Gay magazine ‘Out’ is claiming that the character of Superman is not just an “immigrant,” but he is “also a gay icon” and “always has been.”
The magazine floated its wild claims in an editorial on Thursday just ahead of the world-wide debut of James Gunn’s Superman feature film.
Gunn stirred controversy this month by not only insisting that his Superman character is an “immigrant,” but he also told whose who don’t like the left-wing political message in his movie to go get screwed.
Superman, though, has never necessarily been portrayed as an “immigrant” per se. In the comics, the character has always identified himself more as a citizen of earth — and in past years, a citizen of the United States. After all, he left his alien home planet as an infant, grew up in Smallville in the U.S.A., and only knew about his home from the computer files his parents sent with him to earth. He has far more affinity for humans than for Kryptonians.
But on top of Gunn’s re-imagining of Superman’s ethos as an “immigrant story,” now Out magazine is taking even more of the masculine stuffing out of the Man of Steel and proclaiming that he is a “gay icon.”
For Out, self-identified lesbian writer Mey Rude claimed that the Superman character “has always been a queer allegory” — a fact that would have been news to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the men who created the Man of Steel in 1934.
Out has looked at the various aspects of the Superman legend and imputed a gay subtext to all of it. For instance, the writer claims that Superman’s alter-ego, journalist Clark Kent, is evidence of the same sort of “double life” that closeted gays lead. “The concept of a secret identity is a clear allegory for being in the closet,” the article exclaims.
The magazine also insists that “being an outsider” and the “hypermasculinity” of the character also touch on gay subtexts.
Then there is the costume. The article claims that Superman’s spandex is gay all the way, saying, “Spandex, a bright cape, and the underwear on the outside? Did I describe Superman’s costume or an outfit you’d see at any Pride festival?”
In conclusion Out claims that Superman is gay and straight people need to look somewhere else for a hero.
“No matter how much conservatives complain, Superman’s story is an immigrant story, and it is a queer story. Queer people have always seen themselves in superheroes, and will continue to do so. If conservatives want heroes that don’t represent the queer community, they need to look elsewhere,” the magazine proudly bloviates.
This historical revisionism is an absurd reach. It is patently obvious that Superman is an example of an “outsider,” granted. But for Shuster and Siegel, that did not mean to denote anything about homosexuality. With both creators being Jewish, it was the outsider status of Jews they were commenting upon, not that of gays.
The LGBTQ community can glom onto superheroes all they want, of course. That is what art and entertainment is all about, the idea that patrons might find their own meaning in the art. But that does not excuse Out for attempting to take possession of the Superman character and to exclude those who don’t see anything gay at all in the superhero story.
James Gunn’s Superman opened on Friday and is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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