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I Went to See Superman As an Escape from Reality—Reality Was Still There
Why what I thought was going to be two hours of mindless fun ended up feeling so familiar and so important.
Jul 19, 2025
I am not going to pretend I know exactly what Director James Gunn’s intentions were with his recent adaptation of Superman, which was released in theaters last week. But I didn’t need the 72-feet wide and 50-feet tall IMAX screen to see clear connections to the hate directed toward immigrants here in the United States, as well as the horrific genocide in Gaza.
To take a small break from the emotionally draining work I do, and to celebrate my son’s recent graduation from high school, we drove the hour and 40 minutes from our home in Mississippi to an early screening of Superman in New Orleans last week. As an avid fan of superheroes and comics, the release of Superman was the highlight of the summer for my son. For me, it was just a chance to unplug and disconnect from the harrowing news for a bit and spend some time with him doing what he loves the most. So you can imagine my surprise when what I thought was going to be two hours of mindless fun ended up feeling so familiar and so important.
[I guess this is the part where I should announce spoilers. So SPOILERS!]
The Immigrant Justice Message
Even though I do not have the vast knowledge of superheroes and comics that my son has, I did grow up with the old Christopher Reeve Superman movies, so that is my frame of reference. At the core of those earlier movies was the idea that Superman was an “illegal alien” in our world—something he felt he always had to hide for his protection. Superman has always been billed as an alien orphan, but somehow this reference in Gunn’s latest, where he is vilified as “alien,” has some of the worst people trying to swallow massive amounts of cope. The idea that the person deemed “illegal,” the person who is “not from here,” could be the good guy, contradicts everything bigots are trying to peddle these days, but that underlying message has always been there. What critics don’t like about the storyline this go-around is that it rightfully pegs them as the “evil” Lex Luthor. Hit dogs do hollar, I guess.
At the end of the day, Superman is a story about hope—even when it feels like the world is against you.
In the latest film, another very obvious reference to the current authoritarianism and inhuman treatment of immigrants is the establishment of the character Ultraman, who was tasked with bringing down the world’s most famous “illegal alien.” Ultraman is part of a masked security force that operates outside of normal law enforcement with no public accountability. It is not hard to draw the line between the evil, masked, lawless security force and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which now has a budget larger than most countries’ militaries and is given a free pass to rain down terror without due process on the migrant community, or people they simply don’t consider “one of us.” Then came the ironic and very telling reveal that Ultraman shared DNA with Superman—a nod at the idea that we have more in common with those we deem “different,” with those we are told we are supposed to oppose, than with the people who are playing us against each other in the first place.
Needless to say, no one should have been shocked or caught off guard that a movie about a child from another world who was sent to the United States by his parents because their Indigenous land was being destroyed and their civilization was dying, who ended up being the ultimate good guy (questionable journalistic ethics aside), had a pro-immigrant message. That was always the story. However, what was a little surprising, at least in this current political environment, was Gunn’s portrayal of the fictional countries of Boravia and Jarhanpur.
The Palestine-Israel Message
As I already mentioned, I cannot speak to James Gunn’s intentions with his new take on Superman. There is a lot of debate going on right now about that. But you really can’t deny the similarities between Gunn’s fictional Boravia and Jarhanpur, which are central to the story, to Israel and Palestine. While the drama in the United States between the falsely accused and vilified Superman was playing out, across the globe was the story of a very powerful, heavily militarized country of Boravia that was working behind the scenes with evil fascist Lex Luthor to manufacture consent for the invasion and occupation of the very unarmed, Middle Eastern, brown-skinned population of Jarhanpur.
Some will tell you Boravia was supposed to characterize Russia, I guess, somehow implying that Jarhanpur is Ukraine. However, that comparison falls short when you finally get to the scene where Boravai’s military, with every weapon of war available to them, knocks down the border fence separating the Jarhapurans from them. On the other side of the fence is the Jarhapuran population, who very much look like Palestinians and are only armed with nothing but their fists, a few handheld objects, and a lot of hope and resistance. While watching the movie, and this scene in particular, I couldn’t help but conjure up images of slingshot-wielding Palestinian children defending their homes and lands against the deadly, militarized tanks of Israel.
James Gunn may not have intended to make a pro-Palestinian film, but I believe that, since we live in a world where a genocide is impossible to ignore, he subconsciously made one.
Even without X-ray vision, the visual representation in this climactic scene, intentionally or unintentionally, very clearly captures the decades-long struggle of the Palestinians against Israel. And what is that struggle and the fictional battle between Boravia and Jarhhanpur about? At the center is land, or the desire to take someone’s land through military force.
Just like the immigrant justice messaging, this mirroring of Israel as the evil army of Boraiva and Palestine as the innocent, disarmed population of Jarhapur has a lot of folks crashing out. In my opinion, that says more about them than the movie. It tells me that their whole ideology relies on lies and disinformation, on distortion and projection, and when a movie, whose message has been obvious for years, exposes their contradictions, they sulk and cower, as Lex Luther’s character did at the end of Gunn’s Superman.
The Most Important Message
When I took off work last Tuesday to go see Superman, I thought I was leaving behind the reality of all the injustices that, through our work, we’re forced to confront every day. But what I realized is that we are surrounded by a world of injustice, and no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we may want to sometimes, we cannot look away. I can escape into a dark theater for a couple of hours, but that doesn’t stop the fact that thousands upon thousands of people are currently being hunted, illegally detained, and often beaten by rogue pseudo-police forces. It doesn’t stop the bombs and bullets that are constantly raining down on innocent children who are only left to defend themselves with a small rock. James Gunn may not have intended to make a pro-Palestinian film, but I believe that, since we live in a world where a genocide is impossible to ignore, he subconsciously made one. Because at the end of the day, through all the millions of dollars worth of propaganda created to obscure truth and reality, our psyche cannot deny the obvious.
I could end this piece reaffirming the very obvious connections to immigration justice and the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine (two issues that are very deeply connected in real life as well), but I would be remiss not to include another take on the film—one that I value a lot and one that everyone should walk away with.
When I told my son I was writing this, he asked if he could give me just a couple of notes. First, he asked that I try to stay away from the stupid argument over whether the film was “woke” or not because, as he explained, that word “woke” just gets thrown around without any meaning and distracts from the real message. That message, he said, is that at the end of the day, Superman is a story about hope—even when it feels like the world is against you.
Thinking about the immigrants trying to survive in a country that wants to vilify and imprison them, or the children in Gaza with nothing but innocence and heart facing down an army of hate, it is hope in the collectivity of goodness that gets us through, even in the face of all that insurmountable despair. Because, as history (and the Superman series) has proven time and time again, bad people do get exposed, evil empires do eventually fall, concentration camps can be freed, and defenseless populations, filled with hope and resilience, do find a way to protect the people and the planet.
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Superman Isn’t About Gaza—But It Sure Feels Like It
In Superman, we’re watching something hauntingly familiar: a powerful state waging war on a trapped civilian population, a global superpower choosing complicity over justice, and a narrative war where truth is the first casualty.
Jul 17, 2025
Director James Gunn insists the new Superman film isn’t a political allegory, noting the script was completed before the events of October 7, 2023. But art, especially in times of global crisis, often outgrows the intentions of its creators. Whether consciously crafted or not, the world is receiving this film as a lens through which to process grief, rage, and a collective hunger for justice for the Palestinian people.
Watching the film, I couldn’t help but cheer not only for Superman—but for the people of Jarhanpur, a battered, besieged territory subjected to ongoing military assault by its high-tech neighbor, Boravia. Jarhanpur’s residents are depicted as marginalized and vilified, living in ruins under constant threat. The imagery of bombed-out buildings, displaced families, and children pulled from rubble evokes the horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza and the mounting toll on Palestinian civilians. The people of Jarhanpur are also racially coded to align with Arab identity: darker-skinned actors, traditional garments, accents, and names.
Another parallel lies in the politics of narrative. Boravia brands Jarhanpur’s fighters as terrorists—a label the film slowly dismantles by revealing the humanity, grief, and resistance of a people struggling to survive. It’s a powerful reflection of the Palestinian experience, where the word “terrorist” is weaponized to erase history, justify massacres, and delegitimize resistance.
Boravia, portrayed as the aggressor, fits the role of villainous state all too well: overwhelming military superiority, settler-style expansionism, and a narrative of perpetual self-defense. The film’s portrayal of Boravia’s government manipulating facts and weaponizing fear mirrors Israel’s real-world disinformation campaigns—and the Western media’s complicity in amplifying them.
Those of us who have taken a stand against Israel’s genocide should take advantage of this cultural moment.
Superman himself initially tries to remain neutral—but neutrality collapses in the face of genocide. He ultimately sides with the oppressed, recognizing that Jarhanpur’s people are fighting for survival, dignity, and freedom. This arc mirrors the global awakening we’re seeing today, as more and more people stand with Palestinians and reject the apartheid policies and war crimes of the Israeli state.
In Superman, we’re watching something hauntingly familiar: a powerful state waging war on a trapped civilian population, a global superpower choosing complicity over justice, and a narrative war where truth is the first casualty.
Those of us who have taken a stand against Israel’s genocide should take advantage of this cultural moment. Distribute flyers at film showings. Write your own reviews. Use this film as an educational tool to expose Israel’s atrocities and uplift the righteous struggle of the Palestinian people.
And maybe—just maybe—Superman can remind us that the world community, united with the Palestinian people, can become the real superpower that defeats Boravia… I mean, Israel.
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Restorative Archaeology? Time to Return Looted Treasures to Sardinia
A range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
Jun 28, 2025
When the small statues of a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age priestess and her archer protector take the stage at a Christie's auction next week in London, the Nurnet nonprofit organization in Sardinia plans to make their own bid to bring the sacred bronze pieces back home.
Despite decades of protests against the sale of the island's patrimony, where thousands of UNESCO-recognized Nuragic tower complexes attest to Sardinia's central role in the Mediterranean Sea during the Bronze Age, 2,000 years before the rise of the Roman Empire, a range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
"We think that the purchase could be of interest to the entire Sardinian community of enthusiasts," the all-volunteer organization Nurnet said in a statement, in launching a GoFundMe campaign for the auction. °The institutions do not have regulations that allow them to intervene in the short term and allocate the funds. We decided to intervene, with the savings of the members and the help of enthusiasts."
The history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
The Sardinian group successfully purchased four bronze pieces in 2015 at a similar auction, and then donated them to a local museum.
Last week, in fact, the Monte Prama Fondation, which has recently gained international attention for its 50-year restoration of massive stone giant sculptures from the Bronze Age, called on the British Museum to repatriate thousands of ancient Punic gold jewelry and Nuragic items that had been notoriously raided in the 19th century.
Despite the massive hoard of artifacts, which have been documented in various reports and a 270-page book, only a handful are on display at the London museum, while the rest have remained in storage for over a century.
While the British Museum Act of 1963 forbids the return of artifacts obtained by the institution, critics point to the museum's ability to "loan" their treasures back to the host country.
"Returning the bronzetti," Nurnet pointed out, "is also a way to tell a beautiful Sardinia story, to bring this work of art back to domu sua," the Sardinian language for "home."
For Nurnet advocates and other Sardinian groups, the extraordinary detective work of a Sardinian policeman and actions of the Cleveland Museum could serve as an example for the British Museum and other institutions.
In fact, the bronze priestess on sale at Christie's next week shares a common origin—the shadowy Switzerland art market in the 1990s.
On a recent trip to the Ferruccio Berreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco, I visited a small bronze archer in a glass case, straddling the piece of stone, with two long unwieldy horns thrusting up on his helmet, as if challenging anyone to a charge. Yet, this miniature figure in bronze, a little over eight inches tall, which was tall for the rest of the pieces in the Bronze Age collection, stood there with a gesture of confidence, his hand outstretched in an offering, as if willing to tell the story of his twisted journey.
Centuries before Homer composed The Odyssey, the Sardinians cast miniature bronzes or bronzetti, including ships, among hundreds of other types of bronze pieces. They were vessels of stories. Found mainly in sacred water temples or a rare tomb, they served as exquisite votive offerings dating back to the 12th or 11th centuries B.C.
In 1865, a shepherd uncovered a trove of bronzetti at the Nuragic sanctuary site of Abini in the heart of the central mountains, including an otherworldly figure with four arms and four eyes, with two long horns jutting from its helmet, holding the two round shields that some associated with the ancient Shardana or "People of the Sea" that arrived in Egypt, while others believed it referred to Plato's Symposium on the original four-eyed humans divided in half by Zeus.
These tiny artifacts, often no more than 5-12 inches, spread across sacred sites on the island, including the most remote uplands, and then crossed over the sea into Etruscan tombs, at numerous sites in Tuscany, Lazio, and Apuglia. They journeyed along the Italian boot of civilizations, entering the Greek Sanctuary of Hera Lacinia at the tip of Calabria, on the Ionian Sea, on the eastern coast of Italy.
Each one of these boats, like the hundreds that remained behind in Sardinia, observed archaeologist Fulvia Lo Schiavo, was "not only a work of refined artistic craftsmanship and a precious and sacred object," but it was also "in itself a story and a message," following its own cosmology and narrative.
The Cleveland Museum had hailed one bronzetti figure as an "exceptionally fine example" of bronze work in the lost-wax method, produced by "a rather mysterious group of people who lived in Sardinia in the first millennium B.C. and who left no written records." In the catalog of their notable acquisitions in 1991, the American museum dated the artifact back to the ninth century B.C. They called it "the warrior," and used it as the logo for a section in the museum.
Anyone in Sardinia would have called it "the archer," given the extraordinary longbow hanging off the shoulder of the figure, the distinctive arm guard on the left forearm, a quiver for the arrows on his back. At least, that's what Lieutenant Roberto Lai thought when he saw the Polaroid photo of the bronze figure for the first time. Serving with the heritage protection unit of the Carabiniere police, Lai had been placed in charge of sorting through a treasure trove of documents and artifacts traced to a notorious trafficker of art in Basel, Switzerland in the mid-1990s.
Thanks to two strange, fatal car crashes in Sardinia over a 10-year period, both of which left behind briefcases of cash, diaries with addresses of clandestine diggers and their contacts, and a chart of acquisitions, Lai was able to connect the dots with the infamous Swiss brigand and his warehouse.
Turning over the photo of the archer, Lai got the surprise of a lifetime. "Grutt'e Acqua" was scrawled across the back, tracing the piece to its origins at the 1500 B.C. Nuragic site on the smaller island of Sant'Antioco, where Lai had grown up. It was neither "mysterious," that fulsome code word often trotted out to cover a lack of historical inquiry, nor legally acquired, in Lai's view.
Lai knew the legacy of the nuraghe at Grutt'e Acqua or Grutti 'e Acqua, variously translated as "the grottoes of water," or "the grottoes and water," was not just a pile of rocks, but an intricate architectural wonder of waterways and millennial planning. But he wasn't alone.
The tomb raider also knew, like any shepherd in Sardinia, that the ornate water temples or sacred wells nearby housed the bronze sculptures that had been left as communal offerings. Trudging up my same path, the raider most likely bypassed the Nuragic reservoir that sat at the basin of the hill, a green pool encased by small boulders with the mystic air of a lake in the woods.
"Electrified" by the discovery of the photo and its connection to his island, Lai followed the trail left by the trafficker, his Polaroid in hand, only to come up empty-handed with its match to any institution or collector. Where had the archer gone? No final receipts of his transactions were to be found. The cultural heritage detective didn't give up. Over the next few years, he obsessively dug through any announcements or catalogs or listings at museums, auctions, and private collections with artifacts from Sardinia and Italy. The collections were endless. They still are today.
An entire book on ancient Sardinian artifacts behind lock and key at the British Museum dated back to "boatloads" of "very remarkable" items that had been plundered at 36 tombs in the 1850s. Much of it came from the Tharros and Mont'e Prama areas. The British Museum had its own Sardinian archer, too, though he dramatically drew back his arrow, as if to protect himself. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles featured its Nuragic archer, though it differed in the details. In 1990, The New York Times featured a show at the Merrin Gallery in New York City: "Bronzes Conjure Up Images of a Fabled Past." It included the "raw power" of a Nuragic priest from the ninth century B.C. (The Merrin Gallery would be embroiled in fraud and the acquisition of "questionable antiquities" for years.)
In fact, hardly any major archaeological museum didn't have artifacts from the Bronze Age in Sardinia. While Christie's famous auction house once called off a million-dollar auction for a 4,000-year-old stone carving from the island in 2014, after the Italian police objected to the "robbery of the heritage and civilization of Sardinia," it still continues to peddle Sardinian bronzes. One five-inch Nuragic figure from the Bronze Age went for $125,000 in 2017. It also came from a private dealer in Switzerland.
The trafficking of these prized pieces, among other riches, was an old tradition, of course, dating back to the Roman period. In 1365, the governor of Cagliari brought ancient jewels dug up from a prehistoric site to the Court of Spain, as an elaborate offering from the island. The honeycombing of ruins was so bad that a law was passed in 1481 to stop the digging for treasure, especially among the clergy.
Not just for jewels. By the mid-16th century, a common proverb recounted how the stone walls of the Nuragic, Phoenician, and Roman city of Tharros were "transported away in cartloads." In 1851, the pioneering archeologist and clergyman Giovanni Spano called on government officials to protect the prehistoric sites, which he feared had fallen into the hands of "other people who will not know how to appreciate them."
In 1923, National Geographic magazine lamented the national pasttime of tomb raiders and archaeological thieves in Sardinia, as if the craze hadn't let up. Even the Nazis craved Sardinian artifacts. During a visit to the island in the late 1930s, Adolf Hitler's deputy Hermann Göering attempted to take a priceless glass-beaded necklace that had been recently excavated at a Punic necropolis dating to 300 B.C.
One evening, scrolling online, doing his usual regimen of going museum by museum, the Sardinian detective landed on the Cleveland Museum of Art site. He was stunned by the match. It was the archer in his Polaroid.
It took 18 months of high-level negotiations, including the involvement of the attorney general in Ohio, but the Sardinians managed to convince the American museum to return the stolen artifact. In exchange, in fact, the Italian government had to agree to two conditions: that the archer, among other stolen goods, would be returned to its native place, and that Italy would loan 13 exhibits of similar value for the next 25 years.
When the archer finally arrived at the Ferruccio Barreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco in 2009, Lai stood by for its installation. The archer's placement in that little glass case was deceiving with its significance. The detective would eventually write a book, as well as a graphic novel, on the true crime adventure, as well as other histories of Sant'Antioco. Lai declared the Nuragic archer had returned to "where history had placed it."
Or recovered it, perhaps. Just like the Nurnet effort today with the bronze figures at the Christie's auction.
In effect, their campaign amounts to a new trend that should be called "restorative archaeology." In a period of cultural revival, it speaks to the process of "re-storying" the island and its history.
Meanwhile, the history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
At least until tomb raiders, and institutions like the British Museum, follow the example of the Cleveland Museum.
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