RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Superchrist — Unconscious Cinema: Man of Steel (2013)

March 30, 2021 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer

01:42:49

Superchrist — Unconscious Cinema: Man of Steel (2013)

Mark Brahmin and Richard Spencer delve into the Superman mythos and discuss Zack Snyder's *Man of Steel* (2013). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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	I don't know the degree to which, at least in terms of emphasis, that original Superman comics and films or cartoons or whatever were based on this notion of Superman as Christ.
	Or was it always like that?
	No, I mean, it's interesting.
	I think that from a kind of Jewish esoteric perspective that they understand, you know, as we've discussed in these podcasts before, they definitely understand Christ as a Jewish figure.
	In a lot of ways, as a very, very Jewish figure, right?
	As a kind of archetypal figure in the way that Moses or David is a archetypal Jew.
	Christ is also that in a lot of ways, you know what I mean?
	So, while I don't think that the metaphor about Superman specifically is about Christianity, though it may have elements of that, I mean, I think it's more about Jews.
	With Zack Snyder, it's all about Christ.
	With Superman.
	I think it's almost like a, you could say like an advancement on the myth in a way.
	Yeah.
	I look, it's definitely interesting.
	It's definitely interesting.
	And I think he, like he's very, he's much more clearly turning it in.
	To a Christ figure than the original Superman.
	But the original Superman, you could say he's a Christ figure, but he's much less explicitly a Christ figure.
	And he's more clearly a Jewish figure, which Christ is also a Jewish figure.
	So he shares that similarity.
	And that's an important similarity.
	But I think that what he's doing is he's just making it More explicit, right?
	So he's making the Christian aspect of it more explicit.
	And I think that, you know, being a Christian, most Christians don't, obviously would not agree with my view, which is kind of a sort of continuation of Nietzsche's view, whereas, you know, there are points in Nietzsche's writing where he describes Christianity as sort of...
	Uber-Jewish, right?
	Like a very Jewish.
	Yeah, like more Jewish than Jewish.
	I mean, he basically says stuff to that effect.
	And that's also my position as well.
	I don't know if I would describe it like that, but it's clearly a kind of sort of expression of Judaism and a continuation of Judaism in seeking to fulfill Jewish ends.
	So a Christ figure is also a Jewish figure.
	So yeah, but he's making it more obvious.
	And that probably would be the tendency.
	And I don't even, he might even be thinking that he's even kind of changing the myth, which he is certainly in a way.
	But he might even be changing it kind of superficially because his understanding is that Christ is something definitely distinct from Jewry, right?
	Right.
	And there is that tension.
	Let's jump into this.
	So, Mark, before we talk about Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, released in 2013, let's talk about the whole Superman mythos and the genesis of it.
	I actually read an article about Zack Snyder making Man of Steel.
	And Snyder said that the Superman symbol is the second most recognizable symbol on Earth next to the crucifix.
	And I tried to look up such a study or poll, and I couldn't quite find it.
	But I don't really contradict Zack Snyder.
	I think he's probably correct, maybe followed by...
	The crescent moon of the Muslim world, and the Red Cross, and maybe a couple of others up there, or maybe even Apple Computer or something.
	But these are icons of the modern world, and the Superman S is just as much of one as the Crucifix.
	I mean, in some ways, these comic books seem to be eclipsing.
	You know, traditional religion and mythos.
	And Zack Snyder is a very sincere director.
	I think you kind of can't understand him if you don't understand that aspect of him.
	And he said that as a way of reverence.
	This is a major burden that I'm bearing in bringing this to the screen.
	I can't screw it up.
	Before we talk about Man of Steel and Zack Snyder, let's just talk about what Superman is and who created him.
	We're going to have to go back to 1938.
	Joe Schuster living in Toronto, actually.
	There is this...
	This is the...
	Period of the kind of birth of comic books as we know them.
	Or do we know them anymore?
	I think comic books is a genre kind of fading.
	But on one level, they're more popular than ever because Hollywood has become a kind of comic book industry writ large, you could say.
	There's pulp novels and illustrated novels and so on with figures like The Shadow obviously has a lot of influence on Batman and so on.
	And Schuster starts to create this Superman character.
	And he actually originated in some kind of small little...
	Websen, you know, or not Websen, small little, small blog, no, small little, you know, magazine of some sort, as this telepathic villain.
	He's a bald-headed villain who's a telepath who's kind of controlling the Earth, and it's about the reign of the Superman.
	And I think in this way, he was probably evoking two things.
	I think with the...
	With the bald head, he might very well have been evoking Mussolini, possibly.
	With just the Superman itself, he was evoking Nietzsche.
	And in particular, this reception of Nietzsche that came in America in the 20s and 30s as Nietzsche as the godfather of Hitler, basically.
	This crazy, Germanic, anti-Christian...
	He was a madman who said God is dead and everything is chaos and thought that you could justify a cause with a good war and all that kind of stuff.
	He was not translated well and we just didn't have an academic apparatus that was able to receive Nietzsche.
	What you got of him were these cartoonish depictions as a fanatical Nazi.
	The actual Nietzsche and his relationship with Nazism is very much more complicated than that.
	We don't have to go into it on this podcast.
	We might want to do a podcast on that, to be honest, but we'll save that for later.
	But this notion of a Superman was out there, and it kind of naturally tends to sound like a comic book or pulp villain.
	You know, this mastermind who's going to control the world, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld or these types of figures.
	And then, slowly but surely, Schuster started to change Superman into the form that we know today and that would have emerged in action comics in 1938 with this.
	Wearing a cape with an S on his chest.
	He's actually lifting up a car.
	In a way, the Superman comic book character has changed, of course, as he appeared on radio and then TV and throughout decades of comic books.
	But all of the details were there.
	And he, of course, became this hero.
	He could leap buildings in a single bound faster than a speeding bullet.
	He eventually started to fly.
	He was stronger than anyone.
	He could kind of do anything.
	And it also started to come out that he had this interesting backstory, that he was a kind of alien from the planet Krypton.
	So let me kind of hand it off to you if you want to develop this a little further or add in anything that I missed.
	Yeah, so it was clearly a reference to Nietzsche's concept of Superman.
	And it was from a Jewish perspective.
	And it was kind of, I think it was an effort to basically...
	Because, I mean, you know, again, Nietzsche's idea of a Superman is a little more complex.
	Though, I mean, on some level, it's uncomplex or not complex in the sense that, I mean, clearly what he was describing was a Aryan Superman or a European Superman at the very least.
	You know what I mean?
	Aryan might be too strong a word.
	From Nietzsche's perspective, but a European Superman and not a Jewish Superman, right?
	Yes.
	A good European.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But what Schuster or Siegel, I think, was...
	I don't know if Siegel might have been more sort of the architect of Superman.
	I think that was my impression when I was looking at these things before.
	They both are writers, apparently, but one is an illustrator.
	Was Schuster the illustrator?
	Yes, I think that's the case.
	And Schuster was the writer who started these kinds of things.
	It was from Toronto.
	But yeah, I mean, look, they're co-creators.
	They have very similar backgrounds.
	Yeah.
	In any case, the creators of Superman were...
	They, you know, the first kind of version, as you've described, was this very primitive comic that describes a villain, actually, right?
	And that villain is something more, that villain is something more akin to how they're imagining Superman.
	But at some point they make, they make the decision, they make a kind of artistic creative decision that like, well, we should basically be depicting a kind of...
	A crypto Jew as the Superman or Jews as Superman instead of like, you know, I mean, why do we see that?
	So they made a kind of propagandistic and artistic or creative decision, you know, and an intelligent one, as it would turn out, obviously, right?
	Yeah.
	So there were, and the decision there ultimately was, well, we're actually, we're the supermen.
	So the superman is going to be kind of redefined.
	We're going to redefine the superman.
	And maybe also in the English language in a way, rather than the Uberinch, it's the superman, right?
	So maybe they're taking it for the English audience.
	They're sort of transmuting the superman into a Jewish figure.
	But yeah, so from the beginning, it deals with Jewish crypts, right?
	The main guy, or rather, he has a secret identity.
	So Superman has a secret identity, and his secret identity is Clark Kent.
	And the names, as people know, the names are often chosen very carefully in Jewish works, especially salient and kind of important and impactful ones.
	And it's no exception here.
	Kent, the name Kent means white.
	Right?
	So in other words, Clark Kent represents a kind of white presenting face of this Jewish figure.
	I think the word Clark means, interestingly, means priest or clergy or clerk, right?
	So it's a kind of clerical name.
	Right.
	And so white priest could be a kind of like, that could be essentially the meaning of Clark Kent, right?
	Right.
	Let me jump in real quick.
	No, no, no.
	Also corroborate.
	Fine, please.
	Yeah, no, I'll jump in real quick.
	So first off, in saying that Superman is a Jewish figure, that might have been a bit...
	Controversial, maybe in the 1950s or something like this.
	At this point, this is totally uncontroversial and mainstream among people looking at the history of comics.
	This isn't something that people will maybe talk about when they're reviewing The Man of Steel or something like that.
	But in academic circles, this is just taken for granted that...
	You know, you have this amazing burst of creativity at this point, the golden age of comics, the 1930s, and the creation of all these superheroes that have, you know, kind of stood the test of time and are still extremely popular, maybe even replacing religious figures in terms of iconic images of, you know, woman, Wonder Woman, or Superman as this, you know, God among us who's good.
	Batman is a darker, more ambiguous figure as well.
	But yeah, these are all created by Jews as Jewish myths, and they reflect Jewish experience and Jewish personality.
	So we're not just thrusting this upon there.
	Also, I was just reading up a little bit on Joe Shuster, and he ostensibly claimed that he named Clark Kent after Clark Gable, who, of course, was a...
	I would strongly suggest that you don't always believe the cover stories that people tell you.
	Ian Fleming said that James Bond came from a book on birdwatching.
	I'm a little bit dubious about that.
	Stan Lee said the Black Panther was not named after the Black Panther group.
	Actually, they did come later, didn't they?
	No, well, there was an earlier Black Panther group, the one that we're familiar with that I think is Oakland-based, based out of California.
	There was one in the South that was called the Black Panthers.
	And I think that the Oakland group may have purchased the name or something like that.
	So it was known.
	Civil rights circles certainly would have been known to Stan Lee.
	His work is filled with references to the civil rights movement.
	Oh yeah, I love big animals.
	They're big and scary.
	There are other examples.
	The walk is another example too, which is a more subtle one.
	Another example is...
	Mary Jane is a reference to marijuana.
	And that's, like, worn out in those parables.
	Like, it's, you know, just saying that, and he denied that, but, you know, he actually had reason to deny that, because if it seemed like he was, like, promoting drug use or something in the comics, the guy wouldn't check that.
	Right?
	But just quickly, as an aside, one of the, like, sort of, one of the famous comic books in the, or comic books, one of the famous sort of It might have been a two, you know, two episode series.
	But one of the famous series in the Spider-Man, the early Spider-Man comics, was when Harry Osborn becomes like a hard drug user, right?
	But yeah, but the whole thing is set up with Peter Parker basically kind of like pawning off Mary Jane on Harry Osborn.
	And the real chick in the circle that they want to get is Gwen Stacy or Stacy Gwen.
	That's sort of the waspy sort of blonde that everyone's going after.
	Peter Parker brings in Mary Jane from his own Queen's neighborhood, who's this kind of redheaded sexpot.
	And he introduces her to...
	Harry Osborn, who Harry Osborn becomes sort of like in love with her and addicted to her in a way.
	And then she breaks his heart and he turns to hard drugs, right?
	Because she still loves Peter Parker.
	But the metaphor there is that he's not just introducing a sort of corrupting Jewess into the circle.
	He's introducing marijuana into the circle, right?
	Yeah.
	That's how I read.
	And there are obviously other clues, but it's the whole...
	The whole, it's sort of permeated.
	It's also kind of hiding in plain sight.
	I mean, a character called the Wasp, you know, you're like, oh yeah, she has a Wasp, she has wings, she flies around.
	But it's like that term, Wasp, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, was current for decades before then, actually.
	And it is what you think it is.
	It's like hiding in plain sight.
	It's right in front of your face and you can't see it.
	But much like Superman, I think, in some ways.
	I mean, you see sometimes people joke.
	I've seen someone as a gift one time gave me this.
	It was like an action figure version of Nietzsche and he was kind of like Superman or something.
	You know, it's like this is amusing.
	But yeah, it's like this is a reference to this term that was in the air at the time.
	And as you mentioned before, quite rightly, it was a way of transfiguring it.
	and making it something almost the opposite of what was meant in Nietzsche's works, including Vespa Zarathustra, where that term appears.
	But yeah, so let's...
	There are a lot of strongly Jewish elements to Superman.
	There's the name, which is Hebraic.
	Kal-El, his father, is Jor-El.
	Do you know what those are references to specifically?
	Kal-El, I think, is voice of God.
	I looked at the Hebrew.
	I couldn't really figure out if there was any other secret there, but El is one of the words that's used for Yahweh.
	In the Hebrew Bible.
	Elohim.
	Yeah, well, El is singular, right?
	So the distinction there, I think, is singular versus plural.
	Elohim is plural or can be plural, right?
	So El may be a kind of specific Jewish identifier or a reference to Yahweh.
	You know, Adonai, or something like that.
	So it might be a term that means Lord, and it's singular, therefore identifying a Jewish god as opposed to another god.
	Interesting.
	El Olam.
	So El Olam was one of the gods, too, that was identified with Cronus in Saturn.
	Interesting.
	And El Olam is Lord of Time, basically.
	Lord of Time Olam.
	Or Lord of the World, I guess, would be another reading of the Hebrew there.
	So we have these names that strongly evoke Hebrew.
	Superman will eventually come to Earth in a Moses basket, effectively.
	He'll be, you know...
	Cast out from a dying Krypton and he'll come to Earth in these ways that are clearly evoking biblical myth.
	Now, again, I think a lot of this operates on an unconscious level.
	Particularly in this day and age where we have the personifications of the comic book guy on...
	YouTube, who, you know, like, it was actually in 1940, Action Comics 17, when he was placed in a spaceship that came to Earth.
	You know, these people kind of obsess about the details in an amusing way about these comics.
	But again, it's all, you have to like...
	Get away from the details and just look at the structure of it.
	It's all Hebraic myths retold in this pulpy fashion that is appealing to kids and will eventually appeal to adults.
	And in fact, adults will buy more comic books than kids eventually.
	But it is appealing to them on a childlike level of...
	You know, Superman is wish fulfillment, you know, big strong man who punches everyone and can fly and do anything and can get shot by bullets and they just fall off him, etc.
	It is a way of transmitting Hebraic parables to children at an impressionable age.
	And have those kind of stick in their mind, maybe unconsciously, but still stick in their mind.
	And it is funny that the, you know, the attack on comic books that came in mid-century with the, I'm forgetting his name, it's a name like Werther or Wertham or something, this commission where they were claiming that comic books were about sexual perversion and, you know, they were...
	Promoting deviancy and so on.
	Not completely wrong, you could say, but the most powerful transmission was not free love.
	The most powerful transmission was the Hebrew Bible.
	Yeah.
	I mean, so, but to your earlier point, like, is Superman a Jewish character?
	Obviously he is, right?
	So there's not, and this is one of the most obvious, you know, if, certainly don't bother watching the rest of our, or listening to the rest of our podcast if you can't get over the, you know, Superman is a Jew.
	That's sort of the beginner course, right?
	He's given a Hebrew name, two Jews invented the guy, you know, these clear themes of Krypsis.
	So, And a secret identity.
	And it's a weird one because his secret...
	When you think about who Superman is, I mean, his false identity is Clark Kent, even though it is kind of authentic to him.
	He doesn't have to put on airs to become Clark Kent.
	But his secret identity is as a nebbish journalist, basically.
	But his real identity is this superhero, a god among us, basically.
	And that also, just the fact that those persona were chosen is also interesting, let's say.
	Yeah, and this is, I mean, this is in book one, so I may as well drop it here as well.
	But the krypton is obviously a reference also to krypsis, to Jewish krypsis.
	In fact, the krypton, the word is also the name for an element on the, you know, periodic table.
	The meaning of that word is hidden one, right?
	It means hidden one.
	So, you know, this idea that, which makes the metaphor very interesting, of course, because what is being described is that Krypton is dying, right?
	So there's an interesting layer there where Krypton is dying.
	So they might be dealing with a metaphor where Krypsis is ending on some level.
	I don't know.
	I mean, that might be one way of thinking of it.
	Well, it's fascinating.
	Yeah, it's fascinating you talk about this because it's, you know, what is the only thing that can kill Superman?
	Because in some ways they had to come up with some contrivance because this guy is so strong that there needs to be some kind of threat.
	He can't just punch burglars, you know.
	For all his life.
	And that is kryptonite.
	And it's a piece of his planet.
	And again, krypton evokes krypsis.
	And crypto-Jew, you could say.
	It's the way, a strategy for Jewish survival that was quite successful in Christian periods and elsewhere, which is to...
	Be a Jew at home while ostensibly converting or being relatively neutral in society, but maintaining this tradition and the technology of the Hebrew Bible.
	And it's interesting, again, that he comes from this place that is Krypsis.
	It's almost like we can't know what it really is.
	But in all of these cases, it is dying.
	Maybe that's Krypsis dying.
	Maybe that's a kind of ancestral homeworld.
	You could say Israel, Zion, Jerusalem is dying.
	It's not theirs anymore.
	And they have to kind of enter the world, which is entering the realm of Gentiles.
	But it's also interesting, as you point out, I'll give you total credit for coming up with this.
	Again, when you told me this, it was like...
	Oh, well, here we go.
	This has been hiding in plain sight all this time.
	It's interesting that it is Krypsis that can attack Superman.
	And it's a piece of his homeworld that is dangerous to him.
	And it's almost like if you show him who he really is, that is how you destroy him.
	Yeah.
	Well, let me talk a second.
	Because that metaphor...
	Developed a little later.
	And I actually think it might have been Bill Finger who authored the first appearance of Kryptonite.
	But basically what was happening is that, and I guess their secretary, you know, who worked in the office, pointed it out to them.
	Maybe she had a more important...
	But she's credited with basically bugging these guys, you know, the two Jewish creators of it, by saying, hey, well, there's no way to kill him.
	So it's kind of boring.
	It's a boring guy.
	The guy's indestructible.
	So what's the point?
	The conflict that's inherent in drama is sort of absent with Superman.
	It's actually one of the reasons that I never really liked Superman, because even though there was the problem with kryptonite, okay, he has a weakness, but then it's like...
	The same weakness every time, so it's the same kind of formula to attack him.
	I found that irritating as a kid.
	But I think that one way of looking, so the metaphor, so in a way, they're developing something that wasn't kind of thought of originally, so there might be a kind of imperfectness to it, you could argue.
	But what they do come up with is, yeah, if they have a piece of the planet.
	So there are a couple of readings of it.
	One could be, well, it's reminding them of this tragedy, which hurts them emotionally, right?
	So let's imagine Kryptonite, something like a Holocaust or a pogrom or some Jewish suffering, right?
	Imagine it as a metaphor for that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So by having a piece of it, it's a kind of memento or it's a reminder of suffering.
	So that harms them.
	The other thing, too, is that it could be a metaphor for essentially revealing their krypsis, like we know you're a Jew, basically.
	So the power of this Jewish figure comes from the fact that no one knows that he's a Jew.
	No one knows that Clark Kent's a Jew, and that allows him to operate in Gentile society, be successful in Gentile society, and have this, you know, whatever this sort of...
	I think that that metaphor...
	It might be a little bit of an imperfect metaphor, but one reading of it is that basically he's being outed as a Jew.
	That could be one reading of it.
	So someone who shows them is saying, hey, we know this is Krypsis, right?
	Look, we found the evidence that you're a Jew, effectively, and this is Krypsis, right?
	So being found out as a Jew, that might be the metaphor with Kryptonite.
	Yes.
	Well, let's...
	I'm glad we talked about that, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, because all of these things that we discussed are applicable to Man of Steel.
	So let's go to where I usually start these.
	So what were your initial impressions of Man of Steel when you first saw it, maybe in theaters in 2013?
	Man of Steel.
	So I first had a kind of ho-hum reaction to it.
	You and I talked about this.
	I wasn't, you know, generally, I mean, you know, comic book films in general are kind of a mixed bag.
	Few of them are good, of course.
	And most of them are pretty bad.
	But I tend to, like, I think that my favorite, and I've said this on the podcast before, is that...
	The 2008 Iron Man I thought was a pretty funny movie at the time.
	I thought it just had the right kinetic energy.
	It was humorous and it was kind of cool.
	It didn't take itself seriously in a good way.
	Whereas Nolan took Batman serious in a good way as well.
	It represents two different approaches to the comic book genre.
	They came out in the same year, interestingly.
	Is that 2008?
	Yeah, it was The Dark Knight.
	Yeah, okay.
	Yeah, it is.
	Because I think these are the two kind of versions of what big Hollywood can be.
	It's the Marvel movie where everything is kind of a joke.
	And they'll even wink at the audience and basically say...
	I think there was some moment in one of the Avengers films where he was like, I'm just some guy wearing tights shooting a bow and arrow.
	All of this is wacky.
	It's almost like allowing the audience to play along in the big joke that the movies are.
	Marvel movies are known for their quips, the irony, the silliness, fun, cute characters.
	And then DC has maybe always kind of gone a different direction, but it definitely went in direction post-Nolan of this grounded, realistic film where even a figure like Ra's al Ghul, who is magical and mythical, is kind of brought down to earth and he becomes a Nietzschean terrorist or something.
	Batman Begins, and everything is grounded.
	So Bruce Wayne is a real guy living in modern Gotham.
	He's using technology, but it's a very real thing.
	The magic, the camp, the silliness is removed.
	And then Marvel kind of went another direction.
	They became wildly successful with this.
	They've sometimes had some...
	You know, somewhat serious films.
	But overall, the tone is extremely white.
	Zack Snyder is different than Nolan.
	He is not really trying to ground the comic book characters in reality.
	Like, what would it be like to be Batman?
	I mean, Batman's maybe the only one you can do that.
	I think he, on one level, wants to create a moving comic book.
	So his...
	And you can see this from his first really successful film, 300, where he's doing a faithful rendition of the actual comic book.
	He did this again with Watchmen.
	I mean, it wasn't entirely just a reproduction, but it was very faithful.
	And he tried to almost create film as like moving, as opposed to film as like a...
	Fly in the wall looking at realism.
	It was almost like stylized film as almost like living comic book.
	I don't know if I'm finding the right metaphor, but I think you know.
	It's like the image itself, you recognize it as a composed artistic image, almost like a moving painting.
	And he did this with 300 with...
	Watchmen, there are a lot of realistic elements to Man of Steel, but there's also many painterly elements, you could say.
	These images of Superman being crushed in this mountain of skulls and his hand coming out and all of these really stylized, composed images.
	He's a much more visual filmmaker in that sense than Nolan is.
	I mean, Nolan has a visual.
	But with Zack Snyder, it is all about that.
	He actually, Zack Snyder actually came from music videos, interestingly, and that might have had an effect on him, but it's just his style.
	And it's also deadly serious, bombastic, badass, you know.
	I think that turns some people off.
	But it is this kind of serious...
	And I think there's also this aspect, Zack Snyder, that a lot of leftists pick up on.
	And they've been doing this recently.
	I was perusing YouTube.
	A couple months ago.
	And I was just searching for Zack Snyder.
	And you get these very detailed and in many ways very thoughtful and persuasive left-wing videos on how Zack Snyder is a fascist filmmaker.
	And I don't think they're...
	I mean, I think they're wrong maybe on some things, but I don't think they're wrong in the general.
	I mean, he is a...
	Very sincere, bombastic artist who wants to show gods among men and authority figures in a certain type of authority figure in a good light.
	He will actually go after the CIA and Batman v Superman.
	He'll do little things like that, but he wants to show...
	Kind of like mythic violence.
	And he invites you to give into it.
	And I think that might not be the whole story, but I think that is true.
	I think he is a kind of right-wing filmmaker, as it were.
	Much like Christopher Nolan, actually.
	Though in a different way.
	And this can be compared to the silly, goofy, multi-culti, left-wing films of Marvel movies, which, of course, All of the millennials just love.
	And which also, I should add, glorify the CIA and the American government, such as in that film Black Panther, but we don't have to go there.
	When I first saw Man of Steel, I generally liked it, but I felt that in some ways it was rather loud and the Christ imagery was kind of Maybe too on the nose.
	And there was all these big punching and throwing people into buildings and explosions.
	I got a little exhausted by it when I first saw the movie.
	So I certainly didn't dislike the movie.
	I actually liked it.
	But it was a bit much, you could say.
	I rewatched it a number of times since I first saw it.
	And I have...
	Liked it more and more.
	And I've also begun to appreciate Zack Snyder, who puts this kind of detailed attention into every scene.
	Almost every scene is evoking something.
	It's evoking a theme of the film.
	Sometimes it's on the nose, like when Superman is literally in a Christ pose in outer space.
	Zack Snyder evokes Stanley Kubrick and Watchmen in those scenes in the nuclear war room.
	But he's evoking imagery, either themes from the film or iconic American 20th century imagery, almost in every scene.
	And everything is very tightly composed and meaningful.
	And so I think it does pay worth...
	It pays re-watching these things and kind of catching the reference or looking at some of the layering that he's doing.
	And I have to say, I've come to a point where I not only appreciate Man of Steel quite a bit, I think it's actually a great film.
	And we're going to start talking about some of the themes of the film in a bit.
	But I've also just appreciated Zack Snyder as an artist.
	I mean, he has his limitations.
	He has his temptations, you could say, to be bombastic and use slow-mo and have all this badass Conan the Barbarian style stuff.
	Maybe that's not a fault.
	I don't know.
	But he has his limitations.
	But I actually do think he is a great visual artist.
	And I appreciate him and his films.
	Yeah, the Christ...
	That he's a Christ figure is pretty evident in the film.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's not even in a bad way.
	I mean, as you're describing, because it's sort of like, on some level, it's a bit of a, from a Christian perspective, it's a little bit of a, people describe him as a fascist.
	That's definitely a stretch in my view.
	But he is sort of trolling.
	I think that Christians watching it who can perceive This sort of Christ metaphor,
	which again is pretty blatant, probably take a certain delight and do feel that he's kind of taken this Superman character in a way from Jews.
	They invented Superman, of course.
	And he's made him maybe into a more positive figure.
	He's made him effectively into a Christ figure.
	And you can see this.
	I mean, there is a...
	And some of it could be a kind of subconscious reaction to it, but he does, I've noticed online, he does have this very kind of, like, devoted, which I think that you're kind of, you might even be sort of part of this, like, sort of hardcore, like, zealot group.
	I'm the leader of the Release the Snyder Cut movement.
	No, I...
	But there is a group, yeah.
	There is a group, and I'm not sure...
	Any other filmmaker has such a following.
	Christopher Nolan might be the only one.
	He's very popular and has his fans.
	I think what's kind of unique about Zack Snyder is that he is so divisive among the audience and critics.
	And so like Man of Steel had, I mean, whether you want to put any sock in this at all is up to you, but Man of Steel had a 50% Rotten Tomatoes score.
	So Rotten Tomatoes like aggregates.
	You know, reviews from mostly mainstream sources, but also some kind of online vloggy sources.
	And...
	That was from critics or that was from audience?
	Critics, yeah.
	Audience scores are much higher because he gives the audience in a way what they want, just like badass, you know, things exploding and, you know, Superman with these huge muscles and, you know, punching people.
	Yeah.
	He gives the audience what they want on some level.
	So he's much more popular with audiences, but he's very divisive among critics, and I think among just people like the Twitterati, you could say.
	And so I don't think Christopher Nolan has these leftist, like, communists making hour-long YouTube videos about why Zack Snyder is evil.
	I don't think Christopher Nolan has such a detraction.
	Extremely divisive.
	I think that's a kind of remarkable thing about him.
	And that's good and bad.
	The critics jumped on him after Batman v Superman and all these kinds of things.
	Like Zack Snyder's over.
	He's terrible.
	We hate him.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	But he also has these fans that did something remarkable.
	And it's kind of what sparked us to do these podcasts on this.
	Series of films.
	But these fans who just endlessly, for three years, were tweeting, you know, released the Snyder Cut, Zack Snyder was robbed, his grand epic vision was destroyed by the studios, and they would do all of these really interesting YouTube videos on looking at...
	How Justice League was put into theaters.
	Because Zack Snyder's adopted daughter committed suicide.
	But at the same time, there's always this pushback against him at the studio.
	And so Zack Snyder basically said no moss at some point.
	He just couldn't go on.
	Josh Whedon from Marvel came in to finish the project.
	And what he ultimately did was just radically change it.
	And he turned it into a Marvel movie.
	It didn't work.
	It lost money.
	It was a disaster.
	Justice League from 2017 has just been forgotten as a just movie that no one cares about.
	And so there's this movement of like, there actually is this great film out there.
	And let's like examine like early trailers and behind the scenes footage and like what we know from Zack.
	And Zack Snyder would kind of like release images from the film.
	And they created an online movement that I guess unlike the Trump online movement was actually successful.
	And so they got what they wanted.
	I mean, the Snyder Cut is being released tomorrow as we're recording this.
	And he got another, you know, $50 million to go finish the project.
	And from what I can see, the early reviews are that it's great.
	I mean, it's bombastic and mythical, but it's great.
	And his fans won, you know?
	So there you go.
	If you try to limit immigration and change foreign policy through an online political movement, you'll fail and get co-opted by the GOP.
	But if you're Zack Snyder fans, you'll achieve total victory.
	That's the lesson that I see.
	So, yeah.
	So divert your efforts to more meaningful causes is what you're...
	In a way, yes.
	But what I would say, though, about...
	I mean, I think that some of the criticism of Snyder is deserved just as a filmmaker, right?
	So I think that he...
	And Nolan is guilty of this in ways as well, but he's actually...
	Nolan is...
	He has some scenes in his films that are genuinely very evocative or emotional and evocative, whereas I think that Snyder can be a little more mawkish as a filmmaker, and some of it's a little cornier as compared to a Nolan film.
	So I think that there is a tonal element that's not as strong.
	Or I find in the Snyder films.
	Whereas I think Nolan feels like it just feels like a more sophisticated presentation.
	And there's kind of more style, I think, to a Nolan film.
	You say that visually, I think both filmmakers are very visually gifted.
	Definitely.
	So I would say that.
	I think he can be criticized from a purely filmmaking perspective.
	Now, I think that there is, and I would guess that there's also a kind of political or even religio-political dimension to the sort of hatred of him because there's a kind of, there's a sense that like, oh, here we go again.
	It's kind of Christian filmmaker.
	He's got this sort of Christian sensibility and he's kind of depicting Jews with the bad guys, or he is in this film.
	To some extent.
	This film is...
	Look, if you actually...
	We'll get into it.
	If you actually outline what is going on in this film, you could make a strong argument that this is a wildly anti-Semitic film.
	Now, it's from a certain type of Christian anti-Semitism.
	So it's enveloped by Judaism, you could say.
	In the way that Christianity is.
	But nevertheless, I don't know what to say.
	Krypton had its chance.
	That is what Superman utters while he literally slices through the birthing chambers for Kryptonite and ends his own race.
	I mean...
	When you're watching this film and you're kind of overwhelmed with the visuals and spaceships crashing through buildings and these amazing fights and so on, you might not see that.
	But if you actually read the script, so to speak, and see what's going on, think about what is the implication of this plot, it becomes something very different.
	So do you want to add to that, or should I kind of jump into the whole plot?
	No, I think that's correct.
	I mean, it's correct, but it's more complex than that, obviously, of course, because as it turns out, he ends up being basically the embodiment of Krypton.
	He contains the codex within his blood, yeah.
	So he is the way of continuing Krypton.
	Now, ostensibly, though, I don't know if all the...
	Maybe all the Krypton...
	I'm sure some Kryptonites survived because they have to have sequels, of course.
	Some Kryptonians survived.
	We'll get to that in the next podcast.
	But by all appearances of the film, it would seem that he basically extinguished the last of the Kryptonians.
	On the other hand, he contains Krypton within his blood in a very emphatic and definitive way.
	As described in the film, he contains basically the essence of Krypton.
	The Krypton race is in him.
	He is the embodiment of what they call the Codex.
	Which becomes their...
	You probably can get into the description, but this is the way that this race is effectively bred, is through this codex.
	And he's the embodiment of that codex, as described in the film.
	But ostensibly, though, he would have to breed with humans to continue.
	So in other words, he would have to make a wife of Lois Lane.
	And so he would...
	In any case...
	Yeah, well, so let's go there.
	So the film opens in a 20-minute kind of prelude that takes place on Krypton.
	And it's interesting because I actually saw some of these Superman, the Richard Donner Superman movies when I was a child.
	I don't quite know how I saw them because...
	The first one came out in 1978, I believe.
	So it was the year I was born.
	So I don't think I saw it that early.
	But back in the late 70s and early 80s, before VHS, they were replaying movies more often at theaters.
	So I remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back at the theater in the 80s when it would come back and be replayed.
	So I think that's probably how I saw it.
	And then I probably watched it on VHS or saw it on television or something in the late 80s when I was like 10. But it left an impression, and that impression was ice and this ice world of Krypton.
	And I think Snyder and his writers, they wanted to do something different, so they created a kind of more organic world, but it's a kind of avatar-like world with all these creatures and so on.
	But also...
	Again, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say it's a Hebraic world.
	You have the writing that is present in particular seems to evoke that in some way.
	And just the kind of council of elders that Jor-El is speaking before also evokes that.
	It's not hard and fast, but I don't think I'm wrong on that.
	And so the whole problem that is going on, it's twofold.
	And you actually see the problem, the drama of the film in the first five minutes.
	So basically, Krypton's core is collapsing.
	And Jor-El is giving this news to the Council of Elders and just saying, Everyone here is already dead, but I need control of the Codex and I can save our race.
	So the fundamental issue of the film is whether the Kryptonians can save their race.
	I mean, it is an existential racialist film from its opening moments.
	Then you have a parallel figure to Jor-El, which is General Zod, and he actually has the same exact motivation.
	And he is, you know, he can tell, you know, again, we don't know what exactly is going on, but we can kind of sense that there's some looming catastrophe.
	And Zod also sees that things are collapsing, that the society is breaking down.
	And so it's time for a coup d 'etat and just a takeover.
	You know, kills some council members, dissolves the council, and is engaging in a coup.
	And Jor-El can't go along with it.
	And it's, you know, Zod asked him to join him, and it's kind of like, we're not opposed.
	We both see that our society is dying, and that the politicians are useless.
	And we need to do something.
	And they kind of have two different ways of doing something.
	And then I think Superman will have a third way, which is very different than what his father is suggesting.
	And it's obviously different than what Zod wants to accomplish.
	And so Zod attempts to take over.
	And Jor-El's opposition seems to be kind of...
	Ethical, democratic, you've taken up the sword against your own people, blah, blah, blah.
	But there seems to be some fascination with birth in the sense that Krypton is this rigid society where every single member is bred to be something.
	So everyone is...
	Bred to an occupation, effectively.
	And Zod was bred to be a general.
	Jor-El was bred to be a great scientist.
	And so on.
	And they've reached some point of rigidity.
	And in some ways, the rigidity of the class structure and genetic structure is the cause, the ultimate background of its collapse.
	And so Jor-El also wants to break out of this, but he sees Zod as a problem because you want to choose the bloodlines.
	And Zod is saying we're going to sever the degenerate bloodlines that brought us to this place.
	And Jor-El wants a different path, which is a free birth that is a natural birth of a child.
	And they also, because their planet is collapsing, they also are going to send this child off.
	They're going to implant the Codex.
	So Jor-El wants to get a hold of the Codex, by whatever means necessary, ultimately, and implant it in this child and send it off to another world, much like a message in a bottle.
	So the whole, again, just to reiterate, the conflict of the story is how the Jewish race will survive.
	The Krypton race.
	They're Jews.
	It's how they will survive.
	And there are kind of two paths.
	The one is the harsh, kind of nationalistic, hard path of Zod, which will ultimately entail just conquering Earth and destroying the people on it.
	And the other path is through this child who will embody the best of both worlds, you could say.
	He's a child that will Be apart from Zod, apart from the old world, and he will be given to another race as a gift.
	And so there's a definite, and I think for Zack Snyder, this is all but explicit in the way that he films the text, and I think it was absolutely central to the way that he was conceiving it.
	But it is the Old Testament and the New.
	It is the Old Testament of law and rigidity, that old world, and the New of bequeathing the essence of this, incarnate essence, in fact.
	It's the word made flesh.
	It's the word made flesh, right?
	Yeah.
	Take on this.
	I've given you a lot.
	Yeah, I know.
	Which is the line that appears in John, which is the New Testament.
	So it's the understanding that Christ or the Son of Man has become, the Word has been made flesh.
	So that's exactly what he's sort of depicting in this film.
	Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
	You know, one, I don't know if it's kind of inconsistency in the film, but so what is being depicted in this sort of these breeding pods, right?
	So, you know, whoever has seen the film knows what I'm describing, but to those who have not yet seen the film, you know, essentially there's all these Pods that are kind of similar to Matrix, if you've seen the film, except that they contain fetuses, people that are not born yet.
	And there's these kind of trees that contain these pods.
	And they're being bred artificially in these artificial wombs as opposed to people having natural births.
	But what is described in the film is a tripartite class system, effectively, of...
	Basically, priests, spiritual leaders, warriors, and laborers.
	That's how it's described in the film.
	Which is interesting, because Jews don't necessarily contain that structure within them.
	No.
	Yeah, so that might be a kind of...
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's more...
	I mean, you have religious classes of Jews and you have effectively, you know, secular Jews.
	So I think that there is a kind of, within Judaism, there is a kind of like laity, but there is, in a way, it's sort of kind of, it's one of the strengths of Jews is that they are, in a sense, kind of a more democratic, there is a kind of more democratic structure to Jews, or there is a more sort of ambiguous.
	sense of hierarchy among Jews.
	I mean, there is obviously a kind of religious hierarchy with rabbis and this sort of thing, but it's not what we imagine that kind of, you know, or what people in the dissident rite often kind of fantasize, or alt-right, or whatever we're calling it.
	They fantasize of this three-tiered structure with these priests, and then you have the warrior class, and then you have the labors.
	You know, to the extent that that ever existed in a kind of, like, perfect way, you know, might be dubious, but that is not what Judaism really resembles.
	Judaism is kind of more complex and fluid and interesting in a lot of ways, you know what I mean?
	Well, it's a priestly class, but it's in many ways a slave class.
	I mean, the...
	People of Exodus, and they might very well have existed.
	There might have been an actual people that became known as the Hebrews in ancient Egypt at the end of the Bronze Age.
	And this is a downtrodden group.
	It is interesting.
	Actually, what you could say is that you could say the ancient Israelites did contain a warrior class, which I think is the case, right?
	So you could say that it's the Hyksos that they were often related to, the Hyksos in ancient Egypt.
	The Hypu, I believe.
	We don't have to get lost on these.
	I'll look it up and we'll come back to it.
	I'll just let people know.
	I think it's the Hyksos.
	Maybe that's not the correct pronunciation, but you'll get the correct pronunciation later.
	But effectively, you know, there was a tribe that is often identified with the ancient Israelites.
	And, you know, reading the Hebrew Bible, it's clear that there are different tribes, and one of the tribes is Judah.
	So there were other tribes, and we can imagine that they are effectively serving different functions.
	One of the ideas is that Yahweh, who I argue basically represents Jewry or the tribe of Judah, and there's sort of etymological reasons and there's clues in the Hebrew Bible why you would believe that.
	But effectively, Yahweh becomes a symbol of Judah, I argue, or the tribe of Judah.
	Yahweh is also known as the Lord of Hosts, right?
	So the idea is that he's ruling over a host.
	And the word for host in the Hebrew is also an army, right?
	So you could understand him as kind of ruling over warriors or like a sort of Janissary class even.
	And Yahweh represents something more priestly, something that's directing.
	The tribe, right?
	As it were.
	So you could argue that in that way, you could argue that at least among the ancient Israelites, you do have a kind of structure.
	You have a ranking.
	I mean, clearly Judah ranks above the other tribes.
	He's the lion, for example, right?
	In any case, so I think there is actually one theory that that's effectively happened.
	That's what happened to Jews is that they were conquered, right?
	So this whole idea of the lost tribes, right?
	The British Israelites, which is a kind of sect of Christianity, believe themselves to be descendant of the Lost Tribes, these ten Lost Tribes, when the ancient kingdom of Israel was destroyed.
	So there is a theory that the Jews basically represent a group that's been, a sort of head that's been severed from its body.
	Right.
	And I think that's actually a kind of idea that Nietzsche even entertains.
	So there is an idea that they represent a kind of priestly class that's been separated from its sort of body, its normal body.
	And as a consequence, they've become, you know, they've become, you know, people who are effectively guests among hosts in other lands, right, as this priestly class.
	Class that operates in a different way that operates through religion, through a kind of sorcery or through culture, right?
	As opposed to...
	In the more, you could argue, the more direct ways in which Aryans interact.
	And often the more kind of warrior-like ways in which Aryans interact.
	But in any case, I think we're off the topic.
	But that's kind of a minor point.
	That's a minor point in the film.
	Just to go back to this, I think it's kind of fascinating because in some ways Zod is imaged as this...
	Aryan badass.
	And the fact that they have a tripartite structure and so on is interesting.
	But then there's other ways...
	Is he considered of the warrior class?
	Was that the idea he's a general?
	He's General Zod.
	Yeah, so he's of the warrior class.
	Do you think Zod just means God?
	That's how we're supposed to read it?
	Or do you think that's a reference to something?
	Yeah, I was snooping around before the podcast to try and figure that out.
	I basically came up with zero.
	I don't have a strong...
	There is...
	Yeah, I think there's a Hebrew word that means zid.
	So the thing with Hebrew is that the same word can be given a different vowel, right?
	Because Hebrew doesn't have vowels.
	So it can be given a different vocalization and essentially be the same word.
	But let's come back to that, though.
	Okay, well, it doesn't matter that much.
	It might even mean secret.
	Some secret or council or something like that?
	We'll come back to it.
	At least in English, it reminds you of God.
	You sure?
	Reminds you of Zog.
	Zog as well.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	Do people use that term on Twitter?
	I've never seen it.
	I have actually forgotten what the meaning of Zog is.
	I don't know what you're talking about either.
	You don't know what you're talking about.
	I think it's a meme of some time ago.
	These kids use these things.
	I'm too old.
	To even recognize it.
	It's one of those memes, right?
	Which I think means laugh out loud.
	So Zog is similar.
	Yes.
	I wonder what...
	He is this badass, and so he kind of resonates with Arianism.
	But I think also, and maybe this is a bit of a forced reading, but you could kind of read it as also Jewish, particularly in the kinds of things that he says.
	So the problem with Krypton is that the core is collapsing.
	And you could almost imagine, like...
	I don't know, some Bibi Netanyahu-type raging about the end of the American Empire in, like, 2070 or whatever.
	It's like, the core has collapsed!
	You know, in the sense of, like, the core people of America that keeps this thing going has collapsed.
	Now, maybe that's a bit of a forced reading of my own take on it.
	That would be fine.
	But there's, at the very least, you can say that it's this...
	It's a decaying society, and it evokes more of a kind of Aryan society than it does a Jewish one.
	So that's the central conflict.
	And then Superman is sent to Earth.
	As we know, he winds up in Kansas, and his...
	Crash Landing is not shown on screen in this film.
	It's famously shown in the Christopher Reeve version.
	And he is raised by Martha and Clark Kent.
	And I would say it's very clear that these are Gentile figures.
	And they are, I think also, they're shown a great deal of sympathy.
	I think also kind of sophistication in the context of who they are.
	I mean, Jonathan Kent is a farmer from Kansas.
	He is not an erudite person, but he's also someone who actually is deep and complicated and has a very strong moral sense.
	And so does Martha also, not only being a good and loving parent, but is also someone who is moral.
	Sophisticated in her context.
	I think Snyder treats them in a very sincere way.
	And Jonathan Kent's real issue is, how will the world accept you?
	And also, in a way, who will you be?
	So there's a scene where the young Clark Kent is being bullied.
	They're not on a playground.
	They're somewhere else.
	He's being bullied by these guys.
	He's actually reading a copy of Plato's Republic while doing that.
	I don't know if you caught that.
	But make of that what you will.
	So he's reading Plato, getting bullied, and he doesn't fight back and he kind of resists it.
	And actually, one of his older bullies who...
	You know, used to be a jerk to him, but actually Clark saved, he rescued when a school bus crashed into a river.
	He became Clark's pal and kind of like the good earthling, you could say, who Clark sees in him what all earthlings can be.
	And Jonathan Kent comes up to him, he says, you know, whether you're good or bad, you're going to change the world.
	And so it's a kind of twofold thing.
	It's how would the world react to a superhero, but then, which Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, says that, played by Lawrence Fishburne, how people would lose their mind if they knew that someone like that is out there.
	He says something to that effect.
	Jonathan Kent is like, who are you going to be, Clark?
	Are you going to be a good person, a moral person, when you reveal yourself?
	And effectively, And so it's Jonathan and Jor-El, both of Clark's father figures.
	Literal fathers are similar or parallel and actually very similar as well in the sense that they want him to embody someone.
	And they both understand that he's part of two realms, the Old Testament and the New Testament, as it were.
	So in a very, I thought, very moving scene where the young boy, Clark, learns that he's an alien and he came from somewhere else.
	He says something like, you're not my dad.
	And Jonathan says, no, no, you are my son.
	And so on.
	And he does love him.
	But he says, you also have a father by another name.
	And Jor-El says, you can embody the best of both worlds.
	So I think both of these father figures are leading Clark into a...
	Jesus-like position of connecting the Old and New Testament, connecting the Jewish world with the Gentiles, connecting Krypton with Earth.
	Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely the correct reading.
	So when he says that, you know, the father, his real father, says, you know, you're a bridge, you can be a bridge between two peoples, he's describing a bridge.
	Effectively between Jews and Gentiles, which is remarkable when you think about it, because in the film, the metaphor for Jews, and this is a film being made by a Gentile, they're literally supermen.
	So Jews are understood as supermen, but he's building a bridge between these supermen and ostensibly these unsuper Gentiles, inferior Gentiles, effectively.
	So that itself, you know, and I don't even know if that's something that, I don't even know if that's something a guy like Snyder would spend much time thinking about, but there is a kind of very insulting,
	you could argue insulting, and maybe insulting is a kind of, yeah, maybe it's the correct word, but there's a kind of insulting positioning to that, is that they are the Superman, and Jews basically represent a kind of superior race capable of creating a savior, for example.
	But also capable of just dominating us generally, as it's depicting in the film.
	Now, if...
	If sort of the evidence of how Western civilization has gone recently, it's actually kind of hard to dispute the sort of truthfulness of that metaphor, or the sort of reality of that metaphor.
	I mean, it is kind of, in some ways, there is some kind of painful truth involved in that.
	But the film, in that way, becomes kind of a form of moralization for Jews, you could argue, right?
	And in a way, because I think Snyder, of course, understands these things differently than Jews do.
	And I think that his perspective becomes one.
	Basically, it's Christ against the Pharisees.
	And the word Pharisee itself means separated ones.
	That's effectively what's being described, that they're separate from their tribal, effectively.
	And the dispute there is one between Tribalism, effectively.
	Racism, as it were.
	Jews that don't want to become part of a faith that includes Gentiles, which is what Christ wants.
	Christ wants to expand the franchise and mix, basically, with Gentiles, ultimately.
	So it is basically a conflict between Magneto, right?
	And Professor X, or a conflict between, and this is the comparison that Stan Lee made himself, a conflict between Malcolm X, you know, when he was a separatist, and MLK, between Martin Luther King, right?
	So that's the conflict.
	And Christ represents something similar.
	He represents the Martin Luther King, the one that wants to integrate, who wants to mix.
	Right?
	And, you know, the irony, of course, is that I think that, and this is a very kind of Christian view, is that, you know, in a way, the Christian, it doesn't work out this way, and Christianity sort of has this design.
	It doesn't sort of allow it to happen.
	But there is this kind of fantasy, and, you know, this is a sort of fantasy that Christians have, like a guy like Jay Dyer, for example, would have, is that...
	All the Jews would one day convert.
	This is the prophecy.
	Would all become Christians, right?
	And therefore would be sort of admixed and integrated into the Gentile body.
	And that would be sort of the answer to the JQ, as it were, right?
	Or that would be the solution to the JQ is that they would become part of the Gentile body.
	And, you know, their numbers are...
	Are relatively insignificant so that if that were to occur, if they were essentially to become all Christians, then they would effectively disappear as a people, right?
	Now, they wouldn't ultimately because the whole mythos of Christianity depends on the existence of Jews.
	I mean, Christianity itself becomes incoherent without Jews.
	Without Jews, Christianity doesn't even make sense.
	There sort of has to be Jews for Christianity to exist, right?
	I mean, Christ himself is a Jew, right?
	So for Christ to exist, there has to be Jews, right?
	There has to be something called Jews.
	And Christianity has not...
	Christianity has not been effective in converting Jews, right?
	And I don't think that ultimately that was not the design of Christianity.
	Christianity is designed in this sort of Caducean way where Jews can be Jews or they can convert to Christianity.
	They can do one or the other.
	And when things get a little hot for Jews, for example, in Europe, they can...
	Become crypto-Jews or, you know, they can become Christians that are crypto-Jews and can ostensibly convert into Judaism.
	Or they can remain outside of Christianity.
	You know, this is allowed by Christianity.
	Christianity is, it's an act of free will.
	It's an act of choice to come to Christ, to come to God, to believe in Jesus, to accept Jesus as your Savior.
	That's always been the case, right?
	I mean, obviously, there have been violent conversions in the past, but mostly the history shows in Europe with Christians and Jews that Jews have been allowed to have a kind of existence in serving a kind of function and role in medieval Europe, for example, among Christians, where they're handling the money.
	They're doing the stuff that's ostensibly undesirable for Christians to be doing.
	And so Christianity ultimately doesn't...
	I saw the JQ in the way guys like Snyder appear to be imagining.
	It doesn't really have that design.
	Christianity is not about, for example, the violent conversion of Jews.
	I think it doesn't solve it in the way that...
	Delusional people like Jay Dyer or E. Michael Jones thinks it's going to solve the Jewish question.
	We're just going to convert them all and they'll all just change through Christ or something.
	I mean, I think it doesn't.
	I'm not sure that's quite what Snyder is suggesting.
	I think there, as I mentioned earlier, there is an element to this that is, if you...
	If you accept that Superman is a Jew, which is not controversial at this point, and he is destroying Krypton, saying Krypton had its chance, it's over now, I'm going to genocide all these Kryptonian test tube babies in your scout ship.
	And Zod is understandably horrified by this notion.
	No!
	Then you could say that it's anti-Semitic.
	But I think, again, why the film is effective and why it resonates is that he's not really doing that.
	That he is embodying Jewry in the sense that the Codex, the entire Jewish lineage, is embedded in his individual cells.
	And he is now going to be a god on Earth.
	Maybe a god that has...
	There's some atheists to this god, as we'll see in Batman v Superman.
	There's kind of some anti-Christ people out there.
	But, you know, watching this film, we kind of eventually know that he's going to be the Superman.
	Who is Superman, who is a god among us.
	And the way he ultimately becomes god, there are all these scenes in the film of him kind of being born.
	I mean, the opening scene has no dialogue.
	It's just of him being born there with Jor-El and his mother.
	And then there are these other scenes of him kind of dying and coming back again.
	Where he'll, you know, he goes down to, I guess, like, southern India or something, where he's fighting the other world engine that's going to create, you know, turn Earth into Krypton.
	And he's being chased by all these, you know, kind of horrifying tentacles and things like that.
	And then he's laid low, and then he just generates all of this power.
	And there's a clear crucifix on the screen.
	When he is doing that, of this light beam coming from above and this kind of like explosion or waves going horizontally.
	And then he fires himself up into this thing and is kind of born again.
	Then it happens again when he attacks Zod's ship.
	And there's almost a scene that resembles...
	Christ exiting the cave where there's been this terrible crash and Superman gets up and pushes aside this, rolls aside this door and he's back.
	It's very evocative of him as Christ rising.
	And then I think the ultimate ending of this, and I'm relying to a degree in a very...
	Thoughtful video that I watched.
	I think it's called A Thesis on Man of Steel.
	I'll link to it.
	It's this guy who does very thoughtful video essays.
	And he did one on Man of Steel.
	And it was very good.
	But the ultimate birth of Superman is him killing Zod and then letting out a scream.
	Very much like he let out a scream when he was a baby.
	And he is being born into Superman.
	But that does entail...
	Kind of ending the Old Testament, at least the Old Testament as it was.
	Just severing the Old World, killing, and then kind of rising as the embodiment of Krypton on Earth as a god, as Superman, finally.
	Not just this kind of wandering Gentile who might randomly save people, as he was doing in adolescence.
	Never holding down a job, but some hot spot crops up and he goes and saves it.
	But he finally becomes Superman by, again, killing the Old Testament, but then ultimately fulfilling it at the same time.
	this kind of Hegelian synthesis, you could say, "auf heibung." I don't mean to be too pretentious here, but that is what he is accomplishing.
	And, you know, Christianity as the ultimate fulfillment of Judaism as Nietzsche conceived it as well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Anyways, so I think I was being a little inarticulate before, but also I'll go back to the point.
	The reason, because obviously there have been forced conversions with the Inquisition for Christianity, but really it kind of doesn't matter because You know, Jews operate in crypsis.
	So even if a Jew is a Christian, he remains a Jew, right?
	Or he has the choice of remaining a Jew.
	So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really solve the JQ, as it were, in the way that Christians fantasize.
	And the truth is, he's given advantages for remaining a Jew.
	He's incentivized to remain a Jew.
	There's incentives to remain a Jew.
	You know, they are a successful goese of people.
	So why wouldn't he remain a Jew, even if he is forced through a period of persecution to pretend that he's not a Jew, right?
	So this is how Christianity ultimately fails.
	And, you know, I think that, so I do think that that, I do think in my reading of the film is that this is, this may be kind of part of the fantasy of what Snyder is going for, is the idea that Judaism can be sort of folded into Christianity.
	Right.
	Folded into the body of literally into the body of Christ.
	Right.
	Which would be Superman.
	I mean, there are also, you know, and the idea that he that he represents effectively the word made flesh is made very clear in the language of the film as well, in the sense that the word codex.
	It can be a reference to, like you look in the dictionary, it can be a reference to the scriptures specifically.
	So that word codex is chosen in a very kind of...
	At the very least, code, which is language or logos.
	Well, the first definition of it is an ancient manuscript.
	And the second definition is specifically of the scriptures.
	And I wanted to circle back too, as I promised I would.
	So I was completely wrong about the Zod.
	I was thinking of a different word.
	I was thinking of sod.
	Again, the pronunciation might be incorrect.
	Zod, though, I think I have found a word that might be the word that was being used, assuming that it was a different Jewish writer that created Zod.
	It seems likely, since Hebrew was used with the earlier characters from Krypton, that he would also be naming him through Hebrew.
	So it seems likely that the word is also Hebrew.
	The phonetic spelling for this word I'm thinking of is Zood, so it's very close.
	The transliteration is Zod or Zid.
	But again, there's no vowel, so it could easily be Zod.
	But this word Zod or Zood means act presumptuously, act arrogantly, boil, to boil up, seethe, or be rebellious, rebelliousness.
	So that might, you know, become overly proud.
	So that might actually be the meaning.
	And it's not, it's not, it's kind of more of a, it sort of more characterizes him than it does tell us anything more interesting about him.
	You know what I mean?
	Oh, but, so, yeah, what I would say is I think that in the film, I think there is actually some consciousness, too, and I don't, I doubt that, though, who knows?
	I mean, I think, you know, Snyder, I think Snyder probably has some familiarity with Nietzsche just based on the film, and there does appear to be some cognizance that...
	Maybe the original metaphor was, you know, which it certainly was in my mind, a reference to Nietzsche's Übermensch or Superman.
	Because one of the lines, that idea of a bridge, I mean, that is a kind of idea that appears in Nietzsche, but it's used very differently.
	It's not a bridge between Gentiles and Jews.
	He says, man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman, a rope over an abyss, right?
	Right.
	So Zerathuskas says that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, that's where it appears.
	Yeah.
	Well, you should differentiate between Zarathustra and Nietzsche, just to, not to be pedantic, but, you know, Zarathustra is a character.
	It's not quite Nietzsche.
	No, but I think the sentiment is Nietzsche.
	It's a Nietzschean sentiment.
	It's a Nietzschean sentiment.
	So, Bridge, though.
	So, I don't know if he might have been getting just the word Bridge.
	Might have had some origin.
	Because that is a famous line.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, well, Zack Snyder himself, I've looked into him a little bit.
	He seemed to come from a very...
	He came from an artistic background.
	I think his mother was a photographer.
	So you can see a lot of that in his visual composition.
	And he...
	But it was a Christian background.
	But he is...
	Not really quite a Christian.
	He's kind of a post-Christian himself.
	I've never sensed that he's anti-Christian or a Christian.
	I think he's a kind of post-Christian, but he seems to evoke a lot of these things.
	I mean, in his first film, Dawn of the Dead, was a remake of a zombie film.
	First off, while the apocalypse is going on, you have this...
	He's not opposed to those types of things.
	He also seems to have...
	An interest in Ayn Rand, from what I can tell.
	So he has this unfinished script for The Fountainhead, which he wants to film.
	And so I think if he's...
	I mean, Ayn Rand is obviously a totally different thinker than Nietzsche, but she was kind of Nietzschean in a vague sense, and certainly read Nietzsche and understood, maybe misunderstood Nietzsche.
	But he seems to kind of, you know, frequent in those ideas.
	I don't think he would be...
	He's a literate person as well.
	I don't think he would be unaware of that concept of a bridge in Zarathustra.
	And it's interesting that he takes that kind of, you know, Nietzschean sentiment and then, you know, kind of like retroactively superimposes it onto Christianity as like...
	You know, it's actually a bridge between Old and New Testament.
	Yeah, I, you know, to be honest with you, I think that there is some, again, I appreciate him as a filmmaker, and I think the film is definitely interesting and worthwhile, but I think that there is a little bit of some muddled thinking going on in the film.
	But, you know, maybe it's easy for you and I to say this, because we are effectively Nietzschean in Outlook.
	So it's one of these things where...
	Maybe the guy doesn't totally get Nietzsche because he kind of rejected Nietzsche.
	He went away from Nietzsche, but he got a taste of it.
	It could be one of those things, which we've encountered before, where people are not totally familiar with Nietzsche.
	They're kind of speaking in these broad strokes about what they think Nietzsche was going for.
	One example I would...
	Because, you know, and again, if we assume that Jews, the, you know, Zod's force represents Jews, which I think is, you know, which is a pretty clear, in my mind, metaphor that's going on.
	It's the Pharisees against Christ.
	And one way that it becomes very obvious is that they, initially they ask, you know, they say we'll spare the earth if you sacrifice.
	So he's put in a very Christ-like position in the sense that he's going to sacrifice himself to save the world, right?
	He's going to give himself over, basically, to the Pharisees to be killed, ostensibly.
	That's what he believes is going to happen.
	It turns out that their plans for Earth are much more sinister, and they won't be satisfied with that, right?
	But he's put, so it's clear that he's a Christ figure, and it's clear that they're cast in the position, effectively, of Jews.
	But there were, you know, there's one thing, and so I, in a way, because, and I think it's my, he, in a way, we see the Jews, these Jewish figures, Zod's army, in a way, appear, they kind of take on these sort of...
	traits or that are not necessarily kind of Jewish traits.
	So there is a little bit of I'll give you one example.
	And again, I think it's a misunderstanding.
	It's a kind of cartoon of Jews and it's a sort of misunderstanding of a Nietzschean perspective.
	And the following is he has this sort of dialogue with this, you know, there's this kind of badass chick that's in Zod's army, the female.
	I followed her on Instagram at one point.
	She's pretty cute, yeah.
	Yeah, I have a major crush on that.
	She's a German girl.
	Don't tell anyone.
	She's like one of the Bond girls for you, I bet, right?
	Yeah.
	You need them in good film.
	You need these hot women to be in good films before you really get turned on by them.
	But in any case, whereas I'm more, my standards are quite lower than that.
	They just need to be a nice piece of, you know.
	But in any case, this girl, in this dialogue, she says...
	You know, well, you know, you're basically, you have become, in a kind of evolutionary way, you've become maladaptive because you have morals now.
	And I don't know if she uses the word morals.
	Maybe she does use the word morals, does she?
	Or she has pity.
	Maybe pity, I think.
	Well, I actually think she uses the word morals.
	But what she's really talking about is Christian morals, which are, as we've discussed before, related to pity and are distinct from Roman morals.
	So, in other words, it's a kind of straw man that we've seen developed in the alt-right, for example, because Nietzsche was not against morals.
	He was for Roman morals, effectively, right?
	Master morality.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Master morality.
	So, she basically, there's a kind of straw man that's developed in that scene.
	But in the other kind of layer or other...
	The other layer of that is that, well, she represents a Jewish character ostensibly, right?
	So he's depicting the Jewish characters as having no morals, which is, of course, not true.
	But what it means is Jews have a kind of in-group morality where they view each other in a kind of way.
	They're sympathetic to one another, which is a kind of healthy and evolutionarily adaptive way of being, is that they have this sort of in-group morality.
	Where they are more sympathetic to their own people and their own group.
	And they're moral to their own group, right?
	So it is a kind of mischaracterization.
	Like that scene didn't sit that well with me.
	But it also reminded me of the book upon which Blade Runner is based.
	Do androids dream of electric sheep?
	Is that the full title?
	Yes.
	And in that book, though, The androids, who will later be called replicants in the film, are depicted as these sort of heartless, moralist people.
	And they also are indicated...
	I mean, Philip K. Dick appears to have been indicating them as Jews, effectively, right?
	So they become a metaphor for Jews.
	I'm talking about the book.
	Things change in the film.
	The film is an adaptation, and it takes on different meanings.
	But in the book, basically...
	The same insinuation is being made about the androids or replicants that is being made about Zod's, you know, group of Zionists or group of Jews or whatever.
	And he basically, so I think it's a kind of, it's a kind of sort of unfair and unsophisticated view of Jews, right?
	Because what we're talking about, we're not talking about Jews being immoral or not having morals.
	We're talking about them having, being particularists, having in-group morality, right?
	So there's a distinction to be made there, I think, right?
	Yes, and promoting the morality of pity like no other race before.
	Yeah, sort of inflicting it on outgroups, right?
	Inflicting pity on outgroups.
	But I guess it's correct in the sense that if we're understanding moral as, on some level, Christian morality and pity, it is true in the sense that Jews have no...
	Pity for us, right?
	I mean, that's evident.
	But we've never asked for their pity.
	We don't want their pity.
	We're Aryans.
	We don't give a shit, right?
	So it could be true in that sense.
	But I think that's kind of a slave view, if that's what the guy is arguing or suggesting.
	So, I mean, I think that that was worth pointing out.
	Outside of that, I mean, I think we've covered a lot of bases.
	I think we've forgotten anything or we've left anything on the floor.
	Oh, well, one thing I wanted to say is...
	How would you interpret Lois Lane in this?
	She's...
	Again, I remember the Richard Donner Superman where she's a bit of a catty kind of arrogant journalist type.
	She's a lot less so...
	You see a little bit of that.
	But she's much warmer.
	I mean, she decides not to run a story.
	I mean, she kind of, on some level, violates journalistic ethics of not printing the truth.
	She decides to not run with the story on Clark Kent in Superman because she understands him and believes in him and loves him.
	And that's not exactly what the kind of I don't know.
	In the video essay that I referenced earlier, he suggested she's a Mary Magdalene type.
	I mean, obviously, Martha Kent is Mary, and Jonathan is Joseph in this metaphor.
	But do you think that is correct?
	Maybe even the red hair has something to do with that?
	You know, it could be the case.
	Because I've studied this parable before, and I've looked at the names, for example.
	That could be the case.
	What I was going to say, though, to your remark, which I think is pretty funny, is that...
	I think, Richard, if you were able to fly and shoot lasers out of your eyes, the journalists would give you more of a fair shake.
	That's true.
	So I think you would find some female journalists covering for this show.
	I think that that would be quite something.
	That would probably be a good thing, I guess.
	So, yeah, I mean, so is she, does she represent effectively a Gentile woman?
	I think that that's a possible reading of it.
	You know what I mean?
	I didn't, I wasn't, you know, as far as, you know, usually there's a lot of clues in names.
	And I didn't really find a lot of clues in her name, though, and this is going to sound kind of, you know, out there for people listening.
	But names are, you know, these.
	Comic book characters and characters in Jewish films that are written by Jews, often the names are very meaningful.
	If you follow our series, you know that.
	And we've already pointed out that Clark Kent is a meaningful name.
	So the name Lane, I don't know.
	It actually could have some sort of vaginal significance.
	Because I've noticed that trend.
	I've noticed that trend looking at these names.
	That there are names that basically have vaginal significance.
	And that could be one of them.
	You know what I mean?
	So, you know, she's a kind of breeding stock or a breeding resource or whatever.
	Yeah, in the comics, Superman and Lois Lane will have a child.
	Um, I don't, I don't know if that's going to come up at any point, but, um, we'll see.
	Yeah, but, uh, yeah, you know, I, I, Amy Adams, I think is pretty cute, but she's kind of, she's definitely like the girl next door, in my opinion, whereas she doesn't really have movie star looks, but if you, if, if you knew the girl in real life, you'd be like, wow, that's a great, that's a good looking girl and she's got a good attitude basically, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Yeah, she's like what you would want in a good wife.
	Yeah.
	It's a classic girl next door, I guess.
	Yeah, but she doesn't have an allure or kind of seductive, untouchable quality that maybe you would think of in a movie star.
	No, and I think that's it.
	All the nerds love her, too, I've noticed, because...
	On Twitter, I think I followed one of the...
	Just because I thought...
	I found it to be kind of an anthropologically interesting phenomenon that people were so obsessed about the Snyder Cut.
	So I followed a couple of these zealots that are pushing for the Snyder Cut.
	Oh, yeah.
	They're obsessed with Amy Adams, right?
	Interesting.
	Yeah, because I think she seems accessible, right?
	So the nerds are into her.
	It's like, that actually could be...
	Chick maybe they could date who's kind of a nerdy girl.
	In reality.
	Well, I'm obsessed with Antia Trawa.
	I just went back to her.
	I'm obsessed with the general henchwoman.
	She was pretty cute.
	You have an evolutionary defect.
	Morality.
	And as we know, evolution always wins.
	If you oppose us, we'll kill a million.
	You continue to oppose us, we'll kill a million more.
	Like, you had me at kill a million.
	Yeah, but famous last words.
	Love won in the end, Richard.

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