Holding Out for a Hero
By Andrew Bernstein (Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2006)

While it is great to finally welcome Superman back to the wide screen, Geoff Boucher's "Old-Fashioned Value" [Jan. 15] raises disturbing questions about our culture. If American society now rejects Superman because he is "a big blue Boy Scout," i.e., a morally pure hero, then we are in greater internal danger than any we face externally. A free society fighting for its existence against religious fascists needs to know that good exists, that the world's freest country represents it, and that it can and should triumph over evil. A preference for antiheroes represents a collapse into cynicism at the precise moment that the country needs the idealistic commitment to freedom ("the American way") so brilliantly represented by Superman.