'I want to write myself into existence,' says 'Colored Television' author

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. The satirical novel "Colored Television" was on a number of best-book lists of 2024, including Vulture, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Vogue and the list of our book critic Maureen Corrigan. It's out in paperback next week. The book, written by Danzy Senna, is about being biracial. That's also the theme of her other novels and her memoir. Her mother, who is white, is from a prominent Boston family. Her father, who is Black, grew up in an orphanage in a small Alabama town. Senna was born in 1968 (ph), the year the Supreme Court overturned all existing state laws banning interracial marriage. She grew up during the Black Power movement. We're going to listen to Terry's interview with Danzy Senna from last September. We begin with Terry's description of her book.

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TERRY GROSS: Her new novel "Colored Television" is both heartfelt and satirical. It's about a writer who's devastated when the novel she's been working on for 10 years, a novel about how the meaning of being biracial has changed over generations, is rejected by her publisher. If she can't publish that, she can't get tenure at the university where she teaches, which means not having enough money to get by. Her husband is an artist whose work doesn't sell. They have two children. She's discovering that some of her son's traits that she thought made him unique and interesting may be signs that he's on the autism spectrum. The family lives in LA, which they can't afford, so they've been living in an expensive home of a friend, a screenwriter, while he's working abroad. Some of the tension in her marriage is caused by financial problems, and the only solution she sees is to pitch an idea for a TV series - a TV series with a biracial main character. That requires covering up some problems in her current life. The book is filled with observations about race, marriage, parenting, teaching, generational differences and entering the world of prestige television writing.

Danzy Senna, welcome to FRESH AIR. I love your new novel, and I'd like to start with a reading that I think gives a sense of your writing and a sense of some of the themes of the book.

DANZY SENNA: Sure. Thank you for having me.

GROSS: And this reading is from early in the book, when she's reflecting on teaching and how a few students walked out of someone else's class who was talking about the history of comedy, and in quoting Richard Pryor, he used the N-word. Three students walked out and reported him to the administration. So here's that reading where she's reflecting on teaching.

SENNA: (Reading) The millennials didn't read anything Jane assigned unless she included a trigger warning. The trigger warning was what spurred them on to search the story for the upsetting passage. The Gen Zers, on the other hand, only bothered to read stories that used a lot of white space. They didn't like big, sprawling, old-fashioned novels. Their brains had not evolved for that kind of reading experience. She was reminded of how when her own kids were toddlers, she'd had to cut their food into small pieces to guard against their choking. She had in recent years begun to assign only minimalist autofiction by queer POC authors to her undergraduates, and she had to admit it was a better classroom experience for all.

(Reading) Teaching had made Jane think a lot about her own Gen X-ness. She decided it was the only indisputable identity she had. She checked all the boxes. She'd been a latchkey kid who had moved between the homes of her divorced parents. She'd had the de rigueur Gen X molestation at age 10 and later lost her virginity in semi-consensual sex with a much older man. Like any Black Gen Xer, she hadn't had time to worry about microaggressions, what with all the good old-fashioned macroaggressions she'd experienced - white kids throwing rocks at her head, white kids calling her father [expletive] with impunity, white kids leaving bananas on her family's porch when they moved into the neighborhood.

(Reading) Of course, what made her most Gen X of all was that she was part of the first baby boom of mulattos, whose parents were the first generation of legalized interracial marriages. Jane felt she'd been lucky to be raised in the early days of mulatto militancy, before you could check two or more racial boxes on school forms. She'd been raised knowing, in the immortal words of Tupac, that Black was the thing to be. She refused to use the cloying phrase that some of her cohort had adopted - the Loving generation. Her parents had always, as far as she knew, despised each other, so she was more a part of the hating generation. But in either case, she was deeply, authentically Gen X.

GROSS: So I think our listeners might have noticed you use the word mulatto instead of biracial, and I'll ask you to explain why.

SENNA: Yeah. I use the word mulatto a lot in my work, and I have sort of rejected the more politically correct term of biracial or multiracial, mainly because it's meaningless and vague and it could describe any two or three mixes that one could be. But mulatto, as problematic as the word is - and it comes out of some really - from - out of slavery and these sort of pseudoscientific ideas of race. As problematic as it is, it's the only word that really describes this very specific experience of being Black and white and being that mixture in America, which is singular and, I think, an important distinction from the other mixes.

GROSS: Tell me more about what it means to you that your parents got married in 1968, one year after Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that overturned all the laws still on the books outlawing interracial marriage.

SENNA: Yeah. I mean, they were part of a whole wave of the first, you know, marriages to come out of this huge political change. And so their marriage was filled with all this symbolism and hope for the future and the sort of integration of American society and the kind of movement beyond these incredibly strict, you know, laws of segregation. And they were both very politicized. And so what it meant was also that I grew up with, for the first time, maybe, as a mixed person with other mixed people around me who were also born out of the exact same moment and the exact same political movement. And so I've never been able to kind of separate the politics of the moment in which I was born from the personal. Like, those things are so intertwined for me, and the history is so clear that I emerge out of, it's not - I think some people don't grow up with that history and the sort of legal context in which you're born in their heads as much as you do if you're born in this first generation.

GROSS: Well, your parents got married during the overlap of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement. What do you think being in an interracial marriage meant to your parents? 'Cause the way you describe it in your memoir, it almost sounds as if it was a political statement as much as it was about intimacy.

SENNA: I don't think that, you know, you could be a white woman of a certain class - and my mother is a blond, blue-eyed white woman who grew up the daughter of a Harvard professor in Cambridge and has this lineage that, you know, goes back to the earliest, you know, Americans and also the slave-trading Americans. I don't think you could be her and marry a Black man without that seeming like an incredibly, you know, potent political gesture at that time. And then there was the class issue of my father being from the - first, from an orphanage and then from a, you know, very poor family in the South and then the housing projects in Boston. And for him to marry someone of my mother's background was a huge class leap and a huge, you know, crossing all sorts of lines.

And so this - you know, I think people of - you know, Black and white people get married nowadays, and it's so common and can be sort of seen as just - you know, we just fell in love. But at that time, you were really - you were breaking all of the sort of laws. Even those that had already been dismantled were still in place in people's minds. And I remember my mother went to the courthouse to get some paperwork for the marriage. And in Boston, where interracial couples hadn't been illegal at that time - and even recently - the woman said to her, wait, I have to go in the back and see if this is legal...

GROSS: Oh, really?

SENNA: ...That you two are getting married. Yeah. And there was, you know, constant experiences that we had in the world that really brought home to all of us that we were a radical statement in the culture as a family. Just merely existing as a family was a radical statement at that time.

BIANCULLI: We're listening to Terry's interview with Danzy Senna, author of the novel "Colored Television." Back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Danzy Senna, author of the novel "Colored Television." It was recorded last September. A recurring theme in her novels and in her memoir is what it's like to be biracial, like she is. The book comes out in paperback next week.

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GROSS: You're very light-skinned. And a lot of people first meeting you assume you're white, and then they're confused that you identify as Black, though I think now is it fair to say you identify as biracial?

SENNA: No, no. I've always identified as Black. And I don't really - it doesn't come up in the same way anymore, partly because I've written six books. So it's like, there's no short answer I have to give except read my work, 'cause I think that's more...

(LAUGHTER)

SENNA: ...More of the story is in my work. But I grew up at a time, you know - if I was born today with my hair texture and my skin tone and features, I think maybe - and in a different sort of family - I could be identified as multiracial or white. And, you know, my Blackness would be a sort of interesting fact of my 23andMe results or something. But the time that I was raised and the context that I was raised, there was no mixed race category. And you were either going to identify as white and all of that - you know, all of what that meant for you, or you were going to identify as Black. And there was no doubt in my mind or my family's mind that I was going to identify as Black. It was a political, you know, identity at that time.

And it was also - I have a sister who was born 14 months before me who is my closest comrade in every moment of my life who would not walk into a room and be seen as white. So the decision had already been made when my sister was born; these are Black children. And my father, you know, had a lot of the sort of - that time and the politics of that time that he really wanted to impress upon us our Black identities. And so then I come along with straight hair, and that's not going to change anything about that decision that they had already made. And if - my father's from the South. And he was born in Louisiana and raised in Alabama, and there are lots of Black people who look like me in the world in which he grew up. So I think it's confusing to us now at a time when we see people's race as being very much about how they present. But at the time of my father's childhood and my childhood, I was a Black person who could pass as white. That was what I was. And I was a Black person who had a white mother. And those things were not in contradiction at all.

GROSS: Well, you know, you write that back then, to claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. So...

SENNA: Yeah.

GROSS: And you say also that growing up in the '70s, the mulatto was an inconvenient smudge on both white America's idea of itself as pure and superior and on the Black Power movement's ideal of a unified, uncontaminated Black front.

SENNA: Yeah, exactly. And I feel very grateful that I grew up with such a strong sense of Black identity and that it was never, ever associated with shame for me, which I think was what my parents were aware of, was that we were living in an incredibly racist city. Anyone who knows the history of Boston, it was - there were riots. There was, you know, a lot of violence against Black people. But it was, in America, in the air everywhere - was that Blackness was denigrated. Whiteness was extolled. And so they were just highly aware that when we walked out of the door of our house, that was the message we were going to receive. So they wanted us to kind of have this sense of pride in that background because that was the one that needed defending.

GROSS: And you were bused, too, weren't you?

SENNA: Yes. My sister and I were bused during the height of desegregation, when we were very small. And we were also sent to a sort of Afrocentric school for - it was called the Elma Lewis School of Black Arts, which was sort of to instill racial pride while learning for the Black children in Roxbury. And so I was steeped in politics, Black Power. And there was literally never a moment that I remember not being aware of race and not being aware of these categories. It was always in conversation in my household from the time I could speak.

GROSS: Let's compare that to your family now. So you have two children?

SENNA: Two children, yes.

GROSS: And you have siblings and cousins. And your siblings and cousins, when you add it all up, have brought into the family a Pakistani Muslim, a Jewish person and a Chinese person, I think.

SENNA: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: And so your family is totally multicultural now. It's not just a question of Black or white or, you know, mulatto. It's like - you know, it's the Rainbow Coalition, or as you put it, Benetton (laughter).

SENNA: Benetton, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. So can you talk about how your idea of being, you know, multiracial or biracial has changed as your extended family has grown and, you know, the people represented in that family have changed?

SENNA: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of amazing how many different - I was just with all of the cousins in Massachusetts. And my kids are teenagers now, and those cousins are also in the same age range. And we took a photo. And I was, like, admiring how mixed this family has become. And it seems like the only tradition in my family is to marry someone who is outside of whatever your background is. And, I think, you know, I used to feel very protective of this Black identity and this choice to identify as Black and to kind of, I think, judge other mixed people who didn't hold up that identity. And that was sort of the residue of my childhood in the '70s. And I think the older I get, the more I'm just interested in people being able to define themselves and respecting those decisions that people make, that those are coming from a true, real place. So with all of these cousins, like, I would never impose what I think they are onto them. I let them tell me. And even with my own children, letting them decide who they want to go into the world and identify themselves as. So I've kind of softened my position on this a lot over the years.

GROSS: So I want to ask you about what Donald Trump said at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists when he was talking about Kamala Harris. So let's hear the clip.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don't know. Is she Indian or is she Black?

RACHEL SCOTT: She has always identified as a Black woman. She went to a historically Black college.

TRUMP: But you know what? I respect either one. I respect either one. But she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went - she became a Black person.

SCOTT: Just to be clear, sir, do you believe that she is...

TRUMP: I think somebody should look into that too. When you ask - continue in a very hostile, nasty tone.

GROSS: As I was reading your book, I kept thinking about what Trump said, and I'm wondering what your reaction was the first time that you heard it.

SENNA: For me, hearing that was actually not maybe as surprising as it was to a lot of people because that was sort of the story of my life. The reaction to my racial chaos or the fact that I don't look the way I identify or that when I come out to people as being Black, the reaction is often that, in smaller ways. And I was really - I had to write about that when I saw it because I thought, this is sort of - he's articulating the relationship of America to mixed-race people, and the hostility, the suspicion and the kind of bewilderment with which we've been faced sort of historically. And, you know, that's something I'm exploring in "Colored Television" as well as in my other work - is this particular space that we hold that has been here from the beginning where we're - our existence is denied. From the very first time, you know, there's a mixed-race child born onto a plantation, that child's mixture is denied. That child's - who that child really is is, you know, systematically denied - the paternity. And it continues throughout the history of mixed people in this country that we are constantly in - in my novel "Caucasia," I call it - we're like the canary in the coal mine. You can look to us to see, to take the temperature of the country around questions of race and our relationship to Blackness and whiteness. We're the Rorschach test that kind of reveals what the person looking at us thinks. But it doesn't really tell you anything about us. It tells you about Donald Trump in that moment.

BIANCULLI: Danzy Senna speaking with Terry Gross last year. Her novel "Colored Television" is out in paperback next week. We'll hear more after a break. And later, Justin Chang reviews the new "Superman" film. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Let's get back to Terry's 2024 interview with Danzy Senna. She's biracial. What it's like to be biracial in America is a theme of her novels and her memoir. Her novels include "Caucasia" and "New People." Her new novel, "Colored Television," is out in paperback next week. It's a satire about race, marriage, parenting, financial problems, trying to get tenure at a university, art, literature and television.

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GROSS: So in your new novel, the main character is a writer whose novel is rejected. This is a novel she spent 10 years writing. And since it's rejected, it means she's not going to get tenure. She's not going to get the raise that she not only wants but really needs. And she doesn't know what to do. And she can't return to the novel. She doesn't - it's enormous. She doesn't think she could fix it. No one thinks she could fix it except her husband, who urges her to.

So she decides that her solution is probably to pitch a TV series around the idea of a biracial character. And this is, like, prestige TV. It might be a streaming network or a broadcast network. We're not really sure as a reader. But the head of this network knows that the biracial population is the fastest growing group or one of the fastest growing groups in America, and by 2050, the majority of the country is likely to be biracial. It's the new hot market to market to, the new hot demographic. So the executive and the producer are excited about the possibility of a series with a biracial character at the center. Is it your experience as the writer of books about mulattos, as you put it - is that becoming more appealing to editors and executives? And are they willing to pay more money for it as a result?

SENNA: You mean in Hollywood?

GROSS: Well, in both - in the book world...

SENNA: In both.

GROSS: ...And in television 'cause I know you've done some work in television. Nothing you've written has been produced. The books that have been optioned haven't been actual - you know, produced either - yet. So you have experience in both worlds, and I'd be interested in hearing your take on both.

SENNA: Yeah. I mean, when I first started publishing was in the '90s with my first novel. And there really wasn't anything like that. And that was a novel about a young girl of mixed race and racial passing. And I was met with - you know, I had, like, eight rejections from agents when I first sent it out. And they would say, you know, this is too specific.

GROSS: Is this "Caucasia"?

SENNA: Yeah. This is my novel "Caucasia." And I don't recognize this family, and I don't understand this character's identity, and they're strange to me. And finally, I found an agent who really loved it and sold it. And, yeah, when I published that book, you know, it was met with a lot of acclaim. And I had this really great experience in terms of my first novel. But one of the things I kept hearing from publishers was, you know, don't do this again. Don't keep writing about mixedness. Like, it's time to graduate onto something new and just leave that behind. And it was almost as if they thought that mixedness was a plot and not a world and not a people, not a geography. And I've heard that over and over again when I publish, that - you're still writing about mixed people?

GROSS: (Laughter).

SENNA: Why - are you just going to keep writing about mixed people? And I find that so interesting because I never hear people say that to white authors who write about, say, a particular world of white people. And I actually don't hear it as much about Black authors who write about Blackness or Black worlds or race. But when I write about my people, it's considered somehow a very special episode that...

GROSS: (Laughter).

SENNA: ...I shouldn't do again. And I think part of the reason that I find that so sort of telling is that it's that idea that you're a predicament. You're not a world. And this - what I think of it as is this is the world I write from. This is the geography and the culture that I write from, and it's interracial America. It's mulatto America. And to me, that is a whole world that from that point I can write about anything else, as any other writer can. You can be from Dublin and keep writing about Dublin, but nobody says to you stop writing about Dublin. You're writing about marriage or parenthood or class or divorce or, you know, all sorts of things. And this is the space that I write from. And so I think maybe six books in, people are beginning to get that, that this is just a world. And this is, you know, something I could write about forever and not repeat myself because these are characters in different situations.

But with television, I think they haven't yet gotten to it yet. And I think that was what I was exploring in this is, you know, they've attempted it, but it hasn't been done well. And, you know, the idea is that, you know, you can write about mixed people and it doesn't always have to be about their racial struggle. They can be the space that you begin from and then move onto these other issues that we have and write about us with complexity and nuance. And I haven't seen that done yet in television, but I think it's imminent. I think it's going to happen in my lifetime. Yeah.

GROSS: How close did you come to actually being a part of the TV world? Have you done writing for television or rewriting of other people's scripts?

SENNA: I've actually only three times worked developing things and writing a pilot. I wrote a pilot for a show that was based on my work. I wrote an original pilot for a limited series that is still out there being shopped around that's not to do with my work. And I've worked on another adaptation of one of my books. And so I've only worked in sort of mini rooms and in collaboration with one other writer. I've never actually been in a writers room.

GROSS: Yeah.

SENNA: And I think Jane never gets that close to being in the writers room either, though she longs to be in that room. And, you know, what I've felt writing scripts is I really like it. It's very interesting and sort of technical-feeling compared to writing novels. And I will continue to do it 'cause it's a nice break between books, and it kind of can pay for your stove or something - you know, to get a new stove in your kitchen. Like, there are actual financial benefits to doing it. But I think my soul is in the page and in writing novels and in - being in control of the entire universe that I'm writing is really what feeds me on a much deeper level. And so I will never kind of fully abandon the written word. It just feeds me in a whole other way. But unfortunately, it doesn't literally feed me...

GROSS: Right.

SENNA: ...Or much.

(LAUGHTER)

BIANCULLI: We're listening to Terry's interview with Danzy Senna, author of the novel "Colored Television." Back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS FAMOUS ORCHESTRA'S "IN A MELLOTONE")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Danzy Senna, author of the novel "Colored Television." It was recorded last September. A recurring theme in her novels and in her memoir is what it's like to be biracial.

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GROSS: I want to talk with you a little bit about your childhood. So your mother was kind of from white Boston aristocracy in a way. Tell us a little about your mother's family tree and the most famous and infamous parts of it.

SENNA: She comes from a very long line of Bostonians. Her father was a Harvard law professor who was a civil rights lawyer, actually, and very liberal. And one of her great - or grandfather or great-grandfather was one of the founders of The Atlantic magazine, The Atlantic Monthly. And she had mayors and, you know, goes all the way back to not literally the Mayflower but a different boat. And also in that history of these sort of learned Bostonians was the history of slavery. And some of the most horrific slave traders in American history were in her family in the Northeast Corridor, the DeWolfe family. And her father's middle name was DeWolfe. So she has both this sort of wonderful literary history and then also this disturbing history of slavery in her family. But by the time I was born, we didn't have any of the money. We only had some silverware with those initials on them. And so it was kind of this tarnished, lost aristocracy feeling.

GROSS: My impression is that you found out about the slave trader members of your family tree doing research, like, from a book.

SENNA: Yes.

GROSS: It's not like your family talked to you about it. What was it like for you to learn that?

SENNA: It was - I mean, the details in these books about my mother's family and my family have really horrible details about, you know, this man, this very powerful slave trader cutting off the hands of the slaves who he threw into the water, who were trying to hold onto the boat. There were terrible details in there, but I didn't experience it personally as shame or that this is my family. I think that I take as a given that these are all of our ancestors. We're all connected to these people. And, you know, the idea that that's something special didn't come into my head. I thought, this is American history that I descend out of. And so my memoir was really kind of taking my family as a microcosm of our country's history - both sides of my family.

GROSS: And you learned a lot about your father while writing a memoir about your childhood and your family. And your mother is from, you know, this, you know, eminent Boston family. And your father spent some of his childhood in an orphanage. And, you know, his family was very poor. Was that confusing to you growing up? And especially since growing up, in spite of your mother's background, your parents didn't have money 'cause they lived in a - you know, they were writers. They lived in a world of artists and bohemians, which was kind of outside of the official class structure of America.

SENNA: The class identity for me was never sort of separated from the racial identity and the sense of being sort of illegible, again - because both my parents had so much education and they had published books, but we were getting food stamps. And it was, like, one more thing about me that didn't actually make sense and I certainly didn't see represented on television or in films or novels. And I think always some of my impulse to be a writer comes from that feeling that I want to write myself into existence, and I want to write the worlds that I've lived in and the people I've been in the world with into existence because I never see them. And so even, you know, with this novel, wanting to kind of write a family that, you know, is a Black family in contemporary America who are highly educated, creative people who have no money, I think, writes against some of what I keep seeing replicated in the culture around, you know, Black people are either the Jeffersons living in the housing projects or they're in a Tyler Perry movie and living in a mansion. And there's something else that's more complicated that I want to write into existence, both about race and class.

GROSS: So in your novel, the main character is teaching English literature in college, and she finds that now she's mostly assigning books by queer - she's only assigning autofiction by queer writers of color, and that makes the classroom experience much better. Is that something that you've gravitated toward, too?

SENNA: No, that's - I mean, me...

GROSS: That's you being satirical.

SENNA: ...Writing comedy (laughter). Yes.

GROSS: Yes. OK. So where is that coming from?

SENNA: I mean, it's always, you know, that moment when you're giving your students your syllabus, and sometimes, you know, you feel like, am I checking all the boxes? But in my case, you know, I think some of the most interesting writing is coming from queer writers of color and writers of color, and it's sort of organic to my syllabus that it would be filled with those voices. It's not a choice based on a box-checking. It's sort of who I'm finding exciting in the - who I'm reading at the time. But it's also got a lot of dead white men. And I teach writers who I don't fully - you know, who have things that are demeaning to someone like me in them, but I think they're brilliant writers. And so I always say I'm greedy and I will read whoever can teach me something, even if I have to, you know, notice things in it that aren't palatable to me. If their writing is really great, I want to read it.

GROSS: Since you've written so much about race, about your own, you know, racial mixedness, and you've written about your ancestors to some degree on both sides of your family, have you done your DNA? And if so, what did you want to find out? Like, what were the questions you wanted answered by your DNA? And did they get answered in a way that was useful or helpful?

SENNA: Well, of course I've had my DNA done.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SENNA: As Hampton Ford says to Jane, you mixed people love to spit into vials.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SENNA: And I did it just because of course I was going to do it. And it came out exactly as I had already known myself to be. My father is mixed race and, you know, didn't know his father. His mother had three children by, clearly, people she didn't name, but the children were lighter skinned than her. And so when he had his - when we did my memoir - when I did my memoir, we found out that his father was a Mexican boxer who had gone back to Mexico. And so I'm actually, you know, only a quarter West African and I'm a quarter Indigenous Mexican Indian, and I'm half British and British, basically. And it really added up to what I thought I was based on my father's history, which we had already researched. And that was not really - it didn't really change anything about my identity to find it out.

GROSS: Well, Danzy Senna, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. And congratulations on your novel.

SENNA: Thank you so much. Such a pleasure.

BIANCULLI: Danzy Senna spoke with Terry Gross last year. Her novel "Colored Television" comes out in paperback next week. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new "Superman" movie. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The new "Superman," which opens in theaters everywhere today, launches a new series of movies adapted from DC Comics. It stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent, aka Superman, with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. The movie was written and directed by James Gunn, known for his work on Marvel's "Guardians Of The Galaxy" films and the recent DC Comics adaptation, "The Suicide Squad." Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: Whether you love or hate the new Superman - and I rather liked it - you can't accuse it of wasting anyone's time. When we first meet the Man of Steel, played by David Corenswet, he's falling from a great height and crash-landing in the Arctic. He's just been badly beaten by a mega villain from the war-hungry nation of Boravia, and he desperately needs some recovery time at the Fortress of Solitude. It's a smart way to kick things off. The director, James Gunn, has an irreverent, borderline slapstick way with comic book material, and he likes to cut to the chase. He knows we don't need another dreary prologue set on the doomed planet Krypton. We already know Clark Kent's origin story inside out.

The opening also immediately reminds us that Superman isn't invincible. Barely a minute in, he's already getting the wind knocked out of him. His emotional and psychological vulnerability will soon be on display as well. Back in Metropolis, he's getting mixed reviews for interfering in Boravian affairs. In this scene, Clark, having just written about his own super heroics in the pages of The Daily Planet, learns that his colleagues aren't so enamored of Superman. They include reporter Lois Lane, played by Rachel Brosnahan, and photographer Jimmy Olsen, played by Skyler Gisondo.

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RACHEL BROSNAHAN: (As Lois Lane) So this guy just flew into Midtown and started attacking people, demanding for Superman to show up?

DAVID CORENSWET: (As Clark Kent) Yeah, it's all there in my article.

BROSNAHAN: (As Lois Lane) I don't actually have to make it through your writing, Clark. Knowledge is worth many sacrifices. That isn't one of them.

CORENSWET: (As Clark Kent) A-ha-ha. Very funny, Lois.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Ooh.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Oh, my God. He's so fine.

SKYLER GISONDO: (As Jimmy Olsen) Twenty-two people in the hospital, over 20 million in property damage. It does make you wonder.

BROSNAHAN: (As Lois Lane) Wonder what?

GISONDO: (As Jimmy Olsen) As great as he is, maybe Superman didn't completely think through the ramifications of the Boravia thing.

BROSNAHAN: (As Lois Lane) Well, if this guy is even from Boravia.

GISONDO: (As Jimmy Olsen) What do you mean? His name is the Hammer of Boravia.

BROSNAHAN: (As Lois Lane) Yeah, I doubt his parents named him that, Jimmy. We have no clue what his actual goal was here.

GISONDO: (As Jimmy Olsen) I think it's pretty obvious the goal was kicking Superman's a**.

CORENSWET: (As Clark Kent) Oh, he didn't completely kick Superman's a**.

GISONDO: (As Jimmy Olsen) Pretty thoroughly, Clark.

CHANG: You wouldn't guess from the in-office banter, but Lois and Clark have been steadily dating for months, and she's well aware of his secret identity. In one sharply written scene back at her apartment, Lois interviews Clark as Superman, a nice throwback to an equivalent scene from the 1978 "Superman," when Margot Kidder lobbed softballs at Christopher Reeve. By contrast, Brosnahan's Lois grills Clark mercilessly. What right does Superman have meddling in foreign policy? How can he be certain that his actions are really helping humanity? Before long, the evil tech bro billionaire, Lex Luthor, played by a superbly hissable Nicholas Hoult, will be asking the same question. He finds an ingeniously underhanded way of turning Superman into public enemy No. 1.

Luthor, it's no surprise, has his own devious interest in the Boravia situation. Mostly, though, he's obsessed with taking Superman down, and he has a ridiculous arsenal of high-tech gadgets to help him do it. These include something called a pocket universe, basically a secret dimension that allows Luthor to bend time and space to his will. It also allows director Gunn to indulge his affinity for all things otherworldly and grotesque. As his fans know from his work, not just "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "The Suicide Squad," but also his low-budget horror movie "Slither." Gunn has an exuberant love for weird critters of every kind. You see this in "Superman," as well, which boasts giant eyeballs, various oversized creepy crawlies and even a cute green toddler. And I haven't even mentioned Clark's scene-stealing pet, Krypto, a loyal, but barely housebroken, caped canine who earns the title of Superman's best friend.

The goofiness doesn't stop there. At times, Superman must reluctantly join forces with a band of second-tier superheroes who call themselves the Justice Gang. They're mostly good company. I especially liked Edi Gathegi as a sarcastic tech wiz known as Mr. Terrific. But all this extra baggage can leave the movie feeling unwieldy and overstuffed. Still, after the oppressive doom and gloom of the last Superman reboot, the Henry Cavill-starring "Man Of Steel," it's refreshing to see a filmmaker grooving on this material with a genuine sense of playfulness. Gunn takes Superman seriously, but not self-seriously. It helps that he has a terrific star in David Corenswet, who looks great as Superman, whether he's soaring through space or pulling bystanders out of harm's way. But as Clark Kent, Corenswet may be even better. He sensitively captures Clark's defensiveness when he's called out, his shame and horror when global opinion turns against him, and his poignant realization of who he is and what he stands for.

In one lovely interlude, Clark briefly returns to his Kansas homestead to see his adoptive parents, nicely played by Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell. It's an emotional scene that Gunn handles beautifully, with a groundedness that only a filmmaker fully in sync with his material could pull off. It may open with Superman crashing to Earth, but in all the ways that count, this movie more than sticks the landing.

BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed the new film version of "Superman," opening today in theaters.

On Monday's show, life as a jailhouse lawyer. While serving a life sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for a murder he didn't commit, Calvin Duncan studied law and helped free many wrongfully convicted prisoners, including himself. He's since been exonerated and received a law degree. He continues to do legal work with prisoners. I hope you can join us.

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BIANCULLI: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez.

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BIANCULLI: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Hope Wilson (ph) is our consulting visual producer.

For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

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