Can anyone help in providing some info. on this question, personal opinions, books, references, newspaper clipping etc...
In regards to the 'American Dream,' you might want to read Gary Engle's
What Makes Superman So Darned American and Michael Mautner's
From the Pit to the Peak: Superman and the Ascension of America.
Christopher Reeve has some thoughts at
http://superman.nu/sites/themovie/hope.php and there is an interesting
Time Magazine article at
http://superman.nu/a/Fifty/time.phpWe have more essays at
http://superman.nu/a/fan_essays.php which you might find pertinent.
Elliot S! Maggin asked the question in his very first Superman story,
Must There be a Superman?, but the answer was so complex that it took him 15 years worth of additional stories to tell it...
As for my own opinion - I voted yes in the poll, and my explanation is best summed up by reading everything on
this website :-)