Superman, at least the idea of Superman, isn’t unique to the 20th century. You can find plenty of cases throughout history of a mythic figure who is in some way larger than life, and comes in to save the day. Superman isn’t a god, he’s a regular person who is at the same time more that regular. In that way, he’s similar to a lot of the heroes of Greek, Roman, and Celtic mythology.
One of the things that is interesting about Superman is that he doesn’t always present himself as Superman. Most of the time he presents himself as Clark Kent. There’s a lot of psychoanalysis that could come into play here as to which is the “real” persona and which is fake. My favorite analysis comes from Kill Bill, Vol. 2.
In it, the titular Bill talks about what sets Superman apart from other comic book heroes with alter egos. Superman is always Superman, Bill says. It’s Clark Kent who is the costume. At the time this film was made, twenty years ago, that made Superman unique among heroes in our mythology. In the intervening years, we’ve seen Marvel heroes toy with the same idea. Tony Stark is Iron Man, and you could argue that there’s nothing that separates them. Similarly, Steve Rogers is (or was) Captain America, even when not wearing the suit. But I digress.
Should Clark Kent’s simple disguise fool us?
Comedians, observers, and regular folks have made hay for decades of the fact that Clark Kent looks exactly like Superman except for the glasses. Both Clark and Superman have the same social circle, the same group of people who see them close up. So how is it that these people, reporters who are trained to look at things critically, don’t see that the two men are indeed similar? YouTuber “Trick Theory” takes a look at why, theoretically, Superman’s disguise could work.
The idea here is that we’re prewired to see things a certain way, and Superman uses all of that prewiring to fool us. Superman doesn’t just wear the glasses. He changes his hair, his clothes, his voice, and his body language. And, because we’re not expecting to see “Superman” look like a nerdy klutz, it works. At least that’s the argument that the video makes.
Why it might be true
The two women in the picture are the hosts of HGTV’s Unsellable Houses. They’re also identical twins. Yet, you have no problem telling them apart in this picture. sure, the hair and glasses really help, but when you watch the show you also see differences in body language and voice. It’s really easy to tell which one is talking.
This is about as close as you’re going to get in the real world to seeing Superman next to Clark Kent. I’m not saying that one sister or the other is a superhero, I’m just talking about appearance. So I think based on all of that, you could say that maybe one person could adopt two personas and that people wouldn’t suspect it unless there was some way they really messed up.
Why it might not be true
I’m lucky enough to have home movies dating back to the 1950s. In them, of course, my older relatives are much younger. They look different. In some cases they’re vastly thinner or thicker. In some cases they’re children. Yet, I never have any problem picking out my older relatives. This is true even though, admittedly, a lot of them look very similar. It’s not the body language or the general resemblance. I can just look at them and there’s something rather quintessential about them.
Similarly, there are people who have found me on social media, people I knew 40 years ago. They can tell it’s me. And when I look at them, I can tell it’s them. Never mind that we both had different hair color, were free of wrinkles, that sort of thing, when we last saw each other. Even without hearing a voice or seeing body language, we can recognize each other.
The truth is that once you get past all those biases that people have, the ones in the video, people can be pretty good at figuring stuff out if you give them a chance. And it’s hard to imagine that in a real-world scenario you would work with someone for years and not somehow tie them to Superman.
Is this even a serious question?
Well, look at it this way. We all have superhero fatigue at the moment due to the roughly 7,500 hours of Marvel content out there. (I may be exaggerating but it couldn’t be by much.) But certainly the last 20 years or so have shown us how much superhero culture is our culture. We may look down upon the state of pop culture, but it’s hard to deny that it’s there and it’s a defining part of the 21st century so far. It may be a sad commentary on life that more people know about Ragnarok from Thor movies than from Wagner operas, but it’s a fact we can’t dispute.
So yes, it’s a serious question. But hey, not too serious. It’s Fun Friday, after all, right?
