James Gunn’s Superman Will Explain Why Clark Kent’s Glasses Disguise Works
Did you always want a concrete, overexplained reason why nobody recognizes Clark Kent as Superman due to a mere pair of glasses? Apparently, James Gunn’s got you covered. In an interview with Rolling Stone in the lead-up to the debut of his upcoming film Superman, Gunn talked about his aversion to the unexplained in fantasy and sci-fi, specifically when it comes to Clark Kent’s glasses being an effective disguise. According to Gunn, this was an important issue for him, one that required a discussion during a writers’ group meeting that included novelist and DC Comics writer Tom King, who gave Gunn the idea he ended up using in the film (but doesn’t reveal here… not entirely, anyway):
In the Superman trailer we see that Lois already knows Clark is Superman. So you bypassed one of the stickiest issues — how does Lois not see past the glasses?
It comes up again later in the movie and it’s explained. She says it. We mention it. And it’s a one-off and people chuckle, but there’s stuff later in the movie about the glasses that are canon. That’s canon in the comics.
There’s a controversial Seventies issue of the comic book where it shows that Superman basically uses super-hypnotism to change people’s perception of him in the glasses — it was an idea sent in by a fan that has been mostly ignored since.
Something like that! I only know it from [DC Comics writer] Tom King. The first time we met was at Peter [Safran’s] house. We had this sort of writers group come in. One of those people was Tom King, and he was the most helpful. I’m like, “I just don’t know how to fucking deal with the glasses thing, because it bothers the fuck out of me.” All that little stuff that people are like, “It’s a fantasy, just let it go.” I’m like, “No, I have to explain everything.” Everything for me has to come from a place where I believe it, as outlandish as it is. With Rocket, I could not just make it a talking raccoon. It had to have a real foundation for where he came from and how he came to be. And I needed to believe that.
I can’t say it enough: I hate this era of film so much. Even some of the better writers and filmmakers get so bogged down in this, overexplaining every detail, stripping fantasies down to their nuts and bolts so that they become the equivalent of car manuals. You can say that Christopher Nolan started this trend with his Batman films, and he probably did, or at least was the biggest instigator of it. But those movies work because Nolan understood that you could explain away the gadgets, the suit, the Batmobile, and the mythology around mystical characters like Ra’s al Ghul, but Batman still had to have fantasy elements that made him cool and mysterious, things that only the mind of the viewer could explain. That’s why someone would start talking, then turn around and see Batman gone; that’s why Batman got himself into the middle of the party room while the Joker was holding court without anyone noticing; that’s why Batman was able to overcome his crippling in a hole in the desert; that’s why the lynchpin of Batman’s incredible debut in Batman Begins is its incoherency, Batman being everywhere at once, in the shadows, gone, up above, then below, then in the middle of the room kicking everyone’s ass. Nolan knew that sometimes, Batman had to be Batman, doing the impossible through skill, deception, and sheer force of will. But, as often happens, those he influenced don’t get it, and the fantasy is leaving our stories, and we get prequels that diminish stories through unnecessary detail and demystifying “reinterpretations” of beloved stories and characters. Funnily, Gunn uses Rocket Raccoon in his own Guardians of the Galaxy movies as an example of his need to explain every detail, but I would argue that he didn’t do that until the third one, where it became an important part of the story and the character’s arc; maybe that will be the case with Clark Kent’s glasses, but somehow, I doubt it.
Moreover, this feels like a misunderstanding of what the glasses symbolize. Superman is hiding in plain sight, effectively; he puts on a pair of glasses and a suit, and suddenly, he’s an everyman. He’s unremarkable, someone nobody pays attention to, and his doofy personality adds to the disguise. Even in versions like Lois and Clark, where he’s not as poindextery as he is in the Donner films, Clark still has a farmboy quality that makes the big city folks in Metropolis chuckle; they think he’s a rube, albeit a very nice guy that they like, certainly not someone who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Superman, in every case, is seen entirely differently, as a godlike figure who is here to save humanity, even if he only thinks of himself as a friend who’s here to help. The failure to put two and two together is not down to the glasses themselves but in our inability to see greatness in the mundane, even when it’s right in front of us dropping an armload of files, because we see only what’s on the surface. Ultimately, Clark, though people may laugh at him, is how we view ourselves, while Superman is the ideal; we’re incapable of seeing our own potential, so some aw-shucks good ol’ boy from Kansas could never be a hero. Ironically, the only type of person we would imagine could be Superman is someone like Lex Luthor, a man admired for all the wrong reasons, because we misattribute greatness to the powerful rather than the decent. But Superman sees the greatness in humanity, and its potential to achieve that, and he acts as an example, having immense power and using it only for good. We may never recognize it in ourselves – or Clark Kent – but Superman does.
Or maybe he has silly sci-fi hypnotizing glasses; whatever.
Let us know what you think of James Gunn explaining why Clark Kent’s glasses disguise works in the comments!
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