I'm a punk rocker, yes I am.

I've been crying a lot lately. Not just over things like the fact that our country is now an actual fascist state and a global pariah (over which I've definitely shed many hopeless tears in the past nine months/years), but about weird things, ostensibly silly things that maybe a 41 year-old woman shouldn't necessarily cry so much about?

The last non-scary thing I cried over was Notre Dame de Paris, finally actually seeing it in person after the fire of 2019, getting to stand and revel in its majesty and the passion of the people who have been diligently restoring it since then for only a too brief half an hour. I've been crying at a lot of documentaries over the past several years, too–specifically the Luther Vandross documentary Luther: Never Too Much from earlier this year (it's excellent, please go watch it as soon as you possibly can), but before that it was The Contestant and the OG, Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

But I was more than a little confused when I found myself crying at the ending of the latest (also excellent) Superman that came out this summer, of all things. Spoilers abound, from here on out, if you care about those; it’s also already been available to stream for at least a month now, so I cannot be held liable for any spoiling that occurs after this sentence!

We discover early in the movie that Superman, Kryptonian name Kal-El, takes comfort in watching the video message his birth parents sent along with his cradle escape pod to Earth, finding solace in their directive for him to protect and serve humanity as best he can. We later discover, however, that this is not their complete message—in actuality, Kal-El’s parents urged him to gain the trust and love of humanity not because it was the right thing to do, but in order to take over the planet and rule it for himself:

"...We have searched the universe for a home where you can do the most good and live out Krypton's truth. That place is Earth. The people there are simple and profoundly confused, weak of mind and spirit and body. Lord over the planet as the last son of Krypton. Dispatch of anyone unable or unwilling to serve you. Take as many wives as you can so your genes and Krypton's might and legacy will on in this new frontier. Do us proud, our beloved son. Rule without mercy."

This concept in and of itself feels so foreign to the very idea of Superman, so deeply disconcerting and disturbing in its not-so-subtle fascist colonialist vibes, that it gave me a chill there in the movie theatre as it unfolded. Watching Kal-El’s abject horror as his only memento of his home world is immediately weaponized against him and used as a rallying cry for his destruction made it just that much more distressing…and I don’t even like Superman all that much!

If you had told me years ago I would be so emotionally invested in a movie about Superman, a deeply traditional and solidly heteronormative superhero I never really cared about in the first place, I would have laughed and turned up the volume on She-Ra or later Powerpuff Girls. Batman is still the only classic superhero I have any real connection to, and that's only because of Burton's (iconic, classic, flawless) 1989 version. Michael Keaton is still my one and only Batman, and I don't care who knows it.

But Superman? Yawn. A boring, basic hero born of a potentially racist human philosophy, only able to do “good” and nothing else, and not even disguising himself very well at that? Snooze.

I never read comic books or watched many boy-coded cartoons as a kid (exception: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, aka the reason every Millennial’s favorite food is pizza), because even at that young age, I knew those stories and characters weren't really for me and I therefore wasn't interested. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, either; I've never quite understood our deeply weird and painfully American obsession with super beings and super villains beyond the obvious archetypes that refract across human culture since before civilization even existed.

The Kents, Kal-El's Earth parents, try to explain to their distraught adopted son that he is not inherently evil because of what his parents demanded of him. His pre-conceived and pre-imposed destiny does not have to be his reality: he can transcend it and allow his own inherent goodness to continue leading him on his chosen path. And this was honestly something I think a lot of us have needed to hear these days, living in a country founded on genocide and human enslavement—our origins do not have to define our present or even our future, even though it seems like so many want to return to that state of darkness and ignorance for their own personal gain.

My breath caught in my throat as Papa Kent explained it definitively and kindly (though in an accent that sounded more Alabama than Kansas tbh):

Clark: You don't understand, I'm not who I thought I was. They sent me here to hurt people.

Pa Kent: Parents aren't for telling their children who they're supposed to be. We are here to give y'all help to make fools of yourselves all on your own. Your choices, Clark. Your actions, that's what makes you who are.

I'm sure it was on the on-the-nose for some, but sometimes you need to be reminded of such simple truths when the world is descending into chaos with no discernible end in sight, even if it is at the summer’s big superhero popcorn tentpole movie.

Earlier in the movie, after a fight, Lois scoffs at Clark's declaration that he was into punk rock in high school: pop punk, she sniffs, not the real shit:

Lois: We're so different. I was just some punk rock kid from Bakerline and you're...Superman.
Clark: I'm punk rock.
Lois: You are not punk rock.
Clark: I like the Strangle Fellows and the PODs and the Mighty Crab Joys.
Lois: Those are pop radio bands. They're not punk rock. The Mighty Crab Joys suck.
Clark: Okay, well, a lot of people love them.
Lois: My point is I question everything and everyone. You trust everyone and think everyone you've met is like, beautiful.
Clark: Maybe that's the real punk rock.

Again, a little on the nose, but hearing that arrogant dismissal of someone for not liking the "right kind" of something pulled up the vague memories I've mostly suppressed of boys in college trying to introduce me to music I'd already been listening to for years; how magnanimous of them!

In the final moments of the movie, when the Fortress of Solitude has been restored along with its robot helpers, the video Superman now watches for comfort is no longer a fragment from deceased senders who never knew him, but of his Earth friends and family, the things that truly shaped him into the beacon of goodness, truth and justice he is in his present moment.

Cue a minor indie hit from 2006 right before the credits roll: "Punkrocker," by flash-in-the-pan Swedish producers Teddybears, featuring a one of the truest punk rockers ever to have lived, Iggy Pop.

The thing is, "Punkrocker" is truly about as far from a punk song as you can get: it's upbeat and melodic, with mostly nonsense lyrics (a hallmark of most Swede-penned and -produced pop songs), and some very good beat drops over a fairly perfunctory mid-aughts indie rock guitar riff. Clark's grin is broad and genuine as he takes in that which has made him truly happy instead of a set of impossible expectations that had been looming over him his whole life.

And then the chorus of "Punkrocker" kicks in, and while they're not brilliant, something in them hit deep in my chest: "'Cause I'm a punk rocker, yes I am."

Reader, I wept.

I've also been noticing that the masking skills I developed and maintained across most of my life are quickly eroding. I can no longer keep my emotions hidden away as well as I used to: they claw their way up and out whether I'm in a finance meeting at work or standing before a 1000-year-old monumental work of human creativity and genius. The feelings are going to make me feel them, at this point in my life, whether I want to or not.

It feels intensely embarrassing to be a grown-ass woman who gets teary at the opening credits of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but honestly? I'm trying to lean into it.

I’m trying to lean into a lot of things these days, and this is a big one, and an honestly pretty terrifying one at times. I've had to hide and sometimes bury so many different kinds of feelings over four decades alive on this planet that I'm out of space now, no more room in the dozens of interior compartments I've carved out of my insides. The only thing I can really do at this point is stop caring about how those feelings may or may not be perceived by the world around me, misinterpreted, rejected, projected back at me, and so on.

I read somewhere that in our current era, hope is punk. Enthusiasm and joy are punk. Not caring whether someone online thinks you're cringe is punk. Making art is punk at a time like our present moment. And yes, in a world where cynicism and actual psychopathy are now the rule of law, finding happiness in the goodness of humanity is actually punk, too.

Even though the bands Clark liked may not have been "punk" as self-appointed gatekeepers define it (I'd give the Mighty Crab Joys a listen tbh), in a world where people are commoditized and being brainwashed into self-objectification, remaining true to yourself and what you know is good and right is also punk as fuck.

Right now, feeling my feelings without shame or fear is punk rock for me. Writing about them is still terrifying, but also feels punk as fuck in a world that expects me to care more about Taylor Swift's engagement than the fact that American cities are being occupied by federal forces and children are being starved in Gaza and shot to death in our schools.

All this to say: apologies for the lateness of this topic and this letter in general, I'm trying to write my way through all of the fear and hopelessness surrounding us, and letting myself feel and express my own scary, sometimes dark emotions for the first time in decades. I spent so long pretending to be someone who fits in with the rest of this society that I lost myself altogether for a long while, and the fact that I can still even feel anything at all—especially the good feelings, rare as they may feel these days—feels punk, too.

So shout-out to Superman, writer/director James Gunn, the adorable David Corenswet, Teddybears, and Iggy Pop himself for helping me to feel so much in such a brief moment, as eternally annoying as it its to admit that I cried at a Superman movie in the first place.

With all the feelings,
LKH

One year and change later, can you believe I finally wrote a new edition of The Enthusiast?! I want and need to be writing more, so I don't have a particular plan for posts or topics at the moment, and I might be all over the place, but I hope you're down to come with me along the way.

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