{"id":6923,"date":"2006-06-26T11:39:04","date_gmt":"2006-06-26T11:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html"},"modified":"2006-06-26T11:39:04","modified_gmt":"2006-06-26T11:39:04","slug":"the-savior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html","title":{"rendered":"The Savior"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/movies\/interviews\/bryansinger.html\"><em>Superman Returns<\/em> director Bryan Singer talks about his movie to <em>Christianity Today:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>The guys who created Superman were Jewish, so I don&#8217;t think <em>they<\/em> intended him to be a Christ figure, but he seems to have kind of become that over the years.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>Singer:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t think Jesus \u2026 Well, I can&#8217;t get into religious things, but um\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>Well, you <em>are<\/em> talking to <em>Christianity Today<\/em>!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>Singer:<\/strong> Well, yeah, that&#8217;s true, so I guess it&#8217;s going to come up! (Laughs) I think that it [Superman as Christ figure] is kind of a natural evolution, because he began as kind of a Moses figure, of the child sent by the parents down the river to fulfill a destiny.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>Kind of as a liberator in response to Hitler and the Nazis?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\"><strong>Singer:<\/strong> Yes. The Second World War presented an interesting dilemma for the Superman creators, because he was a very much an inspirational figure for the troops\u2014and yet even though he was so powerful, he did not simply go clean up the Nazi menace and solve all the problems in Europe. He helped out, but he primarily led by example. He stirred others; he inspired. He left the actual heroism to the real heroes, to the soldiers in the field and abroad, and in that way, he became this very inspiring figure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arttext\">And that, obviously, translates into these kinds of allegories, Christ being a natural one, because Superman&#8217;s a savior. And even more so in my film, because he&#8217;s gone for a period of time, and then he returns. For me to say that those messianic images don&#8217;t exist in the movie would be absurd.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Superman Returns director Bryan Singer talks about his movie to Christianity Today: The guys who created Superman were Jewish, so I don&#8217;t think they intended him to be a Christ figure, but he seems to have kind of become that over the years. Singer: I don&#8217;t think Jesus \u2026 Well, I can&#8217;t get into religious&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Savior - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Savior - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Superman Returns director Bryan Singer talks about his movie to Christianity Today: The guys who created Superman were Jewish, so I don&#8217;t think they intended him to be a Christ figure, but he seems to have kind of become that over the years. Singer: I don&#8217;t think Jesus \u2026 Well, I can&#8217;t get into religious&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-26T11:39:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Savior - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Savior - Via Media","og_description":"Superman Returns director Bryan Singer talks about his movie to Christianity Today: The guys who created Superman were Jewish, so I don&#8217;t think they intended him to be a Christ figure, but he seems to have kind of become that over the years. Singer: I don&#8217;t think Jesus \u2026 Well, I can&#8217;t get into religious&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-06-26T11:39:04+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html","name":"The Savior - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-06-26T11:39:04+00:00","dateModified":"2006-06-26T11:39:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-savior.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Savior"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}