By: Felix Xie

The term Übermensch has gained popularity recently through Amazon’s satire “The Boys.” In the show, one of the main characters, Homelander, is portrayed as the Übermensch and as a dark parody of Superman and Captain America.

Friedrich Nietzsche conceived the term Übermensch in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which he described an Übermensch as an “over-man.” What he meant was that the Übermensch is able to risk everything for the enhancement of humanity. An over-man has his own values, independent of others, and is able to affect and change the lives of others who don’t have core instincts, operating only on herd instinct.

Over the years, America’s Übermensch has changed. In the beginning, it was Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, to represent a person who could protect the weak during World War 2. After the war, the image of Superman shifted toward Jesus, a symbol of goodwill and brotherly love after the war.

Political schemes creep into every aspect of people’s lives. This is also shown in the case of philosophy and symbolism. After Superman, the image of Übermensch switched again when companies introduced Captain America. Writers introduced Captain America as a character built to fight the Nazis. He represented the American soldiers sent off to fight in WW2. Unlike Superman, the writers deemed it fit for Captain America to be depicted as “given” his powers. With this connotation, political leaders were able to manipulate his image to whatever fit their needs. After WW2, communism forced his image to change. Instead, it became Captain America, “Commie Smasher.”

Now, the public has become self-aware of the consequences of the Übermensch. Interpreted as a tale of how the public realizes, “The Boys” tells a story of how the public image of the Übermensch has been twisted into something that people sometimes refer to as “the new human.” The creator of the idea, Friedrich Nietzsche, wanted the idea of the Übermensch to tell us how we can all become more human in a way that differentiates us from others in pursuit of our own values. Now, however, people have interpreted this as an excuse to treat others as less than human because they are not Übermensch. I hope the image of Übermensch can be shifted into a more positive light.