October 14, 2021, 2:09 pm
News of the new DC comics version of Superman, the son of the original hero and Lois Lane, coming out as bisexual has officially reached actor Dean Cain, who played the character’s dad in the 90s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Cain, now 55, has come to represent less of an adopted immigrant who fought for justice and to help the helpless and more of the rich white billionaire type who is Superman’s arch-nemesis.
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Exhibit A: Fox & Friends invited Cain on for an interview about this coming out of his former character’s son to talk about just how boring and non-newsworthy the whole thing is, which is always what you want from your news network. Unfortunately, rather than talking about something that he considers to be important or just shutting up and going home, Cain decided to plunge the interview into a supervillain-sized acid vat of racism and Islamophobia.
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“They said it’s a bold new direction. I say they’re bandwagoning,” said Cain. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave.”
The accusation that media companies are “bandwagoning” or “pandering” by including LGBTQ+ characters is nearly as not-new as the explicit inclusion of said queer individuals in popular fiction. Finding that their moral panic was ineffective, conservatives quickly pivoted to dismissing any new queer character or coming out as not a big deal that anyone should be talking about, very often taking up space on major news networks to do so, ironically.
If Dean Cain is really so bored by this news, why go on Fox News to talk about it? The answer can be found further along in the interview, where he condemns the new Superman’s fight against climate change and deportations of the world’s most desperate people from the U.S. Instead, Cain thinks Superman should leave his country of origin and go beat up brown people.
“Why don’t they have him fight the injustices that created the refugees whose deportation he’s protesting?” he asked. “That would be brave. I’d read that. Or fighting for the rights of women to attend school and have the ability to work and live and boys not to be raped by men under the new warm and fuzzy Taliban?”
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If Dean Cain wants to address the roots of the issues in the Middle East, he might be interested to learn that the U.S. funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1970s, resulting in escalating violence and an eventual power vacuum that gave rise to the Taliban. In fact, one of the writers of the Superman comic hinted that they will indeed be exploring the cause of the current refugee crisis, but we’re betting this won’t go the way Cain wants.
Cain then seems to hint at what he thinks “real evil” is, using a certain term very often used by U.S. conservatives to criticize their own government except in the case of things like abortion and marriage equality.
“There’s real evil in this world today, real corruption and government overreach, plenty of things to fight against. Human trafficking—real and actual slavery going on.”
Human trafficking and slavery both occur in the U.S. and could certainly also be things that the new Superman will fight against, being a very explicitly American superhero. Perhaps he could also fight against the bigoted idea that bad things like this only happen in Muslim-majority nations.
Thankfully, Cain’s crusty opinions should be very unlikely to have any impact on the new Superman comics, as the actual fans seem to be widely panning his comments.
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*First Published: October 14, 2021, 2:09 pm
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