Lightbubs for my Feet: Intersemiotical Analysis of the Anticommunism Merchandising and Capitalist Realism in Superman: Red Son (2003), by Mark Millar and “Superman: Entre a Foice e o Martelo” (2019), by Sam Liu

Abstract

The following research had as main objective to analise the anticommunist discursive construction through the intesemiotical comparative analysis of the graphic novel Superman: Red Son (2003), by Mark Millar, and the cinematographic adaptation “Superman: Entre a Foice e o Martelo” (2019), by Sam Liu. The metodology used wore the French-ligned Greimasian Semiotics Theory, enlightened by Barros (2005) studies, investigating the signs, symbols and images utilized to embody to transmit political anticommunist biased messages. The theoretical foundation bases on Slater (2001), about the consume culture dynamics in the contemporary human society; Eagleton (2011), about culture, and Hall (2016), about representation; Bauman’s (2022), Bucci’s (2021) and Fisher’s (2020) arguments about capitalist realism and it’s mecanisms of mídia consume control are considered. As results, have been obtained that the Sam Liu adaptation of the Mark Millar artwork are faithful to the mecanisms of anticommunism contente image dissemination translated in biased political thought, answering the coletive imagination exercise “what if Superman would have fallen in the URSS and not the EUA?”. As final considerations, we point out that the representation of Superman as a lethal weapon, in his messianic nature, gaslighted by the Estate, seems to be biased and implausible, considering that, canonically, Superman belligerently favors the USA in various conflicts between nations and is driven by liberal-economic ideology, while being an allegory for united-estatunian power and lengthly, which provides the understanding that with greater agility, the USA would dominate a force of nature like Superman, where the authors work towards the elaboration of a narrative that deals with a caricatured representation of the Soviet Union.