September 6, 2024 • 40 mins
Discover the surprising origins of the world's first Superhero, and how, in many ways, he was always on an inevitable collision course with America's most insidious vision of itself.
___________
This podcast was hosted by Marc Bernardin and Roth Cornet.
Created and Executive Produced
Roth Cornet
Executive Producers
Max Dionne and Michael Chiang
Producers and Writers:
Nancy Rosenbaum
Loretta Williams
Teru Brach
Michelle Dunn
Eileen Guo
Billy Patterson
Gordie Loewen
Brett Boham
Roth Cornet
and Marc Bernardin
Audio Engineer
Brett Boham
Researchers
Lauren Schwein
Ilana Strauss
Fact Checker
Steven Crighton
Recording was done by
Forever Dog Productions
and
Voice Trax
Special Thanks To:
Caleb Schneider
Sasha Perl-Raver
Brett Weiner
Eric Eisenberg
Soni Benson
Anne Brashier
Shanna Whitlow
Joe Starr
Avital Ash
Dena Crowder
Danielle Radford
Spencer Gilbert
Lon Harris
Pei Chiu
___________
This podcast was hosted by Marc Bernardin and Roth Cornet.
Created and Executive Produced
Roth Cornet
Executive Producers
Max Dionne and Michael Chiang
Producers and Writers:
Nancy Rosenbaum
Loretta Williams
Teru Brach
Michelle Dunn
Eileen Guo
Billy Patterson
Gordie Loewen
Brett Boham
Roth Cornet
and Marc Bernardin
Audio Engineer
Brett Boham
Researchers
Lauren Schwein
Ilana Strauss
Fact Checker
Steven Crighton
Recording was done by
Forever Dog Productions
and
Voice Trax
Special Thanks To:
Caleb Schneider
Sasha Perl-Raver
Brett Weiner
Eric Eisenberg
Soni Benson
Anne Brashier
Shanna Whitlow
Joe Starr
Avital Ash
Dena Crowder
Danielle Radford
Spencer Gilbert
Lon Harris
Pei Chiu
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Right, Superman and his role of podcent mild Manners reporter
comes faith to faith with the most dangerous man in
the world, a man I'll take.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Really. White supremacy is the foundation for our country.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I think it was actually pretty bold. They have a
Superman fight the KKK in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
In Tolerances Are Filthy Week, Jim I told you before
the only way you can get rid of it is
by hunting out the roots and pulling them out of
the ground.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
But Superman isn't about the con Tipperary society. He's about
the aspirations of the high ideals of American society.
Speaker 6 (00:39):
This is a podcast about two powerful opposing forces going
into battle. On one side, Superman, comic book icon, the
original champion of truth, justice and the American Way. On
the other side, the KKK, born of one of the
United States foundational evils, white supremacy.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Both are distinctly American creation, and when you put them
side by side, they represent very different notions about what
America is and what it should aspire to be. So
what happened when these two forces came face to face?
Speaker 6 (01:13):
What happened when they each, in their own way and
time use the potent power of the media and pop
culture to try and convince us of their vision. Well,
that's exactly what we're here to tell you about. And
when you boil it all down, what we're actually talking
about is a very real superpower. It's the power of
the mass media to control information and perceptions and thus
(01:35):
to control your mind. I'm Mark Bernard and I'm Roth Cornett,
and this is Fandom Presents Superman versus the KKK.
Speaker 7 (01:47):
Mark.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
We're both pop culture junkies, film critics, and producers, so
it's essentially our job to dissect different forms of media
and to code the messages they're delivering to audiences. Whether
those messages are explicit and written in neon lights are
a little more subtle in subconscious.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Everything is about something right, and that can be intentional
or accidental, but there's always something going on under the surface,
and very often it's reflective of the society that produced it.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
And we also grew up with Superman.
Speaker 7 (02:14):
In the Great Hall of the Justice League.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
My first Superman was in the Super Friends, and of
all the Superman you could grow up with, it's probably
the lightest of lightweight.
Speaker 8 (02:23):
Superman.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
What did you love about it?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Because he was a great team member, even though for
most of Superman's existence he was a solo act. The
idea that in the super Friends he could be your
friend and he could be the dude that rolled with
you and did cool stuff. Come on, what's better than that?
Speaker 6 (02:40):
I love that, and that's going to play play into
the future as we talk about why people love Superman
and the idea of teamwork. Well for me, and I
don't think you would judge me, but it is a
bit basic, But it was the Donner films that imprinted
on me, especially Superman too.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Superman General, would you care to step outside?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Weird analogy, but kind of like The Last Temptation of Christ,
which I also loved as a little kid. I adored
the idea that this god or god liked being, just
wanted a normal human life. And that's so beautiful to me,
and I think it illustrates how we're all missing what
we already have, you know, like little kid stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
At least he wasn't punching radioactive villains into the sun,
which did happen yes in Superman four, which also yes,
is not as bad as you remember it, nia, I
swear if you look at it again, it's a pretty
decent Superman movie that falls off a cliff. But as
much as we both have a deep love of Superman,
neither of us had deep knowledge of some of the
(03:37):
characters' early history, like how the big Blue schoolboy became
so synonymous with the most American values and ideas. I mean,
how did that even happen?
Speaker 6 (03:44):
Right, and before Superman was a billion dollar movie franchise
and the anchor of massive corporate initiatives, he was a
caped crusader in comics and on the radio.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
This part of our story goes back way back to
mid nineteen forties, when the Superman radio show turned its
attention for battling mad scientists and evil geniuses to a
real life terror.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right, Superman and his role of part det mild mannered
reporter comes face to fight with the most dangerous menace
in the world. We mena all take.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
This is the setup to the Adventures of Superman radio
drama Circle nineteen forty six. During World War Two, Superman
battled Nazi spies and Japanese forces. But after the war ended,
Superman needed a new villain to go up against, so
the scriptwriters of Adventures of Superman and its ad execs
decided to write a new series of stories. They unofficially
called it Operation Intolerance.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Operation Intolerance included storylines where Superman fights bigots and racist
and as we'll discover, this was actually returning to the
character's roots in some respects.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And probably one of the best known stories from this
time was called Clan of the Fiery Cross. It came
out in June nineteen forty six and over sixteen episodes,
Superman battled a KKK like group that was terrorizing the
Chinese American family named the Leeds. Here's Clark Kent mild Manner,
reporter for a Great Metropolitan newspaper, telling cub reporter Jimmy
Elson why the Clan of the Fiery Cross was so dangerous.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
The Clan of the Fiery Cross is made up of
intolerant biggest Jim. They don't judge a man in the
decent American way by his own qualities. They judge him
by what church he goes to and by the color
of his skin.
Speaker 8 (05:19):
By the cheapers.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
You mean, yes, this bigoted mob is against Tommy Lee
and his family because they're Chinese. Gosh, intolerance is a
filthy weed, Jim. I told you before the only way
you can get rid of it is by hunting out
the roots and pulling them out of the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Intolerance is a filthy weed.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
Roth.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I mean like, I'm not sure you could put
that or they would put this on the air today.
And this was more than seventy years ago.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
I know, I mean HBO maybe, but yeah, limited not
a radio, not for kids.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
No.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I noticed that Clark uses the phrase decent American way.
This is the nineteen forties, and as many of us know,
Superman became famous for the phrase truth justice in the
American Way.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Yes, that's kind of the essence of this thing. These
two powerful cultural forces, a comic book superhero and the
KKK battling it out for the very definition of the
American way and the answer to the question who does
America belong to?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
This is a question that has haunted the United States
since its very beginning, since the moment that the idea
of universal equality, well universal equality for white men, was
contaminated with the idea that some were less than fully human.
Speaker 6 (06:30):
This is the dynamic tension that is the foundation of
the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Superman argues for an America that includes everyone. This, even
in the nineteen forties included people who had historically struggled
in America, like African Americans.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
The KKK was created after the Civil War specifically to terrorize, control, brutalize,
and murder newly freed black Americans in the South.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
And it's continued to do that for well over one
hundred years now. It later would add Jews, Catholics, basically
anyone who wasn't white, Anglo Saxon Protestant to the of
those who were not, in their minds one hundred percent American.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
And as we'll see, in the nineteen twenties, they hired
this tiny PR firm to help them pattern, refine, and
deliver their messaging. They packaged and sold hate. And that's
the thing that really blew my mind when I first
discovered this story. The leaders of both the KKK and
the people that made Superman into a pop culture icon
(07:24):
both used some very sophisticated PR and media tools in
this struggle to ultimately define America.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
But before Superman could represent the American way, someone had
to create Superman.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
And that's what we're going to dive into now. I mean,
every superhero needs an origin story, but what we're going
to tell you is the origin story of the people
who created the original superhero. So it's the origin story
of the origin story.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Very meta.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Among the people chasing the American dream and running up
against its conflicting origins were Superman's creators.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
That was Joe and Jerry. You know, Joe Schuster and
Jerry Siegel. They're two jowish kids who first dreamed up
this character that we would recognize as Superman, and while
still going to high school in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Kids who were not the cool kids in the school, right.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
That's Rick Bowers, who literally wrote the book on Superman
Versus the KKK.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
They were kind of shunned. They didn't have girlfriends, they
didn't have dates, but they had science fiction and in
a way they had something that was going to become big.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
So photos of the two showed Jerry's earnest face and
Joe's brooding days, and they look like two regular, I
guess in their mind, nerdy guys. I just think they
look like handsome guys, normal guys.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
They look like dudes from the thirties.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
Here's how Jerry describes himself in an interview with the
BBC in nineteen eighty one like.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
Joe, I was quite meek and I was quite mild,
and there were attractive girls around who was just didn't
all this I exist and just didn't care at all,
you know, of her for me. And I thought you
it wouldn't it be great if I was a mighty
person and these girls didn't know that this clot here
has really said somebody special. Ad helped lead to this
(09:10):
whole triangle setup of Clark, Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Joe and Jerry met in high school and bonded over
their love of science fiction.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
From the beginning, Joe did illustrations and Jerry wrote the scripts.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Their first collaboration was Goober the Mighty, which, if you're
like a sort of preteen kid today, you realize that
you can't call a comic book Goober the Mighty and
not expect something else entirely. But it's a Tarzan parody,
so I guess we'll swing with it.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
I mean, my take really is like this is the
moment where they're just trying to figure out their voice together.
You know, they're experimenting with different things, They're taking what
they love from different aspects of media. You know, they
love masked teros in the movies, and they love amazing
stories and they love science fiction, so they love tales
(09:57):
from outer space, and eventually they're gonna take those stories
and it's going to lead them to Superman eventually. So
for Jerry, it was those stories that inspired him, and
he talks about it again for the BBC and to.
Speaker 9 (10:08):
Fill you in a little under really the beginning of
it all one night, ideas kept coming to me and
I kept getting up again and again during the night
and just johnny down these ideas and these scripts. Until
very early the next morning, I dashed over to Joe's house,
which is about ten blocks away. I showed him the
(10:29):
script of Superman, the entirely new concept in which there
would be a meek mild man of reported Clark Kent
Lois Lane who scorned him, but who was who flipped
over Superman, not knowing that Superman and Clark Kent were
winning the same personnel. You want to stay, you want
to stay with. Your reaction was when.
Speaker 10 (10:50):
Very very excited about the whole idea, I just I
just took on the same enthusiasm. I thought it was
a terrific idea and we went right to work right
then and there.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
So they're doing a little bit of wish fulfillment. You know,
they're writing about strong men that get the girl. But
a lot of their stories are also steeped in how
they grew up in Glenville, Ohio. They're in this middle
class Jewish suburb of Cleveland, and Rick Bauer says Glenville
was the American dream come true for tens of thousands
of Jewish residents, so that part of their identity also
finds itself imbued and who will become Superman.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
They were living in this almost utopian place, this Jewish
community where people lived in nice houses, went to nice schools.
You know, met different kinds of people, some who were
like them, some who were different, and that their overriding interests,
their passion was to be part of the American fabric.
(11:51):
They didn't want to just be part of the Jewish community.
They wanted to be part of the American story. And
their whole mode motivation was to rise above that status
of immigrant and be accepted as part of the main stream.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Siegel was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in nineteen fourteen. His
father ran a clothing store.
Speaker 6 (12:18):
Schuster was born in Toronto, where his dad worked as
a tailor, and the family moved to Cleveland when he
was ten, so.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They had that uncommon clothing. Both Siegel and Shusta's families
had Jewish roots in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Their families were a part of this Jewish exodus that
fled this horrible persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn
of the century. So that has to play into family
memory and family story, right, And it feels like that
likely could have inspired the Superman origin story, the idea
that this baby must flee the ruin of his original world.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, stories don't exist and aren't created in a vacuum.
You know, every storyteller has a reason why they're telling
their stories. And for these two guys, who you know,
were born in this place, who had family who came
from that place, every bit of it is part of
the building blocks of whose Superman would become. There's this guy,
(13:17):
Rabbi Simcle Weinstein wrote a book with the best title
I've ever heard, perhaps up up in Ouve, how Jewish history, culture,
and value shape the comic book Superhero. In it, he says,
it's easy to see that Joe and Jerry put their
Jewish heritage onto the page with Superman. They were Bob Mitzford.
They grew up with biblical archetypes. Writers write about what
(13:38):
they know about, and these were their heroes. This was
very much their mythology.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
So this is their lived experience, right. They're hearing about
this in the home, and when they go to synagogue,
they're hearing about these ideas, and then subconsciously or not,
Superman embodies these Jewish principles and the Jewish experience. For instance,
there's a Hebrew word sadaka, and it stands for this
bigger idea of righteousness and serving the less fortunate, you know,
(14:07):
standing up for the week and exploited.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That sounds a lot like Superman exactly.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
And then there's this other concept in Judaism called takun alam,
and it's about the responsibility that humans have to repair
the world, or as I learned it, to repair a
broken world, which I think is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And again totally on brand for Superman.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
Yep, here's Bowers.
Speaker 8 (14:28):
Again.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I think a lot of it is unconscious. So clearly
they had learned about the Moses story, for example, and
that I think is in the back of their minds.
But think of Moses floating down the Nile in a
basket to be found by strangers and raised in a
(14:51):
loving family to change the world. Hello, that's the exact
story of Superman.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Like Bauer says, there's one hundred percent parallels between the
story of Superman and the story of Moses. And I
can only really do this if I channel my best
Eel Brenner, so you'll have to excuse me. Moses was
born into the world, but people faced inn hihilation.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Kellel, the birth name of Superman, is born into a
world that is about to explode.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Baby Moses is put into a smaller basket and floated
down the nile by his mother.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Baby Kellel is put into a ship and shot into space.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Moses is raising an alien environment where he must conceal
this true.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
Identity Baby Kell's case, it's somewhere on a farm in
the Midwest, where he becomes Clark Kent and hides his
real identity.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Moses reveals a calling from God to use his powers
to liberate his people from tyranny.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
Clark's parents teach him to use his powers for the
benefit and protection of humanity.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Ooh, I realized that some of that Eil Brenner slid
into James Earl Jones slid into like Wakanda a little bit.
But I think the message is clear.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
I think the message is clear, and I think I
learned two very important lessons. One is that I have
no Yule Brenner and the second is that it's clear
like champion of the oppressed, this ethos, it permeated what
Joe and Jerry were writing truth justice in the American way.
That was the marketing and pr language that was used
later on during the radio show, and that's what helped
(16:23):
to create an icon. But this idea of saving the
little guy, that that was there at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Absolutely to stand up for the little guy. So we've
sort of heard a bit about how Joe and Jerry
sort of grew up and the environment that nurtured them
and raised them and helped give birth to Superman. But
it's also really clear looking back that being Jewish in
America in the nineteen thirties wasn't easy at all. Anti
Semitism was all around. Here's the Rabbi simcra Weinstein once more.
Speaker 11 (16:52):
So, I think they grew up possibly in the most
antisemitic period in American history.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Weinstein points out in his book what he means by
the most anti Semitic period.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I mean the classifieds in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper
were filled with job ads that blunt laid state no
Jews need apply.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
And there's country clubs in exclusive neighborhoods that refused to
accept Jewish members.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Ivy Ley colleges had Jewish quotas you could only have,
but so many Jewish students on those campuses.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
All of this prejudice meant that many avenues were closed
down to Jewish kids like Joe and Jerry. But early
on they saw how their teenage obsession with comics might
be a way to make a living. Here's Weinstein again.
Speaker 11 (17:33):
Jews were barred from a lot of industries. It was
hard to get into advertising, all the mainstream arts. They
didn't have the money to go to art schools. Comic
books at the time they were a joke. They were
like the pulper comic given out for free in the
middle of a newspaper. There were no barriers to entry.
The door was open, which is why I think many
(17:54):
Jews and many Italian immigrants at the time were entering
the industry. There was just it was just an easy
thing to get into and I don't think anyone envisions
what was to come from these creations.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Yeah, just kind of riffing on that, Like, we really
have to remember that when we think about getting into comics,
it is not what we would think later on or today.
It didn't exist in that form it was being created.
I mean, superheroes as a genre was about to be
invented by these two kids.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, I mean comics at the time was very much
like crime stories and romances and westerns, you know, and
it was in lots of ways seen as a degenerate art.
I mean even when I broke into it, I was
a degenerate. So I was also trying to become part
of a long lineage of degenerates making degenerate art. But
you know, the comics at the time were not nearly
(18:43):
as quote unquote respected as they are now. And so,
graduating high school in nineteen thirty four, as Joe and
Jerry did, they did what any aspiring creator would do.
They started pitching their ideas to New York publishers, but
nobody then wanted a Superman. They managed to get a
few jobs, help hit the bills, and they also noticed
that the world around them was getting uglier and uglier.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
On February twentieth, nineteen thirty nine, a Nazi rally took
place in New York City at Madison Square Garden, organized
by the pro Hitler group German American Bund. More than
twenty thousand people attended the event, which took place in
front of a huge portrait of George Washington planked by
two swastikas. Keynote speaker Fritz Julius Kuhnen, the leader of
(19:24):
the BUND, incited the audience with fear mongering about the
quote Jewish communist takeover of American education, government and culture.
Speaker 12 (19:33):
I hear sometimes the question why don't you go back
to Germany if you don't like TeV Wavy any things?
Speaker 8 (19:40):
Here?
Speaker 12 (19:42):
And I add, who is swe.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
Is the Communist?
Speaker 13 (19:48):
The Jewish?
Speaker 12 (19:49):
We I say, we will not fail you in the
fight to pake the trip and the pound side hand
of Jewish commonism in our schools.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
Our own work.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Here's Superman creator Jerry Siegel on the BBC special the
comic strip Hero.
Speaker 9 (20:08):
Back in those days, there was a Nazism was, you know,
rising up and lat e incent people were being killed,
and I felt that the world desperately needed a crusader,
if only a fectional one.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
I don't know if they were really aware of just
how profound and how pervasive these themes were. I think
they were just writing about what they know about.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
This is Rabbi Weinstein again.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
And it's remarkable that, certainly in the if you want
to talk about sort of the earlier years, the fact
that I believe Superman was denounced a Jew in the
presence of Hitler that's actually recorded a data about Goebels
talking about this and Superman being the perversion of the Ubermensh.
And I think it's astounding that these two pishers from
(20:54):
Cleveland go all the way to bull In. I don't
know if that was their initially intention, but I think
they just sort of, you know, what do they say,
lightning in a bottle. I think they just really tapped
into a universal truth that it still rings true to
this day.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
So Jerry and Joe are these two Jewish kids living
in a time of just overwhelming anti Semitism, both here
in the US and increasingly abroad. So they create a
character that embodies many of the Jewish teachings and the
Jewish and tenants of the Jewish faith. That character would
go on to have universal appeal, perhaps because of other influences.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
Jerry has this epiphany that the world didn't need a supervillain,
which is how the character was initially written, but it
does need a superhero. And he has this epiphany in
nineteen thirty four, and that's likely for a number of reasons, like.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The supervillain they wrote just wasn't really finding an audience.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Meanwhile, his own father had been killed in a robbery.
It was in nineteen thirty two. Remember, his dad owned
a clothing store, and one day he was held up
by three robbers and had a heart attack. And Jerry
would have been about seventeen years old then, and that
just has to be a really traumatic personal history for him,
(22:07):
something that would be pretty meaningful to write and rewrite
again and again and basically fix absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
And it was this lived experience or how the world
could be menacing, that there were very real and consequential
dangers all around. And again you knew where these two
kids grew up. Their neighborhood was kind of like a
Jewish bubble, but one in which you could hop in
the car and get to white supremacist preaching a few
hours away. To say, nothing of what was happening across
the world right.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And this is important. The country was also in the
depths of the Great Depression and going through massive political, social,
and economic upheaval, the.
Speaker 13 (22:42):
Great Big Spree. The jazz age is over all over.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
Take a listen to this out take from an educational
film that McGraw hill put out in nineteen fifty nine
called Life in the Thirties.
Speaker 13 (22:53):
In the nineteen twenties, the great American word was prosperity.
Now the thirties have begun, and there is a new word, depression.
And if you're bewildered, panicky at what's happening to you
in your country, you aren't alone. One of America's biggest
industrialists has openly admitted I am afraid. Every man is afraid.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Franklin Delano Roosevelt hashtag. My president was president at the time,
and he was the mastermind of the New Deal. It's
this radical and powerful government program in the nineteen thirties
that helped Americans with jobs and economic relief. I mean
it's saved us.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
My friends.
Speaker 8 (23:32):
Since my Annual Message to the Congress on January fourth, last,
I have not addressed the general public over the air.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Joe and Jerry would have been listeners of FDR's infamous, famous, notorious,
glorious fireside chats such as this one, which is kind
of asking the American public to understand the need for
a national work program and to close their ears to
the naysayers and the doubters.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
It is time to provide a smashing answer. But those
cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest,
cannot be efficient. If you will help, this can be done.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
And it's also really notable that, obviously this is a
podcast about how the media, in all of its forms
is in and of itself a superpower that's used to
create meaning and identity and to spread messages. And that
is exactly how FDR was using one of the greatest
mass media tools of the day, the radio.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Renewed faith in the vast possibilities of human beings to
improve their material and spiritual status through the instrumentality of
the democratic form of government.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Heresrick Bowers again, superman comes out this kind of swinging
new deal do gooder who is going to enforce the
pillars of the new deal. Politician by politician, businessman by businessman,
thug by thlug as.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
The KKK rebranded itself, which we're going to be talking
about in the next episode. They were specifically opposed to
FDR in the New Deal. So in some ways it
feels like we've been talking about that this clash was inevitable.
What Superman sought to represent and the evil that was
the KKK, they were always going to come face to face.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And Bowers isn't the only person to make a connection
to the New Deal. Julian Chambliss is a professor of
English and History at Michigan State University and also a
bit of a comic book expert. He says Superman was
created just as the country was grappling with the idea
that maybe the federal government had a responsibility to take
care of its citizens.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
So when we think about Superman as a kind of
template for the superhero, which in many ways he is,
he's a template that establishes many of the tropes that
we associate with the form. Right, his mission is a
pro social one, meaning that he's doing what he's doing
(25:57):
just to help the community.
Speaker 14 (25:59):
Keep him from the crowd by fellows of dense Whites
spoke burning out of the burning building, Superman wings his
way through the air to attempt a daring rescue of
the girl trapped on the twentieth floor. Flames crackle and
spit like things alive as he reaches the window.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
There are other heroes and other kinds of stories. Maybe
they're doing it for revenge, maybe they're doing the uphole
family honor, maybe they're doing it because of circumstances. But
Superman is unique in some level because he is basically
trying to make the community better, but he's also trying
(26:33):
to uphold a kind of status quote, because he assumes
the community is good, right. And this is one of
the things that I think is very much tied to
the moment of creation, because remember, at the moment of creation,
there is a rise or turn, a kind of coalition
around a kind of regulatory state that it is also
trying to help people, also trying to make sure the
(26:55):
little guy is protected. And so Superman takes this perative
and magnifies it in a very powerful way.
Speaker 6 (27:04):
So we've been talking about that at the core of
his identity, Superman is about helping the little guy, and
people ate that up in the first issue. And maybe
it's because Superman isn't fighting monsters from outer space. At
this point, his villains are the ones that everyone can recognize.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
It's also worth remembering that at the very beginning of
Superman's existence, his power set was incredibly diminished. He couldn't fly,
you know. Heat vision and cold breath were things that
would come in later. He was just kind of really
strong and was leaping over buildings in a single bound,
not leaping into the sky to land on the moon.
So let's look at some of the things, some of
(27:39):
the wild things that Superman was doing when he was
initially created, and how that possibly reflected America's vision of
itself at the time. Like Action number one includes Superman
showing up with the governor's mansion, man handling the butler,
(28:00):
and breaking down the still door of the governor's bedrooms
his bedroom to get the governor to stop the execution
of innocent woman.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
So then Superman actually intercedes on domestic violence and slams
a man who's been beating his wife into a wall.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
He catches a gangster who zacter Lowis Lane and hangs
him from a telephone pole.
Speaker 15 (28:19):
He terrorizes a corrupt lobbyist by tucking the lobbyist under
his arm like a football and jumps from building to
building at great heights, including over the Capitol Building, basically
to scare him a corrupt lobbyist.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
You know, I kind of want to do this next one,
but I know it has a place deep down in
your heart roths, so I think, oh, yeah, I can't.
I can't take this cookie from you.
Speaker 6 (28:42):
You're right, Mark, this is my absolute favor. Superman comes
up with a plot to give a mine owner who
doesn't care about his workers a taste of his own medicine.
So when the mine owner takes his party guests into
his mind Superman, Superman causes the tunnel to collapse, slapping
the party go in there, and then he lets them
try and dig themselves out until they're so tired, and
(29:05):
the mind owner then realizes the error of his ways
and announces that his mind will be quote the safest
in the country, I mean Superman's basically like yeah, how
you like it now?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Like crazy tough love, I mean. In Action Comics number ten,
Superman crashes his car again. Superman can't fly, so he's
got a car and it crashes his car into the
car a prison warden, and then gets into a fistfight
with the warden. Warten's just a dude. Superman is Superman,
so that Superman then in disguise can get sent to
(29:39):
prison so we can expose the torture and mistreatment of prisoners.
Basically like it's an episode of loupin but now with
Superman Slash Clark kn't slash Kalel's. It's out of bounds.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
It's bonkers. And what's awesome about this period is that
he's just allowed to care about people and this really
in human way and to make pretty rough judgment calls
about things like greed and corruption and even capitalism itself
at this time, and that's what we've been talking about,
Like we've been talking about there listening to a FDR
and they're connected to the the New Deal and all
(30:13):
this stuff, but it's in the stories. He is going
after corrupt politician, corrupt capitalists, corrupt businessman the same way
AFDR was, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And Superman was not about at this stage interstellar bad guys.
He wasn't dealing with brainy acs, and he wasn't dealing
with you know, cosmic threats. It was very down there.
It was very grounded. It was very much the kinds
of things your average person was dealing with in their lives.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Here's Julian Chambliss again.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
He's not fighting super villains. He's preventing someone who's wrongly
accused from being executed. He's punishing, like this, reputable business people.
He's undercutting like illegal gambling ring. Right, these are much
more hyper local concerns, and he's protecting the little man
right the next door kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
And it's interesting to us the idea that so many
of these early Superman stories are about forcing your bad guys,
your ne'er dwells, your wrongdoers, onto some understanding of empathy.
It's putting them in the situation where they are suddenly
in the position of the little guy, and so they
have to understand that what they're doing is wrong and.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Why Yeah, And in kind of the softer, kind of
airy fairy version of that, it would be, oh, imagine
yourself walking in another shoes. But no, he's like, I
will trap you into mind until you feel their pain,
and that is what will create epathy. But in this way,
it's like the marriage between this idea of the champion
(31:43):
of the oppressed and the crusader for the little guy
starts to become inevitably connected to this idea of truth
and justice, and.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
From where I sit, his actions are also defining what
he means by the American way. It doesn't mean the
values of big corporate America and other powerful people. The
American Way is about fairness, decency, and tolerance.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
It's interesting, isn't it. We associate Superman with that phrase,
but he actually doesn't even say those words until the
first Superman movie in nineteen seventy eight, And this is
during a scene where Lois is interviewing him for The
Daily Planet.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
I mean, why are you here?
Speaker 3 (32:19):
There must be a reason for you to be here. Yes,
I'm here to fight for truth and justice in the
American way. You're gonna end up fighting every elected official
in this country.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
Sure, you don't really mean that, lost Now, that's the
first time Superman says that phrase, but truth justice in
the American Way became his catchphrase in the nineteen forties,
which has incredible significance, as we'll find out in future episodes.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Even in nineteen seventy eight, Lois Lane hearkens back to
the fight against corrupt politicians the Superman fought from the
very beginning.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
So here's the thing. In addition to these big esoteric
concepts of truth and justice and the American way. Superman
is also inherently political. His identity is political because he's
an Grit, well also as American as you can get.
This is one of his many dualities.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
What Superman was not. He's got no clear ethnicity, no
accent or dialect. Even though he grew up in Kansas,
he was born in a different planet. So those two
things tend to cancel each other out. There's no religion,
no political affiliation. He's simultaneously an immigrant and a foreigner,
and he's of the American heartland. He's urban and sophisticated
(33:25):
and moral and wholesome. He's meek Clark Kent and he's
super strong Superman. And what's the difference between those two
things for him, it's the glasses. The glasses are the
thing that tell both the reader and to a certain degree,
you know, Clark himself, who he's going to be at
any given time, you know, And the glasses, especially in
the thirties and forties, were very much a coded Jewish affect,
(33:49):
you know, it reflected the perception of the time that
you know, Jewish men were somewhat meek and someonet academic
and a little bit nerdy, and so the glasses were
a sort of signal of that, you know, rightly or wrongly,
was the stereotype. And so to make the glasses part
of the story, to make the glasses the way he
reveals himself to be super to make shedding to a
(34:11):
certain degree his jewishness and embracing his wholeness is very much,
I think part of the Superman's story and the way
that character has been coded since its beginning.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
And this seems to be the very question. Is the
reason that Superman has for so many years been directly
linked with americanness. I mean, even though we have Captain America,
because he's able to hold multiple identities. I mean, that's
the American dream, right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Absolutely, you know, and it's part of what it is
and what it means to be an immigrant, and you know,
to be able to be multiple things in multiple places,
to multiple people, and to be able to switch between
them all at a moment's notice. I think that's a
core part of what it means to be an immigrant
in America.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
And one of the things about Superman as a character
is that he's almost the perfect immigrant.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
Here's Julian Chamliss again rives.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
When he's very young.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
He grows up in the heartland, the Midwest, which we
often associate with with like pure American values. Then he
goes to the city and he uses his sort of
like innate immigrant traits and the values that he learned
growing up in the heartland, and he makes the city better.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
So who didn't want to be like that? Who couldn't
relate to that?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Is Bowers again.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So it's interesting that this immigrant story is so ingrained
in the Superman story. And yes, that came from those
two kids in Cleveland whose parents had been immigrants, who
had lived that experience and knew about it intricately, you know,
(35:47):
within the fiber of their beings. I'm always stunned when
I walk down the street and see some little kid
with a Superman T shirt, Like, Holy mackerel. That's what
Jerry and Joe created a loose years ago, and they're
still inspiring people.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Superman becomes crazy popular, incredibly clearly. I mean, the publishers
latch onto his popularity and start saturating the market with
anything everything Superman.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
So Jerry and Joe sells Superman to the company that
becomes DC Comics. In nineteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Eight, Hot on its heels in January of nineteen thirty nine,
the Superman comic strip is syndicated in newspapers, and within
a year you can find Superman strips in nearly three
hundred daily and one hundred Sunday newspapers across the country.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
And by nineteen forty, Superman was being mass produced on
all kinds of merchandise sweatshirts, baseball caps, greeting cards, pajamas.
He even had his own board game.
Speaker 7 (36:38):
Boys and girls, your attention, please come now.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
We talked about the FDR fireside chats and how that
was beginning to use the new medium of radio to
just explode its message. In nineteen forty, the Superman Radio
Show begins.
Speaker 7 (36:52):
Presenting a new exciting radio program featuring the thrilling adventures
of an amazing and incredible personality than an airplane, more
powerful than a locomotive, impervious to pullets up.
Speaker 16 (37:06):
In the sky.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Look it's a plane, It's Superman.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
And then nineteen forty one, the animated shorts are seen
in movie theaters.
Speaker 17 (37:16):
Superman best be in a position to use as amazing
powers and a never ending battle for true justice. Superman
has assumed the skies of Clark Kent mild Man of
Reporter for a Great Metropolitan Newspaper.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
And in forty two truth Justice in the American Way
enters into the Superman lexicon.
Speaker 17 (37:33):
Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers then
see you in his bare hands, and who disguised as
Clark Kent mild Man of Reporter for a Great Metropolitan
Newspaper frits a never ending battle for proof, justice and
the American Way.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
Well, the Superman Radio Show is evangelizing their message about
what it means to be a real American to audiences
all over the country. There's a violent force that had
a foothold in the culture with a very different idea
about the American Way and what that means. And it
doesn't include people like Jerry or Joe, or certainly black people,
or Catholic people or immigrants.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Listen to this report from the nineteen sixty five CBS
special Ku Klux claim The Invisible Empire.
Speaker 18 (38:13):
What started as a joke one hundred years ago when
a group of men donned bedsheets for a romp, has
over the years, attracted to it. Persons charged with acts
of harassment intimidation and violence throughout the South. Even though
the nation has been outraged for many years, the Ku
Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
In our next episode, where did these real life villains
come from? And how did they get so powerful?
Speaker 6 (38:39):
And how did they monetize hate and turn it into
an industry that made what would be intoday's terms, hundreds
of millions of dollars?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
And ultimately, what can a fictional character like Superman do
in the battle for truth justice in the American way.
Speaker 6 (39:02):
This podcast was hosted by Mark Bernardin and Roth Cornett,
Created and executive produced by Roth Cornette, with executive producers
Max Dion and Michael Chang, with producers and writers Nancy Rosenbaum,
Loretta Williams, Teru Bratch, Michelle Dunn, Eileen Gall, Billy Patterson,
Gordi Loewen, Roth Cornette, and Mark Bernardin. Our audio engineer
(39:24):
is Brett Boehm. Our researchers are Lauren Schwen and Elana Strauss.
Our fact checker is Stephen Krechten. Recording was done by
Forever Dog Productions and voice Tracks. A very special thanks
to Caleb Schneider Sashia Peroriver brett Weiner, Eric Eisenberg, Sonny Benson,
(39:45):
Anne Brasher, Shanna Whittler, Joe Starr, Al vital Ash, Dina Crowder,
Danielle Radford, Spencer, Gilbert ln Harris, and Paige Chew. On
the next episode of super Versus, the KKK.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Moose people out of the Klan is these clowns in bedsheets,
but there were a lot more than that.
Speaker 16 (40:09):
One of the reasons that we talk about the Clan movies,
if you want to show racism, you pull out ahoad,
is because it is a profoundly effective shorthand and it's
still quite frightening.
Speaker 11 (40:23):
Certainly in the nineteen twenties, the Clan of presenting themselves
as the arbiters of Americanism. They determine what Americanism is.
Speaker 8 (40:32):
And if you ask a clansman in the nineteen twenties
whether or not they stand for truth justice in the
American way, that's basically a Klan recruiting pamphlet.
Right, Superman and his role of podcent mild Manners reporter
comes faith to faith with the most dangerous man in
the world, a man I'll take.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Really. White supremacy is the foundation for our country.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I think it was actually pretty bold. They have a
Superman fight the KKK in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
In Tolerances Are Filthy Week, Jim I told you before
the only way you can get rid of it is
by hunting out the roots and pulling them out of
the ground.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
But Superman isn't about the con Tipperary society. He's about
the aspirations of the high ideals of American society.
Speaker 6 (00:39):
This is a podcast about two powerful opposing forces going
into battle. On one side, Superman, comic book icon, the
original champion of truth, justice and the American Way. On
the other side, the KKK, born of one of the
United States foundational evils, white supremacy.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Both are distinctly American creation, and when you put them
side by side, they represent very different notions about what
America is and what it should aspire to be. So
what happened when these two forces came face to face?
Speaker 6 (01:13):
What happened when they each, in their own way and
time use the potent power of the media and pop
culture to try and convince us of their vision. Well,
that's exactly what we're here to tell you about. And
when you boil it all down, what we're actually talking
about is a very real superpower. It's the power of
the mass media to control information and perceptions and thus
(01:35):
to control your mind. I'm Mark Bernard and I'm Roth Cornett,
and this is Fandom Presents Superman versus the KKK.
Speaker 7 (01:47):
Mark.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
We're both pop culture junkies, film critics, and producers, so
it's essentially our job to dissect different forms of media
and to code the messages they're delivering to audiences. Whether
those messages are explicit and written in neon lights are
a little more subtle in subconscious.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Everything is about something right, and that can be intentional
or accidental, but there's always something going on under the surface,
and very often it's reflective of the society that produced it.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
And we also grew up with Superman.
Speaker 7 (02:14):
In the Great Hall of the Justice League.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
My first Superman was in the Super Friends, and of
all the Superman you could grow up with, it's probably
the lightest of lightweight.
Speaker 8 (02:23):
Superman.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
What did you love about it?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Because he was a great team member, even though for
most of Superman's existence he was a solo act. The
idea that in the super Friends he could be your
friend and he could be the dude that rolled with
you and did cool stuff. Come on, what's better than that?
Speaker 6 (02:40):
I love that, and that's going to play play into
the future as we talk about why people love Superman
and the idea of teamwork. Well for me, and I
don't think you would judge me, but it is a
bit basic, But it was the Donner films that imprinted
on me, especially Superman too.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Superman General, would you care to step outside?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Weird analogy, but kind of like The Last Temptation of Christ,
which I also loved as a little kid. I adored
the idea that this god or god liked being, just
wanted a normal human life. And that's so beautiful to me,
and I think it illustrates how we're all missing what
we already have, you know, like little kid stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
At least he wasn't punching radioactive villains into the sun,
which did happen yes in Superman four, which also yes,
is not as bad as you remember it, nia, I
swear if you look at it again, it's a pretty
decent Superman movie that falls off a cliff. But as
much as we both have a deep love of Superman,
neither of us had deep knowledge of some of the
(03:37):
characters' early history, like how the big Blue schoolboy became
so synonymous with the most American values and ideas. I mean,
how did that even happen?
Speaker 6 (03:44):
Right, and before Superman was a billion dollar movie franchise
and the anchor of massive corporate initiatives, he was a
caped crusader in comics and on the radio.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
This part of our story goes back way back to
mid nineteen forties, when the Superman radio show turned its
attention for battling mad scientists and evil geniuses to a
real life terror.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right, Superman and his role of part det mild mannered
reporter comes face to fight with the most dangerous menace
in the world. We mena all take.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
This is the setup to the Adventures of Superman radio
drama Circle nineteen forty six. During World War Two, Superman
battled Nazi spies and Japanese forces. But after the war ended,
Superman needed a new villain to go up against, so
the scriptwriters of Adventures of Superman and its ad execs
decided to write a new series of stories. They unofficially
called it Operation Intolerance.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Operation Intolerance included storylines where Superman fights bigots and racist
and as we'll discover, this was actually returning to the
character's roots in some respects.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And probably one of the best known stories from this
time was called Clan of the Fiery Cross. It came
out in June nineteen forty six and over sixteen episodes,
Superman battled a KKK like group that was terrorizing the
Chinese American family named the Leeds. Here's Clark Kent mild Manner,
reporter for a Great Metropolitan newspaper, telling cub reporter Jimmy
Elson why the Clan of the Fiery Cross was so dangerous.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
The Clan of the Fiery Cross is made up of
intolerant biggest Jim. They don't judge a man in the
decent American way by his own qualities. They judge him
by what church he goes to and by the color
of his skin.
Speaker 8 (05:19):
By the cheapers.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
You mean, yes, this bigoted mob is against Tommy Lee
and his family because they're Chinese. Gosh, intolerance is a
filthy weed, Jim. I told you before the only way
you can get rid of it is by hunting out
the roots and pulling them out of the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Intolerance is a filthy weed.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
Roth.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I mean like, I'm not sure you could put
that or they would put this on the air today.
And this was more than seventy years ago.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
I know, I mean HBO maybe, but yeah, limited not
a radio, not for kids.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
No.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I noticed that Clark uses the phrase decent American way.
This is the nineteen forties, and as many of us know,
Superman became famous for the phrase truth justice in the
American Way.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Yes, that's kind of the essence of this thing. These
two powerful cultural forces, a comic book superhero and the
KKK battling it out for the very definition of the
American way and the answer to the question who does
America belong to?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
This is a question that has haunted the United States
since its very beginning, since the moment that the idea
of universal equality, well universal equality for white men, was
contaminated with the idea that some were less than fully human.
Speaker 6 (06:30):
This is the dynamic tension that is the foundation of
the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Superman argues for an America that includes everyone. This, even
in the nineteen forties included people who had historically struggled
in America, like African Americans.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
The KKK was created after the Civil War specifically to terrorize, control, brutalize,
and murder newly freed black Americans in the South.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
And it's continued to do that for well over one
hundred years now. It later would add Jews, Catholics, basically
anyone who wasn't white, Anglo Saxon Protestant to the of
those who were not, in their minds one hundred percent American.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
And as we'll see, in the nineteen twenties, they hired
this tiny PR firm to help them pattern, refine, and
deliver their messaging. They packaged and sold hate. And that's
the thing that really blew my mind when I first
discovered this story. The leaders of both the KKK and
the people that made Superman into a pop culture icon
(07:24):
both used some very sophisticated PR and media tools in
this struggle to ultimately define America.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
But before Superman could represent the American way, someone had
to create Superman.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
And that's what we're going to dive into now. I mean,
every superhero needs an origin story, but what we're going
to tell you is the origin story of the people
who created the original superhero. So it's the origin story
of the origin story.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Very meta.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Among the people chasing the American dream and running up
against its conflicting origins were Superman's creators.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
That was Joe and Jerry. You know, Joe Schuster and
Jerry Siegel. They're two jowish kids who first dreamed up
this character that we would recognize as Superman, and while
still going to high school in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Kids who were not the cool kids in the school, right.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
That's Rick Bowers, who literally wrote the book on Superman
Versus the KKK.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
They were kind of shunned. They didn't have girlfriends, they
didn't have dates, but they had science fiction and in
a way they had something that was going to become big.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
So photos of the two showed Jerry's earnest face and
Joe's brooding days, and they look like two regular, I
guess in their mind, nerdy guys. I just think they
look like handsome guys, normal guys.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
They look like dudes from the thirties.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
Here's how Jerry describes himself in an interview with the
BBC in nineteen eighty one like.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
Joe, I was quite meek and I was quite mild,
and there were attractive girls around who was just didn't
all this I exist and just didn't care at all,
you know, of her for me. And I thought you
it wouldn't it be great if I was a mighty
person and these girls didn't know that this clot here
has really said somebody special. Ad helped lead to this
(09:10):
whole triangle setup of Clark, Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Joe and Jerry met in high school and bonded over
their love of science fiction.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
From the beginning, Joe did illustrations and Jerry wrote the scripts.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Their first collaboration was Goober the Mighty, which, if you're
like a sort of preteen kid today, you realize that
you can't call a comic book Goober the Mighty and
not expect something else entirely. But it's a Tarzan parody,
so I guess we'll swing with it.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
I mean, my take really is like this is the
moment where they're just trying to figure out their voice together.
You know, they're experimenting with different things, They're taking what
they love from different aspects of media. You know, they
love masked teros in the movies, and they love amazing
stories and they love science fiction, so they love tales
(09:57):
from outer space, and eventually they're gonna take those stories
and it's going to lead them to Superman eventually. So
for Jerry, it was those stories that inspired him, and
he talks about it again for the BBC and to.
Speaker 9 (10:08):
Fill you in a little under really the beginning of
it all one night, ideas kept coming to me and
I kept getting up again and again during the night
and just johnny down these ideas and these scripts. Until
very early the next morning, I dashed over to Joe's house,
which is about ten blocks away. I showed him the
(10:29):
script of Superman, the entirely new concept in which there
would be a meek mild man of reported Clark Kent
Lois Lane who scorned him, but who was who flipped
over Superman, not knowing that Superman and Clark Kent were
winning the same personnel. You want to stay, you want
to stay with. Your reaction was when.
Speaker 10 (10:50):
Very very excited about the whole idea, I just I
just took on the same enthusiasm. I thought it was
a terrific idea and we went right to work right
then and there.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
So they're doing a little bit of wish fulfillment. You know,
they're writing about strong men that get the girl. But
a lot of their stories are also steeped in how
they grew up in Glenville, Ohio. They're in this middle
class Jewish suburb of Cleveland, and Rick Bauer says Glenville
was the American dream come true for tens of thousands
of Jewish residents, so that part of their identity also
finds itself imbued and who will become Superman.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
They were living in this almost utopian place, this Jewish
community where people lived in nice houses, went to nice schools.
You know, met different kinds of people, some who were
like them, some who were different, and that their overriding interests,
their passion was to be part of the American fabric.
(11:51):
They didn't want to just be part of the Jewish community.
They wanted to be part of the American story. And
their whole mode motivation was to rise above that status
of immigrant and be accepted as part of the main stream.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Siegel was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in nineteen fourteen. His
father ran a clothing store.
Speaker 6 (12:18):
Schuster was born in Toronto, where his dad worked as
a tailor, and the family moved to Cleveland when he
was ten, so.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They had that uncommon clothing. Both Siegel and Shusta's families
had Jewish roots in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Their families were a part of this Jewish exodus that
fled this horrible persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn
of the century. So that has to play into family
memory and family story, right, And it feels like that
likely could have inspired the Superman origin story, the idea
that this baby must flee the ruin of his original world.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, stories don't exist and aren't created in a vacuum.
You know, every storyteller has a reason why they're telling
their stories. And for these two guys, who you know,
were born in this place, who had family who came
from that place, every bit of it is part of
the building blocks of whose Superman would become. There's this guy,
(13:17):
Rabbi Simcle Weinstein wrote a book with the best title
I've ever heard, perhaps up up in Ouve, how Jewish history, culture,
and value shape the comic book Superhero. In it, he says,
it's easy to see that Joe and Jerry put their
Jewish heritage onto the page with Superman. They were Bob Mitzford.
They grew up with biblical archetypes. Writers write about what
(13:38):
they know about, and these were their heroes. This was
very much their mythology.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
So this is their lived experience, right. They're hearing about
this in the home, and when they go to synagogue,
they're hearing about these ideas, and then subconsciously or not,
Superman embodies these Jewish principles and the Jewish experience. For instance,
there's a Hebrew word sadaka, and it stands for this
bigger idea of righteousness and serving the less fortunate, you know,
(14:07):
standing up for the week and exploited.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That sounds a lot like Superman exactly.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
And then there's this other concept in Judaism called takun alam,
and it's about the responsibility that humans have to repair
the world, or as I learned it, to repair a
broken world, which I think is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And again totally on brand for Superman.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
Yep, here's Bowers.
Speaker 8 (14:28):
Again.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I think a lot of it is unconscious. So clearly
they had learned about the Moses story, for example, and
that I think is in the back of their minds.
But think of Moses floating down the Nile in a
basket to be found by strangers and raised in a
(14:51):
loving family to change the world. Hello, that's the exact
story of Superman.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Like Bauer says, there's one hundred percent parallels between the
story of Superman and the story of Moses. And I
can only really do this if I channel my best
Eel Brenner, so you'll have to excuse me. Moses was
born into the world, but people faced inn hihilation.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Kellel, the birth name of Superman, is born into a
world that is about to explode.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Baby Moses is put into a smaller basket and floated
down the nile by his mother.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Baby Kellel is put into a ship and shot into space.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Moses is raising an alien environment where he must conceal
this true.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
Identity Baby Kell's case, it's somewhere on a farm in
the Midwest, where he becomes Clark Kent and hides his
real identity.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Moses reveals a calling from God to use his powers
to liberate his people from tyranny.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
Clark's parents teach him to use his powers for the
benefit and protection of humanity.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Ooh, I realized that some of that Eil Brenner slid
into James Earl Jones slid into like Wakanda a little bit.
But I think the message is clear.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
I think the message is clear, and I think I
learned two very important lessons. One is that I have
no Yule Brenner and the second is that it's clear
like champion of the oppressed, this ethos, it permeated what
Joe and Jerry were writing truth justice in the American way.
That was the marketing and pr language that was used
later on during the radio show, and that's what helped
(16:23):
to create an icon. But this idea of saving the
little guy, that that was there at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Absolutely to stand up for the little guy. So we've
sort of heard a bit about how Joe and Jerry
sort of grew up and the environment that nurtured them
and raised them and helped give birth to Superman. But
it's also really clear looking back that being Jewish in
America in the nineteen thirties wasn't easy at all. Anti
Semitism was all around. Here's the Rabbi simcra Weinstein once more.
Speaker 11 (16:52):
So, I think they grew up possibly in the most
antisemitic period in American history.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Weinstein points out in his book what he means by
the most anti Semitic period.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I mean the classifieds in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper
were filled with job ads that blunt laid state no
Jews need apply.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
And there's country clubs in exclusive neighborhoods that refused to
accept Jewish members.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Ivy Ley colleges had Jewish quotas you could only have,
but so many Jewish students on those campuses.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
All of this prejudice meant that many avenues were closed
down to Jewish kids like Joe and Jerry. But early
on they saw how their teenage obsession with comics might
be a way to make a living. Here's Weinstein again.
Speaker 11 (17:33):
Jews were barred from a lot of industries. It was
hard to get into advertising, all the mainstream arts. They
didn't have the money to go to art schools. Comic
books at the time they were a joke. They were
like the pulper comic given out for free in the
middle of a newspaper. There were no barriers to entry.
The door was open, which is why I think many
(17:54):
Jews and many Italian immigrants at the time were entering
the industry. There was just it was just an easy
thing to get into and I don't think anyone envisions
what was to come from these creations.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Yeah, just kind of riffing on that, Like, we really
have to remember that when we think about getting into comics,
it is not what we would think later on or today.
It didn't exist in that form it was being created.
I mean, superheroes as a genre was about to be
invented by these two kids.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, I mean comics at the time was very much
like crime stories and romances and westerns, you know, and
it was in lots of ways seen as a degenerate art.
I mean even when I broke into it, I was
a degenerate. So I was also trying to become part
of a long lineage of degenerates making degenerate art. But
you know, the comics at the time were not nearly
(18:43):
as quote unquote respected as they are now. And so,
graduating high school in nineteen thirty four, as Joe and
Jerry did, they did what any aspiring creator would do.
They started pitching their ideas to New York publishers, but
nobody then wanted a Superman. They managed to get a
few jobs, help hit the bills, and they also noticed
that the world around them was getting uglier and uglier.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
On February twentieth, nineteen thirty nine, a Nazi rally took
place in New York City at Madison Square Garden, organized
by the pro Hitler group German American Bund. More than
twenty thousand people attended the event, which took place in
front of a huge portrait of George Washington planked by
two swastikas. Keynote speaker Fritz Julius Kuhnen, the leader of
(19:24):
the BUND, incited the audience with fear mongering about the
quote Jewish communist takeover of American education, government and culture.
Speaker 12 (19:33):
I hear sometimes the question why don't you go back
to Germany if you don't like TeV Wavy any things?
Speaker 8 (19:40):
Here?
Speaker 12 (19:42):
And I add, who is swe.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
Is the Communist?
Speaker 13 (19:48):
The Jewish?
Speaker 12 (19:49):
We I say, we will not fail you in the
fight to pake the trip and the pound side hand
of Jewish commonism in our schools.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
Our own work.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Here's Superman creator Jerry Siegel on the BBC special the
comic strip Hero.
Speaker 9 (20:08):
Back in those days, there was a Nazism was, you know,
rising up and lat e incent people were being killed,
and I felt that the world desperately needed a crusader,
if only a fectional one.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
I don't know if they were really aware of just
how profound and how pervasive these themes were. I think
they were just writing about what they know about.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
This is Rabbi Weinstein again.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
And it's remarkable that, certainly in the if you want
to talk about sort of the earlier years, the fact
that I believe Superman was denounced a Jew in the
presence of Hitler that's actually recorded a data about Goebels
talking about this and Superman being the perversion of the Ubermensh.
And I think it's astounding that these two pishers from
(20:54):
Cleveland go all the way to bull In. I don't
know if that was their initially intention, but I think
they just sort of, you know, what do they say,
lightning in a bottle. I think they just really tapped
into a universal truth that it still rings true to
this day.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
So Jerry and Joe are these two Jewish kids living
in a time of just overwhelming anti Semitism, both here
in the US and increasingly abroad. So they create a
character that embodies many of the Jewish teachings and the
Jewish and tenants of the Jewish faith. That character would
go on to have universal appeal, perhaps because of other influences.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
Jerry has this epiphany that the world didn't need a supervillain,
which is how the character was initially written, but it
does need a superhero. And he has this epiphany in
nineteen thirty four, and that's likely for a number of reasons, like.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The supervillain they wrote just wasn't really finding an audience.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Meanwhile, his own father had been killed in a robbery.
It was in nineteen thirty two. Remember, his dad owned
a clothing store, and one day he was held up
by three robbers and had a heart attack. And Jerry
would have been about seventeen years old then, and that
just has to be a really traumatic personal history for him,
(22:07):
something that would be pretty meaningful to write and rewrite
again and again and basically fix absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
And it was this lived experience or how the world
could be menacing, that there were very real and consequential
dangers all around. And again you knew where these two
kids grew up. Their neighborhood was kind of like a
Jewish bubble, but one in which you could hop in
the car and get to white supremacist preaching a few
hours away. To say, nothing of what was happening across
the world right.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And this is important. The country was also in the
depths of the Great Depression and going through massive political, social,
and economic upheaval, the.
Speaker 13 (22:42):
Great Big Spree. The jazz age is over all over.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
Take a listen to this out take from an educational
film that McGraw hill put out in nineteen fifty nine
called Life in the Thirties.
Speaker 13 (22:53):
In the nineteen twenties, the great American word was prosperity.
Now the thirties have begun, and there is a new word, depression.
And if you're bewildered, panicky at what's happening to you
in your country, you aren't alone. One of America's biggest
industrialists has openly admitted I am afraid. Every man is afraid.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Franklin Delano Roosevelt hashtag. My president was president at the time,
and he was the mastermind of the New Deal. It's
this radical and powerful government program in the nineteen thirties
that helped Americans with jobs and economic relief. I mean
it's saved us.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
My friends.
Speaker 8 (23:32):
Since my Annual Message to the Congress on January fourth, last,
I have not addressed the general public over the air.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Joe and Jerry would have been listeners of FDR's infamous, famous, notorious,
glorious fireside chats such as this one, which is kind
of asking the American public to understand the need for
a national work program and to close their ears to
the naysayers and the doubters.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
It is time to provide a smashing answer. But those
cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest,
cannot be efficient. If you will help, this can be done.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
And it's also really notable that, obviously this is a
podcast about how the media, in all of its forms
is in and of itself a superpower that's used to
create meaning and identity and to spread messages. And that
is exactly how FDR was using one of the greatest
mass media tools of the day, the radio.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Renewed faith in the vast possibilities of human beings to
improve their material and spiritual status through the instrumentality of
the democratic form of government.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Heresrick Bowers again, superman comes out this kind of swinging
new deal do gooder who is going to enforce the
pillars of the new deal. Politician by politician, businessman by businessman,
thug by thlug as.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
The KKK rebranded itself, which we're going to be talking
about in the next episode. They were specifically opposed to
FDR in the New Deal. So in some ways it
feels like we've been talking about that this clash was inevitable.
What Superman sought to represent and the evil that was
the KKK, they were always going to come face to face.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And Bowers isn't the only person to make a connection
to the New Deal. Julian Chambliss is a professor of
English and History at Michigan State University and also a
bit of a comic book expert. He says Superman was
created just as the country was grappling with the idea
that maybe the federal government had a responsibility to take
care of its citizens.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
So when we think about Superman as a kind of
template for the superhero, which in many ways he is,
he's a template that establishes many of the tropes that
we associate with the form. Right, his mission is a
pro social one, meaning that he's doing what he's doing
(25:57):
just to help the community.
Speaker 14 (25:59):
Keep him from the crowd by fellows of dense Whites
spoke burning out of the burning building, Superman wings his
way through the air to attempt a daring rescue of
the girl trapped on the twentieth floor. Flames crackle and
spit like things alive as he reaches the window.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
There are other heroes and other kinds of stories. Maybe
they're doing it for revenge, maybe they're doing the uphole
family honor, maybe they're doing it because of circumstances. But
Superman is unique in some level because he is basically
trying to make the community better, but he's also trying
(26:33):
to uphold a kind of status quote, because he assumes
the community is good, right. And this is one of
the things that I think is very much tied to
the moment of creation, because remember, at the moment of creation,
there is a rise or turn, a kind of coalition
around a kind of regulatory state that it is also
trying to help people, also trying to make sure the
(26:55):
little guy is protected. And so Superman takes this perative
and magnifies it in a very powerful way.
Speaker 6 (27:04):
So we've been talking about that at the core of
his identity, Superman is about helping the little guy, and
people ate that up in the first issue. And maybe
it's because Superman isn't fighting monsters from outer space. At
this point, his villains are the ones that everyone can recognize.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
It's also worth remembering that at the very beginning of
Superman's existence, his power set was incredibly diminished. He couldn't fly,
you know. Heat vision and cold breath were things that
would come in later. He was just kind of really
strong and was leaping over buildings in a single bound,
not leaping into the sky to land on the moon.
So let's look at some of the things, some of
(27:39):
the wild things that Superman was doing when he was
initially created, and how that possibly reflected America's vision of
itself at the time. Like Action number one includes Superman
showing up with the governor's mansion, man handling the butler,
(28:00):
and breaking down the still door of the governor's bedrooms
his bedroom to get the governor to stop the execution
of innocent woman.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
So then Superman actually intercedes on domestic violence and slams
a man who's been beating his wife into a wall.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
He catches a gangster who zacter Lowis Lane and hangs
him from a telephone pole.
Speaker 15 (28:19):
He terrorizes a corrupt lobbyist by tucking the lobbyist under
his arm like a football and jumps from building to
building at great heights, including over the Capitol Building, basically
to scare him a corrupt lobbyist.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
You know, I kind of want to do this next one,
but I know it has a place deep down in
your heart roths, so I think, oh, yeah, I can't.
I can't take this cookie from you.
Speaker 6 (28:42):
You're right, Mark, this is my absolute favor. Superman comes
up with a plot to give a mine owner who
doesn't care about his workers a taste of his own medicine.
So when the mine owner takes his party guests into
his mind Superman, Superman causes the tunnel to collapse, slapping
the party go in there, and then he lets them
try and dig themselves out until they're so tired, and
(29:05):
the mind owner then realizes the error of his ways
and announces that his mind will be quote the safest
in the country, I mean Superman's basically like yeah, how
you like it now?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Like crazy tough love, I mean. In Action Comics number ten,
Superman crashes his car again. Superman can't fly, so he's
got a car and it crashes his car into the
car a prison warden, and then gets into a fistfight
with the warden. Warten's just a dude. Superman is Superman,
so that Superman then in disguise can get sent to
(29:39):
prison so we can expose the torture and mistreatment of prisoners.
Basically like it's an episode of loupin but now with
Superman Slash Clark kn't slash Kalel's. It's out of bounds.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
It's bonkers. And what's awesome about this period is that
he's just allowed to care about people and this really
in human way and to make pretty rough judgment calls
about things like greed and corruption and even capitalism itself
at this time, and that's what we've been talking about,
Like we've been talking about there listening to a FDR
and they're connected to the the New Deal and all
(30:13):
this stuff, but it's in the stories. He is going
after corrupt politician, corrupt capitalists, corrupt businessman the same way
AFDR was, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And Superman was not about at this stage interstellar bad guys.
He wasn't dealing with brainy acs, and he wasn't dealing
with you know, cosmic threats. It was very down there.
It was very grounded. It was very much the kinds
of things your average person was dealing with in their lives.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Here's Julian Chambliss again.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
He's not fighting super villains. He's preventing someone who's wrongly
accused from being executed. He's punishing, like this, reputable business people.
He's undercutting like illegal gambling ring. Right, these are much
more hyper local concerns, and he's protecting the little man
right the next door kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
And it's interesting to us the idea that so many
of these early Superman stories are about forcing your bad guys,
your ne'er dwells, your wrongdoers, onto some understanding of empathy.
It's putting them in the situation where they are suddenly
in the position of the little guy, and so they
have to understand that what they're doing is wrong and.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Why Yeah, And in kind of the softer, kind of
airy fairy version of that, it would be, oh, imagine
yourself walking in another shoes. But no, he's like, I
will trap you into mind until you feel their pain,
and that is what will create epathy. But in this way,
it's like the marriage between this idea of the champion
(31:43):
of the oppressed and the crusader for the little guy
starts to become inevitably connected to this idea of truth
and justice, and.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
From where I sit, his actions are also defining what
he means by the American way. It doesn't mean the
values of big corporate America and other powerful people. The
American Way is about fairness, decency, and tolerance.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
It's interesting, isn't it. We associate Superman with that phrase,
but he actually doesn't even say those words until the
first Superman movie in nineteen seventy eight, And this is
during a scene where Lois is interviewing him for The
Daily Planet.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
I mean, why are you here?
Speaker 3 (32:19):
There must be a reason for you to be here. Yes,
I'm here to fight for truth and justice in the
American way. You're gonna end up fighting every elected official
in this country.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
Sure, you don't really mean that, lost Now, that's the
first time Superman says that phrase, but truth justice in
the American Way became his catchphrase in the nineteen forties,
which has incredible significance, as we'll find out in future episodes.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Even in nineteen seventy eight, Lois Lane hearkens back to
the fight against corrupt politicians the Superman fought from the
very beginning.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
So here's the thing. In addition to these big esoteric
concepts of truth and justice and the American way. Superman
is also inherently political. His identity is political because he's
an Grit, well also as American as you can get.
This is one of his many dualities.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
What Superman was not. He's got no clear ethnicity, no
accent or dialect. Even though he grew up in Kansas,
he was born in a different planet. So those two
things tend to cancel each other out. There's no religion,
no political affiliation. He's simultaneously an immigrant and a foreigner,
and he's of the American heartland. He's urban and sophisticated
(33:25):
and moral and wholesome. He's meek Clark Kent and he's
super strong Superman. And what's the difference between those two
things for him, it's the glasses. The glasses are the
thing that tell both the reader and to a certain degree,
you know, Clark himself, who he's going to be at
any given time, you know, And the glasses, especially in
the thirties and forties, were very much a coded Jewish affect,
(33:49):
you know, it reflected the perception of the time that
you know, Jewish men were somewhat meek and someonet academic
and a little bit nerdy, and so the glasses were
a sort of signal of that, you know, rightly or wrongly,
was the stereotype. And so to make the glasses part
of the story, to make the glasses the way he
reveals himself to be super to make shedding to a
(34:11):
certain degree his jewishness and embracing his wholeness is very much,
I think part of the Superman's story and the way
that character has been coded since its beginning.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
And this seems to be the very question. Is the
reason that Superman has for so many years been directly
linked with americanness. I mean, even though we have Captain America,
because he's able to hold multiple identities. I mean, that's
the American dream, right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Absolutely, you know, and it's part of what it is
and what it means to be an immigrant, and you know,
to be able to be multiple things in multiple places,
to multiple people, and to be able to switch between
them all at a moment's notice. I think that's a
core part of what it means to be an immigrant
in America.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
And one of the things about Superman as a character
is that he's almost the perfect immigrant.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
Here's Julian Chamliss again rives.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
When he's very young.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
He grows up in the heartland, the Midwest, which we
often associate with with like pure American values. Then he
goes to the city and he uses his sort of
like innate immigrant traits and the values that he learned
growing up in the heartland, and he makes the city better.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
So who didn't want to be like that? Who couldn't
relate to that?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Is Bowers again.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So it's interesting that this immigrant story is so ingrained
in the Superman story. And yes, that came from those
two kids in Cleveland whose parents had been immigrants, who
had lived that experience and knew about it intricately, you know,
(35:47):
within the fiber of their beings. I'm always stunned when
I walk down the street and see some little kid
with a Superman T shirt, Like, Holy mackerel. That's what
Jerry and Joe created a loose years ago, and they're
still inspiring people.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Superman becomes crazy popular, incredibly clearly. I mean, the publishers
latch onto his popularity and start saturating the market with
anything everything Superman.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
So Jerry and Joe sells Superman to the company that
becomes DC Comics. In nineteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Eight, Hot on its heels in January of nineteen thirty nine,
the Superman comic strip is syndicated in newspapers, and within
a year you can find Superman strips in nearly three
hundred daily and one hundred Sunday newspapers across the country.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
And by nineteen forty, Superman was being mass produced on
all kinds of merchandise sweatshirts, baseball caps, greeting cards, pajamas.
He even had his own board game.
Speaker 7 (36:38):
Boys and girls, your attention, please come now.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
We talked about the FDR fireside chats and how that
was beginning to use the new medium of radio to
just explode its message. In nineteen forty, the Superman Radio
Show begins.
Speaker 7 (36:52):
Presenting a new exciting radio program featuring the thrilling adventures
of an amazing and incredible personality than an airplane, more
powerful than a locomotive, impervious to pullets up.
Speaker 16 (37:06):
In the sky.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Look it's a plane, It's Superman.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
And then nineteen forty one, the animated shorts are seen
in movie theaters.
Speaker 17 (37:16):
Superman best be in a position to use as amazing
powers and a never ending battle for true justice. Superman
has assumed the skies of Clark Kent mild Man of
Reporter for a Great Metropolitan Newspaper.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
And in forty two truth Justice in the American Way
enters into the Superman lexicon.
Speaker 17 (37:33):
Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers then
see you in his bare hands, and who disguised as
Clark Kent mild Man of Reporter for a Great Metropolitan
Newspaper frits a never ending battle for proof, justice and
the American Way.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
Well, the Superman Radio Show is evangelizing their message about
what it means to be a real American to audiences
all over the country. There's a violent force that had
a foothold in the culture with a very different idea
about the American Way and what that means. And it
doesn't include people like Jerry or Joe, or certainly black people,
or Catholic people or immigrants.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Listen to this report from the nineteen sixty five CBS
special Ku Klux claim The Invisible Empire.
Speaker 18 (38:13):
What started as a joke one hundred years ago when
a group of men donned bedsheets for a romp, has
over the years, attracted to it. Persons charged with acts
of harassment intimidation and violence throughout the South. Even though
the nation has been outraged for many years, the Ku
Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
In our next episode, where did these real life villains
come from? And how did they get so powerful?
Speaker 6 (38:39):
And how did they monetize hate and turn it into
an industry that made what would be intoday's terms, hundreds
of millions of dollars?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
And ultimately, what can a fictional character like Superman do
in the battle for truth justice in the American way.
Speaker 6 (39:02):
This podcast was hosted by Mark Bernardin and Roth Cornett,
Created and executive produced by Roth Cornette, with executive producers
Max Dion and Michael Chang, with producers and writers Nancy Rosenbaum,
Loretta Williams, Teru Bratch, Michelle Dunn, Eileen Gall, Billy Patterson,
Gordi Loewen, Roth Cornette, and Mark Bernardin. Our audio engineer
(39:24):
is Brett Boehm. Our researchers are Lauren Schwen and Elana Strauss.
Our fact checker is Stephen Krechten. Recording was done by
Forever Dog Productions and voice Tracks. A very special thanks
to Caleb Schneider Sashia Peroriver brett Weiner, Eric Eisenberg, Sonny Benson,
(39:45):
Anne Brasher, Shanna Whittler, Joe Starr, Al vital Ash, Dina Crowder,
Danielle Radford, Spencer, Gilbert ln Harris, and Paige Chew. On
the next episode of super Versus, the KKK.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Moose people out of the Klan is these clowns in bedsheets,
but there were a lot more than that.
Speaker 16 (40:09):
One of the reasons that we talk about the Clan movies,
if you want to show racism, you pull out ahoad,
is because it is a profoundly effective shorthand and it's
still quite frightening.
Speaker 11 (40:23):
Certainly in the nineteen twenties, the Clan of presenting themselves
as the arbiters of Americanism. They determine what Americanism is.
Speaker 8 (40:32):
And if you ask a clansman in the nineteen twenties
whether or not they stand for truth justice in the
American way, that's basically a Klan recruiting pamphlet.
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