense of almost like heavenly
(09:45):
royal or scientifically advanced. That's the version you get, of
course in the can I say this, that's the twentieth
century version of that, which is like this highly technically
advanced civilization that he's left and that he's kind of
brought with him, you could say. And he has all
of that power, the power of the outside, but he
(10:07):
fully joins to the nation. That is that he submits itself.
He submits himself, especially in the early comics of the
American way, he fights for the country that has adopted him.
He also passes for one of the people, for the
people of the nation. So his Clark Kent figure is
(10:27):
completely integrated into society. He doesn't stand out, he doesn't
he doesn't you know, try to go against the grain,
try to impose his Kryptonian ways on the humans. Rather,
he takes on completely the identity of the people inside,
and he only manifests, you could say, his strangeness when
(10:50):
he is defending the nation or defending his new home
from outside attackers or from corruption within. And so because
of that, that's why in some ways he becomes the
perfect superhero, because he is he both has the power
of this outside monstrous kind of strange, extraterrestrial alien sense,
(11:14):
but then he is also completely devoted to the people
that he has joined, and he uses his strength to
defend the world against the evils from the outside that
are coming to attack it. So that's why, in some
ways Superman is such a perfect superhero. And it's also
i think a reason a good image of what America
(11:38):
the United States can be if America is properly aligned,
which is to understand that, you know, when more hardright
wing people say, you know, America isn't a land of immigrants,
it's like America is the land of immigrants, folks. America,
you know, its whole narrative is about people gathering people
(12:00):
from the outside and then joining them to the nation.
In a way that is a melting pot and in
a way that brings about the American identity. But that
is what gives the strength. That's an aspect of the
identity of America that gives its strength is that it
is capable of bringing in a lot of difference in multiplicity,
(12:20):
but then it does join it to its to itself.
So what is the power of the immigrant, the power
of the immigrant. If the immigrant gives himself to the
new identity, you kind of unleash this secret power, right,
the secret power of the convert, the secret power of
the newcomer that has all this new energy and that
(12:42):
once it's joined to the group, then radiates out. Right.
It's the secret power of the Norman conversion that when
the Normans convert to Christianity, they bring in this new
secret power and then they go out and they you know,
they basically become they they do the crusades because it's
this kind of new energy that joins with this this
(13:04):
world and then radiates out. And so this is one
of the important things about Superman, and I think it
also speaks in some ways to the if we come
back to Siegul and Schuster, who created Superman in some ways,
it comes back to one to one of the aspects
that has made America so powerful is that one of
(13:26):
the things that the United States did is that they
welcome the Jewish people that were excluded from all the
different nations. And so they said to the Jews that
were being that were being kind of beaten on in
Russia during the around the times of the Russian Revolution,
and they said, you can come to America. The same
(13:48):
with those in Europe that are being persecuted, and they said,
come to America. And in some ways the deal was
come to America. But it's the same deal as everybody else,
like put your service in put your intelligence, put your capacities,
put your strength in service of the nation. And that
is one aspect of what has made the United States
(14:11):
so great. So for those who have been following, we
are about to launch our new Rapunzel books very soon.
We were so excited to get this into people's hands
that we actually airshipped about one thousand copies and some
people were able to access those one thousand copies we
sold I think it was nine hundred copies we had
on sale. We sold nine hundred copies in like twenty
(14:32):
six hours. And so I'm really excited to see how,
you know, people reading it and getting the first glimpses.
We already have some reviews coming in. It was also
a way for us to test our new shipping service
and our new distribution service, and we couldn't believe it.
People were getting their books. Some got it on the
same day that they ordered it, other people's got them
(14:53):
one day two days later, and so we're really happy
to see this new distribution system work out. And so
we decided that the book is going to be launching
explicitly in about a month, but we decided to still
do a pre order for those who are interested because
I recorded an audiobook version of the Rapunzel Book, and
(15:14):
we also put together a kind of worksheet to go
through the story with your kids, with your family. So
we thought we could offer that to those who were
willing to pre order the book. Those that already bought
the first very first one thousand copies were able to
get in, and so we wanted to extend that offer
to those who wanted to pre order, and so go
to rapunzelbook dot com and get your book. I cannot
(15:35):
wait for people to read this because this is where
the story gets interesting. This is where the threads are
going to start to come together and where the characters
are going to start to repeat. So get in on
Tales for once and ever. This is the third book.
We still got a whole bunch coming. We've got three
books that are in production right now, and so yeah, excited.
(15:56):
This is the thing that gets me the most excited
is this fairy Tale project. Thanks to everybody and go
get your book. One of the problems that is happening
now this is in some ways that kind of the
end of the World War two consensus or like that.
How it's starting to mess with people's minds is that
(16:16):
if Superman had come and had tried to, let's say,
was serving the interest of Krypton while he was in
America and it wasn't clear what his allegiance was, right,
whether his allegiance was to America or to Crypton, then
he would he could not be the same character. He
(16:39):
could not be Superman, he could not have the power
that he has, and in some ways he would be
constantly suspect of being a trader, constantly suspect of serving
the interest of something which is from the outside. Now,
now it comes to the New Superman movie, which I'm
going to spoil for you, so if you haven't seen
(17:00):
it yet, you can maybe stop watching the video right now.
And so one of the things they do in the
New Superman movie is they change one aspect of his
origin story. What they do is that when Superman arrives,
there's a video with the spaceship and there's a message
from his parents that tell him to kind of join
(17:21):
to this new country. It's a beautiful new planet, and
to join himself with these people. And I think it
says to like serve these people. But then half of
the message is corrupted and so he only hears the
first half, and that's what leads him to become Superman, right,
So basically he serves the people he has this kind
of serves the good of the nation of the planet
(17:45):
where he is. But then in the movie they figure
out a way to decode the last part of the message,
and they find out that in the second part of
the message, his parents basically say, you know, you're the powerful,
they're very weak, you know, and so dominate them, rule
over them. And then he also like basically inseminate as
many human women as possible in order to kind of
(18:06):
repopulate the world with the Kryptonian the Kryptonian lineage, you know.
And so because of that, all of a sudden, now
Superman is rightly so in the movie, rightly so suspect
of being a kind of a foreign agent. He's suspect
of being a foreign influence. Of all of a sudden,
(18:29):
his power becomes dangerous for the for the United States
because why is he doing it? Right? Is he doing
it because he wants to take the strength of America
and give it to the Kryptonian lineage, take the strength
of American, give it to the Kryptonian power, and subjugate
that power to himself. And so it's I found it
(18:50):
to be a very smart move, a very interesting thing
to do, because in some ways, what James Gunn does
is he says, you know, the danger of people coming
from from the outside is real, Like it's real if
the people that come from the outside and join to
your group are still have a strong allegiance to the
(19:11):
place where they come from. Because in some ways you're
taking the power right. In Proverbs five, it talks about
the idea is you know that beware the strange woman,
beware the loose woman. You know her tongue drips honey,
but her feet are down in shale, and it says
to beware of her because what she will do is
she will basically take your strength and give it to
(19:33):
the stranger. She'll take your identity and she'll dissipate it
out into something else which is not you. And so
I was really surprised and kind of impressed by the
fact that James Gunn dares to make that part of
his story to say that, you know, the Kryptonians can
be represented as this invader in some ways, right, the
(19:55):
alien invader that tries to take over. But that what
happens is that super Man realizes that he finds more
value in his adopted home and that he kind of
swears allegiance to his adopted parents, realizes that they're the
ones who really gave him his values. They're the ones
that have provided for him a home to live, and
(20:17):
so he basically switches and then starts to instead of
playing that message from his Kryptonian parents, he then watches
these videos of when he was a child being raised
by his very very American parents. Surprising again in the
movie is that he gives those parents a Southern accent
that might seem like a detail, but that is not
(20:38):
a detail in American iconography, which is that the Southern
accent in American Hollywood iconography is usually to show someone
as being stupid, or to show someone as being backwards
and as being you know, kind of hicic like and
(20:59):
and social regressive. All of these are what is being
signaled in American movies and in American media when they
show someone with a Southern accent, which is why most
people that enter into media try to get rid of
their Southern accent. Which in the movie, of course Superman
does that, you know, so we could. I don't know
what that exactly means, but nonetheless, what he ends up
(21:21):
doing is he ends up kind of giving his allegiance
to his southern you know, kind of homegrown parents. And
I found that to be a very beautiful thing in
some ways, and I thought that I'm really surprised that
Gun went in that direction and signal things in that direction.
And so what it does is it shows you, you know,
(21:41):
the need for yes, people that come from the outside,
but also yes they have to if they want to
join a nation, if they want to join if someone
from the outside wants to join your team or your
company or your nation, they have to have an allegiance
to the reason why they're there. They can't own, only
care for the place where they come from on the outside.
(22:04):
And that is in some ways what is happening now,
like all of the madness of so many things that
are happening in the narrative, you know, several of the wars,
but then also the immigration crisis the United States, the
illegal immigration crisis, all of these are this story shaking,
which is, you know, how can we integrate things from
(22:25):
the outside, you know, without being dissipated, without being completely
taken over, and without our strength moving towards outer or
foreign interests. So, you know, and if you pay attention
right all of that, whether it is the way in
which people are trying to suggest that, you know, the
(22:48):
right wing people are beholden to Russia, or whether it's
now people trying to say that Americas behold into Israel,
or whether it's trying to say, you know, all of
these different narrative everything about also the problem of you know,
millions of immigrants coming from the southern border are all
about how do we both understand America as as a
(23:14):
nation that integrates people from the outside, But how do
we formulate that integration as a true integration and one
that serves the interests of the place itself and not
and not the and not give power to the outside.
And so Superman in some ways, in his in his
imagery is the best example of that is a beautiful
(23:36):
example of someone who comes from the outside and puts
his strength to the service of the place where he is.
You know, this is of course the story also that's
kind of playing out in the movie in the series Invincible,
you know, surprised to see also this coming into the
Superman story. But these are the questions that are important.
(23:57):
And uh and but I would say, you know, if
you want to watch a movie, I would say, go
see the Superman movie. It's worth. It's worth in some
ways rewarding. People are not going insane. There are still
tropes that are annoying in it. Of course, the bad
guys Russian you know, of course, you know, I mean,
there are things that are that are just kind of
(24:18):
kind of tedious in the in the movie. But I
would say most of all, it's just a basic kind
of action superhero story that tries to recapture the power
of the first superhero in a way that I think
is is done quite well. And so thanks everybody for
your attention. Hope you enjoy this and to talk to
you very soon. Bye bye. If you enjoy these videos
(24:40):
and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic world dot com
website and see how you can support what we're doing.
There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel
in books to purchase, So go to the symbolic world
dot com and thank you for your support.
Hello, everyone. I went to see the Superman movie. I've
been kind of out of the superhero movie stuff for
a while now because it was so horrible, and you know,
I heard that this one was different, and because I
did like the James Gunn movies in Marvel, figured i'd
go see the movie. And I have to say that
I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a great movie. It's
(00:21):
pretty mid in general in terms of movies, but it
definitely wasn't woke. I have to say. It wasn't d I.
It wasn't It didn't have all of the the annoying
characteristics and the kind of preachiness that you see in
that you've been seeing in movies now for the past
two decades. It was a Superman movie, a basic Superman movie.
(00:43):
There was, of course, one trope that was changed, and
I'll mention that at the end of the video if
you don't want to get spoiled. But I wanted mostly
at the outset to look at the symbolism of Superman
and to kind of understand the symbolism of Superman, especially
in terms of it's a American narrative you could call it,
or you could also call it something like again post
(01:06):
World War two consensus narrative. Of course Superman comes from
before World War Two. But there is already that story
of the relationship, let's say, between two different types of
thinking of the excess of the one and the excess
of the many, was already there before World War Two.
It's just that because the Allies are the ones who
(01:27):
won during World War Two, that story, you know, you
could say, the Superman's story, the American story, became the trope,
or became the pattern for most storytelling, at least in
the West. And what is that story? This is Jonathan Pegel,
(01:54):
Welcome to the symbolic world. Now. The first thing to
understand about Superman, just from a conceptual level, I really
do believe that it is to understand it as a
(02:16):
reaction or as as a comment on Nietzsche's uber Mensh.
In some ways, Superman is very much not directly on
the uber mans per se, but on a vision or
an interpretation of the uber Mansh as was being developed
in Germany with the kind of slow rise of fascistic ideas.
(02:39):
The Superman character becomes in some ways a reaction to that,
to that, whether conscious or not, it doesn't really matter.
It's a different type of Superman. What's the difference between
the one Superman and the other. And so Superman is,
first of all, was created by two Jewish writers, and
in some ways I do believe that it does reflect,
(03:02):
if not their personal experience, but in some ways the
reality of the Jewish reality in Europe and the Jewish
reality in the world for the past few thousand years,
which is in some ways to be a stranger in
a strange land. You know. You can also of course
understand the destruction of Crypton and the exiling of Superman
(03:23):
into a strange land, as you know, the destruction of
Jerusalem and the exiling of the Jews into strange land.
And so that is the one thing that is important.
But that narrative of the let's say, the stranger that
is exiled and is now living in this strange land
gets in some ways tagged on to the very story
(03:45):
of the United States as a kind of federation, This
idea of a group of diverse people of different people
that kind of come into a place and decide to
make a project together and decide to ally themselves in
order to exist together. But this existence together is very
much focused on the individual on individual rights, on difference
(04:10):
as a kind of you know, a kind of power
that you can tap into, and multiplicity as a power
that you can tap into. Now, you know, these narratives
aren't completely clean, of course, you understand they are all
kinds of little counter narratives. But if you kind of
see it basically generally as a basic story that it
was especially becoming true in twentieth century America, especially, you know,
(04:36):
moving towards the second part of the twentieth century, with
the civil rights movement kind of becoming important and all
of these different things happening, the World War Two consensus
kind of setting itself down, Then the story of Superman
crystallizes as really an important story in American's America's mythology. Now,
(05:00):
which interesting about the superhero genre itself, and of course
Superman is the first superhero, and to represent it very
much is that there are a lot of things butting
up against each other. One is, of course, people talk
about the superheroes as the gods. That is a very
big mistake. The superheroes are not the gods. They're more
(05:21):
like demigods. They're more like they're more like Gargoyle's right,
they're more like these hybrid figures that protect the world
from danger. And that's why the superheroes look the way
they do, right, They're not the ones that participate in
(05:42):
the unitary identity of the world. They're always strange in
some ways. They always kind of come from the outside.
So you have Superman is an alien from another planet,
Batman dresses up as an animal, and the Scary you have,
you know, Martian Manhunter for Goodness Stake, you have Wonder
Woman who's in Amazon. You know, all of these superheroes.
You have this weird sense that in some ways they
(06:05):
are more like exterior things coming together, joining in a
kind of league in order to defend the world against
any So they have much more in common with protector
figures in that sense, more much more in common with
gargoyle type activities than they do with the idea of
(06:26):
the gods themselves. So maybe they're like little titular spirits,
but like titular spirits in the really in the apotropeic sense,
that is, in the sense of something strong and scary
that you put on the border in order to stop
the stop the invaders from coming outside. And in that case,
because that's what they are, they also have something in
(06:47):
common with that which is from the outside, right, And
so what does Superman protect us against? You see it
in Superman too, especially he protects us against the He
protects us against the the the Kryptonians, right, he protects
us against things that are similar to where he comes from.
You know. The stranger that enters in and then gets
(07:13):
joined to the unity of the group is the best
tool you have in order to fight that which comes
from the outside. If you think about how, for example,
the Byzantine Emperor had a Ringian guard. He had all
these Scandinavians that he hired in his service, and they
would come to Byzantium and then would owe everything to him,
(07:33):
of course, because he's the one who brought them there,
and so therefore became very loyal to the emperor and
was able to defend the emperor against outer threat and
also defend the emperor against people who would be corrupt
in his own organization. So this is of course the
model that we're looking at when we're looking at figures
like Superman or like the superheroes. In some ways, it
(07:55):
is the power of the convert, right, the power of
the convert who who comes into the church from the
outside and then becomes a Christian and then has a
kind of zeal to defend the church against heresy and
to defend the church against people from the outside. And
it's the same in some ways with the immigrant who
kind of really wants to come in and to join
(08:17):
into the nation. And once that person has joined, you know,
once they've been let in, you could say they owe
so much to the people that let them in that
now they become And also because they know about what's
on the outside, they kind of come from the outside,
they have the power of the outside, if you can say,
a kind of strength of the border, a strength of
(08:37):
the outside, so they can then turn that strength towards
the outer power. There are all kinds of stories like that.
There are insane stories that we use in God's Dog.
Legends that we use in God's Dog. For example of
Saint mer Curius who encounters the dog headed men and
then he converts these dog headed men to his service.
(08:58):
But then when he faced his monsters and when he
face his enemies, he can kind of turn the dog
headed men against the enemies. And so he has these
monstrous converts that come in and then they become the
best tool to fight on the outside. And so this
is what in some ways Superman represents. And so what
makes Superman, though, such a perfect superhero? Why is he
(09:23):
the perfect superhero? And it is because Superman in some
ways is the integrated stranger. He is the fully integrated stranger.
He is someone who has this identity from the outside
and in this sense also a very powerful identity, one
which is kind of a sense of almost like heavenly
(09:45):
royal or scientifically advanced. That's the version you get, of
course in the can I say this, that's the twentieth
century version of that, which is like this highly technically
advanced civilization that he's left and that he's kind of
brought with him, you could say. And he has all
of that power, the power of the outside, but he
(10:07):
fully joins to the nation. That is that he submits itself.
He submits himself, especially in the early comics of the
American way, he fights for the country that has adopted him.
He also passes for one of the people, for the
people of the nation. So his Clark Kent figure is
(10:27):
completely integrated into society. He doesn't stand out, he doesn't
he doesn't you know, try to go against the grain,
try to impose his Kryptonian ways on the humans. Rather,
he takes on completely the identity of the people inside,
and he only manifests, you could say, his strangeness when
(10:50):
he is defending the nation or defending his new home
from outside attackers or from corruption within. And so because
of that, that's why in some ways he becomes the
perfect superhero, because he is he both has the power
of this outside monstrous kind of strange, extraterrestrial alien sense,
(11:14):
but then he is also completely devoted to the people
that he has joined, and he uses his strength to
defend the world against the evils from the outside that
are coming to attack it. So that's why, in some
ways Superman is such a perfect superhero. And it's also
i think a reason a good image of what America
(11:38):
the United States can be if America is properly aligned,
which is to understand that, you know, when more hardright
wing people say, you know, America isn't a land of immigrants,
it's like America is the land of immigrants, folks. America,
you know, its whole narrative is about people gathering people
(12:00):
from the outside and then joining them to the nation.
In a way that is a melting pot and in
a way that brings about the American identity. But that
is what gives the strength. That's an aspect of the
identity of America that gives its strength is that it
is capable of bringing in a lot of difference in multiplicity,
(12:20):
but then it does join it to its to itself.
So what is the power of the immigrant, the power
of the immigrant. If the immigrant gives himself to the
new identity, you kind of unleash this secret power, right,
the secret power of the convert, the secret power of
the newcomer that has all this new energy and that
(12:42):
once it's joined to the group, then radiates out. Right.
It's the secret power of the Norman conversion that when
the Normans convert to Christianity, they bring in this new
secret power and then they go out and they you know,
they basically become they they do the crusades because it's
this kind of new energy that joins with this this
(13:04):
world and then radiates out. And so this is one
of the important things about Superman, and I think it
also speaks in some ways to the if we come
back to Siegul and Schuster, who created Superman in some ways,
it comes back to one to one of the aspects
that has made America so powerful is that one of
(13:26):
the things that the United States did is that they
welcome the Jewish people that were excluded from all the
different nations. And so they said to the Jews that
were being that were being kind of beaten on in
Russia during the around the times of the Russian Revolution,
and they said, you can come to America. The same
(13:48):
with those in Europe that are being persecuted, and they said,
come to America. And in some ways the deal was
come to America. But it's the same deal as everybody else,
like put your service in put your intelligence, put your capacities,
put your strength in service of the nation. And that
is one aspect of what has made the United States
(14:11):
so great. So for those who have been following, we
are about to launch our new Rapunzel books very soon.
We were so excited to get this into people's hands
that we actually airshipped about one thousand copies and some
people were able to access those one thousand copies we
sold I think it was nine hundred copies we had
on sale. We sold nine hundred copies in like twenty
(14:32):
six hours. And so I'm really excited to see how,
you know, people reading it and getting the first glimpses.
We already have some reviews coming in. It was also
a way for us to test our new shipping service
and our new distribution service, and we couldn't believe it.
People were getting their books. Some got it on the
same day that they ordered it, other people's got them
(14:53):
one day two days later, and so we're really happy
to see this new distribution system work out. And so
we decided that the book is going to be launching
explicitly in about a month, but we decided to still
do a pre order for those who are interested because
I recorded an audiobook version of the Rapunzel Book, and
(15:14):
we also put together a kind of worksheet to go
through the story with your kids, with your family. So
we thought we could offer that to those who were
willing to pre order the book. Those that already bought
the first very first one thousand copies were able to
get in, and so we wanted to extend that offer
to those who wanted to pre order, and so go
to rapunzelbook dot com and get your book. I cannot
(15:35):
wait for people to read this because this is where
the story gets interesting. This is where the threads are
going to start to come together and where the characters
are going to start to repeat. So get in on
Tales for once and ever. This is the third book.
We still got a whole bunch coming. We've got three
books that are in production right now, and so yeah, excited.
(15:56):
This is the thing that gets me the most excited
is this fairy Tale project. Thanks to everybody and go
get your book. One of the problems that is happening
now this is in some ways that kind of the
end of the World War two consensus or like that.
How it's starting to mess with people's minds is that
(16:16):
if Superman had come and had tried to, let's say,
was serving the interest of Krypton while he was in
America and it wasn't clear what his allegiance was, right,
whether his allegiance was to America or to Crypton, then
he would he could not be the same character. He
(16:39):
could not be Superman, he could not have the power
that he has, and in some ways he would be
constantly suspect of being a trader, constantly suspect of serving
the interest of something which is from the outside. Now,
now it comes to the New Superman movie, which I'm
going to spoil for you, so if you haven't seen
(17:00):
it yet, you can maybe stop watching the video right now.
And so one of the things they do in the
New Superman movie is they change one aspect of his
origin story. What they do is that when Superman arrives,
there's a video with the spaceship and there's a message
from his parents that tell him to kind of join
(17:21):
to this new country. It's a beautiful new planet, and
to join himself with these people. And I think it
says to like serve these people. But then half of
the message is corrupted and so he only hears the
first half, and that's what leads him to become Superman, right,
So basically he serves the people he has this kind
of serves the good of the nation of the planet
(17:45):
where he is. But then in the movie they figure
out a way to decode the last part of the message,
and they find out that in the second part of
the message, his parents basically say, you know, you're the powerful,
they're very weak, you know, and so dominate them, rule
over them. And then he also like basically inseminate as
many human women as possible in order to kind of
(18:06):
repopulate the world with the Kryptonian the Kryptonian lineage, you know.
And so because of that, all of a sudden, now
Superman is rightly so in the movie, rightly so suspect
of being a kind of a foreign agent. He's suspect
of being a foreign influence. Of all of a sudden,
(18:29):
his power becomes dangerous for the for the United States
because why is he doing it? Right? Is he doing
it because he wants to take the strength of America
and give it to the Kryptonian lineage, take the strength
of American, give it to the Kryptonian power, and subjugate
that power to himself. And so it's I found it
(18:50):
to be a very smart move, a very interesting thing
to do, because in some ways, what James Gunn does
is he says, you know, the danger of people coming
from from the outside is real, Like it's real if
the people that come from the outside and join to
your group are still have a strong allegiance to the
(19:11):
place where they come from. Because in some ways you're
taking the power right. In Proverbs five, it talks about
the idea is you know that beware the strange woman,
beware the loose woman. You know her tongue drips honey,
but her feet are down in shale, and it says
to beware of her because what she will do is
she will basically take your strength and give it to
(19:33):
the stranger. She'll take your identity and she'll dissipate it
out into something else which is not you. And so
I was really surprised and kind of impressed by the
fact that James Gunn dares to make that part of
his story to say that, you know, the Kryptonians can
be represented as this invader in some ways, right, the
(19:55):
alien invader that tries to take over. But that what
happens is that super Man realizes that he finds more
value in his adopted home and that he kind of
swears allegiance to his adopted parents, realizes that they're the
ones who really gave him his values. They're the ones
that have provided for him a home to live, and
(20:17):
so he basically switches and then starts to instead of
playing that message from his Kryptonian parents, he then watches
these videos of when he was a child being raised
by his very very American parents. Surprising again in the
movie is that he gives those parents a Southern accent
that might seem like a detail, but that is not
(20:38):
a detail in American iconography, which is that the Southern
accent in American Hollywood iconography is usually to show someone
as being stupid, or to show someone as being backwards
and as being you know, kind of hicic like and
(20:59):
and social regressive. All of these are what is being
signaled in American movies and in American media when they
show someone with a Southern accent, which is why most
people that enter into media try to get rid of
their Southern accent. Which in the movie, of course Superman
does that, you know, so we could. I don't know
what that exactly means, but nonetheless, what he ends up
(21:21):
doing is he ends up kind of giving his allegiance
to his southern you know, kind of homegrown parents. And
I found that to be a very beautiful thing in
some ways, and I thought that I'm really surprised that
Gun went in that direction and signal things in that direction.
And so what it does is it shows you, you know,
(21:41):
the need for yes, people that come from the outside,
but also yes they have to if they want to
join a nation, if they want to join if someone
from the outside wants to join your team or your
company or your nation, they have to have an allegiance
to the reason why they're there. They can't own, only
care for the place where they come from on the outside.
(22:04):
And that is in some ways what is happening now,
like all of the madness of so many things that
are happening in the narrative, you know, several of the wars,
but then also the immigration crisis the United States, the
illegal immigration crisis, all of these are this story shaking,
which is, you know, how can we integrate things from
(22:25):
the outside, you know, without being dissipated, without being completely
taken over, and without our strength moving towards outer or
foreign interests. So, you know, and if you pay attention
right all of that, whether it is the way in
which people are trying to suggest that, you know, the
(22:48):
right wing people are beholden to Russia, or whether it's
now people trying to say that Americas behold into Israel,
or whether it's trying to say, you know, all of
these different narrative everything about also the problem of you know,
millions of immigrants coming from the southern border are all
about how do we both understand America as as a
(23:14):
nation that integrates people from the outside, But how do
we formulate that integration as a true integration and one
that serves the interests of the place itself and not
and not the and not give power to the outside.
And so Superman in some ways, in his in his
imagery is the best example of that is a beautiful
(23:36):
example of someone who comes from the outside and puts
his strength to the service of the place where he is.
You know, this is of course the story also that's
kind of playing out in the movie in the series Invincible,
you know, surprised to see also this coming into the
Superman story. But these are the questions that are important.
(23:57):
And uh and but I would say, you know, if
you want to watch a movie, I would say, go
see the Superman movie. It's worth. It's worth in some
ways rewarding. People are not going insane. There are still
tropes that are annoying in it. Of course, the bad
guys Russian you know, of course, you know, I mean,
there are things that are that are just kind of
(24:18):
kind of tedious in the in the movie. But I
would say most of all, it's just a basic kind
of action superhero story that tries to recapture the power
of the first superhero in a way that I think
is is done quite well. And so thanks everybody for
your attention. Hope you enjoy this and to talk to
you very soon. Bye bye. If you enjoy these videos
(24:40):
and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic world dot com
website and see how you can support what we're doing.
There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel
in books to purchase, So go to the symbolic world
dot com and thank you for your support.
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