Fleischer Studio’s Superman and a Darker Side of the · 2019. 10. 14. · Lois Lane, the female protagonist in Superman’s adventures, found herself caught in the crosshairs of - [PDF Document] (2024)

Allan W. Austin, Ph.D., is professor of history at MisericordiaUniversity in Dallas, Pennsylvania.

He is co-author (with Patrick L. Hamilton) of All New, AllDifferent?: A History of Race and the

American Superhero (2019). He has also written QuakerBrotherhood: Interracial Activism and the

American Friends Service Committee, 1917-1950 (2012) and FromConcentration Camp to

Campus: Japanese American Students and World War II (2004) aswell as co-edited projects on

Asian American history and science fiction and fantasytelevision. He has published articles dealing

with Superman as well as race, ethnicity, and identity in theUnited States. Austin can be reached at

[emailprotected].

The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2

Copyright © 2019

217

Fleischer Studio’s Superman and a Darker Side of the

“Good War”1

ALLAN W. AUSTIN

Harry Donenfeld must have felt like he was on the top of theworld in 1941. After

years of eking out a tenuous living on the margins of the pulppublishing industry,

Donenfeld had stumbled across a gold mine in 1938 when he boughtthe rights to

Superman for a paltry $130. Not really understanding the Man ofSteel’s potential,

Donenfeld worried right up to the publication of Action Comicsthat Superman

would be a colossal flop, especially after seeing thecover—featuring the hero with

a car raised over his head—and finding the presentation so“ridiculous” and “crazy”

that “nobody would believe it” (Jones 123-4; Wright 9). Thecomic was a huge hit,

nonetheless, and Donenfeld, swiftly alert to Superman’smarketability, looked to

exploit the Man of Steel’s sudden popularity. The previouslyindifferent McClure

Syndicate, for example, was now interested in a daily Supermannewspaper comic

strip, and Donenfeld also cut a deal with Fleischer Studios tomake a serialized

cartoon starring the superhero (Wright 12-4; Jones 142,174).

Undoubtedly proud of his success and growing bank account,Donenfeld

invited an old childhood friend, David Dubinsky, now a majorplayer in the

American Federation of Labor, to the first screening of theSuperman cartoon

series, which occurred not long before the United States joinedWorld War II. The

1 I would like to thank the anonymous journal readers as well asPatrick L. Hamilton, Carey Millsap

Spears, and Vicki Austin for their feedback on earlier drafts ofthis essay. This work was also

supported by Misericordia University, via both its FacultyResearch Grants Program and sabbatical.

My thanks, finally, to students in my fall, 2017, “Culture andNational Security” class for the long,

insightful conversations about these cartoons.

218 Austin

union man was unimpressed, bluntly remarking to a “glowing”Donenfeld, “It’s got

no social significance” (Jones 158, 160-1). Here, however,Dubinsky missed the

point. While the cartoons might have seemed childishlyinsignificant to him, they

actually expose a more revealing view of the wartime UnitedStates than the labor

leader either could acknowledge or perhaps understand.

Indeed, the war that would soon arrive at the United States’doorstep raised

hopes for some Americans but fears for others about thecounterhegemonic

possibilities of building a more egalitarian nation for womenand people of color.

Uncertain of what the future might be, Americans looked to anynumber of sources,

including Superman, for guidance. As Marek Wasielewski haswritten, the Man of

Steel is “intrinsically connected to the cultural and historicalcontext in which he is

imagined. Superman always embodies the specific moment of his(re)creation” (6).

A rising symbol of “truth, justice, and the American Way” duringthe war,

Superman’s cartoon adventures on the silver screen helpedAmericans cope with

changes that seemed potentially far-reaching for women andnonwhites in

American society. “It was,” as William Chafe has written, “atime of anxiety and

fear. It was also a moment of possibility” (27, vii, 1-2).

In response to this crucial juncture in American history and thechance for

meaningful reform it presented, Superman’s big-screen adventuresreinforced a

cultural hegemony based in white patriarchy, proposingtraditional norms as the

best solution. In this way, the Fleischer cartoons worked (likemass culture more

generally does as well) to “mark the boundaries of permissiblediscourse” and thus

shape “cultural definitions of race, ethnicity, and gender” inways that justify

“existing power relations” (Lears 569-70, 572). The cartoons, toput it more

directly, wrapped themselves in an understanding of the“American Way” that

looked backward instead of forward in urging that women remainsubordinated to

“real” men (if not Clark Kent) and that nonwhite Americans beassociated with

difference, inferiority, and threat, not inclusion.

A “Good” War?

Scholars have written a good deal about Superman, but theseventeen cartoons

produced by Fleischer (released between September 1941 and July1943) have

received relatively scant attention. This despite the fact thatcritics have heaped

praise upon them. Leonard Maltin, for instance, believes theseries to have been

“among the best fantasy cartoons ever produced” (Maltin 122,120). Gerard Jones

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 219

describes, perhaps somewhat breathlessly, Superman’ssilver-screen adventures as

“the most stunning cartoon action ever on screen” (158). LeslieCabarga likewise

celebrates the cartoon, marking the series as “a significantevent in the history of

animation” (180). Such aesthetic and technologicalconsideration, however, has not

been matched by historical examination and close textualanalysis. This study

begins to remedy this lack, especially in an effort to redresspopular, celebratory,

and oversimplified misunderstandings of World War II as the“Good War.”

It is, of course, not hard to understand why Americans havedecided to

remember the fighting in this way. The war, after all, stands asa defining event of

the twentieth century, helping Americans finally conquer theGreat Depression,

pushing their nation to unprecedented global hegemony, andshaping the ways in

which Americans defined themselves as well as their country.Postwar celebrations

have thus tended to paint the war as both successful and moral,a conflict that

brought both unity and affluence (Jeffries ix, 8-10; Takaki 3-4;Wynn 463). As a

result, Americans generally remember WWII as their nation’s“finest hour” (Wynn

463).

Such uncritical memories have considerable power in shaping howAmericans

understand the social consequences of World War II, allowingthem to imagine it

as a conflict that generated substantial and positive change forgroups long

marginalized in American history. For instance, many Americanschoose to

remember an unchallenged wartime liberation of women, embodiedby the

popularized notion of “Rosie the Riveter” and the various kindsof empowerment

that seemingly came along with it. Similarly, Americans can lookback on the war,

via popular culture produced both during and after it, andremember integrated

“All-American platoons,” comparably fictionalized images thatmisleadingly

suggest that people of color (and especially African Americans)achieved

transformative changes—in the military, and also the work forceand society—

during WWII. If such misguided conceptions are taken too far,the war can be seen

as establishing American predominance on the global stage andsimultaneously

crafting a broadly egalitarian society across lines of genderand race.

These positive memories obscure the significant resistance tosuch democratic

reform on the part of many Americans. (Jeffries 4, 8-9, 11-2;Wynn 463, 470-8).

The substantial changes encouraged by the war, in fact,inevitably raised questions

about a nation (as well as a world) that seemed almost totallytransformed. In this

way, American entry into the worldwide conflict certainly openedopportunities for

women and people of color to question and even challengetraditional hierarchies

220 Austin

that had long undergirded American society; however, suchopenings hardly meant

broad public support for far-reaching social change. Instead,faced with growing

domestic uncertainties generated by the world-wideconflagration, Americans

struggled to ascertain just what their nation should (or would)look like in the war’s

aftermath. As they did so, they cast about for reassurance inresponse to growing

anxieties that were disguised—both then and later—by goldenvisions of an

“American Century.”

Superman and American Women at War

Wartime pressures to elevate the status of women presented onesuch source of

anxiety. Indeed, the war opened the possibility of challengingwhat R. W. Connell

and James W. Messerschmidt have described as a “hegemonicmasculinity” that

allows “men’s dominance over women to continue.” Such dominance,they

contend, did not require force (although force could bemarshalled to support it, to

be sure); male superiority could also be achieved via “culture,institutions, and

persuasion” (832-3). Masculine hegemony had been constantlyenforced (and

reinforced) across the scope of American history in the face ofnew challenges

before WWII, a historical reality revealing that genderhierarchies could in fact

evolve, potentially in significant and even radical ways(Connell and

Messerschmidt 832). The possibility of real change must haveexcited some and

terrified other Americans, and the cartoon version of Superman,sympathizing with

those who resisted such changes, did his best—in concert with ahost of cultural

and official entities—to hold the line during the war.

The developments of the early years of WWII, indeed, broughtsignificant

changes for women that divided Americans. Going to college andto work in larger

numbers, women asserted an emerging agency as they tookadvantage of new

opportunities “with skill and ingenuity” (Chafe 9; Dorn 534-6).Their educational

assertiveness carried over from the Great Depression, when“college enrollment for

women soared,” jumping by about 120,000 between 1930 and 1940.This translated

into significantly more women receiving bachelor’s degrees, thenumber growing

from almost 49,000 in 1930 to about 77,000 in 1940 (Nash andRomero, 2, 6, 20-

3; Solomon, 142). During the war, college women enteredtraditionally male

programs of study in larger numbers, and some assumed positionsof leadership and

political activism on and off campus. (Dorn 534-6, 541-52;Solomon 167-9) No

longer actively discouraged or barred from employment, womenalso went to work

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 221

in unprecedented numbers. Some six million or more took jobsduring the war,

increasing the percentage of women in the workforce from 25% in1940 to 36% by

1945 and making “Rosie the Riveter” an iconic wartime figure.Many of the new

laborers initially imagined working only “for the duration,” asthe government

bluntly suggested to them; however, by war’s end many had begunto think

differently (Blum 94-5; Chafe 8-11; Jeffries 5, 93-7, 102; Ware,23).

But if some Americans, looking at such changes, believed that a“revolution”

in gender norms had occurred, others were skeptical of such adrastic

transformation. The latter, of course, could point to continuinggender

discrimination in employment and the military as well as thepersistence of gender

segregated jobs. In addition, historians have noted, women hadvirtually no voice

in the most important policy-making bodies, suffered a doublestandard in wages,

and struggled to find adequate childcare facilities.Furthermore, women were

themselves divided about what the future ought to look like;while a new-found

agency and sense of opportunities outside the home inspiredsome, to be certain,

others remained loyal to more traditional understandings ofgender norms (Blum

94-5; Chafe 11-4, 25-6; Jeffries 101). It seems fair to say thatthe balance sheet was

at best profoundly mixed for women, raising questions about justwhat the postwar

world would look like.

Lois Lane, the female protagonist in Superman’s adventures,found herself

caught in the crosshairs of this cultural confusion. Loisarrived in the newsroom,

indeed, not all that long after women had begun studyingjournalism in increasing

numbers at college. (Nash and Romero, 20-3) Much like herreal-world professional

contemporaries who had to fight to move to jobs beyond thesociety pages or the

rewrite desks, Lois also found limited opportunities in her newprofession, confined

in her earliest comic book appearances to the role of “‘sobsister’—a dismissive

term given to female reporters who wrote human interest stories,often with heart-

tugging, sentimental hooks” (Nash and Romero, 25-6; Ware, 75-6;Weldon 22).

The war seemingly brought new opportunities for Lois, especiallyon the silver

screen. Here, Glen Weldon has noted that the cartoon version ofthe reporter was

“considerably more tenacious and resourceful” than hercomic-book counterpart;

the cartoon version of Lois still needed rescuing, to be sure,but she was “her own

woman—and one hell of a reporter” (47). Examinations of theSuperman cartoons

in terms of gender have, surprisingly, not gone much furtherthan this broad

generalization, in particular in failing to explore just how thecartoon treated this

new-found assertiveness and independence.

222 Austin

Superman’s cartoon adventures ultimately confronted thegendered

complexities of wartime by depicting a limited sort of femaleempowerment;

however, the cartoons ultimately came down firmly on the side oftradition as a

bulwark against the anxieties engendered by such changes. Theseries’ first episode,

titled “Superman,” captured the fundamentals of what woulddefine Lois Lane’s

character in all the stories that followed: an ambitious andindependent career

woman, who from time to time gets to play the action hero, butalways finds herself

in peril and need of rescue, a reality undercutting any seemingcelebration of her

new-found agency. Lois establishes her independence at thestart, protesting when

the chief assigns Clark to work with her that she wants “thechance to crack the

story on my own.” Before her boss can respond to her demand,Lois sets off to

investigate alone. She briefly assumes the role of action hero,dressing in a pilot’s

uniform and taking off in her one-seat propeller plane. Herheroism is short-lived,

however, as she somewhat naively lands her plane next to alaboratory and then

knocks on the front door, where the mad scientist easilycaptures her; she can now

only await Superman’s rescue. Thus, and ever, the story ofLois.

Scenes of Lois as the seemingly independent career woman followthroughout

the rest of the series as she asserts herself against men. WhenClark volunteers to

join her in covering the story of a (temporarily) frozen giantcreature being brought

to Metropolis, she demurs, worrying that he might very likelyfaint in the face of

such danger. “You scare so easily,” she acidly observes to herunwanted colleague

(“The Arctic Giant”). In “Volcano,” Lois again sets out to workalone, grabbing

their press passes away from Clark and later depriving herco-worker of access to

the story. As they leave, the chief urges the pair to “worktogether for a change,”

but his plea falls on deaf ears. Clark readily agrees, but Loisrefuses to acknowledge

his order. Lois also contests a Native American villain whodemands that

Manhattan be returned to his people, dismissing his claim assimply too “fantastic”

to take seriously (“Electric Earthquake”). In all suchinteractions, Lois asserts her

status as—in her own words—an “ace” reporter who remainsstaunchly

independent in her relationships with men (“Terror on theMidway”).

Such assertiveness leads Lois, repeatedly, to pursue big scoopson her own,

another way in which her character gestured toward what seemedan independence

from men. She might pretend to play a submissive role as awoman—as, for

example, when she tells Clark in one instance that she is just“getting the woman’s

angle on [a] story”—but she is actually pursuing something moreambitious: the

story that, by implication, had previously belonged to men (“TheMechanical

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 223

Monsters”). When things go bad in “The Arctic Giant” and theslumbering monster

is awakened, Lois is thrilled—“Boy, what a story,” sheexclaims—and refuses to

evacuate. Similarly, “The Mechanical Monsters” and “Japoteurs”both see Lois

stowing away (in a flying robot and a super-bomber,respectively) in her pursuit of

a big scoop. Finally, Lois’s nose for news is impressive; eventhough her boss

quickly dismisses the Native American’s threat of retribution ifManhattan is not

returned, Lois knows better, sneaking off to follow the villainand even hiding

aboard his boat to get the story that her boss cannot yet see(“Electric Earthquake”).

Similarly, her instincts prove true in sniffing out a story ofindustrial sabotage in

“Destruction, Inc.,” the reporter piecing together the evidenceof a plot that

threatens the industrial basis of her country’s ability tofight. No story, clearly, is

too big for Lois.

Lois’s ambitions also repeatedly lead her to run towards danger(in contrast to

the men around her), further reinforcing a purportedindependence. Thus, as Clark

retreats to a phone booth in “The Mechanical Monsters,” Loissneaks into a

compartment on a flying robot’s back, demonstrating her daringspirit. She does the

same as a scientist causes mayhem in Metropolis when he tries topull a comet from

the heavens but things go badly; as men flee the scene, Loisruns in the opposite

direction, choosing to confront danger instead of retreating tosafety (“The

Magnetic Telescope”). Finally, Lois confronts the ultimateenemy—the Nazis—in

“Jungle Drums,” flying into the face of danger and, after hercapture, refusing to

break during an intense interrogation, even under the threat oftorture. Eventually

freed in the episode, she works bravely to save Americanmilitary lives, tussling

with Nazis and ultimately playing a supporting heroic role bymaking a radio call

that arrives just in the nick of time to save an importantAmerican convoy from

predatory Nazi villains.

In asserting her independence in these various ways, Lois was,at least

occasionally, given the opportunity to become an action hero inher own right,

seizing control of her own destiny, if only for brief moments.In this way, “Billion

Dollar Limited” sees Lois jump to the defense of a train underattack, picking up a

machine gun and returning fire on the bad guys, even if tolimited effect. More

dramatically in another cartoon in the series, when a volcanoerupts, Lois finds

herself in immediate danger. Trapped, she jumps up to grab atrolley wire,

acrobatically swinging hand over hand while traversing athreatening landscape

(“Volcano”). Even more impressive is Lois’s performance whendiscovered by the

industrial saboteurs in “Destruction, Inc.;” here, Lois eludesher ill-intentioned

224 Austin

male pursuers, athletically gliding up the stairs, daringlyleaping onto a ledge,

smoothly shimmying down a post, and swinging gracefully on afortuitously placed

rope. While she is eventually captured (necessitating, ofcourse, another heroic

rescue), her athletic prowess is undeniable. Lois alsooccasionally will confront

male antagonists directly, perhaps most dramatically in“Showdown” when she

tussles with a fake Superman, managing to tear the “S” off hischest and thus prove

that he is not the real deal. In such ways, Lois embodied thepotential of liberated

women to become active participants in their own stories.

Whatever such positive portrayals of women at work seemed tosuggest, Lois’s

independence was more often and repeatedly cut short andundermined as the

cartoons ultimately enforced traditional gender norms; in almostevery episode her

inquisitive professionalism gets her into trouble that sees herneeding rescue.2 In

this way, the series revealed a lack of faith in the independentwoman that it might

be mistaken for celebrating. Indeed, the anxiety about women’snew-found agency

appeared in literally every episode and could not but call intoquestion the

legitimacy of independent women. Whatever her merits, Loisalways ends up in

peril, for example in “The Mechanical Monsters” when a villainties her up and

suspends her over a huge pot of molten lava; she is utterlyhelpless, her only hope

being the dramatic and timely arrival of the Man of Steel.Throughout other

episodes, Lois was, to provide but a small sample of the perilsfrom which she was

saved: stalked and attacked by an enraged gorilla (“Terror onthe Midway”),

dropped to her seeming doom by Japanese American saboteurs whohave stolen a

new American super-bomber (“Japoteurs”), threatened by a tribeof hawk people

who want to sacrifice her (“The Underground World”), and boundand threatened

by a Japanese firing squad (“Eleventh Hour”). In such and myriadother ways, the

series repeatedly questioned the independence of women; whateverthe short-term

accomplishments of Lois, her actions ultimately bring hernothing but failure that

necessitates a man’s intervention.

Such rescues in this way repeatedly implied that women’snew-found agency

was suspect, and occasionally the series went further in drivingthis point home.

For instance, “The Magnetic Telescope” reinforces theinferiority of Lois when she

is rescued by Superman, who digs her out of debris. WhenSuperman asks if she is

unharmed, Lois replies that she is fine as she brushes her hair,reminding viewers

2 This would prove true in all of them, but the final episode,“Secret Agent,” replaced Lois with a

blonde protagonist, who, while professional and independent,also, unsurprisingly, needed rescue.

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 225

that she is more object than agent. When Lois stumbles intodanger in “The Arctic

Giant” and finds herself about to be eaten by the giant monster,Superman arrives

to save her. He then verbally reinforces her proper “place,”sternly lecturing her,

“Now this time stay put.” Lois dutifully obeys, saying, “Yes,m’lord.” While such

visual and verbal lessons were not as common as the ubiquitousrescues, these

scenes certainly reinforce the message—present throughout theentire series—that

any growing assertiveness and independence on the part of womenwas suspect. In

this way, women might make some short-term contributions, butthese were no

more permanent in the cartoons than they were in real life,where women were

expected to contribute only “for the duration,” after which menwould again assume

control in the workplace and beyond. Here, thecartoon—reflecting and reinforcing

hegemonic social messages—asserted traditional gender norms asbest for women,

even in the allegedly new world ushered in by the war. Supermanremained clearly

her superior and her savior, winking—sometimes literally—atviewers to let them

in on the joke of her seeming emancipation. Whatever gains womenmight be

making, Superman, like many Americans, seemed unwilling toabandon traditional

norms, looking to past traditions, and not future innovation, toprovide solutions to

contemporary concerns.

Superman, Race, and WWII

The war also threatened to unsettle American race relations,ultimately bringing

“small progress in the midst of massive racism” (Chafe 16). Inthis way, the

transformations wrought by war encouraged more than two millionAfrican

Americans to move north and west for new jobs and convincedPresident Franklin

Roosevelt to create the Fair Employment Practice Committee(after A. Philip

Randolph threatened a massive protest, of course) to protecttheir right to have

them. At the same time, however, African Americans foundthemselves excluded

from more than a dozen national trade unions, received limitedhelp from the FEPC,

and confronted racial violence, most prominently in urban raceriots, with little

support from government leaders. Such mistreatment spurred blackactivism, with

growing numbers joining the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored

People, talking about fighting for equality at home as well asabroad, and initiating

protests (Blum 11, 182-8, 199-207; Chafe 15-9; Jeffries 108).The story was no

better, and sometimes worse, for other nonwhites. After PearlHarbor, Japanese

Americans—citizens and aliens alike—found themselves facing thereality of exile

226 Austin

and mass incarceration, processes that deprived them of theirbasic rights. Even

though others like Mexican Americans and Native Americans foundsome new

opportunities in employment and military service opened by thewar, wartime

proved a mixed bag at best, as racism and discriminationcontinued to limit

nonwhites. Anti-Semitism flourished, too (Chafe 19-22). Racismand prejudice had

deep roots in American history; they were hardly going todisappear over the course

of four short years (Blum 147).

Some scholars have nonetheless teased out more positive trendsduring the war.

Ronald Takaki, looking back on the war as a moment ofpossibility, observes that

some wartime intellectuals came to understand a fundamentalincongruity:

Americans fought for freedom but lived in a country in which allmen and women

were not created equal. He also notes that grass-roots activistsdemanded “inclusion

in the democracy that they were defending.” In doing so, heavers, “they stirred a

rising wind of diversity’s discontent, unfurling a hopefulvision of America as a

multicultural democracy” that would provide an importantfoundation for the

coming “Civil Rights Revolution” (Takaki 4-7). John W. Jeffriessimilarly, with

the benefit of historical hindsight, argues that the war—despiteracial tensions

throughout—laid the groundwork for change and racialassertiveness (5, 144).

Takaki and Jeffries can pull such optimistic threads together inlooking back on the

war and what followed; however, Chafe is right to note an evenmore important

understanding: Americans at the time just didn’t know what wascoming as a result

of the war. “It was too soon,” he writes, “to say what it allmeant” (19). The question

of just what would come next generated anxieties, as Americansimagined different

futures, some aspiring to a return to traditional norms, othersenvisioning a more

innovative future.

Superman waded into these troubled waters with certainpredispositions on

race. The initial comic-book version of the character hadembraced reform, albeit

with limits made clear by the ways in which race was notaddressed. In his earliest

published adventures, Superman was a somewhat edgy, NewDeal-style reformer

who fought for the common man, but his reform agenda avoidedissues of race (as

the New Deal often did as well). The war then transformed theMan of Steel into a

determined supporter of the very status quo that he had not thatlong ago questioned.

Now wrapping himself in the American flag (especially on hiscovers), Superman’s

wartime comic-book stories actually shied away from the war,adopting instead “an

increasingly whimsical, juvenile tone” that continued to offerlittle in the way of

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 227

overt racial commentary (Wright, 22-9, 55; Gordon, “Nostalgia,”184; Weldon,

60).3

In addition to his own comic-book history, Superman’sretrogressive

relationship to race on the big screen was shaped by otherhistorical forces. The

racism endemic in early American animation, for one, compoundedthe problem,

hardly predisposing the cartoon’s creators to address race inprogressive ways.

Early American cartoons presented a wide range of racist imagesand

understandings in the antics of characters including, among thebetter known, Felix

the Cat and Mickey Mouse, and Fleischer Studios had actuallyprofited from

signature characters like Betty Boop and Ko-Ko, who starred insome episodes

grounded in racism. This era of cartoons, indeed, “produced themost racist and

sexist depictions of people of color in cartoon history.”(Behnken and Smithers 83,

84, 85-92; Sammond 130, 132, 140-2) “Whether any specificanimator was or was

not racist,” Nicholas Sammond concludes, “the practices thatanimators by

necessity entered into were” (146).

Furthermore, the political context hardly encouraged seriousconsideration of

racial reform. As Wendy L. Wall has shown, conservativeopposition to the Office

of War Information’s advocacy for “greater racial equality” hadwide-ranging and

stultifying results; in response, the government resorted tolinking tolerance and

unity as twinned wartime ideals that marginalized those pushingfor equality as

“troublemakers, traitors to an ‘American Way’ that often putcivility and social

harmony above all else.” As a result, calls for tolerance couldcondemn individual

bigots but not federal policies or systems of power (Wall 116,132, 149-50). Such

realities made it easier for Superman’s cartoon creators toresist OWI requests (and,

indeed, even DC Comics’ occasional efforts) “to present Americansociety as a

great melting pot,” instead showcasing racial diversity as onlythreat (Munson 6-7;

Wright 44-5, 34, 53-5). Set in this milieu, the Fleischer seriesmirrored other less

progressive aspects of superhero popular culture more directly,especially in terms

of engaging in paternalistic and reductive understandings ofnon-whites, imagining

an internal racial threat, and amplifying a hateful, racializedportrayal of Japanese

3 Superman confronted race more directly in the newspapers, onthe radio, and on the silver screen,

of course, especially in denigrating the Japanese and JapaneseAmerican enemy (Chang 37-60;

Gordon Superman, 44; Munson 5-13; Weldon 57). Scholars, however,have done very little with

issues of race beyond Japanese and Japanese Americans, leavingunexplored the broader racial

politics at play in the cartoons and, as a result, the ways inwhich these shorts help us better

understand the American home front.

228 Austin

and Japanese Americans (Austin and Hamilton 14-5, 25-49; Munson5-15; Wright

36-7, 54-5, 39, 45-7).

The Fleischers’ Superman series, indeed, adopted a hard lineagainst racial

reform, presenting any and all racial difference, both at homeand abroad, as a threat

to white institutions and white Americans. In doing so, thecartoons assumed the

United States to be a white society and supported an impliedwhite supremacy.

When Lois interviews the mayor of Metropolis, the city’sinhabitants (and power

brokers) are presented as uniformly white, manifestly connectedto the progress

associated with the modern, sleek Metropolis that they havebuilt (“Bulleteers”). In

contrast, when Lois and Clark investigate Mt. Monokoa, locatedsomewhere in the

Pacific, the natives scurry about hopelessly as lava approaches,looking

disorganized and helpless, their primitive nature emphasized bytheir horse- and

person-drawn carriages (“Volcano”). Closer to home, “Terror onthe Midway”

metaphorically connected danger with challenges to thelong-established racial

hierarchy. In this episode, staged at a local circus, abrown-skinned fire-eater

performs backgrounded by a series of posters that connote exoticdanger, one

depicting a black panther pouncing on a barely-clothed Africanand another

showcasing a giant, menacing ape, big enough to hold a person ineach hand. The

gorilla that later stalks Lois in this episode offers but athinly veiled sense of

racialized threat. Clearly, racial difference representedsubstantial danger to white

Americans.

As suggested by the circus scene, racial difference in thecartoons threatened

American unity and security. Native Americans present just suchan internal enemy

in “Electric Earthquake.” Here, the unnamed villain—standing infor Native

Americans generally—arrives with his unsmiling, rocky visage andlonger, black

hair, all of which immediately type him as Native American. Whenhe visits the

newspaper offices to demand that Manhattan be returned to “mypeople,” he speaks

in a stereotypically stoic fashion, standing proudly, armsfolded across his chest,

the classic image of the Native American; his suit and tiehardly mask his inherent

primitiveness. When the reporters challenge their visitor, hesnarls and the whites

of his eyes grow large before he stalks off to ominous music.While hypocritically

polite to Lois—gallantly stepping aside to allow her to enter anelevator first, for

instance—the threat of the “Other” reaches its climax when heshackles Lois and

later leaves her for dead in his flooding underwaterheadquarters, revealing a

racialized threat to white womanhood. Whites might be trusted topull together to

fight the war, but non-whites presented a threat lurking withinsociety.

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 229

Japanese Americans joined Native Americans as another racializedthreat in

“Japoteurs,” which launched a harsh attack that implicitly madeclear the need for

the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans (Austin 51-6).Here, the Japanese

American saboteur, like the Native American, is instantlyidentifiable as dangerous

and “Other.” He speaks with a thick accent, and his buck teethand thick glasses

play to widely held wartime stereotypes associated with hisassumed inferior racial

ancestry. Even more insidiously, the villain pretends to beloyal to the United

States, a poster of the Statue of Liberty seemingly signifyinghis love of country,

but is of course disloyal, as revealed when the postertransforms into a symbol of

the rising sun (when no one else is watching, of course). Hisefforts to steal a new

American super-bomber fit him into another stereotypicalexpectation as he attacks

from behind. Finally, Lois’s call of distress after the plane ishijacked lays bare the

racial threat: “Japs,” she radios, using the universal wartimeracial epithet that

collapsed Japanese and Japanese Americans alike into oneundifferentiated and

threatening mass, are up to no good. That the “Japoteur” alsothreatens white

womanhood in attempting to drop Lois to her death suggests thatsuch racial threat

was both broad and nefarious.

Additional racial threats existed inside the U.S. “The MummyStrikes,” for

instance, highlighted the threat of brown-skinned Egyptians.Opening to roaring

flames, an Egyptian tomb, and foreign-sounding music, thisepisode centers on the

legend of an Egyptian boy king whose protectors—apparentlyensconced in a

barbaric culture—drank poison to join their leader in theafterlife after he died.

Years later, in a local museum, the guardsmen’s blank, whiteeyes glow to ominous

life. The menacing, brown-skinned guards attack, grabbing Lois,who is dwarfed

by their fantastic size. Even though Superman eventuallyachieves victory over

these menacing monsters, their lurking presence, hidden in anunassuming

Metropolis museum, warned of a pervasive non-white threat towhite women and

wartime American society.

A racialized threat abroad included the Japanese enemy. In“Eleventh Hour,”

Lois and Clark venture to Japan to report on the war. Clark,however, also sneaks

off every night at 11 o’clock as Superman to commit sabotage.His actions enrage

the Japanese militarists, who decide to make an example of Lois,kidnapping her

and sentencing her to death before a firing squad. Throughoutthe film, the Japanese

appear more like animals than humans, their appearancesuggesting a kinship to

rodents and their actions driven by unthinking anger. Theshowdown with the firing

squad again plays to the idea of a racialized threat to whitewomanhood, although

230 Austin

the scene also critiques Japanese manhood when, in silhouette, aJapanese solider

approaches Lois; his sword hangs down, suggesting a limpphallus. He may have

evil intentions towards Lois, but he will be impotent in actingon them. And, indeed,

Superman arrives at the last moment to save Lois, doling out awell-deserved

beating to her captors, suggesting hope in the battle versus theracialized “Other.”

Africa presented a racial threat, too, as the cartoon suggestedthat Africans’

ignorance made them susceptible to control by outsiders like theNazis, a reality

necessitating American intervention in the world. In doing so,the cartoons

mimicked a prominent theme in comics of the day in which Nazis“exploited [non-

white, colonized peoples] to suit their own hostile interests”(Wright 37) “Jungle

Drums” opens to an exotic and darkly-lit scene, intending toportray a most

primitive Africa. Here, in a society dominated by the Nazis, apriest in a horned

helmet, arms outspread, appears as red lighting bathes thescene, all suggesting an

ominous and threatening locale. Africans often appear insilhouette, their top knots

seemingly elongating their skulls into more simian shapes. Whenshot from above

in groups, the Africans appear disorganized, scurrying back andforth almost like

ants and implying a chaotic society. Under Nazi control, thenatives prepare to burn

Lois at the stake (as white womanhood never escapes a racializedthreat in

Superman cartoons featuring non-white characters), an ominousdrumming

building tension for the viewers. Here again, the Africans haveape-like features,

their arms too long for their bodies, as they dance and walk inprimitive fashion,

almost like monkeys. As the flames grow, the drummers come intobetter focus,

their war-painted cheeks and simian features all grotesquelyhighlighted by the

red/orange light thrown by the growing fire. As the scenecontinues, Africans wear

strange garb—loin cloths, bones through their noses, braceletson their wrists,

ankles, and biceps—and are hidden in the shadows, furtherdehumanizing them. As

Superman restores order, “Jungle Drums” served as a call tointervention for

Americans grounded in blunt racism: if Americans did not takecontrol of what the

cartoon presented as inferior peoples, their enemies would.

Conclusion: Superman as Savior?

WWII thus simultaneously opened new opportunities for women andpeople of

color while reinforcing traditional roles and hierarchies. Thisparadoxical process

led inexorably to increasing tensions, no matter how much mythsof the “Good

War” have obscured such realities. In the face of pressingconcerns about gender

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 231

and race, Fleischer Studios offered Superman as a solution(Jeffries 93). In doing

so, the studio presented a hero who both reflected and helped toconstitute

American norms (Gordon, Superman 52). The hero, to be certain,had his charms

for Americans living in a world at war. At the start of eachepisode, Superman

arrives to upbeat music, suggesting optimism and energy. In“Superman,” his origin

story presents the hero as something of an angel come to earth,arriving from

Krypton backgrounded by heavenly harps. As he (at leastindirectly) addressed

assertions of gender and racial equality, the Man of Steelassumed the moral high

ground; it should be pointed out that Superman, as Americansliked to believe about

themselves, never starts a fight—he only finishes them, using acombination of

resilience, strength, and intelligence to overcome whateverthreats may come his

(and Americans’) way. In case viewers missed the larger symbolicpoint, later

episodes emphasized Superman as embodying the United States. In“Terror on the

Midway,” for instance, as Clark changes into Superman, hisshadow is cast against

a circus tent’s broad red and white strips, almost as if he istransforming in front of

an American flag. Even more directly, the final episode, “SecretAgent,” sees the

hero, his mission completed, salute a massive Americanflag.4

Americans might have liked to have imagined that they couldtransform into

Superman as easily as Clark, allowing some escape from theworries that beset

them. Such security was, of course, deceptive. That Supermanoffered something

different—and better—was made clear by the fact that the Man ofSteel had his

own set of model charts, different from Clark Kent’s, at thestudio. Further setting

Superman off from his more mild-mannered alter ego, Clark’svoice was given “a

quavering tenor” while Superman, the new American, spoke in a“powerful

baritone” (Cabarga 177). If Clark was not up to the challengesof the new world,

Superman clearly was, or at least was intended to be. Thepurportedly “new”

solutions offered by Superman, however, ironically looked onlybackward, and not

forward.

Superman’s adventures, indeed, suggested a retreat to traditionas the best

solution to the possible changes raised by the war. When J.P.Telotte argues that

4 Superman’s inherent goodness is cemented, of course, by theinherent evil of those he faces down.

For instance, “Superman” introduced a recurring theme in theseries by showcasing a villain who

has no discernible motive; he acts in evil ways, as best theviewer can tell, only because he is an evil

guy. At other times, the bad guys act irrationally; “BillionDollar Limited,” for example, presents

criminals who target a train not to steal all the money onboardbut simply to destroy it.

232 Austin

some of Superman’s cartoon villains presented “a threat tonormalcy,” he gestures

toward a larger point regarding the Man of Steel’s big-screenWWII adventures:

the episodes were suffused with a quiet, if rising and anxiousacknowledgment that

things might never be the same (293). Thus, as Superman went tobattle, his

cartoons attempted to ease American anxieties about thepotential changes that were

arising from the war. As a result, Marc DiPaolo correctly pointsout that the

Superman cartoons were “more politically conservative than thecomic book” and

might even be considered “reactionary” (156; Dial 328).

This reality, however, seems to have been largely forgotten bymost Americans

today, who prefer to ignore the ways in which past versions ofSuperman have

embodied unsavory qualities. Such romantic memories, Weldonargues, were later

laid bare when DC “killed” Superman in 1992, provoking outrageat what many—

and often casual—fans saw as “a curiously personal attack onsomething good,

innocent, and fondly (if dimly) remembered.” This was true,Weldon argues,

because Superman “is not the hero with whom we identify [asAmericans]; he is

the hero in whom we believe. He is the first, the purest, theideal” (Munson 5;

Weldon 3, 4). As a result, for example, Americans tend toremember the wartime

Superman doing his patriotic part to sell war bonds, but forgetthe ways in which

he belittled and dehumanized the Japanese enemy to do so. As IanGordon has

pointed out, race hatred helped to build national unity in early1940s America

(Gordon, Superman 44). An examination of the wartime cartoons inany detail

serves to remind us, in this way, that there was a much lessseemly side to the Man

of Steel during the war, one that presented sexist and racistunderstandings of the

“American Way” that Americans would continue to grapple withlong after war’s

end, spurring civil rights and feminist movements demandingequality that clearly

had not been achieved during the war. The much-neglectedSuperman cartoons thus

provide essential, if previously unrealized, insights into somedarker realities of

what so many remember as just the “Good War.”

Recognizing this more complex silver-screen Superman who emergedamidst

the profound social challenges ignited by the war helps usbetter understood one

prominent regressive solution favored by anxious Americans asthey faced the

threat of potentially far-reaching changes. Such attitudes hadlong-term

consequences. Americans would win the war, but even thensubstantial work

remained to be done in sorting out issues revolving aroundgender and race that had

been made increasingly clear by that very conflict. In this way,winning WWII—

no matter how much Americans then or since have wanted tobelieve otherwise—

Fleischer Studio’s Superman 233

was not the conclusion of a story of greatness; it is insteadbetter understood as the

opening chapter of a story that is still unfolding around them,even in the early years

of the twenty-first century. In this way, the war evokedconfidence and bravado, to

be certain. But it also generated worries—even if they lurkedbeneath the triumphal

spirit of the early postwar years—that encouraged Americans notto build a new,

more equitable future but instead to fight a rear-guard actionagainst nascent

changes geared towards greater equality, pushing back againstthe claims to

equality made by women and people of color. In this darker sideof the so-called

“Good War,” Superman encouraged viewers to understand the worldin simplistic

terms of good versus evil, promoting ways of thinking thatdidn’t bode well for

solving problems of race and gender, either at home or abroad.As a result, wartime

society, whatever the American myths of unity and confidence,struggled to work

through such issues, leaving Americans today to turn tosuperheroes to rescue them

from wartime problems that they never really escaped.

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