I thought that the 'deeper meaning' of the most recent Superman movie couldn't be more clear. With the filmmakers being so obvious about it, it really surprised me that anyone could miss it. The filmmakers were so obvious about what they wanted to say that I regard Man of Steel as the most "preachy" movie of all time. (Finally surpassing the all time winner of movie preachydom, Return of the Living Dead part III). [1]
Alas, despite having their noses rubbed in the point of the movie repeatedly, nearly everyone missed it. By miles. Only one of small sub-culture actually understood what The Man of Steel was all about -- self-proclaimed individualists. This wasn't so much a surprise because the movie is about individualism.
But this post isn't about the hits. It's about the misses, and this brings me to my time as a hoaxer. [2]
I learned a lot while I was a hoaxer, mainly from two classes of people: the believers and the skeptics. Believers always attempt to validate or justify a hoax while skeptics[3] always try to "debunk" a hoax by giving an explanation designed to show their audience how the magic trick was performed.
There is very little difference between the two: the skeptic is a believer who begins with a different premise. A believer begins with the premise of "it's real" and works their way towards it. A skeptic begins with the premise of "it's fake" and works their way towards it. [4]In both cases, the initial premise is what's important and anything which follows is merely an attempt to justify their premise.
A believer rarely misses the point of a hoax because the hoax is for them and begins with the same premises they already hold and on some level, mostly unrealized and subconsciously,[5] and at least on that level, they "get it". They do, however, often completely fail on their justification. Anything which justifies their premise and is sufficiently believable according to their own evidence procedure[6] will do.
A skeptic will often correctly identify a hoax as a hoax, but will completely fail in their interpretations of how it was done. They're like the audience of a magic show who think that they know how the trick works, even though the trick can be done any number of ways.
What I've learned from this is people generally have no idea what they're talking about. They just make it up as they go along and go with whatever comes to mind.[7] Then whatever they shat from their rectal nethervoid[8] becomes their "truth".
So let's get back to Man of Steel.
I've found that the various fan-interpretations of Man of Steel illustrate this very well. If you want to see it for yourself, I recommend the following:
Step 1: Find an interpretation / review of Man of Steel written by a self-proclaimed individualist. It will clue you into what the Man of Steel is about. (Google "man of steel individualism")
Step 2: Read other interpretations by various types of people. (Google "man of steel review", "man of steel christianity", "man of steel etc") [9]
Step 3: Enjoy this quirk of human nature.
Step 4: Stay Frosty.
In closing, I'm going to give one common justification and show how it's completely irrelevant to what the movie was about.
The justification is "Superman has always been violent."
The justification's purpose is to make Superman's behavior seem more socially acceptable[10]. Man of Steel is about individualism, not the acceptability of violence. Any attempt at a discussion of Superman snapping Zod's neck without discussing WHY completely misses the point. As given, "Superman has always been violent" is equally valid as saying "Zod had a snappable neck."
FOOTNOTES
[1] I'm not saying that preachy movies are bad. I've learned a lot from them. I just think that they lose something for their preachyness. I consider Fight Club the third most preachy movie of all time, and it would have been much better if I had to do a bit more work to "get it". A good example of a non-preachy but worthwhile series is Aeon Flux and a good example of a song would be Hotel California.
[2] There are hoaxers who hoax for ideological or sadistic reasons. Then there are hoaxers who hoax to make life more interesting. I'm the second type, a crowbar of separation, please.
[3] There is a difference between professional and armchair skeptics. A professional is more like a scientist who collects actual data, evaluates it, and comes to a conclusion based on that. An armchair skeptic is more like a zealot whose only evidence is whatever they can come up with. You can tell the difference between them easily: the armchair skeptic is incapable of arriving at the conclusion of "undetermined" or "unknown" -- that m'fkr knows it all.
Note that there is some showbiz to professional skepticism where cameras are involved and I may cover this in another post.
[4] A hoaxer begins with the premises of his intended audience.
[5] See Carl Jung's short treatise on "Flying Saucers."
[6] "Evidence procedure" is a term I swiped from NLP. Though I didn't know anything about NLP while I was hoaxing, I understood the concept: an evidence procedure is the cognitive strategy someone uses to collect 'information' and determine whether any of it is valid evidence. "Get information from the internet. If it's on the internet, then it must be true" is a simple, but valid (well-formed) evidence procedure, though not a very useful one.
[7] The availability heuristic (bias) is relevant here.
[8] Yup. I aware of the implications of that statement. :)
[9] I'm interested to know what kinds of people you searched for as they are sure to be different from what I did. It gives me another point of view.
I'm also interested in any premises and justifications you identify in various interpretations.
[10] See the concept of "Accountability" as described by modern psychology.
[11] The hidden footnote. :) "Interpretation is often projection."
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