Why President-elect Barack Obama may be the best candidate for Superman since Christopher Reeve.

On October 16th 2008, at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, a tall, slender presidential candidate with a "funny name" took to the stage to give, as tradition demanded, a self-deprecating speech. "Contrary to the rumours you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth." Senator Barack Obama of Illinois wasn't just jokingly referencing the similarities of a long-deceased father (from Kenya), a mother from Wichita, Kansas, his move to the big city to find his purpose (all eerily similar to the Superman story), or even the fact that his state houses the town of Metropolis, official home of Superman. Obama was also poking fun at an ethereal distance and deep seriousness that has for years led many of those that come into contact with him to sense something special about this man. The echoes of both Reeve's Superman and Reeve himself are hard to ignore.

The quiet superhero

The story of Christopher Reeve's ultimate casting as Superman has been told and retold countless times. Half-way through a screen-test, a skinny, sweating "kid" with black shoe-polish in his hair jumped off a makeshift ledge and uttered a few simple words: "Good evening, Miss Lane." As the story goes, Superman writer Tom Mankiewicz looked over to cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth with a knowing glance. After some initial hesitation, director Richard Donner, producer Ilya Salkind and the rest of the burgeoning Superman crew became convinced that they had finally found their man.

Put simply, there was something about the earnest, gentlemanly "playing it dead straight" sincerity of Chris Reeve's delivery that led the Superman producers in early 1977 to believe that this skinny "kid" could, given some serious and speedy bulking up, become the Man of Steel. Similar sentiments were in abundance exactly thirty years later in February 2007, when a seemingly inexperienced and relatively young Senator Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency - some were sceptical, but others believed that this was no ordinary candidate.

It wasn't just Christopher Reeve's sincerity, it was also his ethereal distance; a "not quite one of us" detachment that characterised the twenty-four-year-old's (he really was that young) embodiment of Superman. During the shoot, the man was disciplined, dead serious ("'dead' being the operative word!" Reeve later joked) - a few even mistook that for arrogance or detachment - but Reeve had a mission: to serve the film, and along with Dick Donner to help make an audience believe that a man, not just a comic book character could fly. Reeve would come a long way from that "kid" that had initially led Lois Lane actress Margot Kidder to think "That is Superman!!??" when she first encountered him.

Buying into Americana

During the tumultuous shooting of the star-studded Superman two-part epic, on the final rendition of the Lois Lane balcony set, Chris Reeve uttered two more lines that one can hardly imagine any other actor clad in blue tights saying with a straight face: "Lois, I never lie…" and "I'm here to fight for truth, justice and the American way." The latter "American way" line was controversially remodelled in 2006's Superman Returns with a dismissive "…and all that." Of course, times had changed, and such overt American sentiments clearly seemed somewhat at odds with the times. Yet ironically, back in 1977, when the original scene was being filmed, the idea of the innate righteousness of the "American way" was no less of a talking point than it was in 2006 - Vietnam, Cold War excesses, the loss of JFK, MLK and RFK were all still open wounds in the American psyche - the rebirth in American self-perceptions that took place under Reagan was still a number of years away.

Crucially, Superman's "American way" was not a nauseating or self-righteous geopolitical aspiration, but rather a somewhat corny sentiment that if earnestly and innocently delivered fit hand-in-glove with Dick Donner's vision of Superman as a celebration of innocent Americana, one that at times might seem either politically incorrect or woefully naïve - but to hell with the cynics, said the director, the American myth is worth celebrating! And Donner's Superman was not only uplifting, but connected religious symbolism with Norman Rockwell; the fields of Kansas with the streets of New York (Metropolis); the Apollo moon landings with the Statue of Liberty; the fast-food diner (complete with redneck bully) with the office of the good and wise American president. It is hard to imagine a greater poem to America than Donner's Superman epic and a greater ambassador for that iconic ideal than Christopher Reeve - who else could say those lines with a straight face…until now?

Dreams from my Father

In his pre-Senate-days-written autobiography, "Dreams from My Father" Barack Obama frequently gives the impression of an outsider looking at the world from a slight distance - a half-black, half-white child as alien in Hawaii as Indonesia (where he lived for a while with his mother and step-father), and in later life as at odds with white prejudice as black self-loathing. As an eight-year-old boy, Obama describes an incident, which made him realise that he was different. Leafing through a magazine in a library, young Barack stumbled upon a picture of a black man with very odd-looking skin:

"He must be terribly sick, I thought. A radiation victim, maybe, or an albino…" recalls Obama. But then he found out that the man had undergone chemical treatment to change his own skin colour. "I felt my face and neck get hot," continues Obama, "My stomach knotted; the type began to blur on the page. Did my mother know about this? What about her boss - why was he so calm reading through his reports down the hall? I had a desperate urge to jump out of my seat, to show them what I had learned, to demand some explanation or assurance. But something held me back. As in a dream, I had no voice for my newfound fear."

In such scenarios, one can easily imagine the soothing words of Pa Kent "One thing I do know, son is that you are hear for a reason…" giving comfort to this small boy who had just found out that he wasn't like the other kids. Years later, when as a student Obama was slumping in school and experimenting with drugs, the latter half of Pa Kent's sentiments also seem appropriate (albeit with a little paraphrasing): "But, I do know one thing - it is not to sit around wasting your life away in self-pity." There was in both cases a greater purpose, one which the fictional Superman found at his polar Fortress of Solitude after encountering his real father (played by Marlon Brando) for the first time.

Obama also describes a very Jor-El like sudden reappearance of his long absent father during a one month visit to Hawaii from Kenya - young Barack was just ten when this monumental visit occurred. "It fascinated me, this strange power of his, and for the first time I began to think of my father as something real and immediate, perhaps even permanent." He hadn't seen him since his parents separated when Obama was just two. But to young Barack, his father remained a stranger, a curiosity - and then he was gone. He would never see him again and years later, a static-ridden call from Africa informed him that his father had been killed in a car crash. Sometime later, Obama describes a strange dream in which his father appeared to him "Barack, I always wanted to tell you how much I love you," his father said. Obama then recalls, "I woke up still weeping, my first real tears for him - and for me." In a recent half-hour infomercial (replete with wheat fields and American iconography), Obama noted of his father "I was probably shaped more by his absence, than by his presence," something certainly true of Kal-El as well.

In 1992, just as Barack was finding out that his words and deeds could make a difference, his mother died of ovarian cancer. Again, the words of Superman find a strange appropriateness to Obama's life: "All those things I could do, all those powers, and I couldn't even save him," lamented young Clark after the sudden death of his adopted father from a surprise heart-attack; the arrogance of his burgeoning sense of power, wiped away in an instant.

In his years as a community organiser in Chicago, Obama unwittingly underlines one of his key personality traits: keeping his emotions to himself. There is an almost mystical impression of a man serving for the sake of serving - "who are you?" one hears the many characters around Obama asking. "A friend" one can almost imagine Obama thinking, again, straight out of Chris Reeve's earnest Superman lexicon. And for all the powerful oration and calm political gambits that have made Obama famous today, deep down one also senses a bit of the Clark Kent nerd in the man. There is the slight Christopher Reeve Clark Kent stutter that he had to overcome in early primary debates and a clear introvert tendency shared by a surprising number of seeming "big-stage" extroverts. It is an interesting duality at the heart of what makes Superman himself so interesting dramatically.

There are other parallels too - Obama's grandparents Stanley and Madelyn "Toot" Dunham, who essentially raised the young Obama in his later childhood (his mother was often away) bear a striking resemblance to Jonathan and Martha Kent - a simple salt-of-the-Earth couple: Stanley Dunham the WWII soldier turned insurance salesman (he died in 1992, aged 72, almost four years before his daughter's death in 1995)
, and "Toot", today the archetypal "silver-haired lady" to whom Obama, like Clark Kent no doubt sends a fraction of his pay check at the end of each month. Both were extraordinarily tolerant when their young daughter informed them that she was going to marry a black man and bear his child, something very rare in those days. Madelyn was something of a trailblazer in her day, having managed to become the first ever woman vice-president of a local bank and Obama proudly credits her as helping to instil in him many core values. As the 2008 election neared its conclusion, Obama took two days off from the campaign trail to be with his now very frail and elderly grandmother, one still living in the same apartment in Hawaii in which Obama was raised as a child. In an interview, he noted that he had, through the misfortune of circumstances, missed his mother's death years earlier, and didn't want to make the same mistake twice. In a rare interview sometime earlier, Madelyn revealed that she now spends much of her time watching her grandson on television - in Donner's Superman, we never found out what Martha Kent thought of her son's Superhero persona, but it may have been similar to "Toot's" experience. Sadly, Madelyn Dunham died of cancer two days before the 2008 presidential election.

President: the movie

Even in the prolonged presidential campaign, there have been parallels with Donner's Superman. Joe Biden, Obama's VP running-mate is the archetypal embodiment of Jackie Cooper's Perry White - crusty, short-tempered and intense, yet immensely likeable. And though Obama, unlike Superman, is happily married, one senses that his wife Michelle Obama is a tough and self-actualised, yet ready-to-melt "for her man" woman much like Margot Kidder's portrayal of Lois Lane.

And where did Michelle and Barack meet? At the same law firm, where a young Michelle Robinson was assigned to Obama during his first three months there - again, echoes of Lois Lane and Clark Kent at the Daily Planet seem unavoidable. One can almost imagine an instantly smitten Barack Obama offering his hand out, only for Michelle to walk straight by him, just like in Superman. Michelle has since stated that she rejected several initial offers to go on a date with Barack. But, eventually, she relented, and was "sold" on their first date - the tough cookie melted at Obama's sincerity; perhaps Obama's Superman triumphed over his Clark Kent - "Michelle, I never lie…"

Obama's innate seriousness has often been (mis)characterised as arrogance (particularly by political opponents), his intensity portrayed as a lack of humour, something that Christopher Reeve struggled with too, albeit in a different way. After his paralysing accident in 1995, Reeve dismissed thoughts of giving up or accepting his situation in favour of believing that despite the odds, he would walk again. It was just his way, though even some disabled groups accused him of peddling false hope.

Unquestionably, Obama, Reeve and Superman share as many differences as commonalities - one a politician, the other an actor and the third, an American icon. Yet, almost exactly thirty years apart, Reeve and Obama experienced an unforgettably intense two years of their lives: one in a seemingly improbable political campaign based on restoring "Hope" to a damaged nation, and the other strapped in a harness day after day during a gruelling almost two-year-long shoot on a movie that might as easily end up being the biggest disaster in movie history. Both feats seemed equally improbable and for both Reeve and Obama, the greatest tests were in fact still ahead - Reeve with an unexpected paralysis years later, and Obama with the burdens and challenges of the American presidency.

At Christmas time 1978, Donner and the production team breathed a huge sigh of relief - Superman was a huge hit; an uplifting slice of Americana. The ensuing tragedy, which meant that Donner never got to complete the second part of his almost-complete two-part epic, is another story…another chapter.

As for Superman himself, it is perhaps ironic to note that one of America's greatest icons is an alien, albeit one raised in the heartland of America and one instilled with American values of service and the need to serve the common good - the very core of the American immigrant story. Obama's father was an "alien" of a different kind. His son, raised with middle-American values, was nonetheless forced to confront perceptions about his Kenyan name and dark skin. During his campaign, he battled prejudiced tags of being anything from a radical to a sleeper-cell - one wonders what some bigots would have thought of Superman - an alien invader perhaps?

The character of Superman was created back in 1938 at the tail end of the Great Depression, something that 1978's Superman referenced with its comic-book opening - the need for a hero to "lift us up" as strong in both eras. 2008 sees the fear of another similar depression, but also a genuine American icon emerging with a message of hope.

Christopher Reeve died three months after Barack Obama rose to national prominence with his 2004 address at the Democratic National Convention and just several weeks before Obama was elected to serve as a US Senator from the state of Illinois. Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States of America on November 4th 2008.

The American Dream

"I'm here to fight for truth, justice and the American way!" one can very easily imagine Obama saying. And not since Christopher Reeve has there been a better, more earnest, more gentlemanly candidate to deliver those lines without eliciting a cringe or a laugh, and not since Christopher Reeve have there been so many people around the world ready to give a serious nod and thumbs up to such aspirations.

One man was a skinny "kid" who ended up playing a superhero, and with such grace that till this day Reeve and Superman are almost synonymous. The other was a slender guy with a "funny name" who ended up "fighting every elected official in the country!" as Lois Lane cynically put it in Donner's Superman. He did, and he won. And in that, America has found its strongest iconic champion since Reeve to promote Dick Donner's take on that troubled, yet fascinating country, the United States of America - one that can turn to its own deep mythology when all else fails, and one that can still elect the likes of Barack Obama president. One can't help but see Obama as the late Christopher Reeve and Superman rolled into one.

-- Selutron

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