on Lex. and the Bros. Winchester
Jan. 20th, 2007 05:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotWatched Smallville. Watched the whole episode. I believe this is the first episode of this show I have watched straight through with no fastforwarding. Entirely not coincidentally, this is the first episode with no Lana whatsoever! Anyway, it was fun. Not so fun as to get me regularly watching the show, but fun. I love Lex, and I love evil, so, yeah, great tastes that taste great together. The ponytail line killed me.
Except that it's also sad, because we've been watching first and second season SV lately. And TPTB made this tactical error with Lex. Now, Lex (other than the movie interpretations) has always been the coolest of the cool, the most kick-ass supervillain, because he's ruthlessly ambitious enough to do anything and brilliant enough to be able to do it. He's got brains, wealth, power, and charisma, and Smallville went and gave him the one thing he was lacking, which was The Sexy. Bald is beautiful: Smallville's Lex can seduce the white off a cue ball. And that's cool. The appeal of Hot Evil is something anime cottoned onto a while ago and it's always been a matter of great regret that Hollywood is behind on that particular curve.
But Smallville didn't stop there. Nor did Smallville stop with the one-time melodrama of Superboy and Lex Luthor's broken friendship. Instead, they went on to make Lex himself a sympathetic figure. More than sympathetic; they made him tragic. In fact, they made him so tragic that rather than finding his future crimes reprehensibly unforgivable (if deliciously entertaining), a whole bunch of us find him totally forgivable no matter what he does. The problem? Well, it's hard to be rooting for the hero when you're spending much of the time shrieking at him, "You asshat! This is all your fault!"
In some of the original Superboy comics, Superboy and Lex were friends, of a sort. Lex was a social outcast due to his untreated Science Related Memetic Disorder. Superboy, being both a super-nice kid and also a genius in his own right, and feeling sympathetic what with the whole stranger-in-a-strange-land thing, befriends Lex, builds him his own lab and such. This backfires when one of Lex's experiments goes awry, Superboy saves Lex from it but ends up destroying the lab and the experiment, which accident incidentally causes all of Lex's hair to fall out. He's a little bitter after that.
I rather like how Smallville keeps Lex's hair loss being indirectly Clark's fault. Not that Lex knows or especially minds this. (Who would? The exoticness is a crucial part of his Sexy). His character is pretty different otherwise, because it's mainly based on the '80s/'90s business tycoon Lex Luthor. Except for the whole sympathetic thing. Because young Lex, Smallville style, is definitely flawed - he's spoiled, he's selfish, he's got far too much pride and arrogance and too few boundaries. But he's not evil.
Except that every single person in the town of Smallville has read the comic books, and therefore knows that he is going to be, someday. Which sets up this crucial tragedy of the series, except it arranges it in a way that leaves one bitter and ticked off with the so-called good guys. Because Lex isn't evil, and doesn't want to be evil. And spends most of the first four seasons of the show trying not to be evil, trying to reach out to people, all but begging for someone to save him because he doesn't know how to save himself. By fourth season he is begging - "There's a darkness in me that I can't always control..." "We all have a dark side, Lex." "Yeah, but I can feel mine creeping over the corners. Your friendship helps keep it at bay. It reminds me that there are truly good people in the world." And Clark...lies to him, as Clark has been lying to him from the beginning. He doesn't make any real effort to preserve this friendship that is the only thing keeping Lex from becoming, well, a supervillain, as it turns out.
And yes, there are extenuating circumstances. Clark doesn't tell his secrets to anyone, not willingly, and doesn't even see it as a betrayal. I blame that on Ma and Pa Kent, who somehow missed out on the "Truth" part when they were instilling in their boy "Justice & the American Way" (then again, given the current administration, the first and last are pretty much incompatible anyway...) Clark's lies about his identity are so natural to him that he's almost incapable of seeing beyond them to how they might hurt people. This gets him in trouble with a lot of people, but Lex worst of all, because Lex has been betrayed and lied to so many times by everyone he's ever been close to (his father, his mother, Pamela); and also because Lex's greatest flaw, more than any other, is his curiosity. He can't let anything go; he always has to know - not just about Clark, but about himself, about what the meteors did to him, about how he lived when he should have died; but all of that is inextricably bound up in Clark. He can't investigate one without the other. And Clark takes that insatiable need to know as a betrayal, as much as Lex takes Clark's refusal to admit the truth as one. Lex lies back to Clark, true - but only after Clark lies to him, repeatedly and obviously. And still trying to be friends, all the same, because he needs Clark's friendship, even with the lies he knows Clark is telling.
And yes, it's unfair to Clark - unfair for Lex to put the heavy burden of his soul on a teenage boy only just coming to terms with his own dark sides. Clark is unprepared to deal with Lex's darkness - most people are; Lex's scars run frighteningly deep. If Clark were an ordinary kid, he couldn't really be blamed for cutting and running. Except Clark is not an ordinary kid. Clark is supposed to be a young superhero. The greatest hero, Superman, whose indomitable physical strength is supposed to only be outmatched by his strength of character. If anyone in the world could help shoulder Lex Luthor's darkness and walk him into the light and warmth he so desperately wants, it would be Superman.
Except Smallville's Clark doesn't. Clark turns his back; Clark runs away and lets Lex descend. And his parents - support him all the way. Don't get me wrong. I love Martha and Jonathan Kent, I really do. But when it comes to Lex, they're cruel. Time and again they slap him down, and it's not even totally clear why. They say it's because he's too much like his father. Except they give Lionel a chance. Everyone gives Lionel a chance! (Which, well. It's hard to blame them for. This is Lionel Luthor we're talking about. He's nothing if not entertaining.) Even when they do give Lex a chance, it never lasts more than an episode or two, and then they're back to the mistrust. They're terrified of Lex learning Clark's secret and they let that fear blind them to any other possibilities.
The worst part of it is, their fears are pretty much for nothing. One, because one truth about Lex Luthor is that he will do anything for his friends. Lie, kill, accept a murder rap (see "Zero" and "Memoria"), whatever it takes. Lex is someone you want on your side, badly; as dangerous as he is to cross, if you can get him as an ally there's none better. And also - because Lex does find out. "Asylum" has to be Lex's most tragic moment. Drugged, institutionalized, tied down, tortured, and Lex keeps Clark's secret. He could use it to possibly buy his way out with his father, but the possibility doesn't seem to cross his mind. And when Clark comes to save him - when Clark gets in trouble - Lex's only thought is saving Clark.
And, after all that, when he loses his memory, Clark doesn't remind him. Doesn't give him those secrets back, and while I do believe that at the time, Clark was genuinely worried about Lex's safety - later, he could have told him. He should have known, he should have understood, but he didn't, either too blind or too scared. Some Superman. That was probably Lex's most noble point, his apex, the closest he came to salvation. It's pretty much downhill from there.
Even so, Lex still tries. As late as fourth season, Lex's worst nightmare - is becoming exactly what he becomes. "Scare" is an awfully bitter episode. Clark, proto-Superman, is still so petty that his greatest fear is rejection from his high school crush (admittedly rejection of the stabbing him through with a kryptonite shard variety. Still, it's such a personal, closed thing. I'd've thought it would be failing to save someone, but Smallville's Clark is much more hung up on getting Lana-laid than helping people or anything dumb like that.) Lex is the one with the epic terrors; he dreams of smiling as he ends the world. This is his nightmare. He doesn't want his future, but he doesn't know how to avoid it.
Part of the problem is that no one sees how trapped Lex really is. "If anyone can choose who they want to be, Lex, it's you," Clark tells him back in first season, but he's dead wrong. The mistake is understandable, because the Luthors are infamous for making their own rules. Lex's teenage rebellion never had any legal repercussions; he's calmer now but still so spoiled that he throws a temper tantrum when he gets a parking ticket. And that's all that the citizens of Smallville see (when they're not paging through their comic books comparing the bald present brat to the bald future terror): a kid who never had any boundaries or brakes put on him, who thinks he can get away with anything because he always has. What they don't understand - what only Clark sees, and that's vaguely, because he's too young and inexperienced to really grasp it - is that Lex has lived his whole life under an incredibly rigid and oppressive set of standards, those laid down by Lionel Luthor. A paternal dictatorship so extreme that his mother murdered her second son rather than see him endure the same; but almost no one can see that law, because it's a code so different from the usual legal or moral strictures that it's unrecognizable to the regular honest down-to-earth folk of Smallville. Even Lex's teen rebellion was following Lionel's law; it's only in coming to Smallville that Lex is mature and strong enough - with the help of new examples to follow - to break away from the Luthor code. And by then it's too little, too late; no one bothers to step in and try to teach Lex other ways, so try as he might otherwise, he inevitably ends up following the path his father set him upon. Only because he's the greater man, he ends up proceeding further down that path than Lionel ever dared tread.
In the end, maybe it's no one's fault, just the way it had to happen, which is the greatest tragedy of all. Someday, when Superman comes into his own, maybe he'll see, maybe he'll realize his culpability and be ashamed of the chance he missed. Meanwhile, it's painful to watch, irritating to see the hero being so unheroic, failing so miserably and not even noticing; agonizing to see Lex becoming his own nightmares. And all the viewers are left shouting, like the audience at a slasher flick, "No, don't go down that hall, don't open that door!" but Lex can't hear anyone, and no one comes to stop him, not until it's too late...
More thoughts here
But enough of that depressingness. There's always Supernatural. Which is still apparently confusing its show bible with Mama BNF's Great Big Book of Yummy Fanfic Cliches. (When it's not being creepy as hell. Have I mentioned I hate horror? I hate horror. The trick with SPN is that I always forget I'm watching horror, being too distracted by the beautiful brotherliness, up until the point it has freaking creepy dolls - dolls! dolls are worse than clowns, even! - and swingsets moving by themselves and I wig out, because I'm a total wuss.)
Seriously. Does this show have a 'must break the fangirls' hearts at least once an episode' requirement or what? I'm running out of vocabulary to describe how much I'm loving it. I mean, random drunken confessions and extracted promises. And then Sam, even totally hungover, so neatly sidesteps the question of what he remembers that you know he does, even before he springs it on Dean. I adore Sam this season, I really do. He's letting himself depend on his brother because it's what he has to do, and Dean can take it. I love how these boys operate. Dean is so much better now, after he's come clean to Sam, he's really seeming himself again for the first time this season. And naturally, since he's got it together, now Sam can afford to go totally to pieces. Co-dependent, much? Hey, whatever gets you through your terrible monster-slaying lives. And makes the fangirls squee. Because oh yes, we totally are.
Squee, I tell you! Squee!
Except that it's also sad, because we've been watching first and second season SV lately. And TPTB made this tactical error with Lex. Now, Lex (other than the movie interpretations) has always been the coolest of the cool, the most kick-ass supervillain, because he's ruthlessly ambitious enough to do anything and brilliant enough to be able to do it. He's got brains, wealth, power, and charisma, and Smallville went and gave him the one thing he was lacking, which was The Sexy. Bald is beautiful: Smallville's Lex can seduce the white off a cue ball. And that's cool. The appeal of Hot Evil is something anime cottoned onto a while ago and it's always been a matter of great regret that Hollywood is behind on that particular curve.
But Smallville didn't stop there. Nor did Smallville stop with the one-time melodrama of Superboy and Lex Luthor's broken friendship. Instead, they went on to make Lex himself a sympathetic figure. More than sympathetic; they made him tragic. In fact, they made him so tragic that rather than finding his future crimes reprehensibly unforgivable (if deliciously entertaining), a whole bunch of us find him totally forgivable no matter what he does. The problem? Well, it's hard to be rooting for the hero when you're spending much of the time shrieking at him, "You asshat! This is all your fault!"
In some of the original Superboy comics, Superboy and Lex were friends, of a sort. Lex was a social outcast due to his untreated Science Related Memetic Disorder. Superboy, being both a super-nice kid and also a genius in his own right, and feeling sympathetic what with the whole stranger-in-a-strange-land thing, befriends Lex, builds him his own lab and such. This backfires when one of Lex's experiments goes awry, Superboy saves Lex from it but ends up destroying the lab and the experiment, which accident incidentally causes all of Lex's hair to fall out. He's a little bitter after that.
I rather like how Smallville keeps Lex's hair loss being indirectly Clark's fault. Not that Lex knows or especially minds this. (Who would? The exoticness is a crucial part of his Sexy). His character is pretty different otherwise, because it's mainly based on the '80s/'90s business tycoon Lex Luthor. Except for the whole sympathetic thing. Because young Lex, Smallville style, is definitely flawed - he's spoiled, he's selfish, he's got far too much pride and arrogance and too few boundaries. But he's not evil.
Except that every single person in the town of Smallville has read the comic books, and therefore knows that he is going to be, someday. Which sets up this crucial tragedy of the series, except it arranges it in a way that leaves one bitter and ticked off with the so-called good guys. Because Lex isn't evil, and doesn't want to be evil. And spends most of the first four seasons of the show trying not to be evil, trying to reach out to people, all but begging for someone to save him because he doesn't know how to save himself. By fourth season he is begging - "There's a darkness in me that I can't always control..." "We all have a dark side, Lex." "Yeah, but I can feel mine creeping over the corners. Your friendship helps keep it at bay. It reminds me that there are truly good people in the world." And Clark...lies to him, as Clark has been lying to him from the beginning. He doesn't make any real effort to preserve this friendship that is the only thing keeping Lex from becoming, well, a supervillain, as it turns out.
And yes, there are extenuating circumstances. Clark doesn't tell his secrets to anyone, not willingly, and doesn't even see it as a betrayal. I blame that on Ma and Pa Kent, who somehow missed out on the "Truth" part when they were instilling in their boy "Justice & the American Way" (then again, given the current administration, the first and last are pretty much incompatible anyway...) Clark's lies about his identity are so natural to him that he's almost incapable of seeing beyond them to how they might hurt people. This gets him in trouble with a lot of people, but Lex worst of all, because Lex has been betrayed and lied to so many times by everyone he's ever been close to (his father, his mother, Pamela); and also because Lex's greatest flaw, more than any other, is his curiosity. He can't let anything go; he always has to know - not just about Clark, but about himself, about what the meteors did to him, about how he lived when he should have died; but all of that is inextricably bound up in Clark. He can't investigate one without the other. And Clark takes that insatiable need to know as a betrayal, as much as Lex takes Clark's refusal to admit the truth as one. Lex lies back to Clark, true - but only after Clark lies to him, repeatedly and obviously. And still trying to be friends, all the same, because he needs Clark's friendship, even with the lies he knows Clark is telling.
And yes, it's unfair to Clark - unfair for Lex to put the heavy burden of his soul on a teenage boy only just coming to terms with his own dark sides. Clark is unprepared to deal with Lex's darkness - most people are; Lex's scars run frighteningly deep. If Clark were an ordinary kid, he couldn't really be blamed for cutting and running. Except Clark is not an ordinary kid. Clark is supposed to be a young superhero. The greatest hero, Superman, whose indomitable physical strength is supposed to only be outmatched by his strength of character. If anyone in the world could help shoulder Lex Luthor's darkness and walk him into the light and warmth he so desperately wants, it would be Superman.
Except Smallville's Clark doesn't. Clark turns his back; Clark runs away and lets Lex descend. And his parents - support him all the way. Don't get me wrong. I love Martha and Jonathan Kent, I really do. But when it comes to Lex, they're cruel. Time and again they slap him down, and it's not even totally clear why. They say it's because he's too much like his father. Except they give Lionel a chance. Everyone gives Lionel a chance! (Which, well. It's hard to blame them for. This is Lionel Luthor we're talking about. He's nothing if not entertaining.) Even when they do give Lex a chance, it never lasts more than an episode or two, and then they're back to the mistrust. They're terrified of Lex learning Clark's secret and they let that fear blind them to any other possibilities.
The worst part of it is, their fears are pretty much for nothing. One, because one truth about Lex Luthor is that he will do anything for his friends. Lie, kill, accept a murder rap (see "Zero" and "Memoria"), whatever it takes. Lex is someone you want on your side, badly; as dangerous as he is to cross, if you can get him as an ally there's none better. And also - because Lex does find out. "Asylum" has to be Lex's most tragic moment. Drugged, institutionalized, tied down, tortured, and Lex keeps Clark's secret. He could use it to possibly buy his way out with his father, but the possibility doesn't seem to cross his mind. And when Clark comes to save him - when Clark gets in trouble - Lex's only thought is saving Clark.
And, after all that, when he loses his memory, Clark doesn't remind him. Doesn't give him those secrets back, and while I do believe that at the time, Clark was genuinely worried about Lex's safety - later, he could have told him. He should have known, he should have understood, but he didn't, either too blind or too scared. Some Superman. That was probably Lex's most noble point, his apex, the closest he came to salvation. It's pretty much downhill from there.
Even so, Lex still tries. As late as fourth season, Lex's worst nightmare - is becoming exactly what he becomes. "Scare" is an awfully bitter episode. Clark, proto-Superman, is still so petty that his greatest fear is rejection from his high school crush (admittedly rejection of the stabbing him through with a kryptonite shard variety. Still, it's such a personal, closed thing. I'd've thought it would be failing to save someone, but Smallville's Clark is much more hung up on getting Lana-laid than helping people or anything dumb like that.) Lex is the one with the epic terrors; he dreams of smiling as he ends the world. This is his nightmare. He doesn't want his future, but he doesn't know how to avoid it.
Part of the problem is that no one sees how trapped Lex really is. "If anyone can choose who they want to be, Lex, it's you," Clark tells him back in first season, but he's dead wrong. The mistake is understandable, because the Luthors are infamous for making their own rules. Lex's teenage rebellion never had any legal repercussions; he's calmer now but still so spoiled that he throws a temper tantrum when he gets a parking ticket. And that's all that the citizens of Smallville see (when they're not paging through their comic books comparing the bald present brat to the bald future terror): a kid who never had any boundaries or brakes put on him, who thinks he can get away with anything because he always has. What they don't understand - what only Clark sees, and that's vaguely, because he's too young and inexperienced to really grasp it - is that Lex has lived his whole life under an incredibly rigid and oppressive set of standards, those laid down by Lionel Luthor. A paternal dictatorship so extreme that his mother murdered her second son rather than see him endure the same; but almost no one can see that law, because it's a code so different from the usual legal or moral strictures that it's unrecognizable to the regular honest down-to-earth folk of Smallville. Even Lex's teen rebellion was following Lionel's law; it's only in coming to Smallville that Lex is mature and strong enough - with the help of new examples to follow - to break away from the Luthor code. And by then it's too little, too late; no one bothers to step in and try to teach Lex other ways, so try as he might otherwise, he inevitably ends up following the path his father set him upon. Only because he's the greater man, he ends up proceeding further down that path than Lionel ever dared tread.
In the end, maybe it's no one's fault, just the way it had to happen, which is the greatest tragedy of all. Someday, when Superman comes into his own, maybe he'll see, maybe he'll realize his culpability and be ashamed of the chance he missed. Meanwhile, it's painful to watch, irritating to see the hero being so unheroic, failing so miserably and not even noticing; agonizing to see Lex becoming his own nightmares. And all the viewers are left shouting, like the audience at a slasher flick, "No, don't go down that hall, don't open that door!" but Lex can't hear anyone, and no one comes to stop him, not until it's too late...
More thoughts here
But enough of that depressingness. There's always Supernatural. Which is still apparently confusing its show bible with Mama BNF's Great Big Book of Yummy Fanfic Cliches. (When it's not being creepy as hell. Have I mentioned I hate horror? I hate horror. The trick with SPN is that I always forget I'm watching horror, being too distracted by the beautiful brotherliness, up until the point it has freaking creepy dolls - dolls! dolls are worse than clowns, even! - and swingsets moving by themselves and I wig out, because I'm a total wuss.)
Seriously. Does this show have a 'must break the fangirls' hearts at least once an episode' requirement or what? I'm running out of vocabulary to describe how much I'm loving it. I mean, random drunken confessions and extracted promises. And then Sam, even totally hungover, so neatly sidesteps the question of what he remembers that you know he does, even before he springs it on Dean. I adore Sam this season, I really do. He's letting himself depend on his brother because it's what he has to do, and Dean can take it. I love how these boys operate. Dean is so much better now, after he's come clean to Sam, he's really seeming himself again for the first time this season. And naturally, since he's got it together, now Sam can afford to go totally to pieces. Co-dependent, much? Hey, whatever gets you through your terrible monster-slaying lives. And makes the fangirls squee. Because oh yes, we totally are.
Squee, I tell you! Squee!
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Lex, Tragic Anti-Hero
Date: 2007-01-22 06:17 am (UTC)I won't bore you by climbing onto my soap-box about how Lex "can't" be evil (it's a long soap-box oration about moral agency and choice, and how Lex hasn't had enough of either, and therefore can't be 'evil,' though he can definitely do evil things). But I completely agree, and have since S1 SV, that Lex can never be "Luthor" to me now. Because I know what shaped him, and basically think he's pretty justified in becoming what he becomes, and a lot of that is precisely because of the Kents. It's pretty much ruined me for Superman altogether, and is one of two reasons I didn't see "Superman Returns" (the other being that Chris Reeve is forever Superman to me).
What I love about your story - and I already said it - is how you present "Lex" and "Luthor," showing the ambiguity in a way that conveys a wonderful understanding of it. There are quite a few fanfic writers who do Lex proud, but Rivkat is among the best at reconciling Lex the Tragic Anti-Hero with Luthor the Supervillain: not excusing him, but understanding him (the way she can crawl into his head is astounding). Your Lex characterization reminds me of hers, and I hope you take that as the compliment I mean it to be.
Re: Lex, Tragic Anti-Hero
Date: 2007-01-22 11:10 am (UTC)It is very interesting to be watching JLU at the same time as SV (and not merely because JLU, though a cartoon, is rather the superior show...) JLU has probably the ultimate incarnation of what you call "Luthor", the master supervillain. He's compelling not because he's at all sympathetic but because he's so outrageous that it's a thrill to watch him in action. He's the smartest man alive (excepting maybe Bruce Wayne) and is always so far ahead of everyone that you end up cheering him on simply because it feels like you're supporting the winning side! Trying to reconcile that Luthor with SV's Lex is...an exercise in imaginative psychology, to say the least, and not just because SV's Lex seems to lack the genius mad scientist gene that is a significant part of Luthor's makeup, along with the financial acumen. (I have to confess that despite initial appearances, my SS x-over is not really such a reconciliation at all, but rather me sidestepping the issue to the point of parody; still I hope it'll entertain you! I'm contemplating another story which would have a more serious take on the matter, because I'm very curious if I could make it work...)
And wow, I'm honored to be compared to Rivkat - while some of her stories give me the chills, she's a fantastic writer. I also think