Recently, when I have tried to voice opinions on these boards, a lot of people have felt attacked and insulted. So let me start by saying now that I'm trying to voice
my own opinion and nothing else. If you feel that I'm trying to put words in your mouths and thoughts in your heads, I'm not. I don't know what any of you are thinking. I
will try to formulate certain general theories, but I may certainly be wrong about them.
Precisely because I can't read anybody else's mind, it is of course impossible for me to know why any other member of this board is a Lois and Clark fan at all, or what it is about our favorite couple that attracts any of you to them in the first place. But I can think of certain possible reasons that could make people approve of Lois and Clark.
The first reason is that some people may think that Lois and Clark could serve as
role models for young people. While I have no idea how any member of these boards views premarital sex, I do know that there is an influential "family values movement" in the U.S.A., a movement which tends to condemn premarital sex. Anyone who shares this view of premarital sex can use Lois and Clark as role models. According to the LnC TV show, our favorite couple remained absolutely chaste until their wedding night, even though they had to suffer through all kinds of angst and resist very many temptations before they could finally exchange their wedding vows. But, also according to the LnC TV show, Lois and Clark became very, very happy after they were married. Therefore, it is possible (but not necessary) to conclude that Lois and Clark became so happy
because they didn't have sex until their wedding night.
Personally I have a problem with this kind of view of Lois and Clark, if only because I grew up with very didactic, rather moralistic stories about children who behaved well and were rewarded because of it. These stories were usually religious and had a supernatural twist. A typical story dealt with a little girl who was playing in a ramshackle old shed and suddenly heard her mother call out to her. The girl immediately left the shed to go and find out what her mother wanted. Hardly had she exited the decrepit building than the roof came crashing down, and it would have killed her instantly if she hadn't left the shed the moment she heard her mother's voice. Of course, it turned out that her mother
hadn't called for her after all. Instead, it was the girl's guardian angel who had imitated her mother's voice and called out to the child. The angels looked out for her, but it was the girl's own obedience that saved her.
I liked this story, but at the same time it irritated me. I knew a lot of religious people, but not a single one of them had ever heard from, let alone been saved by, their own guardian angel. Therefore I felt that the story about the girl was lying to me. If I were ever to find myself in mortal danger, I was sure that no angel would call out to me to save me. The story was trying to make me and other children become obedient, and it did so by promising us a reward, our own guardian angel that actively intervened in our lives and saved us from bodily harm, as long as we were obedient. But I felt very strongly that this reward did not exist, and the obedience that would give us this reward was an ideal in itself, an ideal for its own sake.
Similarly, I feel that the stories that suggest that Lois and Clark became so happy
because they stayed chaste until their wedding night are lying to me. I believe that the reward that Lois and Clark seemed to get - a happy marriage - is not generally created by premarital abstinence. I believe, instead, that the premarital chastity is an ideal in itself, an ideal for its own sake. I believe that it takes very many factors to create marital bliss, and I don't think that premarital chastity is necessarily one of those factors.
I said that the stories which promote Lois and Clark's premarital chastity feel like lies to me, but that doesn't mean that I regard the
writers of these stories as liars. Indeed, I think that these writers express their own beliefs and ideals about romance and marriage in their stories. And for what it's worth, I think that many LNC fans are here because this is a place where it is possible to indulge in various lofty ideals and ideas about what is right and good, not least when it comes to relationships. Frankly I don't believe you can easily be a fan of Superman if you don't have the slightest inclination to indulge in wishful thinking. I think many of us live out our dreams by creating "perfect" fantasies embodied by Lois and Clark. Some writers may celebrate Lois and Clark's premarital chastity that way, not because they necessarily believe that unmarried abstinence automatically leads to a happy marriage, but because a LnC story is a good place to celebrate one's own ideals about romance and marriage.
To some people, Lois and Clark's premarital chastity in the face of strong temptation may indeed be the most attractive thing about them. To others, it is probably the LnC passion and attraction in itself that make these fans want to see more of Lois and Clark. And if you are here because you respond to the passion you sense between Lois and Clark, then I think it's natural that you want to see Lois and Clark give in to that passion. In other words, then it becomes natural that you want to read LnC nfics containing dscriptions of Lois and Clark's lovemaking. Moreover, I think that if Lois and Clark's passion is what attracts you to this site, then it is also natural that you may prefer to read about Lois and Clark's
unmarried encounters over their married ones. After all, we could see that Lois and Clark were extremely attracted to one another, but that they were also afraid and reluctant to give in to their attraction. It takes a lot of passion to overcome a strong resistance, and because we must assume there will be more resistance to unmarried than to married lovemaking, we may also assume that Lois and Clark are driven by a stronger passion during their premarital encounters than during their married ones. In other words, their unmarried sex seems to pay a greater tribute to their passion than their married encounters, and to passion-lovers, their unmarried sex will therefore be more satisfying.
Naturally, it is possible to counter that Lois and Clark's passion isn't less overwhelming just because their need to respect the purity of their love and the sanctity of marriage is even stronger. But is unmarried sex an ugly thing that cheapens a relationship and diminishes the love that is its foundation?
Personally, I idealize Clark and Lois very, very much. I think of them as two people who were born light-years apart and yet were destined to love no one but each other. The obstacles that they had to overcome were immense, and the purity of their passion is, to me, a thing of amazing beauty. To me, the idea that their physical union might be soiled by the fact that they have not undergone a certain earthly ceremony is absolutely unacceptable. It is their soulmate status, their connection across the light years, that makes them so utterly, perfectly romantic and erotic to me. To me, a wedding ceremony is something rather superficial and unimportant in comparison to the cosmic bond between them. And to me, the idea that they would refrain from consummating their cosmic bond just because they have not yet uttered certain words in a certain building
is something that cheapens their passion and their bond. How can a string of words be more important than
them? To me, that is unacceptable.
DJ, you said this:
To me personally, their waiting in the series made their love worth more - not cheapen it. It proved that they were willing to wait for each other. That they meant more to each other just just a cheap thrill or a fling (but I come from a traditional upbringing).
To you, it was Lois and Clark's willingness to wait to have sex that really proved that they didn't regard one another as a cheap thrill or a fling. That is your take on them, or at least that's how I read your quote. We all see these people differently. Nevertheless, I think most LnC fans will agree that Lois and Clark's relationship is something incredibly important and significant, and that it is
not a fling. I can't remember a single LnC story that has treated Lois and Clark's relationship as a cheap thrill.
I think we all felt that Faustian was ultimately about Lois and Clark's incredible bond, too. To Clark, their buddy sex was not about a cheap thrill but about trying to win Lois
(and about giving in to his incredible passion for her). To Lois, it may have seemed like a fling, but we all knew that it was so much more than that. Think about it. Wouldn't almost all of us have been absolutely extremely disappointed if Lois had just walked away from her buddy sex with Clark and turned her back on him forever? Is it even possible to think of Lois and Clark that way - as two individuals who indulge in a cheap fling and then just walk away from it, slightly jaded by their experience but otherwise unchanged?
To some people, Lois and Clark's premarital chastity in spite of their overwhelming passion is the most beautiful tribute to their love. To others, to me, their premarital lovemaking is an all but necessary confirmation of their passion and truly cosmic love. We view their lovemaking differently. Let's try to get along anyway.
Ann
