Marty Supreme

The “Supreme” in Marty Supreme has dual connotations. The obvious one is that here’s an underdog hero who will stop at nothing to achieve sporting supremacy. Marty Mauser will be an anti-hero, a hustler, a fraud, a narcissist and whoever it takes to summon his destiny of being world champion. Usually, such protagonists have to overcome the system with talent and grit. Here, the talent and grit are almost incidental. It is assumed he has those, so he’d rather game the system in the language of those who run it. As a Jewish shoe salesman in 1950s New York in a post-Holocaust world, he is accustomed to selling his identity more than proving it. America and table tennis are merely his mediums to be seen; he is neither patriotic nor a purist. If he’s an allegory for the entitlement of US capitalism and the illusion of the American Dream — where he upends multiple lives and puts everyone at risk to get what he wants — so be it.