As many of you probably know, I keep criticizing Clark mercilessly for keeping his secret from Lois for too long. But for some reason, I never seem to criticize Lois. Why not? Was Lois some kind of saint who never did anything wrong in the show?
Of course not. On the contrary, most FoLCs would say that Lois was the one who was at fault, so that she needed to open her eyes and stop putting down the wonderful guy who wanted to marry her.
But as I've said many times, I don't think of LnC as an entity separate from the rest of the Superman mythos. I see it as a part of the whole Superman story. So when I look at LnC I always compare it with the larger Superman mythos, and I judge it according to how I think it improves on the larger mythos, or in some cases, how it detracts from it.
When Joe Siegel and Jerry Shuster created Superman back in 1938 (actually, back in 1934) they turned their hero into a wet dream for frustrated teenaged boys. Think of it. The original Clark Kent was a total nobody - okay, he was enough of a somebody to have a job, but that was about it. His boss, well, bossed him around, and the beautiful girl he admired, Lois Lane, despised him. How many young boys couldn't identify with a loser like that?
But the nerdy Clark Kent harbours this amazing secret - he is really Superman, by far the most powerful being on the Earth, who makes the entire world go "oooohh" and "aaaaahhh". Interestingly and depressingly, his superhero qualities don't rub off on his Clark Kent persona in the slightest - the sorry reporter is still a hopeless loser, who gets absolutely nowhere with the girl. The man with the double identity lets off steam by repeatedly becoming the mighty hero who keeps stunning the world and rejecting the girl.
As you can see, this leads to a situation where Clark Kent/Superman can never get the girl at all, because as the bumbling Clark Kent he just can't win her, and as the mighty Superman he simply doesn't want her. I would go so far as to say that the original Superman mythos is at least in parts a depressing story about revenge: it is about the geeky loser in love who becomes the mighty Atlas just so that he can get back at the girl and turn her down himself. There is something sad, selfish and depressing about this. Don't get me wrong now, people, but this can be considered as an extremely, extremely "light" variation of the hunger for revenge that drove Viginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho. It is clear that Cho fantasized, among other things, about having a stunningly beautiful girlfriend (who like to be spanked by him to boot). But Cho could never get himself a girlfriend. Instead he punished the people who had rejected him, not primarily by rejecting them back, but by killing more than thirty people.
The long and short of it is that after many years as a comic book reader, I came to the conclusion that there is something sad, depressing and slightly ugly about the way that canon comic book Superman treated Lois Lane. Okay, but what about canon comic book Lois, then? Was she such a saint? Didn't she deserve some of the things that were coming to her?
Yes, she did deserve it, some of it. But not all of it. Yes, she treated Clark Kent very condescendingly, very disrespectfully. But didn't he deserve at least some of it? Did he really, truly have to behave like such a total geek? I couldn't blame Lois for not wanting such a bumbling loser of a man. But I got even more irritated by the fact that Clark didn't have to behave so stupidly. He chose to act that way, to protect his secret identity. But in doing so, he also chose his secret identity over the girl he liked. He couldn't honestly expect her to like the stupid facade he showed her, so how could he be angry at her for rejecting him?
On the few occasions when Clark decided to shape up and be the nice and interesting man that he could be if he chose to, Lois always responded favorably to him. In the comics, there are two major storylines that began when Clark started to shed his idiot persona with Lois. There was an "alternative" story in the seventies, where Clark got amnesia and forgot that he was Superman. Right away he stopped playing the geek with Lois, and she immediately started to like him. It didn't take them long to actually get married, and this was the beginning of DC's "alternative" story, Mr. and Mrs Superman. Then in the nineties, Clark had become the "real" person in the comics instead of Superman, and he just decided that he wanted to date Lois. As soon as he made it clear that he was romantically interested in her she reciprocated his interest, because now he was a likable guy.
Now let's compare these "canon" version of Superman, Clark Kent and Lois Lane from the larger Superman mythos with their counterparts in the show. It is immediately obvious that LnC Clark Kent is a nice guy who is seriously interested in winning the girl. Nerdy Clark is gone! Very, very good!
But hey, what's this? Lois still rejects Clark, even though he is now smart, sexy and personable, and she rejects him in a really cruel, mean way. This is something I don't recognize and don't understand. In fact, her behaviour is so hard to understand for me that I don't take it too seriously. There are hundreds and hundreds of fanfics out there describing how Lois learns to acknowledge to herself that Clark is a great guy. My enjoyment of these stories - which in many cases are splendid - is diminshed by the fact that I don't understand why she ever disapproved of Dean Cain's Clark Kent in the first place. "My" Lois, the one I grew up with, the one who is the original version of her, would see Dean-Clark's great qualities immediately.
Yes, I know. LnC's Lois Lane comes with a baggage. She grew up with an adulterous father who put his daughter down by telling her that she wasn't any good because she was a girl. And she was severely burned by the betrayal she suffered at the hands of fellow reporter Claude. So, okay - I can see that there are some reasons for her to be suspicious of Clark Kent. Still and even so, to me it is impossible to regard Lois's contempt for Clark Kent as altogether believable, and I really can't believe that her questionable contempt for Dean's Clark Kent is the main obstacle to their togetherness.
However, the thing about the show that I find impossible to wrap my head around is Lois's acceptal of Lex's proposal. There was nothing like it in the comic books. But more than that, the whole idea that Lois would fall for Lex is so totally objectionable to me that I can't really enjoy any story that has the Lois/Lex relationship at the center of it.
To show you what I mean, let's consider the "classic", "canon" versions of Clark, Superman and Lex Luthor as they were portrayed in the larger Superman mythos. Clark Kent was the big zero, the nobody. Superman was the strong good guy, and Lex Luthor was the strong bad guy.
We know from real life that the strong bad guys have no trouble getting themselves girlfriends. Prominent mobsters, various gang leaders, charismatic rap singers who sing about raping and punishing girls - whatever these guys lack, it's not girlfriends. And doesn't O.J. Simpson, who probably murdered his ex-wife, have a new girlfriend now?
What is it that attracts women to dangerous and scary guys like these? Part of it is probably the same thing that makes many schoolchildren side with the school bully instead of with his victim. You want to hang with the strong guy, not with the loser. Because if you antagonize the imposing bully, he can turn you into his next victim. Purely and simply, we are scared. We want to stay close to the scary guys and flatter them into giving us their protection. At least we hope that they will not actively turn their scary might on us.
But this doesn't explain why so many women seem so interested in getting together romatically and sexually with bullies and criminals. The traditional explanation is that most of the women are drawn to these guys because they hope to "save" them, to turn them into nice guys. My good friend Arnost rejects that explanation. Arnost claims that much of our human behaviour is driven by primitive forces that our conscious minds don't even understand - namely, our behaviour is driven by the needs of our genes. According to Arnost, the only thing that interests our genes is that we should multiply and have children. Never mind that many modern people aren't too interested in having children in the first place. Our genes view people of the opposite sex as a means for us to have children. But not only do our genes want us to have children, they want us to have many grandchildren, too. And for our genes, this is the all-important question for any female: Who is the best father for her children? Who can create the best possible chances for her children to become successful themselves, so that they, too, can have many children?
Now remember the popular bad guys. There are always swarms of girls surrounding them, aren't there? Okay, so now imagine that one of these women hanging around the dangerous guy gets lucky and manages to have a child by that guy. Imagine that the child is a boy. Suppose the boy grows up to be just like his father, dangerous, criminal and charismatic, and surrounded by hordes of girls. What are his chances to impregnate many of these hopeful girls and leave behind a multitude of children? I would say that his chances are pretty good.
This is a depressing view of humanity. It says that many women want to have children (especially sons) by bad guys, because they hope that their sons will become bad guys themselves, who will be considered attractive because of their badness, so that they can have many children of their own. If this is true, it means that many women are deliberately trying to have sons that will become dangerous individuals and bad for society.
My friend Arnost also insists the human beings are pretty good at reading other human beings. Usually we recognize the bad guys. We know who they are.
In the comics, Lois always knew that Lex was bad. In LnC, she didn't have a clue about his evil nature. This is something I can't accept. Lois is an award-winning investigative reporter. In my opinion, it is impossible to be so dense and clueless about people's true nature and still manage to uncover important and hidden truths about various shady dealings and criminal people.
So, frankly, I don't believe that Lois didn't know that Lex was a bad guy. I'm not saying that she necessarily knew just how bad he was, but I insist that she had to know that he was bad. And if she fell for his proposal, what does that say about Lois?
Let's consider again Lois's three suitors, Clark, Superman and Lex. Clark is the traditional hopeless nerd. I can't blame Lois for rejecting him. (But I dislike her for rejecting Dean Cain's Clark - and at the same time, I don't entirely believe that she rejected him.) Superman, on the other hand, is the strong good guy. The guy who, apart from the fact that he was punishing her for rejecting his Clark persona, is an unselfish hero who works for the greater good of society and mankind. Lex, finally, is the strong bad guy, who rides roughshod over anyone who stands in his way, and who ultimately only wants what is best for himself.
I don't blame LnC's Lois for falling for Superman. I think she read him very well - he is a hero who is incredibly strong and marvellously good at the same time. I don't blame her for wanting him. But I shudder at the episode where Clark proposed to Lois and she not only turned him down, but she also asked him to go get Superman for her. She was telling Clark that he had nothing to offer her. I don't believe that she would reject Dean's likable Clark so out of hand - this is not the Lois I want to believe in. And she absolutely wouldn't have asked him to go get Superman instead, so that she could ask Superman if he would consider marrying her instead. The Lois I believe in wouldn't be so horribly cruel even to the goofiest version of Clark. And finally, when Superman, the strong good guy, rejects her, she decides to settle for Lex, the strong bad guy, instead. In my opinion, she must know what she was doing. She must know that she was deliberately choosing to pledge her personal loyalty to a man who was, for all intents and purposes, a criminal. I can't believe that she would do it. I can't accept that she would it. Canon comic book Lois wouldn't have done it. And the Lois that I can like and accept wouldn't and couldn't do it.
So, bottom line, this is why I keep critizing Clark even though I hardly ever criticize Lois. I criticize Clark for hiding his double identity from Lois, because I recognize that behaviour in him and I believe that he would do it. And I hate it when he does it, because I'm convinced that it primarily serves to keep him and Lois apart.
But I don't recognize Lois's relationship with Lex. It was never there in the comics. In the comics, Lois was not a woman who would choose to ally herself with a bad guy because she hoped she would get favors and advantages that way. And, bottom line, I can't and won't think of Lois as a woman who would really, truly damn the serious consequences to society for her own personal gain. To me, Lois, like Superman, is a person who fights for the greater good. Therefore, her relationship with Lex is not just abnormal, but impossible. To me, the world of Lois and Clark doesn't make sense if Lois ever fell for Lex.
Ann
