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Hey All,
I don't pay too much attention to media news, so I'm wondering where all of the 'Superman is gay' talk is coming from. I mean, I not a comics expert, but Supes has always seemed to have a thing for the ladies (witness Lana Lang and Lois Lane).
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Because he wears skintight, rainbow coloured clothes, has a secret he won't share with his nearest and dearest, and is obviously into body culture?
Seriously though, the link between superheroes and homosexuality is oft discussed. Bryan Singer, the director of X-Men and Superman Returns, is gay, and he has mentioned that he feels connected to the idea of mutants and the need to keep a "secret identity" from the rest of the world.
The line in X2, when Bobby's mother asks him "Have you tried NOT being a mutant?" is a parody of the question gays are often asked by their parents when they first come out: "Have you tried not being gay?"
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Oy, you'd think this would get old after the Batman and Robin lunacy...
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*grumbles something about internet connection anomolies*
Double post, please remove.
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Eh, that's kinda weak. Besides, for that to work he would have had to 'come out' to Ma and Pa Kent instead of them telling him the truth of who he was. It's much closer to what adopted children go through.Originally Posted by parallaxicality
I had a feeling that part of it was because Singer was directing. I can remember the crap people said about X-Men (not only because of Singer but also because of McKellum and Stewart)
And for the record, I thought the scene in X2 with Bobby and his folks was priceless.
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What talk is that?
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If you catch any of the unbelievable torrent of "fanboy" noise(particularly around the IMDB or AICN) it seems that the director of SUPERMAN RETURNS, Bryan Singer is gay.
The vibe seems to be that Superman's issues, like many of X-Men characters crises can be seen as parables for the homosexual experience(notably, of course, in the US). Singer's films often identify strongly with the outsider, so alot of people are making connections that may or may not be intended. Of course, these characters could represent "outsiders" of any type, but with the X-Men, especially the second film(and to a degree, the third), the homosexual parallel is fairly clear.
Also if this incarnation of Superman is depicted as a little less "beefcake" and a little more in touch with his feminine(kryptonian-feminine, that is)side that could account for some questioning SUPERMAN RETURNS portrayal.
I find it odd because to me Superman has always smacked of the Christ persona. The films I-IV, despite growing exponentially saccharine, seemed to float the element in and out when needed. They tried very hard to make him the kind of guy the whole world could like...but in the end, it came across like trying to sell other countries on setting up McDonalds franchises. Not so much "a Superman for all peoples" as "All peoples are welcome to like American Superman".
SUPERMAN RETURNS seems like it's trying to move what is essentially a very American character away from his Monroe Doctriny, Uncle Sammyness to a more universal persona. In the trailer, at least, they have clearly avoided the full tagline that's been used for decades"Truth..Justice...and all that other stuff" What other stuff...it was one more thing...The American Way. That last time that kind of naked jingoism worked was with Rambo in 1985.
Seems that way...but that's just me.
ps I absolutely loathe it when someone refers to the character as "Supes"
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It's a popular fictional character in the media. There's always going to be "Character X represents Y" articles around.
He's represented Jesus, gays, dictators, gladiators, soldiers, victims, and anything else you can imagine.
For a more humorous answer, I would link to a certain site, but it would violate the BA's "family friendly" rule. Just do a search for "Superman is a ****" on Google. I'm sure your imagination can fill in the asterisks.
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Well, isn't it Daily Planet editor Perry White saying that? If so, I wouldn't read too much into it- Perry is a well known curmudgeon.
Does that include when other DC characters like Lobo uses it?ps I absolutely loathe it when someone refers to the character as "Supes"
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You must fall over foaming at the mouth when folks call him "the big blue Boy Scout" then.ps I absolutely loathe it when someone refers to the character as "Supes"
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I dont know about Superman, but I do know spiderman will make you gay http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/dadyes/sp.html
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Oh Lord that page is funny. I once spent an afternoon going through that page. Long live National Lampoon!For a more humorous answer, I would link to a certain site, but it would violate the BA's "family friendly" rule. Just do a search for "Superman is a ****" on Google. I'm sure your imagination can fill in the asterisks.
For those who don't know, the page show a wide variety of Golden Age Superman comic covers where Superman is doing something nasty to Lois, Jimmy, and sometime even Batman. The covers were a hook to get you to pick up the comic and see why Superman would act that way, but the sheer volume of them tell you how many times they used that cliche.
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There talks about Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid too [after Brokeback Mountain].
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I used that without sound as my City of Heroes avatar for about 14 minutes once...
On those borads, we've gotten in to many superhero discussions (the majority of the board is comic geeks afterall) but preference has never come up. I didn think it was interesting that in a choice between Superman and Batman the overwhelming majority chose Batman if we had to have a 'real' comic heor running about.
I also posted the question I saw from an old thread on here over there, about a fight between Worf and Wolverine. Worf goes down in under 10 seconds. The Wolverine Data battle lasted longer but Data ultimately lost.
RE: Superman being gay I don't see it. although some of these vintage comics covers would seem that he had reason to be...
I'm Not Evil.
An evil person would do the things that pop into my head.
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Gay?
I thought he was a religious figure (just like everything else).
Some see hero of 'Superman Returns' as Christ figure
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ps I absolutely loathe it when someone refers to the character as "Supes"Does that include when other DC characters like Lobo uses it?If it's used by a character within the comics universe that seems relevant, still irritating as hell, but relevant. When it's just a normal live human being, though, trying to be clever by implying a kind of faux-familiarity with the character..well that just makes my teeth hurt. Calling Batman "Bats"(or worse "Batsy")is a real close second!You must fall over foaming at the mouth when folks call him "the big blue Boy Scout" then.
The other nicknames, well, I don't know why, but they just don't rub me the wrong way. "Big blue Boy Scout", "Man of Steel"(Hello Joe Stalin!), "Last Son of Krypton", etc...no effect really.
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It was also a joke
Eh? Patrick Stewart isn't gay. He has played gays though.I had a feeling that part of it was because Singer was directing. I can remember the crap people said about X-Men (not only because of Singer but also because of McKellum and Stewart)
Yeah. The actress played her as utterly clueless.And for the record, I thought the scene in X2 with Bobby and his folks was priceless.
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"Superman" was a Nietzschean concept appropriated by the Nazis. All the odder because the two kids who created Superman were both Jewish.
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Okaaay, Carl is clueless. I am probibly mixing him up with one of his characters. Bad, bad Carl!
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And in The Celluloid Closet, which came out in the 80s. (Okay, to be fair, they don't really suggest Butch and Sundance were gay, just that there's a lot of chemistry between Newman and Redford, a fact confirmed by Paul Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward.)
Oh, and Matherly: It's "McKellan," actually. Who, as I understand it, came out so he could be the first openly gay man to receive some honour he was going to be receiving.
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Actually, it's "McKellen".
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Not really. I understood Superman was meant as a royal "**** you!" to the Nazi ideaology.
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Press-Ganged, like the age old swastika symbol.
When they weren't busy appropiating art treasures, other nations lands and slave labor, these guys had no problem cherry-picking the desired elements from many different and far flung sources or bending rules to accomodate needs(They did after all name the Japanese as something approximating "Honorary Aryans"). Other draftees include Bach(as a symbol of nationalism?), Wagner(of course, though I personally don't think he would have had anything to do with them),
Quite upside down to have an entire nations worth of people convinced to aspire to the nordic "superman" concept, when the whole project was lead by a failed meglomaniacal painter, a drug-fiend ex-air ace, a brutish closet-homosexual street brawler, a troll-like womanizing zealot state mouth-piece with a taste for Jewish actresses, a sycophantic dullard lackey and a failed chicken farmer. NONE of whom even remotely resembled the national ideal.
Yet proof that when times are real tough, you definately DO NOT want the real losers with severe grudges to form any kind of political party whatsoever.
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From what I understand from an interview I saw with him, he came out in protest against a law Thatcher tried to push though legislation to make "public promotion of homosexuality" a crime.
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Well, to bring it back to science a bit, we could compare the origin of homosexuality and superheroes. If homosexuality is not a choice because it's genetic then the genetic mutants would be the most analogous. I'm not sure about aquired mutancy, though.
I'm not sure that Batman would be analogous with gay. I'm not sure that you could claim one facet of his life is a lie and the other is real, he is equally Bruce Wayne and Batman. He runs around at night in a mask, but he doesn't really have super powers either, so he's not a superhero in that sense.
Superman is interesting since his alter-ego, as mentioned in Kill Bill #2, is his "normal" side, not his superhero side. He has to hide his reality, not his fabrication. One the other hand, his super powers are a result of environment and he would lose those powers other places.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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As Ara Pacis mentioned, Bill (of Kill Bill fame) maintained that Clark Kent was Superman's disguise. I disagree. A couple of DC authors explored this and came to the conclusion that Clark is who Ka-El sees himself as, and Superman is the alter-ego.
In Sandman, Neil Gaiman brilliently portrays this by showing a very normal Clark in the Dreaming (i.e. Clark is who he is when Ka-El dreams), and a non-human looking Batman (i.e. Batman is who he is when Bruce dreams)
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That sounds like a psychological issue, not a physical issue. Physically, Superman is super despite his self-image. There is probably some long pseudo-greek word for that condition, possibly cognative dissonance.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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spiderman found his friends http://www.spacespider.net/misc-danc...nd-friends.php
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I think that depends on how you interpret the analogy. When I first read what you wrote about Batman, I thought it was actually a good analogy for homosexuality, particularly the bolded sentence.
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Hmm - Batman asks himself a good question.
(I'm not saying Batman is gay - just the picture I've linked to is often offered as circumstantial evidence by those who do)
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