Erasing Superman

The other day I had to call a plumber out to my house. Everything went fine, and my problem was fixed. I looked outside at the plumber's vehicle, only to see the above-pictured familiar image (with a slight modification): Superman, or should I say Superplumber.

Superman has so ingrained itself within our popular culture that it is not surprising for a small business like my plumber's to choose to depict it as part of an advertisement. Yet when recording artist Sufjan Stevens placed his own comic version of "the man of steel" on his 2004 Illinoise album cover, his own record company, concerned that the image might result in a lawsuit from DC Comics, held up the album's distribution until a new version was produced. So the initial copies of Illinoise that had been distributed to music outlets for sale were all recalled and modified versions were rereleased, without the Superman image on the cover. It probably cost Stevens a lot of momentum with his album sales, having it held up like that.

And that's too bad, considering that Illinoise was a themed album examining various aspects of the state of Illinois, its history, and Stevens' personal experiences of having once lived there. One of the songs on it was a tribute to Superman, whose Metropolis roughly corresponded to Chicago (while his friend Batman's Gotham City corresponded to New York). I felt that the album cover, which was a mosaic showing various themes covered in the songs, was entirely appropriate, in an artistic sense, with Superman's inclusion on it.

Yet the Superman on the plumber's truck is nothing more than a tacky ad, with nothing of artistic value or even intent. But isn't there something a little more to the point about all this?

For one, isn't the whole concept of "Superman", as adapted to comics and commercially exploited, basically in itself rooted in German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's "Übermensch" from his book Also Sprach Zarathustra? And doesn't the idea of an all-powerful savior fit as well into the traditionally messianic culture that permeates Christianity, the predominant religion here? Ultimately, when does a trademark or symbol become so much a part of the popular culture that enforcement and restriction of its unauthorized use become arbitrary and counterproductive?

If I owned the Superman copyright, I would welcome the use of the Superman symbol by plumbers, musical artists, or others. After all, this is free advertising for my product! I suppose, though, that if someone exploited the Superman theme and image to make a porn movie, then perhaps it might be appropriate to step in and have a few words with the filmmaker!

In other words, copyright enforcement is not an exact science. There needs to be some reason employed here both by those owning copyrights and by those who want to use symbols and trademarks. If someone is discussing or artistically examining something that in some way involves someone else's copyright, that discussion or examination should be free from interference or censorship. Perhaps this is where the line was drawn with Sufjan Stevens, with the song permitted to go through but the cover art not. But I hold that the album cover is part of the artist's expression, not just the audio content on the CD.