Superman and the American Christian Nation

Superman is renouncing his U.S. citizenship and Mike Huckabee is none too happy about it.

Huckabee, responding to the comic book flap Sunday on Fox News, called it “disturbing” that the larger than life superhero would give up his citizenship.

“Well it is a comic book, but, you know it’s disturbing that Superman who has always been an American icon is now saying I’m not going to be a citizen,” he said. “I think it’s a part of a bigger trend of Americans almost apologizing for being Americans.”

Huckabee said he wouldn’t purchase the comic book, and that American kids should be taught that their country is great.

“I’m disturbed by this whole globalist trend. I think we ought to be teaching young Americans that they’re young Americans, that it means something to be an American,” he said. “There’s something great about this country.”

I’m not a comic book reader or fan, nor am I a scholar of comic culture, but, if we take comic books as pedagogical at some level then it’s interesting to think of the shift Superman’s newfound internationalism symbolizes. I’ve been working with 19th century schoolbooks lately and thinking about the ways these books constructed “the American” for readers. I was especially interested in geography books because of the ways the located a white/Protestant/Enlightened/moral American nation in a world full of lesser nations and people. (For more on these schoolbooks and there representations see this paper from the 2010 AAR meeting.) In these books the American was always superior to the foreign. But now, in the 21st century, Superman is offering a new view of the globe.

“I intend to speak before the United Nations tomorrow and inform them that I am renouncing my U.S. citizenship,” Superman says in a comic book released last week. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy. ‘Truth, justice and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore.”

The 19th century schoolbooks I’ve examined stressed the moral superiority of America. Superman is questioning this moral superiority and that’s what bothers Mike Huckabee so much. Furthermore, 19th century books connected American moral superiority to its Christianity. Children were taught that Protestantism was the basis for American freedom; for ‘truth, justice, and the American way.’ For folks like Huckabee, who believe that America was founded as a “Christian nation” (whatever that means), Superman’s repudiation (or maybe it’s a refudiation?) signals a shift in our national pedagogy. The “globalist trend” Huckabee decries questions the morality of a specifically American form of Christianity that is grafted into American nationalism. The nationalist message of a white/Protestant/Enlightened/morally superior/civlized America gives way to a global message of tolerance, diplomacy, and international justice. The American way just isn’t enough any more. Superman is not a tool of American policy. He now stands for global truth and international justice.

Now, I only wonder if Superman was dancing in the streets Sunday night.