HOPE AND PSYCHOPOLITICS IN SUPERMAN (2025): AN ANALYSIS IN LIGHT OF BYUNG-CHUL HAN'S CATEGORIES

Abstract

Superman (2025) reinscribes the sign of "hope" simultaneously as an ethical-counterdispositive gesture and as an affective commodity of DC's new phase in cinemas. We can analyze the production using Byung-Chul Han's critiques of the performance society, infocracy, and psychopolitics as its theoretical framework. The research employs a qualitative, multi-paratextual method: the film, promotional materials, press reviews, studio statements, box office data, and fan testimonies were examined, coded into eight categories (temporality, otherness, opacity, negativity, market positivity, performance, ritual, fandom). The findings reveal structural ambivalence: in the diegesis, hope emerges as a relational force—the immigrant hero, a diverse ecosystem of metahumans, moral dilemmas, and fallibility that reintroduce fertile negativity and community spirit, countering prevailing cynicism; Simultaneously, the same semantics of "heart/hope/humanity" are instrumentalized by marketing ("look up") to reactivate the brand, build audience loyalty, and generate US$122 million in its opening weekend, confirming the psychopolitical capture of emotions. Critical and fandom reception oscillates between praising "hopepunk" sincerity and criticizing the overload of intellectual products and motivational performativity, highlighting that hope remains in tension between transformative power and mercantile neutralization. It is concluded that Superman (2025) functions as a contemporary laboratory for Hanian dialectics: it will only maintain its impact if it continues to cultivate negativity and otherness before becoming a mere slogan for feel-good entertainment.