#This is about the larger problem of writers using nonhuman (and often very dangerous) things/species as an allegory

[watermelonsloth]

So I’ve recently rewatched My Adventures With Superman and I wanted to share a qualm I’ve had with it. That being its use of Superman being an alien as an allegory for immigration and racism. It’s not the execution that I have a problem with—this not being the only idea explored and how the characters and the villains’ motivations are written largely save this from hurting the series—but rather the idea because it forgets the same thing Zootopia and Detroit: Become Human’s allegories forgot: racism is fundamentally irrational.

Even if there are differences between cultures, no group is more or less capable of violence than another. No individual from any group is automatically stronger or more weaponized than an individual from another. Thus fearing a specific group’s capacity for violence is absurd, irrational, and ✨racist✨. Now, with that in mind, is it irrational to fear Superman? I’d say no.

Maybe you could argue that after a certain amount of time there would be enough evidence of him putting himself on the line just to help people that it would be harder to defend fearing him, but if we’re talking about a Superman who’s just starting out like in MAWS… well… Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of some random person in Metropolis. Some random guy from a planet we’ve never heard of shows up one day saying he’s here to help and he wants nothing in return. He never gave us a name and we have no way of knowing where his similarities to humans end or if he’s lying. All we know is what he’s told us, what he’s done, and that he has a laundry list of extremely powerful superpowers with little to no weaknesses. Now maybe y’all are saints compared to me, but I tend to be wary around strangers—especially strangers I know are fully capable of killing me without consequence—and when I hear someone say that their motives are exclusively altruistic, I assume it’s an act. If I was in Metropolis and I didn’t know Superman personally, I’d, at minimum, be concerned about him one day becoming resentful of doing so much for so little. So from my perspective, fearing Superman and wanting to have countermeasures on standby isn’t exactly what I’d consider irrational.

(When you take into account all of the universes with “evil Superman” this perspective makes even more sense. I just didn’t bring that up because the average person wouldn’t know about that.)

My point is that maybe instead of using Superman, an alien with godlike powers, to tell a story about immigration and racism, we could just use a superhero who’s an immigrant or a person of color. Or we could make a new character. Or we could at least make Superman an actual immigrant (he was created by Jewish immigrants, we could make him a Jewish immigrant). I’m just saying that if you want to write about racism, you should use race to talk about it.