strain this chaos turn it into light
Ever so very very very long ago I promised Sofia meta along the lines of "Smallville is awesome! HERE IS WHY" and all that and so I said I'd talk about Smallville as an expansive mythology or whatever and how it's all about the possibilty and stuff. This is that! Or at least what I managed of it, because dear lord do I ramble and it was getting entirely too long. OMGWTF, SELF.
Way back in the day when I cared about Joss-shaped things and was all over the Spike thing, I found myself in a possibly odd position. I was a bit of an evilista Spike fan (liked my Spike evil and with Drusilla and all that), but I wanted to read and discuss and get on with people that were soulless redemptionista minded. I had no real desire to see Spike “redeemed” in canon, but the things, the ideas, the interpretations and views of canon that the soulless redemptionista types presented were the ones that appealed to me. They were broader. Those ideas saw the most room and possibility within the text.
Now, the Jossverse didn’t go that way, because well that’s a thing for another time that I will never talk about because a)that train left and then blew the hell up and fell of a canyon a long time ago and b)omgwtfwaaaaaank. But the point of the above trip to hellish nostalgia (Yes, I totally am a rapist apologist! *eyeroll*), the point is I search for and love these widening ever broadening texts. These things that continually widen in possibility and ideas on themselves.
This is what I adore about Smallville.
Smallville as a show takes a lot of knocks (and I think most of them unfairly. But… that’s a defense for another time. I will just say that I’ve watched more than enough television in my time and I’ve seen far worse acted and written that got far more critical and fannish acclaim and now I shall pull that back in because not the point and also I am not skilled enough to reserve my snark on that one). Now, quite often the show is completely crack. Fat sucking vampire girl! Vampire Lesbian Sorority! Uh season four! But most of these plots are on the same crack level as your standard non-mythology case of the X-Files. (and you know man, the X-Files, there was some fucking crack rock that never made any god damn sense. WHATEVER, CHRIS CARTER. WHATEVER.*) So if we accept that yes crack and also it’s at least standard with regard to writing or acting (and sometimes I think quite far above. See, the acting of Rosendork, Glover, Annette, and quite often Allison. Kristen and Tom being, I think, still the weakest links in the regular cast acting chain). Right, so if we accept that those are the fairly standard, what makes Smallville actually quite good and wonderful and *my* teenage Superman show is this,
It’s an expansive source/text/show/whatever.
Smallville is a show with a very basic (and not all that original) premise. What if Superman and Lex Luthor were once upon a time the best of friends?
Now, as I said, that’s not all that original. Silver Age Superboy featured a stories about how Lex and Superboy were once BFF until Lex’s jealously of Superboy drove him all crazy fucking evil and thus… oh noes! ENEMIES. There was even an else world story at some point that featured the what if! Scenario of Lex not being evil and being adopted as Clark’s brother and many wacky and vaguely gay in a “dude, you cannot even excuse this by it being the 60s” way ensued. This scenario was
reasserted in the post-Smallville DCU in Mark Waid’s Superman origin story Birthright. The biggest addition that this adds to the comics canon as such (other than reretconning back in the BFF thing which then, as far as I can tell, never really got done anything with. I blame Bruce’s jealously!) was reasserting the notion that Clark and Lex found an equality in one another that they could not find with anyone else (Clark’s alien skills and Lex’s superior brain power).
So what is it about SV that makes that so much broader? I mean, it’s not like BFFs that turn enemies is all that new. Even in the land of Superhero comics we have the once pure true love of Eric and Charles over in the X-Men or the wacky hijinks of Peter and Harry (though that’s less “ideology” and more “you killed my dad and everyone in my family is fucking crazy cakes).
What makes SV different and interesting and all those things is what it is working from. SV never allows the viewer to forget who they are telling the story of. Clark and his red and blue wardrobe and Lex’s dark cool colors. The Warrior Angel and Native American Mythology reflecting back on who Clark and Lex will be. The imagery in Clark and Lex’s visits with death, visions of the future, and Clark’s never ending life in “Hereafter.” Many are irritated with the constant anvils, but the point is to never allow the viewer to forget that no matter where the characters are at the moment, no matter what their desires are (Clark’s desire for a “normal” life and Lex’s desire to be loved/good man), these people are going to be what they have been for 60+ years of American Mythology:
The God (who walks among us) and The Man (who wants to rule us) each the other's challenge. The one that the other will spend their life trying to defeat, save, and defeat again. That never ending battle for truth, justice, and defeating that damn arrogant alien bastard.
I do think it’s the cultural *thing* of the Superman mythology that makes this show not only interesting, but possible. I mean, whatever you can buy pretty teen superheroes 12 for a dollar at your local Cowboys/WaWa/7-11, right? What makes this different is that it’s about Superman. Even people who have never read a comic or watched a cartoon or anything *know who Superman is*. He’s that guy in our modern American mythology. A slightly smaller number of people will go “Oh yeah, Lex Luthor = Evil!” and most even can go “Yeah, truth, justice and uh the American way?” They know that he’s a good guy.
He’s Superman. And if there’s Superman, then there’s Lex Luthor. Superman the guy who will save everyone. The guy who walks among us, but also the guy who we can never be. Symbol of truth, justice, and the American Way (and, this is where I want to stop and go “Dude, the American Way thing isn’t about like fascist whatthefuckever, it’s about OPTIMISM and that sort of noble drive to think you can just do anything which okay! Can be a bit… yes!” And so right, getting back to things…). Then there’s Lex, a man so great that it takes this symbol to be his challenge. To finally demand something of Lex that Lex cannot deliver and all that. I think one of the best representations I’ve seen of *that moment* was in the Lois & Clark pilot you have Lex showing off to Lois and Clark and saying how he loves that everyone in the city has to look up to him. Later, Superman comes to Lex to inform him that he knows Lex is evil and tells him that if he ever needs to find him, all he has to do is “look up.” And these characters shift and mold (to a certain extent) over time. Superman goes from corrupt boss beating up hero to fighting Nazis to being the poster boy for law & order to being… something in between all of those. Lex is a mad scientist during the fear of the post-war era (nuclear bomb, motherfuckers!), a criminal mastermind during the chaotic silver age, a corporate tycoon always getting just beyond Superman’s grasp, and then finally a politician. If we take Lex Luthor: Man of Steel in to account, you even are left with “possible alien menace and man seeking to keep menace at bay through really fucking sketch ass wrong actions” and all that. Though, Lex = world’s most unreliable narrator so whatever.
Superman always our protector, of course, but finally left in the modern era to be conflicted about what his role is in this messy world of ours. Lex, always damnation, but finally we are left with Lex being *us*. This is where Smallville’s handling of the relationship between Clark and Lex is so pivotal to the spin they put on the mythology.
What if, once upon a time, Superman tried to save Lex Luthor? What if he kinda failed? What if Lex kinda wanted to be saved, but failed himself. What does that say and all that?
It isn’t simply that Lex is the biggest woob in the history of angst moppetry and that on a good day he could out angst Peter Parker, Fox Mulder, and the entire crew of Serenity. It’s that over and over again we see the person that Lex wanted to be and even *could* have been, and then didn’t become and *why*. The mythology of Smallville allows that Lex could have been a very different man (“Lexmas”), but Lex could *not* be that man because of everything that came before.
Even as early as the pilot, we see Lex’s desperate desire to be reborn and saved (no matter what he says to Clark in “Vessel” Lex in the early days of his relationship with Clark, even as late as season four, was a man looking to be saved and Clark with his strength and virtue was Lex's own personal hot alien farmboy Jesus). Even that early though, we see the seeds of why Lex cannot be saved, even by Clark. The lying, the desperate desire to know and control. Driven by the abuse of his father, the loneliness and isolation from everyone, and his fucking desperate need to be loved from his father he will at some point break almost every chance at salvation he is given until he eventually starts rejecting all the outside chances for it (“Have you ever thought about where you life is going, Lex?” “All the time”). This rejection of outside salvation for being his own/not needing it becomes clear in “Void” when he lies to Lana about what his mother says. After seeing his damned mother yet again scold him about his obviously sketch ass behavior, he lies and says his mother is proud of him and ignores what she says to him.
So the thing of Lex is that he could have been someone else. That there is the possibility in the universe that he could have been a good man. That if a different choice there, a different move here and he wouldn’t have been Clark’s greatest enemy and this monster that the flashes of the future in the mythology of SV have shown us.
To flip this over to Clark, I am often reminded of the story that Metatron tells Bethany about Jesus’s reaction when he was told he was all son of God messiah wtf!** In some ways, this is Clark in a lot of SV. I think sometimes people mistake Clark on SV for being Peter Parker. The difference is that Peter is driven by guilt and responsibility, that it’s his fault Uncle Ben had died. One is left to wonder/assume that Peter would never have become a hero if Uncle Ben was still alive. Contrast that to Clark who has no such guilt (either in SV *or* any main continuity. The closest thing to that is the death of Jonathan Kent in the films, SV, and older comics when both of his parents were dead. That’s still different though, because the death of Jonathan, at least within the context of SV and the films is intended to be a catalyst to making Clark realize he has to step the fuck up, son).
Clark doesn’t save people because he has to, he saves people becase he *wants* to. In SV, there is the guilt and horror he has over the meteor shower causing the meteor freaks and damage (Rocks fall! Langs die!***). However, I think it is of huge massive OMG NOTICE IT importance that before *any of that* is revealed to Clark it’s Lex that he saves. He pulls Lex out of that car without any thought to hiding his abilities (something his parents had already been preaching to him long before he knew he was an alien omg!) and it’s Lex that Clark will keep on saving. Over and over again in small ways that Clark doesn’t quite get, he will be this thing that keeps Lex hinged. There are times in the first season where Lex will say something that reveals he totally has no real sense of morality beyond his own desires. Not that he’s bad evil wrong! But that it’s just *not there* and Clark will only partially be able to hide his mixture of shock and unease. Take the clone friend of Lana episode where Lex is all “DUDE! CLONES!” and Clark is all *inches farther away omgwtf* (insert your own joke about Superboy’s origins here).
The hugeness of this, the giant screaming thing of it all doesn’t really come home to Clark until “Shattered”/”Asylum” I’ve asserted before that Clark doesn’t really get how he loves Lex (NOT! LIKE! THAT! OMG) until he watches Lex come completely unhinged in season three. You have that, but you also have a Clark who looks at Lex and suddenly doesn’t know that he can do this. Many have faulted Clark for his failure to save Lex in these episodes, but I think that’s kinda wrong because it misses how fucking *huge* that task is, how young and naïve Clark is, and how fucking unbelieveably scared the boy is. He’s 16-ish. He can lift havey things and is indestructible, but Lex? Lex is an entire other thing, because how do you save someone like Lex from himself? (Contrast this back with Chloe/Clark at the start of season three where in Chloe knew she couldn’t save Clark from whatever the hell he was doing in Metropilis during the Red K summer). The look on Clark’s face when he goes to see Lex in the hospital. It isn’t just Lex’s half-crazed confession of knowing Clark’s secret, it’s *everything* It’s how Lex grabs onto Clark when he sees him and that fucking desperate look on Lex’s face.
In that moment, Clark thinks this is something too huge for him. And… it probably *is* because who (and this is taking this into the metaphorical thing of it all and less the actual actions. Sort of, but maybe not!) who can save Lex from all that darkness, all that desperation and fucked upness? Who is that Super? And so maybe Clark could do that, maybe he could devote his life and virtue to keeping Lex’s darkness at bay and making sure that Lex is always a good man.
But at that moment? Clark is a terrified teenage boy that cannot comprehend anything other than being terrified that this is not his job, that he cannot do this.
This notion of the fear and doubt before taking on the Superman mantle is something that I have not seen played with so heavily before in other canons. The two most recent Superman origin stories in the comics are Byrne’s Man of Steel series and the previously mentioned Birthright by Waid. In MoS, we are shown a Clark who, after Jonathan reveals the entire alien thing to him, stops using his skills to win football games and starts saving people. Eventually he takes on the Superman costume in order to preserve some sort of sanity in his real life as Clark Kent. Birthright shows a Clark who has traveled the world and sees the need to become a saving people kind of person but this time with a nifty cape. Both of these while different in plot and interpretation of who Clark Kent/Superman is, are essentially the same: Clark Kent sees a need to save people and does it. Lois & Clark, the movies, and cartoons are essentially same thematically.
What SV does differently is gives Clark Kent his, “My father, why have you forsaken me?” moment.**** or whatever.
What if Superman looked at humanity and his responsibility to them and freaked the hell out? What if he thought it was entirely too much for him to handle? What if he angsted about this a lot and it took him sometime to accept who he is and the great things he can do? What if all his problems and ways he keeps fucking himself up are because he wants to deny who he really is and that he’ll finally be happy and fulfilled when he finally accepts his identity big hero saving people and wearing a cape person? (insert paper on Superman, SV, and Queer Theory here!)
It’s about possibility. Now, it would seem in theory that all fictional universes carry a notion of possibility. However, one has to look at what universe allows and doesn’t allow both in its flashes of alternate universes, mirror/shadow characters, the past and the present as well as its general mythology. Each season, SV continues to open up on itself. Even as Lex gets darker and Clark gets more Super we see the show continue to reassert that there is another way for Lex to be and that Clark is still unbelievable freaked the hell out about what he’s supposed to be. I don’t feel that the slow transition these characters have made has been light switched, and instead feel the sort of odd nature of Lex’s evil fits beautifully with the sketchy but always just appearing enough above the board guy he is destined to become, in just the same way that Clark will eventually learn that even with the angst, saving people is so totally his thing and be content there (even if he didn’t save those ants in Arizona! OH NOES).
Yes, it could all go to hell in a handbasket in the next season/two seasons. I’ve so been there done that (omgwtfjoss). But, at the moment the show has asserted that it wants to expand on our modern mythology about heroes, salvation, villainy, humanity, good, evil while also always expanding on itself. Though SV often asserts a certain moral clarity in its universe (there is good and there is evil, even among the millions of shades of grey), it is still unbelievably complex because of the possibility. How evil is Lex if he could have been better? How good is Clark if he couldn’t save Lex? If Lex (the ultimate representation of the darker aspect of humanity) cannot be saved by even Superman, what does that say about *us* and our ability to be saved. What happens when we reject God/Superman/All the sparkly things that Superman stands for? What happens when we do not accept the shades of grey that Lex chooses to hide in?
What if, man? What if.
*YOU BROKE MY HEART, FREDO.
**I… have a huge Christian Mythology thing and due to my upbringing being very steeped in it I tend to ping toward those interpretations of texts first and others next. And also, because I tend to want stories about those sorts of things… it’s a cycle of omg! OKAY!
***That’s wrong, I know! But… I amuse myself too much. SHAME AND SHAME AND TEARS.
****Matthew 27:46. All of my bibles have this as “My God, My God…” but, I learned it originally as “My father,” and so that’s what we’re going with here. Though, probably the “My God, My God” one is more correct. Four of Four bibles cannot be wrong! OR SOMETHING.
Way back in the day when I cared about Joss-shaped things and was all over the Spike thing, I found myself in a possibly odd position. I was a bit of an evilista Spike fan (liked my Spike evil and with Drusilla and all that), but I wanted to read and discuss and get on with people that were soulless redemptionista minded. I had no real desire to see Spike “redeemed” in canon, but the things, the ideas, the interpretations and views of canon that the soulless redemptionista types presented were the ones that appealed to me. They were broader. Those ideas saw the most room and possibility within the text.
Now, the Jossverse didn’t go that way, because well that’s a thing for another time that I will never talk about because a)that train left and then blew the hell up and fell of a canyon a long time ago and b)omgwtfwaaaaaank. But the point of the above trip to hellish nostalgia (Yes, I totally am a rapist apologist! *eyeroll*), the point is I search for and love these widening ever broadening texts. These things that continually widen in possibility and ideas on themselves.
This is what I adore about Smallville.
Smallville as a show takes a lot of knocks (and I think most of them unfairly. But… that’s a defense for another time. I will just say that I’ve watched more than enough television in my time and I’ve seen far worse acted and written that got far more critical and fannish acclaim and now I shall pull that back in because not the point and also I am not skilled enough to reserve my snark on that one). Now, quite often the show is completely crack. Fat sucking vampire girl! Vampire Lesbian Sorority! Uh season four! But most of these plots are on the same crack level as your standard non-mythology case of the X-Files. (and you know man, the X-Files, there was some fucking crack rock that never made any god damn sense. WHATEVER, CHRIS CARTER. WHATEVER.*) So if we accept that yes crack and also it’s at least standard with regard to writing or acting (and sometimes I think quite far above. See, the acting of Rosendork, Glover, Annette, and quite often Allison. Kristen and Tom being, I think, still the weakest links in the regular cast acting chain). Right, so if we accept that those are the fairly standard, what makes Smallville actually quite good and wonderful and *my* teenage Superman show is this,
It’s an expansive source/text/show/whatever.
Smallville is a show with a very basic (and not all that original) premise. What if Superman and Lex Luthor were once upon a time the best of friends?
Now, as I said, that’s not all that original. Silver Age Superboy featured a stories about how Lex and Superboy were once BFF until Lex’s jealously of Superboy drove him all crazy fucking evil and thus… oh noes! ENEMIES. There was even an else world story at some point that featured the what if! Scenario of Lex not being evil and being adopted as Clark’s brother and many wacky and vaguely gay in a “dude, you cannot even excuse this by it being the 60s” way ensued. This scenario was
reasserted in the post-Smallville DCU in Mark Waid’s Superman origin story Birthright. The biggest addition that this adds to the comics canon as such (other than reretconning back in the BFF thing which then, as far as I can tell, never really got done anything with. I blame Bruce’s jealously!) was reasserting the notion that Clark and Lex found an equality in one another that they could not find with anyone else (Clark’s alien skills and Lex’s superior brain power).
So what is it about SV that makes that so much broader? I mean, it’s not like BFFs that turn enemies is all that new. Even in the land of Superhero comics we have the once pure true love of Eric and Charles over in the X-Men or the wacky hijinks of Peter and Harry (though that’s less “ideology” and more “you killed my dad and everyone in my family is fucking crazy cakes).
What makes SV different and interesting and all those things is what it is working from. SV never allows the viewer to forget who they are telling the story of. Clark and his red and blue wardrobe and Lex’s dark cool colors. The Warrior Angel and Native American Mythology reflecting back on who Clark and Lex will be. The imagery in Clark and Lex’s visits with death, visions of the future, and Clark’s never ending life in “Hereafter.” Many are irritated with the constant anvils, but the point is to never allow the viewer to forget that no matter where the characters are at the moment, no matter what their desires are (Clark’s desire for a “normal” life and Lex’s desire to be loved/good man), these people are going to be what they have been for 60+ years of American Mythology:
The God (who walks among us) and The Man (who wants to rule us) each the other's challenge. The one that the other will spend their life trying to defeat, save, and defeat again. That never ending battle for truth, justice, and defeating that damn arrogant alien bastard.
I do think it’s the cultural *thing* of the Superman mythology that makes this show not only interesting, but possible. I mean, whatever you can buy pretty teen superheroes 12 for a dollar at your local Cowboys/WaWa/7-11, right? What makes this different is that it’s about Superman. Even people who have never read a comic or watched a cartoon or anything *know who Superman is*. He’s that guy in our modern American mythology. A slightly smaller number of people will go “Oh yeah, Lex Luthor = Evil!” and most even can go “Yeah, truth, justice and uh the American way?” They know that he’s a good guy.
He’s Superman. And if there’s Superman, then there’s Lex Luthor. Superman the guy who will save everyone. The guy who walks among us, but also the guy who we can never be. Symbol of truth, justice, and the American Way (and, this is where I want to stop and go “Dude, the American Way thing isn’t about like fascist whatthefuckever, it’s about OPTIMISM and that sort of noble drive to think you can just do anything which okay! Can be a bit… yes!” And so right, getting back to things…). Then there’s Lex, a man so great that it takes this symbol to be his challenge. To finally demand something of Lex that Lex cannot deliver and all that. I think one of the best representations I’ve seen of *that moment* was in the Lois & Clark pilot you have Lex showing off to Lois and Clark and saying how he loves that everyone in the city has to look up to him. Later, Superman comes to Lex to inform him that he knows Lex is evil and tells him that if he ever needs to find him, all he has to do is “look up.” And these characters shift and mold (to a certain extent) over time. Superman goes from corrupt boss beating up hero to fighting Nazis to being the poster boy for law & order to being… something in between all of those. Lex is a mad scientist during the fear of the post-war era (nuclear bomb, motherfuckers!), a criminal mastermind during the chaotic silver age, a corporate tycoon always getting just beyond Superman’s grasp, and then finally a politician. If we take Lex Luthor: Man of Steel in to account, you even are left with “possible alien menace and man seeking to keep menace at bay through really fucking sketch ass wrong actions” and all that. Though, Lex = world’s most unreliable narrator so whatever.
Superman always our protector, of course, but finally left in the modern era to be conflicted about what his role is in this messy world of ours. Lex, always damnation, but finally we are left with Lex being *us*. This is where Smallville’s handling of the relationship between Clark and Lex is so pivotal to the spin they put on the mythology.
What if, once upon a time, Superman tried to save Lex Luthor? What if he kinda failed? What if Lex kinda wanted to be saved, but failed himself. What does that say and all that?
It isn’t simply that Lex is the biggest woob in the history of angst moppetry and that on a good day he could out angst Peter Parker, Fox Mulder, and the entire crew of Serenity. It’s that over and over again we see the person that Lex wanted to be and even *could* have been, and then didn’t become and *why*. The mythology of Smallville allows that Lex could have been a very different man (“Lexmas”), but Lex could *not* be that man because of everything that came before.
Even as early as the pilot, we see Lex’s desperate desire to be reborn and saved (no matter what he says to Clark in “Vessel” Lex in the early days of his relationship with Clark, even as late as season four, was a man looking to be saved and Clark with his strength and virtue was Lex's own personal hot alien farmboy Jesus). Even that early though, we see the seeds of why Lex cannot be saved, even by Clark. The lying, the desperate desire to know and control. Driven by the abuse of his father, the loneliness and isolation from everyone, and his fucking desperate need to be loved from his father he will at some point break almost every chance at salvation he is given until he eventually starts rejecting all the outside chances for it (“Have you ever thought about where you life is going, Lex?” “All the time”). This rejection of outside salvation for being his own/not needing it becomes clear in “Void” when he lies to Lana about what his mother says. After seeing his damned mother yet again scold him about his obviously sketch ass behavior, he lies and says his mother is proud of him and ignores what she says to him.
So the thing of Lex is that he could have been someone else. That there is the possibility in the universe that he could have been a good man. That if a different choice there, a different move here and he wouldn’t have been Clark’s greatest enemy and this monster that the flashes of the future in the mythology of SV have shown us.
To flip this over to Clark, I am often reminded of the story that Metatron tells Bethany about Jesus’s reaction when he was told he was all son of God messiah wtf!** In some ways, this is Clark in a lot of SV. I think sometimes people mistake Clark on SV for being Peter Parker. The difference is that Peter is driven by guilt and responsibility, that it’s his fault Uncle Ben had died. One is left to wonder/assume that Peter would never have become a hero if Uncle Ben was still alive. Contrast that to Clark who has no such guilt (either in SV *or* any main continuity. The closest thing to that is the death of Jonathan Kent in the films, SV, and older comics when both of his parents were dead. That’s still different though, because the death of Jonathan, at least within the context of SV and the films is intended to be a catalyst to making Clark realize he has to step the fuck up, son).
Clark doesn’t save people because he has to, he saves people becase he *wants* to. In SV, there is the guilt and horror he has over the meteor shower causing the meteor freaks and damage (Rocks fall! Langs die!***). However, I think it is of huge massive OMG NOTICE IT importance that before *any of that* is revealed to Clark it’s Lex that he saves. He pulls Lex out of that car without any thought to hiding his abilities (something his parents had already been preaching to him long before he knew he was an alien omg!) and it’s Lex that Clark will keep on saving. Over and over again in small ways that Clark doesn’t quite get, he will be this thing that keeps Lex hinged. There are times in the first season where Lex will say something that reveals he totally has no real sense of morality beyond his own desires. Not that he’s bad evil wrong! But that it’s just *not there* and Clark will only partially be able to hide his mixture of shock and unease. Take the clone friend of Lana episode where Lex is all “DUDE! CLONES!” and Clark is all *inches farther away omgwtf* (insert your own joke about Superboy’s origins here).
The hugeness of this, the giant screaming thing of it all doesn’t really come home to Clark until “Shattered”/”Asylum” I’ve asserted before that Clark doesn’t really get how he loves Lex (NOT! LIKE! THAT! OMG) until he watches Lex come completely unhinged in season three. You have that, but you also have a Clark who looks at Lex and suddenly doesn’t know that he can do this. Many have faulted Clark for his failure to save Lex in these episodes, but I think that’s kinda wrong because it misses how fucking *huge* that task is, how young and naïve Clark is, and how fucking unbelieveably scared the boy is. He’s 16-ish. He can lift havey things and is indestructible, but Lex? Lex is an entire other thing, because how do you save someone like Lex from himself? (Contrast this back with Chloe/Clark at the start of season three where in Chloe knew she couldn’t save Clark from whatever the hell he was doing in Metropilis during the Red K summer). The look on Clark’s face when he goes to see Lex in the hospital. It isn’t just Lex’s half-crazed confession of knowing Clark’s secret, it’s *everything* It’s how Lex grabs onto Clark when he sees him and that fucking desperate look on Lex’s face.
In that moment, Clark thinks this is something too huge for him. And… it probably *is* because who (and this is taking this into the metaphorical thing of it all and less the actual actions. Sort of, but maybe not!) who can save Lex from all that darkness, all that desperation and fucked upness? Who is that Super? And so maybe Clark could do that, maybe he could devote his life and virtue to keeping Lex’s darkness at bay and making sure that Lex is always a good man.
But at that moment? Clark is a terrified teenage boy that cannot comprehend anything other than being terrified that this is not his job, that he cannot do this.
This notion of the fear and doubt before taking on the Superman mantle is something that I have not seen played with so heavily before in other canons. The two most recent Superman origin stories in the comics are Byrne’s Man of Steel series and the previously mentioned Birthright by Waid. In MoS, we are shown a Clark who, after Jonathan reveals the entire alien thing to him, stops using his skills to win football games and starts saving people. Eventually he takes on the Superman costume in order to preserve some sort of sanity in his real life as Clark Kent. Birthright shows a Clark who has traveled the world and sees the need to become a saving people kind of person but this time with a nifty cape. Both of these while different in plot and interpretation of who Clark Kent/Superman is, are essentially the same: Clark Kent sees a need to save people and does it. Lois & Clark, the movies, and cartoons are essentially same thematically.
What SV does differently is gives Clark Kent his, “My father, why have you forsaken me?” moment.**** or whatever.
What if Superman looked at humanity and his responsibility to them and freaked the hell out? What if he thought it was entirely too much for him to handle? What if he angsted about this a lot and it took him sometime to accept who he is and the great things he can do? What if all his problems and ways he keeps fucking himself up are because he wants to deny who he really is and that he’ll finally be happy and fulfilled when he finally accepts his identity big hero saving people and wearing a cape person? (insert paper on Superman, SV, and Queer Theory here!)
It’s about possibility. Now, it would seem in theory that all fictional universes carry a notion of possibility. However, one has to look at what universe allows and doesn’t allow both in its flashes of alternate universes, mirror/shadow characters, the past and the present as well as its general mythology. Each season, SV continues to open up on itself. Even as Lex gets darker and Clark gets more Super we see the show continue to reassert that there is another way for Lex to be and that Clark is still unbelievable freaked the hell out about what he’s supposed to be. I don’t feel that the slow transition these characters have made has been light switched, and instead feel the sort of odd nature of Lex’s evil fits beautifully with the sketchy but always just appearing enough above the board guy he is destined to become, in just the same way that Clark will eventually learn that even with the angst, saving people is so totally his thing and be content there (even if he didn’t save those ants in Arizona! OH NOES).
Yes, it could all go to hell in a handbasket in the next season/two seasons. I’ve so been there done that (omgwtfjoss). But, at the moment the show has asserted that it wants to expand on our modern mythology about heroes, salvation, villainy, humanity, good, evil while also always expanding on itself. Though SV often asserts a certain moral clarity in its universe (there is good and there is evil, even among the millions of shades of grey), it is still unbelievably complex because of the possibility. How evil is Lex if he could have been better? How good is Clark if he couldn’t save Lex? If Lex (the ultimate representation of the darker aspect of humanity) cannot be saved by even Superman, what does that say about *us* and our ability to be saved. What happens when we reject God/Superman/All the sparkly things that Superman stands for? What happens when we do not accept the shades of grey that Lex chooses to hide in?
What if, man? What if.
*YOU BROKE MY HEART, FREDO.
**I… have a huge Christian Mythology thing and due to my upbringing being very steeped in it I tend to ping toward those interpretations of texts first and others next. And also, because I tend to want stories about those sorts of things… it’s a cycle of omg! OKAY!
***That’s wrong, I know! But… I amuse myself too much. SHAME AND SHAME AND TEARS.
****Matthew 27:46. All of my bibles have this as “My God, My God…” but, I learned it originally as “My father,” and so that’s what we’re going with here. Though, probably the “My God, My God” one is more correct. Four of Four bibles cannot be wrong! OR SOMETHING.