Last Son of Civility: The Man of Steel's Totemic Qualities and Symbolism within American Civil Religion

   

          1. Americanistmemes. 2025.                                        2. García-López, José Luis. 1982.

The first image is split into two main sections. The top panel has a beige, parchment-like background with the text: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” echoing the Declaration of Independence in style, between two lines on either side. Below this is a colorful, comic book illustration featuring a classic Superman in his iconic blue and red costume, standing confidently. Behind him is a large American flag and a dramatic explosion in orange, yellow, and black, creating a glowing halo effect around Superman. Bold white text at the bottom reads: “Damn straight,” a modern affirmation of the historical text above.

In the second image, Superman is depicted in flight. He is shown in a horizontal flying, power pose, with his body stretched out and angled upward toward the right side of the image. One arm is extended forward in a fist, while the other arm is bent slightly backward. His legs trail behind him, reinforcing the sense of forward motion. His costume, blue suit, red cape streaming behind him, and the “S” emblem on his chest. His facial expression is determined and focused, with his gaze directed forward in the direction of flight. Across the diagonal stripes of the flag, there is bold black text. The phrase reads: “He wages a never-ending war for truth, justice, and the American way!” The words “truth,” “justice,” and “the American way” are emphasized by their placement on and below the red stripe. The font is bold, uppercase, and slightly italicized, matching the dynamic, action-oriented feel of the image.

The first image, the meme, was made using an image of Superman drawn and published in 1943, and the top text, taken from the Declaration of Independence from 1775. The meme itself was created in July 2025, likely as a reflection on July 4th and as a conclusion for a slide deck of patriotic memes. It’s unlikely that it has any further significance, but it’s interesting that it was created with the express purpose of expressing national pride and patriotism.

The 1943 image is part of an early Superman comic. Its release in 1943, it was distributed after the United States joined the Allied forces, and just before the end of the war. This image was crafted with patriotism in mind from the beginning, and depicts a character that directly conflicts with the Aryan racial philosophy, hailing the American flag and standing strong amid destruction. Images like this became prevalent in World War II as propaganda took the main stage. In Germany, these images took the form of children's books and posters, while in America, they did come in part in posters and publications. One of the new bastions of American propaganda was to be found in comics. Superman, namely, presented an opportunity for the national imaginary to be informed about the war in passing and absorb American ideology, as well as a sense that the war was just. This photo is a comic book cover, which acted as the ideal place for propagandic messaging, outwardly available to even those who did not read or buy the comics. The Declaration of Independence presents a similarly propagandic message. While it may be somewhat heretical to call attention to, the line displayed in the meme specifically is paradoxical, given that autonomy wouldn't be granted to every individual for almost 100 years. 

The second image was drawn and distributed in 1982; unlike the other image, this was a style guide for comic book illustrators. It was created with the intention of preserving the character through an increase in production speed and capacity. Comic books, having become a more generally accepted form of propaganda, were widely consumed, and style guides like this one helped to preserve design and message. At the time it was produced, the propaganda war was in full swing as the Cold War drew to an end. The 1970s and 80s saw extensive U.S. foreign operations, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Comic books like the ones likely produced using this guide tell a story of American liberation and righteousness, instilling classical American values into the public imagination, and serving as a justification for continued incursion overseas and in our backyard. 

In “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” Émile Durkheim theorizes that religion is fundamentally social, uniting people through shared understandings of the sacred and opposition to the profane. Religion comprises two essential, inseparable elements: beliefs, which classify the world into sacred and profane, and rites, which regulate how individuals interact with the sacred and each other. This system creates a moral community by establishing consensus. The sacred is not supernatural but is created and maintained through collective social agreement and practices. Totemism, for instance, shows that the totem is both a sacred symbol and a representation of the social group itself, meaning society's collective power is what is ultimately revered. Rituals generate general effervescence, an intense shared, euphoric emotional experience that reinforces group solidarity and renews commitment to collective beliefs. Through these, individuals internalize social norms and moral authority, leading to concepts like soul and conscience. Durkheim argues religion provides the foundation for collective representations, shaping symbols, values, and basic categories like time and space. Thus, religion maintains social cohesion, regulates behavior, and produces meaning.

Robert Bellah's "Civil Religion in America" posits that U.S. identity is shaped by ideals of mobility, opportunity, and liberty. He argues that alongside formal religions, the nation has developed a "civil religion," a public system of beliefs and rituals that grants sacred meaning to national life and unifies the political community. Like Durkheim, Bellah distinguishes between beliefs such as the nation's higher, divinely-guided purpose and rites, including inaugurations and memorials. This civil religion relies on a transcendent moral authority, establishing a boundary between the sacred (founding ideals, sacrifice) and the profane (ordinary politics). Bellah traces this civil religion through history, noting how figures like Lincoln used themes of sacrifice and renewal to elevate national experience. He also says foundational documents act as scripture, reinforcing a shared moral narrative. Bellah emphasizes that civil religion's critical, prophetic dimension is holding the nation accountable to its ideals. Thus, it fosters cohesion and identity while providing a moral framework for interpreting history and justifying authority, showing how religious forms of meaning structure public life even in a secular system.

Jeffrey Alexander's theory of ‘The Civil Sphere" maintains that a democratic society is fundamentally structured by a system of moral meanings that culturally differentiates the "civil" (pure and democratic) from the "uncivil" (polluted and anti-democratic). This essential distinction rests upon shared, abstract values such as autonomy, solidarity, and justice. However, these values only become effective and visible through tangible social performances by various actors and established institutions. Legitimacy within this sphere is inherently contingent, continuously relying on an actor's perceived authenticity and their alignment with these core symbolic codes. Mass media plays a crucial role by translating complex events into digestible moral narratives, thereby "coding" actors as civil or uncivil and actively shaping public sentiment, frequently through powerful, quasi-ritualistic performances during times of societal crises. While marginalized groups persistently struggle for inclusion, Alexander observes that this powerful binary logic can be seamlessly extended externally to code foreign populations or enemies as inherently "uncivil," thereby morally justifying coercion or violence as a necessary defense of civil values or an effort to extend liberty abroad. Consequently, the distinct language and framework of the civil sphere are instrumental in forging both internal social solidarity and in rationalizing external or internal conflict.

Superman, more broadly and in images like these, has acted in a few ways, operating as a totem, a source or representation of cultural codes, and as a prophet of civil religion. I use the ideas of Durkheim, Bellah, and Alexander to construct a comprehensive (hopefully) look at the function and rationale behind the character and its representations. 

            As Durkheim describes them, totems are “nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under… visible form”(Durkheim, 153). This, I believe, holds true in the way Superman is marketed and sold in the U.S. In the first image, Superman becomes the site onto which national ideas of strength, justice, and moral certainty are projected, allowing Americans to identify with the nation as a unified moral force. His visual dominance and alignment with Americanism make him both an emblem of “good” and a representation of America, entangling the ideas and simultaneously both creating and embodying American virtue. This is what makes the first image as a whole enticing; it blends the foundational texts of our country, those which define our national conscience, and, in pairing it with Superman, has reinforced Superman’s totemic quality. By 1982, the style guide reflects the need to preserve his totemic integrity, standardizing his image so that the symbol can be reproduced and retain its symbolic value. For Durkheim, a totem is powerful because it is repeated and generally recognized; here, Superman’s consistent image sustains a collective conscience, ritualizing the belief that American military action is inherently righteous. In this way, his totemic quality lies not only in his representation but in how he reaffirms the identity of the society.

              Alexander’s civil codes speak to these two images in context and Superman’s image more broadly. They can be read as mechanisms for coding global actors into the civil and uncivil binary, with Superman and, by extension, America as the former. In the first image, the coding is obvious; Superman stands aligned with the flag and American virtue, implicitly casting the Axis powers as barbaric and fundamentally opposed to the bounds of civil society. This representation carries with it the uncivil classification, making the target a necessary evil to defeat. The first image as a whole perfectly embodies this idea, as the assumption is that Superman has killed the evil-doers in pursuit of the top text, or the unalienable rights of each man. The 1982 image shows the extension of this framework into the Cold War and into interventionist policy throughout Latin America. In Alexander's terms, the application of “uncivility” to these outgroups enables the exclusion of moral consideration, transforming military action into an ethical obligation for the maintenance of civil society. “the Democratic quality of other nations is always something very much open for debate, and the territorial bifurcation of civil charisma makes the civility of others much more difficult to discern. This explains why, throughout the history of civil societies, war has been a sacred obligation; to wage war against members of other territories has been simultaneously a national and civilizing task.”(Alexander, 196-7)  The boogieman, communism, became the new Axis Powers in this case. The repetition of these ideas in widely consumed comics reinforces the idea of just intervention through defining the uncivilized other. 

            Through Bellah’s concept of civil religion, we can see these two Superman images, or rather Superman himself,  as symbolic components of Bellah’s civil religion, both reflecting and reproducing American moral codes. Albeit, the more imperialist American values. Taking Superman in this way, the 1943 picture in the first image acts as a kind of sacred text in visual form, presenting the nation's involvement in World War II as not only justified but morally obligatory, much like the Declaration of Independence at the top of the first image functions as a sacred text in American Civil religion. As part of the rhetoric that forms the backbone of American ideology, it invokes universal ideals while masking exclusion; the image sacralizes American power by reframing it as a force of justice against evil. This quote, “The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were the sacred scriptures and Washington the divinely appointed Moses who led his people out of the hands of tyranny,” (Bellah 9) demonstrates Bellah’s interest in the constitution as a sacred text as well as perfectly explaining the replicability of classic liberation narratives and the power that they hold for civil coercion and religion. The two images in tandem and presented in meme form fulfill their objective perfectly. As a Fourth of July patriotic post, the side-by-side presentation of two sacred texts/symbols brings the meme bundle full circle and reifies belief in the religion of the American way. The second image’s nature tells the same story of preserving the totemic image and continuing its circulation. In the context of the Cold War, it was important that the narrative be plastic so that any given engagement could be incorporated into the American conscience through the liberatory lens of Superman. This quote in a way expresses the way that these symbols can be plastic and represent multiple connections to the past, “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; more recently it has become the site of the tomb of another martyred president and its symbolic eternal flame.” (Bellah, 11)

Questions to ponder

As a form of propaganda in himself, can Superman operate as Bellah’s transcendent moral authority in full or symbolically, or is that reserved for the timeless, usually non-denominational God? 

How does Superman’s last message from his parents represent the dissemination of civil code and the solidification of the American collective conscience? 

In the new Superman movie, he discovered his parents' message had been corrupted, and instead of what he thought was a message of good, he discovered the message was instructing him to live as a king and enslave the human race. 

How does this reflect the modern American collective conscience in the wake of broader education of colonial and imperial U.S. History? 

Ultimately, his choice was to continue the fight against evil and save the human race of his own volition. What message do the writers hope to impart? 

Bibliography:

García-López, José Luis. 1982. "Superman Flying with American Flag." From: Standards Manual: 1982 DC Comics Style Guide. Retrieved March 30, 2026 (https://standardsmanual.com/products/1982-dc-comics-style-guide).

Americanistmemes. 2025. "A bunch of July 4th and patriotic memes." Instagram, July 3. Retrieved March 30, 2026 (https://www.instagram.com/p/DLpxmQYuW1S/).

(Original Image - Burnley, Jack. 1943. Superman #24 (Cover Art). New York: DC Comics.)

Finley-Gillis, Emma. 2021. “SUPERMAN, A JEW? A Study of Cartoon Influence on the German and American Public c. WWII.” Unpublished Paper. Pages 1-8. https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:ed315c62-c231-4316-a7c0-8424cf8036c2

Bellah, Robert. 1967. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus, (vol. 96, no. 1), pp. 1–21. 

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2007. "The Civil Sphere.“ Journal of Communication 57. Pages 599-612.

Durkheim, Émile. 2015. “Elementary Forms of Religious Life(1912)” Pp. 145-62 in Sociological Theory in the Classical Era, 3rd ed, edited by L.D. Edles and S. Applerouth. Los Angeles: Sage

(Apologies. I should've either followed through or simplified my post. I also had problems with formatting, not sure what's happening with the first two paragraphs.)