The layers behind the harem subplot in Superman 2025
I feel a lot of people lack the media literacy to understand what Gunn was likely aiming for with the harem plot point. At its heart, I would argue that it’s all about control and it has more layers than folk give it credit for.
One of the most persistent tropes in anti-immigrant rhetoric throughout history is the idea that “foreigners will steal our women.”
This fearmongering trope has been used across cultures and eras to provoke emotional, often violent reactions against immigrant or minority groups. It is intended to tap into insecurities about purity, belonging, and control (particularly over women), and it has always been an effective way to manipulate public sentiment because it can feed into the more instinctive fears that people have.
Basically, the harem plot point is intended to evoke the fear that immigrants will steal your women.
In Superman 2025, you should read that as the alien Superman will steal your women. That is how Luthor presents it to the world to manipulate them against Superman.
We see this throughout history, over a hundred years ago the US had anti-Chinese propaganda that often portrayed Chinese men as sexual predators or corrupters of white women. There were literal comics, books and posters that depicted Chinese immigrants as threats to both moral and racial order. We see it again in the 1920's as America also depicted black men as being sexually aggressive to white women in films such as Birth of a Nation. That film is arguably one of the first propaganda film intended to stir up racism against people of colour. Similar happened in Nazi Germany, the nazi’s propaganda machine painted Jewish men as sexual predators who would seduce and “pollute” Aryan women, using that as justification for exclusion and genocide to protect society. In the present we see the same narratives resurface from far-right rhetoric in Europe about Muslim migrants and in the United States about Hispanic people or Latin American immigrants.
Lex Luthor’s attempt to convince people that Superman who is an alien immigrant was secretly scheming to take “Earth’s women” isn’t really intended to be goofy though a lot of people have opted to interpret it that way. It’s a deliberate invocation of a number of xenophobic tropes which is literally all over the film. Luthor isn’t simply being jealous or insecure; he’s deliberately engaging in propaganda. And as we see, its disturbingly effective as it frightens people and by and large they instantly reject Superman.
Luthor trying to turn Superman’s otherness into something threatening, using a centuries-old tactic to stoke fear and resentment. Superman, as Gunn has emphasised repeatedly, is the immigrant, that someone who comes from not just elsewhere on earth but is from an entirely different world who has adopted earth as his home, and tries to contribute positively to it. Just like the vast majority of immigrants from across the world do right now. Superman's actions should demonstrate he is a good person, but as we see all too often in the real world, acceptance can be fragile when it comes to the other. In simple terms, Lex Luthor wanted to make people distrust Superman, and to do that he tried to convince them that Superman was doing all these good deeds to serve as a distraction from his real aim, which was taking Earth's women.
Superman, as Gunn (and others throughout Superman's history) has repeated multiple times, is an immigrant. In the 2025 film, James Gunn was just using an anti-immigrant trope through the character of Lex Luthor with accommodations so that kids are likely to miss it but the adults in theory would get it. Additionally and perhaps appropriately given where we are in 2025, Gunn seems to be trying to explain that even the most absurd or obviously false claims can take root when they resonate with deep-seated cultural anxieties. Sadly more often than not, it comes down to this outsider is taking away someone or something I feel entitled to. I don't know if Gunn intended this plot point to provide commentary on how propaganda works, especially when it weaponises stereotypes and sexual insecurities to demonise the outsider but its effective.
Yes, to most people who know Superman and are familiar with the Supes ethos, the thought of him coming to earth to form a harem to colonise earth sounds bonkers.
But that's the point. It is absurd, but it works. Literally, it’s all down to this alien will steal your woman. You should hate him and kill him to protect YOUR women.
