The Myth of SupermanUmberto Eco

Ilyas Babar Awan

Lecturer in English

National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan

The Myth of Superman

Introduction (Umberto Eco-1932-2016)

• Umberto Eco has long been recognized in other circles as theleading contempory theorist of semiotics.

• Born in Alessandria, Italy, Eco was educated at the University ofTurin (Ph.D. 1954) and has taught at the universities of Turin,Florence, Milan, and Bologna, where he has been professor ofsemiotics since 1975.

Superman

• The hero equipped with powers superior to those of the common manhas been a constant of the popular imagination - from Hercules toSiegfried, from Roland to Pantagruel, all the way to Peter Pan.

• Superman is not from Earth; he arrived here as a youth from the planetKrypton. Growing up on Earth, Superman finds he is gifted withsuperhuman powers. His strength is practically unlimited.

• He is kind, handsome, modest, and helpful; his life is dedicated to thebattle against the forces of evil; and the police find him an untiringcollaborator.

Myth & Semoitics

• Myth:

• “A widely held but false belief or idea”.

• An idea or story that is believed by many people but that is not true. : astory that was told in an ancient culture to explain practice, belief, ornatural occurrence.

• Semoitics:

• Semoitics is the study of signs, symbols, and signification.

Superman’s Double Identity

• In fact, Superman lives among men disguised as the journalistClark Kent; as such, he appears fearful, timid, not overintelligent, awkward, nearsighted, and submissive.

• Superman's double identity has a function, since it permits thesuspense characteristic of a detective story and great variation inthe mode of narrating our hero's adventures, his ambiguities, hishistrionics.

THE STRUCTURE OF MYTH ANDTHE "CIVILIZATION" OF THE NOVEL

• There is, in fact, a fundamental difference between the figure ofSuperman and the traditional heroic figures of classical and nordicmythology or the figures of Messianic religions.

• The "civilization" of the modem novel offers a story in which the reader'smain interest is transferred to the unpredictable nature of what willhappen and, therefore, to the plot invention which now holds ourattention. The event has not happened before the story; it happenswhile it is being told, and usually even the author does not know whatwill take place.

THE PLOT AND THE "CONSUMPTION"OF THE CHARACTER

• A tragic plot, according to Aristotle, involves the character in aseries of events, reversals, recognitions, pitiful and terrifyingcases that culminate in a catastrophe;5 a novelistic plot, let usadd, develops these dramatic units in a continuous and narratedseries which, in the popular novel, becomes an end in itself.

• Superman, by definition the character whom nothing can impede,finds himself in the worrisome narrative situation of being a herowithout an adversary and therefore without the possibility of anydevelopment.

Superman’s Inconsumibility

• Superman, then, must remain "inconsumable“ and at the sametime be "consumed" according to the ways of everyday life.

• He possesses the characteristics of timeless myth, but is acceptedonly because his activities take place in our human and everydayworld of time. The narrative paradox that Snperman's scriptwritersmust resolve somehow, even without being aware of it, demands aparadoxical solution with regard to time.

TEMPORALITY AND "CONSUMPTION"

• Time : The Aristotelian definition of time is "the amount ofmovement from before to after”.

• Time as a structure of possibility.

• Sartre says that "the past is the ever-growing totality of the in-itself which we are."

A PLOT which DOES NOT"CONSUME" ITSELF

• If contemporary discussions which involve man in meditation upon his destiny and his condition are based on this concept of time, the narrative structure of Superman certainly evades it in order to save the situation which we have already discussed.

• In Superman it is the concept of time that breaks down.

• If it took Superman up again at the point where he left off, he would have taken a step toward death.

A PLOT which DOES NOT"CONSUME" ITSELF

• If Superman married Lois Lane, it would of course be another steptoward his death, as it would lay down another irreversiblepremise; nevertheless, it is necessary to find continually newnarrative stimuli and to satisfy the "romantic" demands thepublic. And so it is told "what would have happened if Supermanhad married Lois.“

SUPERMAN AS A MODELOF ''HETERODIRECTION''

• The proposed analysis would be greatly abstracted and could appearapocalyptic if the man who reads Superman, and for whom Superman isproduced, were not the selfsame man with whom several sociologicalreports have dealt and who has been defined as "other directed man."

• In advertising, as in propaganda, and in the area of human relations, theabsence of the dimension of "planning" is essential to establishing apaternalistic pedagogy, which requires the hidden persuasion that thesubject is not responsible for his past, nor master of his future, not evensubject to the laws of planning according to the three "ecstasies" oftemporality (Heidegger).

CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS ANDPOLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

• Superman stories have a characteristic in common with a series ofother adventures that hinge on heroes gifted with superpowers.

• Each of these heroes is gifted with such powers that he couldactually take over the government, defeat the army, or alter theequilibrium of planetary politics. On the other hand, it is clearthat each of these characters is profoundly kind, moral, faithful tohuman and natural laws, and therefore it is right (and it is nice)that he use his powers only to the end of good.

Civic Attitude

• Superman's civic attitude is perfect, but it is exercised andstructured in the sphere of a small, closed community.

• It is strange that Superman, devoting himself to good deeds,spends enormous amounts ofenergy organizing benefitperformances in order to collect money for orphans and indigents.The paradoxical waste of means (the same energy could beemployed to produce directly riches or to modify radically largersituations) never ceases to astound the reader who seesSupermanforever employed in parochial performances.

Civic Attitude

• On the other hand, it would be inexact to say that Superman'sjudicious and measured virtue depends only on the structure ofthe plot, that is, on the need to forbid the release of excessiveand irretrievable developments.

Superman

QAIlyas Babar Awan

Lecturer in English

National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.