Too Good to be True: Generation X Men and Superman

Superman (played by David Corenswet) turning himself in to the feds. 

If the words “Gen X” have begun to give you an almost adverse physical reaction, you are not alone. Setting aside the rather unfortunate ways Gen X has been figuring into American politics of late, my generation has developed an absolutely tiresome inferiority/superiority complex. We are in an unenviable position. To put it in World War 2 European geographic terms, Gen X is Poland. We are sandwiched between two bigger and more powerful cohorts. We seem to be the new Silent Generation, which refers to the people too young to enlist in World War 2 and too old to be hippies (though some did it anyway). And we make up for feeling overshadowed and passed over by consoling ourselves with the dubious fact that we are "cooler" than everyone else, which is of course, profoundly uncool. 

Generation X, which is broadly defined as people born between 1965 and 1980, begins to turn 60 this year. Retirement age is rapidly approaching, though I am of course using “retirement age” loosely as many in my generation will never be able to fully retire. We are at a turning point. And the discourse around Gen X has tended to revolve around the fact that throughout the horrific first half of the first year of his second term, we have been President Trump’s most reliable age bracket of support. This has led to a question that rings out on social media every day: how could the generation that once slapped “Question Authority” stickers on their car bumpers and skateboards do such an abrupt heel turn (and to be clear, Trump support amongst Gen X is not a universal phenomenon: per CNN, Gen X support for Trump in the last election was at 54% but drops to 14% when you factor for race and only look at African-Americans; Latine Gen-X went for Trump by 51%)? 

This might seem like a strange turn of events unless you are Gen X. We know that our cohort was practically gavaged for the entirety of the 80s with the message that liberal idealism was to be sneered at, the cause of annoying risible losers, and a failure. We spent our formative years marinating in Boomer cynicism, and the most pernicious aspect of cynicism is the way it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyone who says things cannot change or get better will, wittingly or unwittingly, do their part in ways large and small to ensure that outcome.

Watergate seems to be definitive for my generation. But what has always struck me as curious is how much Watergate has been coded as a symbol of how hopelessly flawed and untrustworthy our leaders are rather than celebrated as an instance where the system worked to expel something toxic from power. Framing it the former way was a choice, one made collectively at a time when no one wanted to risk looking naive by endorsing the latter take. 

This disillusionment became endemic. It’s not a stretch to say that the widespread experience of divorce in the 70s also saddled my generation with a lack of faith in traditional authority figures. Unfortunately, my generation rarely tried to replace these literal and figurative faildads with anyone who embodied goodness as we had been taught it and instead drifted into affected, jaded nihilism. “My dad sucks. Your dad sucks. Ergo, all dads suck.” You can hear this explicitly in punk/hardcore music (there is literally a song by Descendants from 1985 called “My Dad Sucks”). Youthful rebellion, early disillusionment, and nihilism are a dangerous mix. They lead to embracing toxic monsters as truth tellers and the opprobrium they inspire only makes them more appealing. 

And all of this has been rattling around my aging head as I reflect on James Gunn’s new film Superman which has the Herculean task of launching a rebranded cinematic universe but also bringing the most defiantly square superhero back to his roots. Gunn, who is soon to turn 59, is Elder Gen X. And his story is in many ways emblematic of my generation’s arc over the decades. 

He began at Troma Entertainment, the legendary B-movie company and kicked around at the outskirts of the industry in the early 2000s, but is now the Co-CEO/Co-Chairman of DC Studios for Warner Discovery. He has gone from movie business outsider to film industry titan. And along the way, Gunn was very active on social media. He cultivated a brash persona. His spiky hair was a trademark and announced his punk sensibilities. And by the time Marvel had improbably made him a major player, some of Gunn’s earlier tweets that were deeply Gen X in their deliberately transgressive and offensive subject matter offered as humor, came back to haunt him. This was a coordinated campaign to get Gunn by the reactionary fanboys he’d gleefully crossed swords with on Twitter and in his work. By the middle of the Guardians Trilogy, Gunn was a pretty outspoken liberal voice and clashed with the growing chorus of revanchist geeks. And this clash was inevitable. By the middle of the trilogy, it was clear what drew Gunn to it was the chance to showcase a multicultural/multi-species band of rejects who form a family as they fight bad guys who represent either ethnonationalism or eugenics, two of the pillars of Nazism. 

Gunn was at a crossroads when he was attacked. What he did had the merit of being both honorable and strategically sound. He refused to make himself the victim even though this was clearly a campaign to victimize him, and instead owned his mistakes and apologized. He was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (only to, of course, be later rehired) and defected to DC to make another film about another ragtag multicultural band of rejects fighting a foe built to combat diversity. Gunn’s journey from 90s provocateur to heart-on-his-sleeve earnestness in middle age is not the path many men in my generation have taken. He could have easily emerged from Tweetgate decrying political correctness and cancel culture. But he has, up to this moment, not. He forged ahead. 

So Gunn was perfect to finally take up Superman. The film he made was exactly what one would expect. One in which Gunn finally reverses the last decade or so of Evil Supermen narratives and dares to imagine a man can have godlike powers and remain fundamentally decent. My generation has struggled with this. Mightily. 

The list of Evil Superman stories is a testament to this issue. And so of course is Zack Snyder’s three films featuring Superman (Snyder is also Elder Gen X, he turns 60 next year too). Snyder forces Superman to commit murder, replaces his need to help people with a weary numbness toward their suffering, has him humbled by an Ayn Randian Batman, and puts him in a black suit. He is fascinated by Superman’s power, but not much else. Batman, the favorite of edgelords everywhere because his quest is less about helping people than out-badassing the badasses, is Snyder's true hero. Batman's reaction to his childhood trauma has made him a patron saint for hurt, angry men everywhere who would rather imagine retribution than go to therapy. And I was once absolutely a member of their ranks when I was dealing with my own traumas of youth. It is beyond telling that we still have yet to get an Evil Batman film even though Batman is far more villain ready than Superman. Comics have made much of the parallels between Bruce Wayne and the modern version of Lex Luthor as a tech lord and captain of industry. Given how much we are ready to put toxic robber barons on a pedestal, it’s frankly a miracle we never got a movie that posits Lex Luthor is the real hero.

Another hero who has had a similarly hard time at the hands of Gen X is Captain America. It is striking how Joss Whedon (who also bears some responsibility for the recent mismanagement of Superman on the big screen) can hardly hide his disdain for the character in his two Avengers films. Whedon clearly sees the two nerds as the core of the group. As a self-described nerd himself, he gets them. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are like Tyler Durden and the Narrator of Fight Club. Tony, with his quippy sangfroid, womanizing past, and punk edge (remember him blasting Suicidal Tendencies as he works in Gen X’er Jon Favreau’s Iron Man?) is what nerds would like to be, but Banner, the awkward guy with the worst temper ever, is closer to what they are. In Avengers and Age of Ultron, these two play scenes together only to have Steve Rogers come in as the tedious scold who (worst sin of all to a geek) doesn’t get references. Whedon’s residual nerd resentment of the jocks extends to Thor, who lashes out at Tony in Age of Ultron in a way that feels more brutish than justified. Whedon pays lip service to heroism and decency, even as he delights in ridiculing Steve Rogers at every turn for the unforgivable sin of not being Gen-X cool. 

Gunn’s depiction of Superman is a rebuke to all of this. His Superman refuses to be anything but himself. He cares a lot. He expresses feelings (other than anger, the only feeling a man can express under patriarchal masculinity). He says "I love you" first. Just as his Guardians films almost seem like a 6 hour plea for embracing diversity, with Superman he exhorts like a megachurch pastor that having a big heart and refusing to be ashamed of it is the last act of rebellion left for Gen X men as we begin to ease out of middle age.