Superman and America

Abstract

In the 1930s Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman not just in response to the privations of the Great Depression, but also as a result of the frustrations of modern life with increasingly centralized power in government bureaucracies and private corporations. These were social concerns and Siegel and Shuster’s early Superman looked to social solutions. By the 1970s such social concerns had turned inwards and individuals sought release from the stresses of modernity through self-improvement and increasingly individualistic behavior. The late 1978 film Superman, and its sequel, responded to these changing times. The films reassured Americans of their worth, at a time of great cynicism due to Watergate, and helped reshape values into a vision of America that aligned with the conservative agenda of Ronald Reagan.