Superman

James Gunn, writer and director of the film Superman, has given us a puzzle: The Marvel superhero known as Superman (David Corenswet) tries to save a society in which a demigod, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), has concocted lies that a nonthinking public accepts at face value. Gunn has given us an obvious analogy to contemporary politics involving Trump and MAGA. Unfortunately, having given us this real-life dilemma, Gunn then offers a solution that is pure fantasy. He grasps the complexities of the political situation in the USA, 2025, but then he offers a simplistic resolution in which these complexities are reduced to a battle between good and evil. Just so, the first half of the film contains a thoughtful presentation of the complexities facing citizens of the USA. The second half devolves into one noisy, bloody battle after another, battles so protracted that by the time they end, we are happy to accept Gunn's simplistic notion that “good” triumphs over “evil”—in this film, anyway. We are glad the fighting has ended, the movie is over, and we can get away from this mindless violence by leaving the theater.

Why is this film relevant to psychoanalysis?

Just as Gunn didn't entertain the complexities of today's MAGA society and, instead, turned the problem into a battle between good and evil, so too most patients enter treatment having tried—and failed—to solve problems in their lives by calling on a naive superego to reduce their problems to a clash between good and bad. Psychoanalysis aims to help patients avoid reducing the world to black and white. Psychoanalysis aims to expand the patient's capacities to think of their own dynamics and the dynamics of others as more complex, not reducible to good or bad, black or white. Even Lex Luthor, who at one point in the film waxes eloquent about the dynamics of envy that propel him towards his nefarious actions, deserves to be understood—not simply locked up in prison, as Gunn does to get rid of him and avoid exploring his p