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Noted In Passing: Spoilation

Since 1942, Superman’s motto has been “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” That’s no longer the case. In the newly-published Superman: Son of Kal-El #1, the new Superman has a new motto: “Truth, Justice, and a Better World”

The official update to Superman’s slogan was exuberantly reported by virtually every media outlet in existence, as if it were a radical departure for hidebound pop culture, a bold step in bringing progressive values into reactionary Hollywood.

Such nonsense!

The update to Superman’s motto is simply another act of spoliation by the winners of the culture war.

Spoliation means “incorporating art into a setting culturally or chronologically different from that of its creation.”1 The term derives from Classical Latin word spolium, a singular noun which literally means “the skin or hide stripped from an animal.” The plural, spolia, came into figurative use by Latin writers such as Cicero to refer to plunder, from which we derive the English phrase “the spoils of war.”2 Whenever the Romans conquered a nation, they brought back war trophies as proof of their victory; and so spolia came to designate “building materials and artworks brought from conquered provinces and exhibited in official triumphs.”3 Over time, these materials were reused by conquerors for their own purposes, and so the word spolia came to mean any reused artwork designed to evidence the conquest, triumph, and dominion by the spoliators over those whose art they appropriated.4

In contemporary usage, spoliation is “a practice consisting of a transference of power from the past through a taking over of its cultural expressions and incorporating them into one’s own. The purpose of appropriation [is] to convert the object of appropriation to one’s own purposes; it [is] preceded by finding the most valuable expressions from the past.”5 It is part of an “appropriative loop in which the qualities of the appropriated object are transferred to the appropriator.”6

Spoliation, then, works like this:

A conqueror defeats a rival.

The conqueror identifies the defeated rival’s most valuable cultural expressions (artwork, artifacts, buildings, monuments, stories, etc.).

The conqueror appropriates those expressions and reuses them in its own cultural expressions, thereby transferring power to itself.

Does that process seem familiar? It should.

RTWT AT The Spoliation of Pop Culture from Tree of Woe

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Mike Anderson March 31, 2022, 7:53 PM

    Why stop with “a Better World?”

    Why not make Superbeing an ILLEGAL Alien trans-sexual anti-racist un-white who’s super-triggered by everything from rare beef to the Oxford comma? Let’s quit dickin’ around and get ‘er done.

  • Mike Anderson March 31, 2022, 7:53 PM

    Why stop with “a Better World?”

    Why not make Superbeing an ILLEGAL Alien trans-sexual anti-racist un-white who’s super-triggered by everything from rare beef to the Oxford comma? Let’s quit dickin’ around and get ‘er done.

    • Denny April 1, 2022, 7:36 AM

      You can say that again!

  • OneGuy March 31, 2022, 8:43 PM

    Truth checkers, Jan 6th style justice and one world government.

  • KCK March 31, 2022, 11:13 PM

    Why haven’t they turned Superman gay yet?

    Pop culture is a culture of idiots.

    • Jack April 1, 2022, 8:57 AM

      I always thought he was a homo. Lois Lane, all hot and sweaty, blouse open two buttons, short tight fitting skirt, wet red lips…. Olen certainly wasn’t into it and if SM wasn’t banging that like a loose screen door on an old worn out house, he was a fudge packer from the get go.

  • ghostsniper April 1, 2022, 6:21 AM

    “The update to Superman’s motto is simply another act of spoliation by the winners of the culture war.”
    ==========
    They haven’t won jack shitski.
    These misfits are a very small portion of the whole and their voices are mere pipsqueeks in the larger picture, in fact, here in reality land they don’t matter at all.

    So they can dance around their cannibal pot all the live long day consuming each other and I encourage them to continue in their urban ghetto’s. Bring it out here to flyover and they’ll get a big taste of reality like they never imagined.

    FWIW, I have a full dozen of the original “Death of Superman” (Superman #75) comics purchased the very day they became available about 30 years ago, boarded and bagged in Wizard archival components. In fact, I have the whole complimentary series. Gnaw on that a while city pantywaists.

    • John the River April 1, 2022, 7:58 AM

      Have you priced them out lately? I friend had an box of my old comics that he brought to a dealer and sold for me, they were ‘reading copies’ not archival; $1,600.
      I also had the DOS set put away, “never read, in mylar”, they went in the house fire. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…”.
      What I really miss were the original Nostalgia Press bound collections of Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon Sunday pages. Bought them while still in High School, at the time the most I’d ever spent for a book.

    • Boat Guy April 1, 2022, 9:17 PM

      Well, damn…in complete agreement with ghost once more; they haven’t really “won” anything but illusion which will be pierced multiple times in the coming years and months. Keep dreaming commies, the end is nigh.

  • Boat Guy April 1, 2022, 7:13 AM

    These nitwits should know that the “American Way” has led to a “Better World” but they don’t, sadly.

  • James ONeil April 1, 2022, 8:49 AM

    My savage teenage granddaughter is now working at the local Comic Shop, the only bookstore left in town (Barnes and Noble’s more or less a coffee shop toy store now.). I’ll have to ask her how prevalent this trend is in the local market.

  • Jack April 1, 2022, 9:06 AM

    The simple term “pop-culture” reeks of mental illness, addiction, moral depravity and the subjection of people who are plenty willing to fall into an abyss. And, rat-cheer in Amerurica they line up like blind lemmings eager to be rubbed out. Everyone’s soul is for sale and the going prices are cheap.

  • billrla April 1, 2022, 9:52 AM

    Superman got the not-vax is is now unable to fly. Henceforth, he will respond to calls of distress by taking public transit.

  • jwm April 1, 2022, 9:52 AM

    Not all entertainment needs to be profound, or bear a message. There is a place for just plain old escapist fantasy fun, and a good comic is a great way to get there. I still love this stuff. If that makes me immature, well, I’m immature and getting worse. Bummer.
    Love him or hate him, Vox Day has been fighting the good fight for comics. I’ve been following several of the stories being published at Arkhaven Comics. Avalon is a great superhero/crime drama. Something Big, the story of the aftermath of a UFO invasion, is just all kinds of fun. Rebel Dead Revenge, is just off the charts weird. Vegfolk Fables is clever as hell. The new one, Sword of God looks like it’s going to be good, too.

    https://www.arkhaven.com/

    JWM