'Smallville' is Breaking My Heart

First, some background.

Two years ago, on a cloudy and cold Saturday morning, I met a guy in a K-Mart parking lot to hand him the cash in exchange for the goods. We nervously approached each other, after he arrived in his beat up ’89 Grand Am. I gave him the money and he gave me my fix… enough to keep my girlfriend Jamie and me happy for a few weeks. After I checked each “Smallville: Season 4” DVD for scratches, the deal was done. I headed home and we watched five episodes that day.

For me, the show has always been about young Clark Kent’s ascension to greatness. He knows, and the show explores, that he was delivered to Earth to rescue mankind from its own frailties. In fact, “Smallville” added a piece of mythology to the story: that his father Jor-El of Krypton specifically chose the town of Smallville, Kansas, right in the heart of the United States of America because his dense molecular structure could help the world (via Clark’s learned perspective as the adopted son of middle-Americans who would teach him morality) to regain moral balance.

Painting by Michael Wilson

Deeper “Superman” mythology aside, the narrative of “Smallville” is light and airy. It deals with the very-heavy-at-the-time-but-not-really-consequential stuff we all dealt with as teenagers. My favorite shot from all 10 seasons is from Season 2 – a solitary shot of Clark, alone in his barn-loft hangout. He had just been watching through his telescope as Lana Lang reconciles with her boyfriend (who Clark used his superpowers to save, denying himself the chance to win the girl). He is alone and sad in his power, and hangs his head… cut to black. That inner struggle makes the show worthwhile. It has also, at times, been a bit like the teeny-bopper-rock-pop my daughter listens to, and that I genuinely, genuinely enjoy.

Go to hell. So what if I like autotuned vocals and melodic guitar riffs over manufactured drum tracks that have been Focus-Group tested by Nickelodeon and Disney and that tie into their programming?

The show spent its nine seasons arcing through both Clark’s internal struggle and Superman mythology. It’s done a better job than not of both adding to and borrowing from the existing canon. Tom Welling has proven to be a perfect casting choice from Day 1, bringing a beautiful humanity to the Kryptonian savior (I’d rather he play Supes in the upcoming WB/Zack Snyder reboot, but since Snyder is the most badassed director of comics-turned-flicks on earth, I trust his judgment). It has also inspired a devout following of people who know right from wrong, and who believe you should do whatever you can to help people remain free to pursue their own happiness. After nine seasons, it was time to wind down the show.

And now, the point.

This may sound trite, but Season 10 has hurt my feelings. Vic Holtreman wrote a good piece wondering about the direction earlier this season. He thought maybe he was imagining the left turn. He wasn’t. It seems that the writers have decided that all forces for good are liberal and all forces for evil are conservative. It’s not subtle, but overt, on the nose, and at times, abusive. The writers – Don Whitehead, Holly Henderson, Jordan Hawley, Genevieve Sparling, Al Septien & Turi Meyer in particular – have used their positions as stewards of one of our most beloved mythologies to put forward their personal politics, at the expense of the show’s fans and frankly, at the expense of the narrative.

Make no mistake, there are politics in the DC Universe. For example, Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) has always been a limousine liberal. And when Kevin Smith brought him back to life a few years ago in the comics, sans money or limos, he was still a hardcore lefty. And Batman has always seemed a gruff law-and-order conservative. All of which is okay. People ARE, after all, political.

But what the writers have done this year, aside from stealing lines from Star Wars (not cool and referential, just stolen lines from lazy writers), is more about injecting politics where none are necessary. Was it necessary for one of the season’s early villains to be a Glenn Beck clone or for Lois to tell Black Canary “I hate to rain on your tea party, but…”? Or to paint a conservative character as not understanding life’s nuances, until she suddenly “repents” and becomes a liberal who now gets that the world is not cast in black and white (because obviously Neanderthal conservatives have no ability to understand nuance)? And is it necessary, or even accurate to create a branch of government (run strictly by hardcore conservative characters with eyepatches) hell-bent on enslaving the show’s heroes in an overt reference to immigration reform (after all, liberals WANT government to run things, don’t they?)? And how did Ma Kent become an Al Franken-esque US Senator who chants “No more HATE (the word liberal folks use to describe any disagreement with anything they say)!” after she and Jonathan spent the early seasons struggling and refusing government subsidies to keep the Kent farm alive, while teaching Clark about self-reliance? There’s an example from nearly every episode.

Recent iterations of Superman, including the sadly disappointing “Superman Returns” and this season of “Smallville” have eschewed “the American Way” leaving Superman to stand only for “Truth” and “Justice.” The idea, I suppose, is to make the Man of Steel a savior for all the world, for the sake of being the savior for all the world. What the people behind this shift in mythology fail to understand is that Superman serves humanity BECAUSE of “the American Way,” not in spite of it.

Superman, from his early beginnings, was always the light of the world because of his upbringing in a modest, Midwestern, and indeed, American family. His virtues are uniquely American and his actions are framed within that context. To shelve that aspect of the character is to transform what we’ve (my 2 year-old son included) always known about him, and through him, ourselves. I don’t want that knowledge to change, either in Superman’s story or in our own national self-reflection. We are the shining city on the hill, and Superman is the mythological representation of that glorious sight.

In an upcoming comic book reboot, DC is planning to make young Clark Kent kind of a whiny loser, rather than a young kid conflicted about the struggle between being able to do anything he wants and doing the right thing. That the company wants to take the iconic character in that direction saddens me, but Superman’s young life can be reinterpreted as time goes on, I suppose. I only hope that the writers will remain faithful to the self-reliant morality that Clark’s adoptive parents inspired within him.

As I write this, I sit in my office, with one wall adorned by a framed Superman poster. The Man Of Tomorrow is stretching out his fist, propelling himself to flight, off to battle the dark powers that confront mankind. In the poster, he is fighting for truth, justice, and indeed, the American way. That poster has followed me for 10 years, and it has, at times comforted me, reminding me that we must all live into our destinies. We must battle the desire to seek vengeance and do good in the world (certainly, Superman could snap Lex Luthor’s neck like a twig, yet he always turns the “greatest criminal mind in history” over to the authorities to be tried by a jury of his peers). Superman is what we all aspire to be, even though none of us can truly fly.

I want Superman to remain a patriotic symbol of aspiration. He reminds us that we, as Americans, stand for honesty, determination, charity, industry and self-reliance. I hope that before this season of Smallville ends, its writers remember that.