Truth, Justice, and an Ideal of Hope

Everyone loves heroes. It's an idea that's existed since the birth of mankind. Someone who can stand tall in the face of adversity, look over the mess of the world, and somehow... Be better than it. To save it.

But, stories wear with time, and often, they are limited by their presentation or values. What us heroic to some, will fail to inspire others.

But... There is one symbol everyone knows, everyone understands, and has become the very pinnacle of what heroism means...

Everyone knows what this symbol represents. Everyone knows the story... Yet, all too often, I find people who don't quite get it.

You've heard this before: "Superman is boring/predictable/unrelatable".

It's a statement I can never understand, and one I find too many in major media have. As a result, I find that the Man of Steel is bent, his ideals compromised, as some try to "update" him to "modern audience", as though the idea of a man who simply wants to do good is too far beyond what we can understand or desire.

Too often, the focus is on the power of Superman, making him a sort "god" amongst men, looking down on humanity as ignorant children to be shepherded and disciplined, while trading universe-shattering blows with higher-dimensional beings and all-powerful abstractions, and while this makes a great spectacle, I think that's precisely where the feeling of indifference and blaise people get from something like... 2013's Man of Steel. A godlike being who is disconnected from humanity save for only a love interest and his adoptive parents, it's like watching Dr. Manhattan nonchalantly muse about the "inevitable fate of man" or some other pompous nonsense that seeks to portray themselves as something far larger and better than the rest of us small, mortal peons.

But that has never been who Clark is. Before he was an alien, before he ever knew Krypton existed... He was a Kent, a boy growing up with a kind family who loved him, taught him right from wrong, who nutured and watched him grow. Despite his birth, he is a human as any one if us, and thus, that he became Superman, is all the more inspiring. A man of his power, learning he is NOT one of us, deciding that despite all that, despite all that his powers could freely give him, to retain humanity, to adopt us just as we did him, and be the very best of us. Superman does not think he is more than you. To him, you are a world of possibility, infinite in value, worth everything from a simple smile, to his very life. Superman exists to lift us up, to show that strength doesn't have to be a corruption, that good doesn't have to come from guilt, or pain, but rather... From hope. Belief that even a man can be Super.

That's why I love Superman, and the reason I make this post, because as imperfect as I am, and the world around me, I think of him, and know I can be better, we all can. That symbol, that S, it means hope, because all it takes to a be a hero, all it takes to make a difference... Is simply, to be good.