The instant I saw the white, woolly-haired Zlatko Buric in Superman, portraying Boravian president Vasil Ghurkos with broad gestures and some kind of thick Slavic accent, I immediately thought “okay, a Vladmir Putin-like despot as well as an ally of Lex Luthor, and clearly up to no good.”
And when Boravian troops are shown invading or otherwise hassling their neighboring country of Jarhanpur, I naturally saw this as a reenactment of Russia invading Ukraine.
But a whole lot of TikTok wokeys are seeing a different analogy. Vasil Ghurkos is not Putin but Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu, they’re saying, and Jarhanpur is not Ukraine but Gaza.
Could I get a show of hands from the HE community about which real-world analogy seems the more plausible?
Ghurkos is obviously too much of a vulgar, intemperate, arm-waving blowhard to serve as a convincing stand-in for Bibi, who is well-known for his non-accented English, trimly cut white hair and conservative, well-tailored business suits. But tell this to the TikTokers.