I rewatched Paddington with the kiddo last night and just take a look at how much more air tight their immigrant allegory is:
"Mrs. Brown says that in London, everyone is different, but that means anyone can fit in. I think she must be right, because although I don't look like anyone else, I really do feel at home. I will never be like other people, but that's alright. Because I am a bear. A bear called Paddington."
compared to the far more assimilationist Supes2025:
"That is where you’ve always been wrong about me, Lex. I’m as human as anyone. I love, I… I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time. But that is being human. And that’s my greatest strength."
I've said before in the "is Superman a human or an alien, which one!" debate that it all boils down to allegory. What are these stories representing and saying to you. Because (to quote myself lol):
If alien characters are meant to meaningfully represent immigrants, then this standard of comparing them to “humanity” or a desperate attempt to label them as something they’re not needs to stop. In this fictionalized context, when we equate “human” with “a sentient person with the same bandwidth of emotions, intelligence, devotions and ideals as anyone” then we’re implying that Kryptonians don’t have the range for such “humanizing” emotions. That any alien doesn’t have that bandwidth. That these concepts are culturally unique to Earth.
Now imagine I replaced my statement before with "bears from Darkest Peru" and instead of Earth I said London. It might seem silly but that's what Superman and Paddington are meant to represent as allegories. One just looks a whole lot more human than the other. But they both serve the same narrative purpose.
There's this great scene in Paddington (2014) that I think is brilliant for being basically a baby's introduction to how xenophobic people perceive the immigrant Other. It's the flashback reveal that the explorer that be-friended Paddington's aunt and uncle refused to kill them and put them in a British Museum. He tries to argue that the bears were "not dumb beasts! They were intelligent and civilized." But the guild argues back: "They didn't even speak English." "Did they play cricket?" "Drink tea?" "Do the crossword?". It's allegorizing the arbitrary standards of "human" intelligence- or in this case the standards of the colonizer.
Meanwhile Superman in Supes2025 bends over backwards to prove himself "human" which we know really means "American". He's brought up by classic Christian American Kansas parents (tm) and because he's been "civilized" by Americans he knows how to act and is a model citizen. But that's not the case for Paddington. He isn't forced to act "human". He's given an English name and a hand me down coat, but the Brown family love him for who he is. They even return the love with making marmalade and (in the daughter's case) learning bear language.
This to me just shows how far gone Superman is as an immigrant allegory. Paddington is a delightfully simple and straightforward allegory for kids, but its in that focus that his character doesn't lose sight of their immigrant message.
