Imperialist Realism or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Indispensable Superman
Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century (forthcoming)
Daniel Bessner
Zero Books
Superman (2025)
James Gunn
Warner Bros. Pictures
William Appleman Williams, one of America's most prominent 20th-century historians, argued that a core aspect of American exceptionalism was the persistent denial of the United States' imperial nature. According to Williams a defining belief of American life was “our ahistorical faith that we are not now and never have been an empire.”
This might have been true when Williams wrote it in 1980, but it certainly isn’t today. The countless calamities caused by U.S. foreign policy have proven too great to ignore. Americans have begun to acknowledge the imperial nature of their country, and their leaders have started admitting it too.
But, if Americans are now willing to name their empire as such, why has there been so little opposition to it?
To answer this question Daniel Bessner, cribbing from Mark Fisher, introduces the concept of “imperialist realism”. The notion that imperialism is the only viable system and that it’s impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.
Imperialist realism is a structure of feeling that provides a sense of what is possible and what is not when it comes to the present and future of U.S. empire.
To explicate how imperialist realism functions Bessner interrogates American cultural objects, like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020). The game stars grizzled reactionaries with tenuous government allegiances who, nonetheless, do “whatever’s necessary” to protect the American way of life.
Black Ops Cold War can’t justify American actions abroad, but it also can’t imagine a post-imperial world.
The game reflects the views of its players. Many Americans feel their country can no longer positively influence the world - and believe real change is impossible due to deeply entrenched interests. Simultaneously, they believe that the U.S. is “the greatest nation in human history”. That it’s indispensable and therefore must intervene all over the world: consequences be damned. Black Ops expresses a hypermasculine strain of imperialist realism, one that leans towards nihilism and the Republican Party.
There’s also a weepier strain, the shooting and crying genre, which portrays soldiers expressing remorse and privileges their own trauma over the trauma they’ve inflicted. This genre’s guilt-ridden affect emerges from the tension between cynicism (we’re incapable of creating positive change) and interventionism (nonetheless - we must act). Zero Dark Thirty, which closes on an image of protagonist Maya sitting in front of what looks like an American flag, crying about all of the brown men she had to torture in order to find and kill Osama bin Laden, is exemplary.
Democrats love to shoot and cry. Here’s Barack Obama, who’s so embedded in an imperial context that he can’t imagine not acting:
U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties … but as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives … doing nothing is not an option.
It’s a sentiment that Bessner takes a rather dim view of:
If liberals didn’t act, they wouldn’t be liberal; and if they didn’t feel guilty about the consequences of their actions, they also wouldn’t be liberal. This is the logic that results in the apologetic and guilt-ridden affect central to imperialist realism.
Superman is a film about a world bestriding colossus who, despite his detractors, feels duty bound to intervene to protect people across the globe. Applying Bessner’s ideas to it produces some really interesting results.
In the film Boravia invades the neighbouring country of Jarhanpur. The film analogises Boravia with Israel, and Jarhanpur with Palestine. Boravia is backed by the U.S. government and aided by U.S. arms company LuthorCorp.
Superman sides with Jarhanpur, which seemingly challenges Bessner’s assertion that Americans “can’t imagine the end of the U.S. empire.” But… there’s a bit more to it than that. So, does Superman succumb to or surmount imperialist realism? Let’s find out.
Everyone is cynical about U.S. global “leadership”
Superman has a bright, optimistic and nostalgic presentation, but don’t let that fool you: this film is deeply cynical about America. The clearest example of this is its Israel/Palestine analogy, an injustice that the film goes out of its way to underscore U.S. complicity in. Here’s the film’s FBI Director Florence Crawley:
The country of Boravia has purchase over $80bn worth of arms from LuthorCorp in the last two years. No one would profit more from a war with Boravia and Jarhanpur than you. A cynic might say that having Superman out of the way might not be bad for business.
Like many of writer-director James Gunn’s allusions, this critique is somewhat defanged by its transposition from the real world to the DC Universe. The reality is worse: Israel doesn’t even have to purchase arms, the U.S. government gives them away. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to hear a critique of the U.S. “defense” industry, whose stock prices soar whenever there’s a war, in a Hollywood blockbuster.
The problem with Crawley’s critique is that it remains just that: a critique. Despite being skeptical of Lex Luthor’s intentions, Crawley does absolutely nothing to stop him. She’s critical of imperialism, but she cannot conceive of challenging it. Crawley, and Gunn, are so embedded in an imperial context that the film doesn’t present this as a dereliction of duty. Crawley’s inaction goes unremarked upon.
Superman is “the responsibility to protect” personified
Cynicism about American imperialism pervades the film’s dialogue, but Superman is the only one who feels able to do anything about it. Take this exchange between him and Lois Lane:
Lois: You illegally entered a country, inserting yourself in the middle of an incredibly heated geopolitical situation. Siding with a nation, Jarhanpur, which historically has not been a friend to us, against a nation that is technically our ally.
Clark: First of all, whether or not Jarhanpur is an imperfect country does not give another nation the right to invade it.
Lois: Yes but the Boravian government maintains they’re freeing the Jarhanpurians from a tyrannical regime.
Clark: Yes but you know that’s very silly.
Lois: I do?
Clark: The Boravian government, of all people, is saying this? Come on! You know as well as I do that the Boravian government is not well intentioned.
Lois: I think that’s almost certainly the case. But do I know that? No I don’t.
Clearly this is Gunn lamenting his country’s unconditional support for Israel, and mocking the extent to which journalists become stenographers when Israel is involved. Clark basically states the thesis of Mohammed el-Kurd’s latest book: even if Jarhanpurians are imperfect, that doesn’t give Boravia permission to exterminate them.
What’s interesting for our purposes though, is that Lois embodies the first feature of imperialist realism and Clark personifies the second. The film resolves the tension between cynicism and interventionism by giving interventionism superpowers and a heart of gold. Superman gets to embody every positive trait in America’s self-image, while the country itself is left with all the bad ones. The man whose slogan used to be “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” now stands distinctly apart from America. The film, and its merchandise, is quite clear about this:
Lois: The result of you seemingly acting as a representative of the United States will be more problems around the world.
Clarke: I wasn’t representing anybody except for me.
You might think that distancing himself from America would alienate this Superman from domestic audiences, but the film’s box-office success doesn’t bear that out. Clarke’s answer in the above exchange isn’t a political one, but an answer against politics. Americans, like Superman, have become alienated from their empire. Recognising this, their political candidates now insist, however implausibly, that they too are outsiders. As Bessner explains, the alienation was intentional:
From its inception, the U.S. pursuit of global primacy was accompanied by a domestic democratic deficit.
Guilt-free interventionism
As a result of this divorce, both Superman and the audience get to feel unambiguously good about interventionism for the first time in decades. It’s a neat trick from a screenwriting perspective, and it’s a lot more fun than Zach Snyder’s dour portrayal of a Superman wracked with guilt and feared by the people he hopes to protect. The self-pitying guilt that pervaded Snyder’s Superman films, and films like Zero Dark Thirty, is nowhere to be found, but that doesn’t mean that this film represents a cultural route out of imperialist realism.
Superficially, Superman looks like an anti-imperialist blockbuster. It features a particularly invigorating shot of Hawkgirl dropping Boravia’s president (who resembles David Ben Gurion) to his death, comically match cut to an Alka-Seltzer plunking into a glass. Furthermore, the action scenes at Jarhanpur’s borders strongly resemble the Great March of Return, in which Palestinians marched peacefully towards their homes while IDF snipers held a contest to see how many civilian knees they could cap.
But thematically, the film embraces imperialist realism. Superman might verbally distance himself from America, but he behaves like an American. Bessner makes a similar point about another superhero who recently grew skeptical of U.S. power:
Captain America acts like the United States does in real life—both the superhero and the country exist in a permanent state of exception, in which they determine what is right and what is wrong.
Furthermore, while Superman punishes Boravia, he never once thinks to challenge Boravia’s ally across the Atlantic. Washington is portrayed as naïve, deceived, and ultimately redeemable. To show fealty, at one point in the movie Superman even surrenders to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Moving beyond imperialist realism
There’s a lot to like in Superman, but it’s empty calories. It doesn’t surmount imperialist realism. It resolves the tension between cynicism and interventionism, but not in a manner that we can apply in the real world. And even with that nut cracked, Superman still acts like the U.S.
So, how can we move beyond imperialist realism?
The first step, achieved by Bessner, was to identify and articulate its primary features.
The second is to apply what we’ve learned to the world around us, to cultural objects and to the statements of political decision-makers. I’ve tried to do that here, and it’s led me to conclude that Alan Moore was right when he said that superhero movies are a form of “infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism”. Thinking beyond empire from within the empire is difficult. There’s no need to make our task even more challenging by undertaking it within the inherently interventionist superhero genre.
The third step is to imagine how we could be doing things differently. I cannot imagine a post-imperial utopia, but I can at least imagine how we might fumble in the darkness towards one.
TV shows like Andor and films like How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which more directly grapple with what fighting empire might realistically entail, are glimmers of hope. They’re both about solidarity, about the cost of resistance, and about how the spirit of rebellion foments and passes between people. Interestingly, they’re both heist tales. Perhaps that genre better suits our aims? Discovering which formats best suit our purposes will be a worthwhile endeavour.
As we take these steps we should remind ourselves of a core feature of imperialist realism: that it’s not true. It’s a lie that stifles our imagination, trapping us within a system that harms us. Bessner’s book diagnoses the problem and, in doing so, reminds us that another world is possible.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Daniel Bessner for trusting me with an advanced copy of his work. The best way to keep up with Danny is by listening to his podcast: American Prestige.
If you want to read more like this, you’ll be happy to know that this isn’t the first time Possibility Space has engaged with Danny’s writing.
I was inspired to write this article by Danny’s appearance on the Always at War podcast.
Shout out to James Gunn I guess? He made a really thrilling left-wing Superman film; and his first act as DC Studios CEO was to cancel a planned Gal Gadot Wonder Woman sequel. It was about time someone stopped an Israeli bomb.