David
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Superman - The Populist Hero We Needed (Audio)
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Apologies to readers :: This post has been updated both in terms of Superman history and a far more accurate understanding of the film Man of Steel. The update was inspired by an excellent video essay of Zach Snyder's entire filmography(including good things about his work which I agree with) by Patrick Willems which made clear the mythological aspects of the film that I'd neglected.

Superman was the first ever comic book superhero. Looking to communicate moral concerns beyond religion, the comic combined ancient myths and modern moral issues. Ever since then superhero comics - and their cartoon and live action adaptations - have provided readers and viewers moral guides for navigating the world; something mostly neglected by our current amoral metaphysics.

The comic was created towards the end of the Great Depression and with the tides of Fascism and Communism in the air. Superman was created as a democratic symbol of hope, anti-elitism, and a champion of the oppressed. He defended the poor from greedy landlords, workers from abusive employers, victims of domestic violence from the violent, and the wrongfully accused from their accusers. And he didn’t stop with cases where there were always clear victims; he also tackled systemic injustice by going after corrupt politicians and war profiteers.

The protagonist wasn’t just Superman either, he was Clark Kent, a newspaper reporter who, in true populist style, wholly appreciated the importance of intellectual values. Finding the truth and acting on it in the name of his version of justice and fairness - these were the values of Superman.

In a world full of corruption and desperation, Superman gave hope to the poor who had been on the bad end of the s%$t stick for too long. They could look to him as an example of someone demonstrating how to live in the less-than-fair world around them. They might not be able to do all that he could, breaking laws to get his way, but Superman's brand of justice and protecting the weak were values worth living. This Golden Age Superman - rebellious, morally driven, and politically charged - quickly became a pop culture icon.

Then, after American success in World War 2 and the beginning of the Cold War - a new Silver Age Superman morphed into something different. He became the flying, super-intelligent, super-powerful Superman we see today. This transformation occurred not as a result of a drop in popularity, as throughout the 40s and 50s he was one of the most popular comic characters, but due to a post-war conservative cultural movement. A movement of change that was driven by the post war Red Scare and the anti-subversion atmosphere that came with it.

Where Superman was previously populist, rebellious and carried out his own version of vigilante justice - he now needed to appear safe, loyal and patriotic. So by order of a newly created Comics Code he was reshaped. Moral ambiguity and law-breaking were out - American values of lawfulness, restraint and a perfect morality where he vowed against killing were in.

This shift in Superman’s moral character wasn’t limited to his behaviour either - it extended to the nature of the threats he faced too. They became far more fantastical rather than represent any kind of systemic injustice. Aliens, robots, and science fiction villains were the new while the problems of elitism and class based injustice were the old and no longer used.

After this second Silver Age version of Superman - the comic has waxed and waned between being the vigilante populist hero he once was and the picture of moral perfection fighting aliens and science fiction villains he was forced into being. Bronze Age Superman from around the 70s to the mid 80s, for example, appeared to be a somewhat harmonious amalgamation of the two where writers re-incorporated some populist elements but kept his style of justice on the side of the Law.

Bringing us back to the version of Superman in popular consciousness today - with Lex Luthor as his arch enemy - Lex no longer fully embodies those same Golden Era populist concerns of systemic injustice. But the populist parallels, even with the single Billionaire Lex, are clear.

So in amongst this conflict between the era's of the different versions of Superman and what he is to represent we've had the backdrop of rising inequality over the last four decades and the increasing elite control that goes with it. Indeed while things aren’t quite as desperate as they were when Golden Age Superman was created, America now has the highest levels of inequality and the elites more power than ever before.

As if matching that inequality, a sense of cynical and overly-intellectual hopelessness has infected modern culture for decades. And who can blame folks? Elites have cynically used our modern ‘amoral’ Subject-Object Metaphysics to hide all sorts of immoral behaviour under the language of objectivity. From immoral wars, to economic exploitation, to the corruption and millions of lives taken in healthcare, to the gutting of news laws and the resulting media manipulation, to the weakening of environmental protections and the delay of further action on climate change - the list just goes on and on.

And right there all along, helping them along the way, has been our current metaphysics, which encourages individualistic, ‘scientific’, subject-object thinking and denies and undermines the existence of morality at every turn. Indeed, science has been so successful - who can question the importance of this amoral objectivity?

Embraced by folks who see the power of science; this amoral yet individualistic intellectual attitude has become an increasingly large part of our shared culture. An attitude which views concerns about right and wrong with great intellectual skepticism at best, or naive and foolhardy at worst.

With this background - this brings us to the 2013 film Man of Steel. Following the lukewarm reception of 2006’s Superman Returns - the first Superman film since the Christopher Reeve era - the creators of Man of Steel saw an opportunity for change. Screenwriters David Goyer and Christopher Nolan aimed to ground Superman in realism, while Goyer and director Zack Snyder specifically hoped to emphasise moral ambiguity. Snyder further contributed to this grounded vision with his gritty yet stylised cinematography, marked by bold, powerful imagery.

To achieve this look Snyder used an aforementioned "Heightened Realism" film technique which makes every shot appear dull, overexposed, and cold. If someone were looking for a cold, calculated, and intellectual style of filming - away from the emotions and warmth that colour brings - then this would likely be it. Indeed, the intellectualism demonstrated in this film isn’t the warm, pragmatic style shown by Superman in the first comics. Instead it’s an intellectualism far more in line with our current individualistic Subject-Object Metaphysics - one which views doing good with great hesitation and skepticism and then requires reasons for doing so.

Throughout his childhood, Clark is told by his father to hide his powers - his full goodness - from the world for fear of the repercussions of folks knowing his power. It is only after witnessing an abundance of suffering, including the death of his own father, that Clark finally breaks free from this parentally imposed limitation and begins to act in line with what is right.

When Superman finally and openly confronts the villains, they are portrayed in a highly thematic and mythic way, reminiscent of the grand, otherworldly antagonists of the Silver Age comics. This Superman ultimately does the right thing - but this version is far from the idealised, unwaveringly noble hero of the Silver Age.

The culmination of the film is a choice Superman must make between the lives of innocent bystanders and his fellow Kryptonian who is threatening those bystanders - General Zod. In the end Superman takes the life of Zod and saves the bystanders but the film highlights that this choice isn't without great suffering. It is this choice that the creators wanted to highlight as a reason for Superman doing the right thing and having his 'no killing' clause.

This version of Superman isn't interested in Golden Era concerns of shining a light on moral injustice and standing up for the right things in populist fashion. Nor is it the Silver Age Superman of moral purity who is always on the right side of justice against science fiction style villains. Instead this version of Superman is morally unsure of himself and is overburdened by the consequences of the enormous power he holds. Indeed on a metaphysical level this Superman is struggling with goodness and morality so much that he even requires reasons to do it.

But Creator/director Zach Snyder was never interested in telling those old Silver Age stories and his knowledge of the Golden Era appears mostly lacking - instead by his own admission he was interested in the mythology and depicting larger, deeper mythological conflicts on screen. Particularly the physical consequences of Gods living among men and the awesome power they hold. As Snyder says:

"Yeah, I feel like a lot of people didn't want Superman to grow up. They want him to remain a simpler man from a simpler time. My philosophy is that these characters are cathartic, they're our mythology and they speak to modern problems - when we don't know how to deal with an issue we can superimpose those feelings of impotence on to them and let them solve unsolvable problems."

So in this Snyder version, the attention shifted away from the moral conflicts Superman was resolving, to existential moral uncertainty within Superman himself. While Snyder leans into the virtuous and mythological aspects of Superman, placing the character in a contemporary political and metaphysical framework - this resulted in a very different perhaps unintended message. Instead of affirming the existence of goodness, the film questions it mirroring a growing sense of moral despondency found throughout the world. And it does this all while entirely neglecting the elite concentrations of social level power that cause much of it.

Golden and Bronze Age Superman by contrast, knew what goodness was and is and acted on it in the name of Intellectual and Dynamic Morality as with the populists before them. These versions of Superman, supported by the Metaphysics of Quality, morally highlighted important moral conflicts within modern culture that were unaddressed by existing power structures and neglected by our current metaphysics.

Enter 2025’s Superman film and the reason why I’m writing this. Rather than simply call out a misguided film, I think it’s worthwhile if we also point to one that’s good. If Snyder’s Superman was cold and overly skeptical of doing good, this new James Gunn version is way more in line with Golden Age Superman and open and direct about doing good. Indeed in one scene Superman goes so far as to proudly declare that all he is doing is serving 'Good'. This is a colourful, warm, and pragmatic Superman who doesn’t lament the decisions he makes and is almost too self-assured that he always does the right thing.

But before I go into the detail of that quality, let me get five minor issues with the film out of the way.

Because it would have been better if:

  1. Lex Luthor had manipulated the people and divided them against each other - distracting them while he carried out his evil plan (more accurately reflecting real life).
  2. Clark’s real concerns were more about elite manipulation rather than his own identity (although both were rightly included).
  3. It further highlighted the intelligence of the reporters at the Daily Planet.
  4. The focus was more 'Golden Age' Superman style on the abuse of the common folk by many different elites (not just Lex) in many different ways.
  5. The other 'Silver Age' style superheroes were not included - I'm not hopeful for any sequels to highlight the right things from this point forward.

 

Now the good.

Since Man of Steel we have witnessed the rise of Marvel and superhero films taking over global consciousness. It can be hard to underestimate the impact these films have on our shared culture. So in these times of overt elite injustice, we have been crying out for a film of similar popularity which didn’t just shine a light on some of that injustice but also pointed to a better way.

Where Man of Steel‘s father told Clark to be cautious and skeptical about doing and being good, the 2025’s Jonathan Kent has no such hesitations. The fearful parenting style is gone and something quite different and better has taken its place. As his father says to him:

“Parents aren’t for telling their children who they’re supposed to be. We are here to give y’all tools to help you make fools of yourselves all on your own. Your choices, Clark, your actions… that’s what makes who you are.”

Which is about as strong a statement in favour of pragmatism and goodness, and away from the nihilistic mythology of Man of Steel as you could find.

Indeed, this film is ‘the Superman we needed’. This film:

  1. Rightly and proudly points out, in our modern often overly ‘individualistic’ culture, that caring is punk rock and people and things are beautiful and worth caring about.
  2. Quite directly calls out a few major villains in today’s world - something we haven’t seen in a blockbuster of this scale since Chaplin’s brilliant The Great Dictator.
  3. Provides a positive role model for young men to look up to - something that has been lacking on the screen for a long time. It provides something the rise of the ‘crisis of masculinity’ has been calling out for
  4. Demonstrates, through an excellent performance of Mr Terrific by Edi Gathegi, how it’s cool to use your intelligence for good - far better than for bad, as Lex does.
  5. Joins a growing trend of eschewing the Heightened Realism cinematographic style made popular by Christopher Nolan. Colours are finally coming back to blockbuster cinema films.

It's not often a piece of art that's culture changing is also popular. But that appears to be the case here - and for the better. So with Superman 2025's box office success - I say Rock On. 🤘

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David
The Cage of an Amoral Metaphysics Over Art.
Film

We have gone through a trend, lasting at least the last 20 years in cinema, of something referred to as "Heightened Realism". A preference for shots which look slightly dull, yet somewhat overexposed. The technique is often to take the natural light already existing in a shot and subtly increase it. A dull effect is not what one might expect from increasing light in a scene- yet because only the existing light is being raised, it ends up muting the subtlety of the colors that sit quietly in the frame.

The result is a feeling as though we are right there in the shot with the subject - yet entirely as passive observers. Or perhaps more precisely, we’re overlooking the scene in a cold, scientific, god-like manner. The sterility of the effect, and how it separates the audience from the emotional life of the scene, is perhaps the aspect of it which is most overwhelming.

It’s a cinematographic style that appears dull on the surface. It uses “natural” lighting, a certain graininess, and avoids any sense of creative risk in color grading or light design. It resists stylization in favor of something that pretends to be close to reality but is, in fact, just another aesthetic decision.

Christopher Nolan is perhaps the most famous for this style. And the “scientific observer” quality of his work goes beyond just the visuals. It extends to the sound - audiences have often complained they can’t hear actors speak their lines clearly, just as a distant observer might struggle to pick up speech from far away. The music, too, often follows the same formula: naturalistic, but pushed, exaggerated, heavy.

The key to note perhaps though is that this Heightened Realism is anything but real and is just another style. Beautiful yes, but just another style choice like every other.

To those of us who appreciate a better metaphysics though; the parallels between this kind of thinking and an amoral metaphysics - which denies any sort of human emotion or moral judgement - is obvious. We live in a scientific age, and one creatively trapped by the metaphysics that underpins it. A time where even audiences appear to prefer this kind of aesthetic. A time where science and the apparent necessity of its amoral metaphysics rule the day.

Perhaps this kind of judgement-free thinking is why superhero films have, until recently, dominated the box office. These are stories that allow the breaking of scientific laws - but only by very specific characters. Superheroes are entirely external to us, and even their powers must follow very specific rules for how they break the natural order. They are fanciful, yes - but absolutely everything else around them must remain grounded. Heaven forbid we cast judgement or break free from the self-imposed cage we’ve built.

What’s missed in this way of thinking though - is the simple fact that we exist - and our existence is value. There is nothing but value. Value judgements are just as real, if not more real, than the objects we observe. Even scientific rules begin to fall apart at the subatomic level, but yet we cling to this aesthetic of scientific realism, almost entirely driven by the material success it has brought us.

This cage of scientific-style art is one entirely of our own making. But the good news is—we can break out of it at any time. And we're starting to see the cracks.

Most directly, we can see it in the rise of anime among Gen Z. Anime deliberately shuns realism in favor of something entirely different. But another great example is the underrated yet great and brilliant film Speed Racer.

Dismissed by critics at the time of its release - some even called it “pop fascism” - Speed Racer embraces almost everything that runs counter to the Heightened Realism trend. Except maybe the Heightened part. "Heightened Un-realism" it could almost be called. Indeed Speed Racer is full of heightened color, heightened light, heightened playfulness, heightened emotion and it continually breaks the laws of science to the point where those laws are constantly bent always in service of the story itself. The result is just a great masterpiece of film - one co-incidentally also based on an anime. So now, nearly 20 years later, people are beginning to change their minds on this box office failure. Some are even calling it the most important film of the 21st Century.

But it's not all roses and perhaps this is why I'm writing this post.

Because the latest forthcoming Christopher Nolan film - The Odyssey - might perhaps be the most egregious usage of his Heightened Realism style yet. A film that will bring Nolan’s scientific realism to the Ancient Greeks - a culture that predates our current metaphysics entirely. The juxtaposition between our modern, emotionally detached aesthetic and how things actually were is likely going to be at an all-time high.

Except it won't just be a juxtaposition but a "heightened juxtaposition" if you will..

Nolan, famous for his realistic portrayal of the appearance of a black hole in the film Interstellar, is entirely shunning the experts on what the Ancient Greeks actually looked like or what they wore. Instead he will be pairing his Heightened Realism filmmaking style with entirely fanciful and false portrayals of their armor and dress.

Where modern portrayals often reduce the Ancient Greeks to something stoic, monotone, dominant, and hyper-masculine, they were, in fact, the opposite. They celebrated color and beauty in their clothing. They were emotionally complex, playful, poetic, and deeply involved in democratic dialogue - far from the dominance they are usually associated with today.

A dominance which, perhaps not coincidentally, is plainly visible when animals are observed scientifically. Indeed it is the same value-blind perspective that distorts both our understanding of our uniquely human behavior and the deep and rich fabric of Ancient Greek culture. Our current amoral metaphysics then doesn’t just undermine modern art—it also sustains and enables our misunderstanding of the Ancient Greeks themselves.

Regardless of that exacerbation though; with Nolan's portrayal there is the high likelihood that those who aren't familiar with the Ancient Greeks will be even further led to misunderstand them. The important difference between modern portrayals and how they actually were will be further undermined. While Nolan brings his 'realistic style' of cinema to them, the portrayal of the Ancient Greeks he's looking to show on screen will be anything but realistic.

Which brings us full circle - back to our current metaphysics. It masquerades as the “most real” way of seeing the world, insisting on a detached observer model that excludes value, judgment, and feeling. But in truth, experience itself is soaked in all of those things. Real experience is not neutral. It never was.

As always there’s a better way. The Metaphysics of Quality shows us that. And thankfully, we are starting to move - back toward art that affirms life and its rich tapestry of values and emotions, not merely observes it. And that's a Good thing.

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David
Film

Some great news for the week is that there looks to be a great Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance documentary in the works. See above a clip of an interview with David Buchanan who I've spoken with many times online over the years.

David has an unparalleled understanding of the Metaphysics of Quality - particularly around how it relates to the philosophical tradition of american pragmatism. I'm sure with his involvement (no matter how small) the quality of this documentary will be greatly increased!

I believe the creators are currently looking for funding which you can do whilst they travel the route of the book - here.

Best of luck to them and hopefully this will kick off some well needed - renewed interest in Pirsig's original book.

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There's a great short documentary on the uniquely strong value the University of Chicago places on the intellectual value of free speech. And before I go on - there's actually much crossover here with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The university was attended by the author Robert Pirsig where he had an infamous showdown with the Chair of the Committee on Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods. And it was the universities president Robert Maynard Hutchins who was a close colleague of the Chair and who had reformed the university into a mirror of what Pirsig uniqely terms in ZMM 'Aristotilean Quality'. But as also mentioned in the book; this reform led to a clash against those who wanted a more value-free 'scientific' education, as well as an eventual clash with Pirsig who didn't agree with the low quality Aristotilean definition of Quality..

Phædrus didn't know quite what to make of this clash. But it certainly seemed to be close to the area he wished to work in. He also felt that no values can be fixed but that this is no reason why values should be ignored or that values do not exist as reality. He also felt antagonistic to the Aristotelian tradition as a definer of values, but he didn't feel this tradition should be left unreckoned with. The answer to all this was somehow deeply enmeshed in it and he wanted to know more.

Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

And in along the same lines in the movie..

'Hutchins' envisaged something like a military academy for the mind. One grounded in a demanding core curriculum.'

Rob Montz - 'Silence U Pt. 3: Can the University of Chicago solve the campus free speech crisis?'

Despite a very clear disagreement about the metaphysical place of Quality - it's clear however, that the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) supports the University of Chicago's latest stand for free speech discussed in the documentary. As always - we can use the language of the MOQ to break down the problem into its core evolutionary components and beautifully show why it's moral..

Firstly, the MOQ agrees that students around the world shouldn't need to be shielded from certain ideas they find painful or confronting. Such thinking comes from one of biological suffering where society morally supports and comforts those in pain. But ideas are intellectual, not biological, and so it's moral for our culture to allow a voice to ideas that are challenging to confront and this will eventually change our ideas for the better.

'Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Suffering is the negative face of the Quality that drives the whole process. All these battles between patterns of evolution go on within suffering individuals.. And Lila's battle is everybody's battle, you know?'

Robert Pirsig - Lila

And secondly, the MOQ also agrees that students shouldn't demand universities refuse to 'give a platform' to ideas they disagree with. Whilst universities and colleges are cultural institutions, they are much more than this and seeing them as exclusively cultural, is to undercut the intellectual values they are set up to protect and preserve. In other words - it is true that who they give a platform to is in some way a cultural statement, however few cultural statements could be better than for an intellectual forum to actively demonstrate the intellectual value of free speach. Giving a voice to those ideas on the periphery or in opposition to those they agree with is just such an intellectual demonstration.

Thirdly, if they are concerned about the strength of certain bad ideas to take hold within the culture, then it's possible they have not appropriately confronted the issues themselves or rightly asked that of others. Which indeed according to the MOQ is the intellectually moral, and perhaps socially difficult thing to do.

And so finally, in this battle for free speech - in all cases it's clearly between those who are seeing things through a social lens at the expense of intellectual morality. Of course equipped with the Metaphysics of Quality - students could avoid grave errors in logic such as this and be far more likely to choose those ideas that are the best. But until that point, the MOQ still uniqely and rightly calls those seeing things through the social lens as immoral and acting against the intellectual quality of evolution and what's right.

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If there was anything in particular that 'primed' me to understand Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila aside from being raised the thoughtful, caring person I am. It would be a movie called 'Fight Club'.

For me, watching as a youthful Westerner - the ideas of Chuck Palahniuk were a revelation. Here was the idea that rather than finding freedom by running away from something, it could be found right here in front you.

Such thinking is supported by the MOQ and shown to be one of the two types of freedom discussed in the book Lila. That is; the freedom to be found running away from something which we're commonly used to, and the less commonly known freedom found by working through the pain of something right in front of you.

This was a freedom of the East which I knew little about - and now that I practice Zazen - still know nothing about it! :-)

"In the West progress seems to proceed by a series of spasms of alternating freedom and ritual. A revolution of freedom against old rituals produces a new order, which soon becomes another old ritual for the next generation to revolt against, on and on. In the Orient there are plenty of conflicts but historically this particular kind of conflict has not been as dominant. Phaedrus thought it was because dharma includes both static and Dynamic Quality without contradiction."

Robert Pirsig - Lila.

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