Superman renouncing his citizenship doesn't really mean a whole lot by itself. After all, while he may renounce his citizenship as Superman Clark Kent could still use a day job and still use work at the Daily Planet to find out what is going on. He can go live in the Fortress of Solitude to ensure he isn't beholden to the United States in any way such as property taxes or income taxes but then he will be breaking a few laws regarding lawful entry into the country. The paradox is that by renouncing his citizenship Superman is nothing more than a quintessential American in precisely the way his story editor and writer proposes is bad. As it stands Superman was never really a legal citizen of the United States because he's an illegal alien, as a Mockingbird commenter so shrewdly pointed out.
But even if we suppose for the sake of argument that Superman's citizenship was truly too legit to quit that doesn't matter. Let's not forget, folks, that back in the 1860s thousands of Americans decided they didn't want to be treated merely as instruments of United States policy and also decided that they didn't consider that good enough. You know who those folks were, folks, they formed the Confederacy because they believed the Constitution and what America stood for had changed so radically and for the worse they wanted no part of it. Superman renouncing his citizenship is simply taking the precedent of the Confederacy but applying it from the "apparently" opposite direction.
Ironically if you really think it through Superman renouncing his citizenship because just being an American isn't good enough exemplifies America and exemplifies it in its most problematic way. We can't just be good enough to be Americans, we must also be able to be citizens of the universe and as far as that goes a lot of Americans are content to be citizens of the universe so as to pay less in taxes or to disregard laws in the United States they consider problematic. Go either in the left or the right and you'll see that the impulse to renounce citizenship because the "wrong" person got elected is always around.
Rather than see this publicity stunt of Superman renouncing his United States citizenship as meaning anything in the long run I cite it as so quintessentially American it embodies the cultural and character flaws it would presume to critique. Notice decades ago when Superman and Batman fight in The Dark Knight Returns that Batman tells Superman he's become a joke, fighting for anyone who hoas a badge. Frank Miller used Superman to symbolize acquiescence to Reagan and 80s consumerism and conservatism. But notice that even in this polemic there are two things that stand out. First and foremost, it wasn't always so, and is implied in the narrative. Second, notice that Superman works out Batman's ruse of faking death but lets him get away with it. In other words, Frank Miller gave us a Superman who was a puppet of a Republican president but someone who still had enough decency and friendship with Batman to let him go off the grid rather than kill him. This is made all the more apparent after we've seen that Superman took Green Arrow's arm from him.
In other words this is citizen renunciation shows us an American raised Superman who doesn't want to be seen as a patsy for American imperialism and proclaims universal citizenship. Well, Presidents have declared that they want to bring democracy and freedom to the rest of the world and make the world safe from terrorism. So far if "Superman" hoped to accomplish anything by renouncing citizenship it does not look to be much more than yet another American trying to shrug off the bond of land and people for ideological reasons. Well, that's okay Confederates were also truly American, too, even when they didn't think they wanted to be puppets of U.S. policies. This, far from making Superman more appealing to ordinary people, may just make him more irrelevant. Superman can be more than a champion of truth, justice and the American way but he can't be less than that either. Both a Yankee who supported Lincoln and a Confederate who supported the stars and bars can see this about Superman plainly enough.
The issue, as I've been discussing it over at Mockingbird, is that if Superman fights for truth, justice and the American way, the challenge is figuring out which American way he is fighting for. A Superman who does not consider American values to be good enough is still an American making an assessment of the weakness of America. If anything it's surprising this publicity stunt story element wasn't pursued decades ago. In the last twenty years I've seen a lot of rhetoric about renunciation of citizenship because a Democrat or Republican got into office. Twenty years ago when someone you didn't like got elected you grumbled but granted that that person was Commander in Chief.
In the last twelve years what has happened is if you didn't want that person to be Commander in Chief you convince yourself that the election was rigged and stolen so you can find some way to state that the person is not legitimately representing "real"American interests. As I noted earlier, this is not new in practice or principle thanks to the Civil War, but what is new is how conveniently bipartisan this practice is. Superman, as an unavoidably American pop culture icon, was going to reflect this bad habit among Americans at some point. Why not now? It, too, is part of the American legacy.
Speaking of which ...
http://www.mbird.com/2011/04/superman-an-american-icon-at-war-with-and-for-his-legacy-part-3/
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