crimes against a television audience

[xparrot]

Still wrestling with the Lex question, and the more I think about it, the more I believe my support of a budding arch-villain is all the heroes' fault. (Or, technically, the bad writing's, but for now let's stick to canon.) greenlady2 and others having been discussing here how one disturbing aspect of SV is how the heroes often do the same things as the villains, but are not found morally questionable simply by virtue of being the 'good guys'. In addition to that, I find it just as questionable how the heroes have been treating the villain's 'evil' acts - because for all they pronounce Lex as evil, they've been remarkably reluctant to do anything useful about it. Who are we supposed to be rooting for, here?

I argued before that Lex may not be willfully choosing evil so much as not seeing any good choices left to him. We the audience are in the same boat. In a comic book, we have the heroes to root for; even when they screw up, they're still trying to do the right thing, and they come through in the end. But in SV, the hero has yet to come into his own. Clark only helps in situations he's personally involved in, either because they're his fault (the Zoners) or because he knows one of the victims, either an old friend or someone he's just met and befriended (every other storyline). If you're not friends with Clark, you're screwed.

Never is this more clear than in the 33.1 story arc. "Crimes against humanity," Chloe pronounces of Lex's programs. But when they're breaking Moira out of the facility in "Progeny," do they spare a thought to the other people being held there? In "Ryan" Clark was willing to break Ryan out of the lab testing him, but the 33.1 freaks weren't savvy enough to cultivate a friendship with Clark, and therefore are left to rot. Likewise, in "Freak" Chloe was terrified that she was about to be killed, as they watched those green GPS dots around them go red. Repeat - sat and watched them go red, believing they were watching people die. People only blocks away, in the same town; possibly - likely - people they know. Clark has superspeed. They had a map to all their locations. And Clark did nothing except help his friend Chloe. Once she was safe, Chloe never so much as suggested that Clark try to help any of those dots left. The only one they investigated was the death of the boy Chloe had met herself earlier. (Now, I don't believe anyone else died in "Freak" but the bowling alley boy; I believe that was a massive misinterpretation of events, and Lex was tying up loose ends by taking out the tracking devices, not the people implanted with them. Otherwise one would think there'd be mention of the rash of deaths, and Clark could have brought the computer as evidence to the police, a sticky situation for LuthorCorp. But none of this happens.)

Oliver and Company are being more active - but not necessarily in a more positive way. They're 'taking down' 33.1 facilities, but we don't know how. At least some of the labs they're blowing up. What are they doing with the people being held in said facilities? (If they're all indeed holding freaks or other talents? Some facilities may be researching other kryptonite applications.) Are they just opening the cage doors and letting them run free? Some of these people may need medical attention - either because of whatever experiments Lex is running on them (we have yet to see a single 33.1 'experiment', so how invasive or dangerous the procedures are there's no way to know) or because of their own condition - or because Superboy knocked them into a coma; see the man in "Subterranean." If that man is still in a coma, he'll need to be placed in a hospital. If he's not in a coma and has been released - that's even worse; he's a mass murderer. Odds are that at least some of the other freaks are as well. Lex got many (if not all) of his subjects from Belle Reve, convicted criminals who tried the insanity defense, apparently. Is the Junior League checking arrest records and taking those criminals into the police...who will probably utterly fail to hold them, since prisons are not equipped for super powers?

Herein lies the problem with SV. Meteor infection is a serious problem. Kryptonite is a dangerous health risk. And Lex Luthor is the only person doing anything about it. He's not doing the right thing - but the series thus far hasn't offered any other options.

If Oliver was using Queen Industries' vast wealth to set up a freak assistance network, programs to help infected people or other mutations, researching kryptonite's dangers and methods to contain the problem, then it would be easier to condemn Lex, to point out he could have done the same, rather than the extremely questionable methods of 33.1. Instead, Oliver helps out a few other freaks with grudges, people with talents that can further his own ambitions, and convinces them to join his anti-Lex quest.

If you're a meteor freak, what are your choices? You can try to become a superhero, maybe, but with the possible exception of the guy in Hug (who murdered his ex-best friend; yes, it was self-defense, but still, he killed the guy) not one freak has ever managed that (probably because of meteor psychosis; it seems evident that one effect of meteor mutation is neurological disorders.) You can suffer alone with your isolating powers, hiding what you are and withdrawing from society before you're hurt or you hurt someone. You can kill people (especially if your mutation leaves you with no choice), and probably get killed; or kill yourself before you kill anyone else. You can get committed to Belle Reve or another such hospital. Or you can go into 33.1.

Unless you have a proto-superhero best friend who is powerful enough to stop you if your walking time bomb self goes off, those are your only options. There are no government programs to help people like you, no support groups, no medical treatments or insurance policies (unless you're lucky enough to become friends with a guy who knows a billionaire who can pay for an eye operation).

Of all these options, 33.1 is the most unknown; possibly a preferable option, at least for some people. Lowell the meteor freak in "Progeny" shows no interest in running away from it, oddly. Way back in "Mortal" the freaks were resentful about going back to Belle Reve after living it up 33.1. For all Chloe says 33.1 is committing crimes against humanity, we've seen relatively little evidence of that, compared to, say, the mysteriously unregulated crimes of Belle Reve (which include illegal electroshock treatments and putting patients in lethal steel-cage matches). --Hell, if Clark and Chloe are worried about crimes against humanity, why the heck isn't Chloe using her reporter's pen to take down Belle Reve? They have more evidence against that place than they do against Lex, and unless LuthorCorp steps up to defend it, it probably doesn't have the financial clout or the blackmail material to stop Chloe's article from being published. And since they know it's got 33.1 ties, it would be a blow to LuthorCorp to take it out of commission anyway.

But Chloe doesn't care, because stopping Lex isn't really about stopping crimes against humanity; it's about getting revenge on Lex for...um...waking her mother out of a coma. (Which was a pretty terrible crime, considering how dangerous Moira is to humanity.) "The war," as Clark terms it, doesn't begin until it's personal for him, until Chloe and her mother are involved. That's not a war; that's a grudge. Lex, meanwhile, has avoided making it personal; for all Clark insisting Lex would go after Lana to spite him, he has no evidence for this; Lex has yet to target Clark or his family or friends. Even knowing that Chloe is meteor-infected, he has yet to pick her up for 33.1. There's no sign that he selected Moira Sullivan because she was Chloe's mother, but because he had a need for her gifts. At the end of "Progeny" he doesn't threaten to go after Chloe - "I'm in his cross-hairs," Chloe decides, but Lex actually told her if she went up against him he would be responding in kind; he doesn't imply that he'd be targeting her otherwise. Considering how close tabs Chloe has been keeping on Lex's operations, how can Lex be faulted for keeping tabs on her?

If Clark busted a few people out of 33.1 and we got a firsthand account of how innocents were being hurt there, it would be easier to cheer him on in this newly proclaimed war. But Clark has yet to get anyone out, except for personal acquaintances (to date, Bart, who had broken into Lex's facilities and personal home and was captured in the middle of a robbery; and Moira, who claimed to have committed herself to a mental ward and might have been legally transferred to 33.1's care, for all we know.) Clark doesn't seem to want to get anyone else out of there.

For all the talk of 'crimes against humanity' - Clark and Chloe don't seem to see any other options besides what Lex is doing. Even as they speak out against Lex and his projects, they're tacitly supporting them by not taking any measures against them, not even something as simple as seeking out meteor freaks to warn them. They know how dangerous these freaks are. They can't be busting people out of Lex's cells because chances are anyone they bust out would be a homicidal maniac! In "Progeny" Chloe confronts a meteor freak who has been mind-controlled by her mother. What does Chloe do when she realizes the brainwashing's worn off? She cocks her gun and threatens him. She knows he's from 33.1, one of Lex's victims, but she has no sympathy for him, because she knows meteor freaks are dangerous. Being one herself only makes her more terrified of them.

Clark and Chloe react when a problem directly impacts their lives, but they refuse to make any active choices themselves, either to help the mutants they know Lex is endangering, or to protect the people the mutants endanger, even as they condemn Lex for making the wrong choice. That's not heroic; that's cowardly. They haven't tried to put a stop to 33.1 because they see it as a 'necessary evil' - and they're perfectly willing to let Lex shoulder the burden of that evil while keeping their own hands clean.

Comments

[sholio]

You know, what you describe here, the whole phenomenon of "the only difference between the good guys and the bad guys is what color their hats are", is something that I see in a lot of different (fictional) places. And it always bugs me. I don't enjoy it when I feel like the writer is telling me "[x] is the bad guy and [y] is the good guy" but they're not actually *showing* me that. If you expect me to sympathize with so&so and hate his enemy, you've got to show me that so&so is worth rooting for. Otherwise, I'll just throw my sympathy over to the bad guy out of sheer stubbornness. *grin*

I still remember, vividly, how frustrated I was by the ending of Julian May's book "Diamond Mask", when the incredibly powerful, telekinetic good guys stood by and let the bad guy destroy an entire planet full of people (which he did, I might add, for what he believed were the right reasons) so that they could prove to the galactic council that he had to be stopped. And then the remaining chapters, post-battle, were dedicated largely to everyone gushing over how awesome they were. Um, NO? Considering that they could have stopped him, were right there in a position to stop him AND KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS GOING TO DO, but rather than having his blood on their hands, instead they let him kill billions of people so that they could attack him with a clean conscience?

It really kicks me out of the story when no one ELSE, including the author or (in the case of TV) TPTB, seems to realize that the actions of the hero aren't entirely on the right side of morality.

[ladydey.livejournal.com]

WORD!!

More then that, both Clark and Chloe have at various times in the recent past worked with LIONEL LUTHOR, while call him a "good guy". This is the same Lionel Luthor that they know, KNOW, murdered his parents, know conspired to drive his son, Lex, "crazy" so that he could have him committed, steal his company, and have unnecessary and mind altering electro-shock therapy performed on him, and can more then likely suspect that he actually targeted Chloe and her father for death - BY BLOWING UP A FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION SAFE HOUSE. Heck Clark knows that Lionel stole his body and left Clark to die in prison in Lionel's mortally ill body.

Compared to Lex - a Lex who although he is making bad choices in his pursuit of PROTECTING HUMANITY, is actually trying to well protect humanity - Lionel is evil incarnate. How they are so short sighted and insular that they can't think outside of their own circle is a shame and a true missed opportunity.

[greenlady2.livejournal.com]

"Oliver helps out a few other freaks with grudges, people with talents that can further his own ambitions, and convinces them to join his anti-Lex quest."

And how is that different from building 'his own private army', as he accuses Lex of doing?

'...why the heck isn't Chloe using her reporter's pen to take down Belle Reve?'

Yes, I have been wondering that myself. Especially since, I believe, Clark was in Belle Reve himself at one time, and could be a source. Am I right?

'If Oliver was using Queen Industries' vast wealth to set up a freak assistance network...'

The Wikipedia article on Oliver Queen -- and I know that Wikipedia isn't always trustworthy -- states that Queen is helping 'Mutants in danger from Lex' to escape to Europe. Oh, goody. Spread the joy of possibly homocidal Meteor Mutants to other continents.

'They're 'taking down' 33.1 facilities, but we don't know how. At least some of the labs they're blowing up.'

That's nice. Really environmentally friendly. Who knows what dangerous chemicals they're releasing into the environment, possibly to cause more Meteor Mutations. I like these guys more and more. Sigh.

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I think part of the problem is with the genre. It's in the very nature of superheroes (at least as presented in the DC and Marvel universes)to act outside the law and in morally dubious ways. Breaking and entering, extreme violence, violations of privacy - that is what costumed vigilantes do, and they often don't do it wit the consent of their people. And Superman does it almost as much as Clark does in Smallville. And they tend not to present alternatives (with the exception of things like the Authority or Cable in Marvel). Batman, Oracle (cyber crimes), J'onn (disguising himself as government official to spy on the President), Wonder Woman (murder) - they're all criminals (or unlawful combatants, or whatever).

Superheroes are awesome, but they're neither very effective nor are they morally sound. If you suspend your disbelief to superheroes, you have to suspend part of your morals, too, I think, and that's the problem: in order for the superheroes to still seem like heroes, the villains need to be flat and menacing, natural forces rather than people. Lex so far fails to be that.

(And if I got my way, he'd continue to be that. Aside from his smartness, Lex's effectiveness against Superman lies in the fact that Superman can't fight him physically and can't prove any of his crimes. As long as Lex doesn't pick up a raygun and put on a powersuit, moral ambiguity is important for him.)

I'm almost glad now that SV introduced Ollie in this role instead of Bruce (Green Arrow is originally a Batman substitute, and I'm sure that`s how SV intended to use him), because Green Arrow *is* one of the most reckless and extremist heroes of the DC verse. SV!Ollie apparently isn't a big lefty, but aside from the lack of a political aspect, his methods are something I could see comics!Ollie using, whereas Bruce is more rigid in his morals and probably would go one-on-one with Lex rather than blowing up stuff. And I don't think we're supposed to see Ollie as the kind of infallible ideal Superman is meant to be (See "Rage" or "Reunion", as well as "Sneeze".) He's an anti-hero in my book, and probably he knows that.

My main problem with Clark at the moment is his complete lack of proactiveness. People will always die while Superman eats a sandwich, but excessive moping in barns or obsessing about Lana is less excusable. And why doesn't *he* look for Level 33.1? Why doesn't he *ever* try to gain more information? Clark must be the least curious being in the world - and that just doesn't work for someone who's going to be a reporter (although I've long resigned myself to the fact that Clark is only ever going to be a reporter because of peer pressure. Everyone he knows is either a superhero, a villain or a reporter.) It's like he relies on his gut feeling to tell him everything he needs to know about the world. He's not a Kansas farmer, no matter how much he wants to be!

Wow... I didn't know I had that urge to rant. Sorry!

[attaccabottoni.livejournal.com]

I have a headache, so let me know if I'm being incoherent. ;-P

I think the heroes operate on virtue ethics. You have to be a virtuous person for your actions to be judged as good, and for you to possess morally excellent judgment for decisions that directly affect Clark, the Kents, Lana, Chloe etc., and affect the world in general, which excuses their illegal acts in the name of world saving. Lex even said so himself about Clark in Vessel, which is why he honed in on the fact that Clark is a sick liar about the alien-related stuff.

Since this is Smallville and the perspective most people have is very small town, what consists as "the world" to them would be the people they know and love, and everyone else who doesn't belong there is excluded from active consideration until necessary, which could explain why they are only considerate to the mutants whom they have come to know as good people. Virtues are grounded on the time and place they come from and are practiced, so this could explain why Clark doesn't offer a solution to the mutant problem until forced (by the episode's plot for the FotW), Chloe is acceptably biased wrt her mother, and everyone excuses Lana who is supposed to be the paragon of Smallville virtue. If the people outside Smallville knew all about the shit that's going down in that town, then they'd probably have a different opinion about matters mutant/alien related and what the SV residents are doing about it, or maybe why the government seems to not directly deal with what's happening there and/or have been working with Lionel and now Lex in doing something about it.

Just because unlike the personal touch of Clark et al., Lex acts socially distant in dealing with the problem (given the lack of info we've seen, activities in 33.1 could be seen as a form of slavery at most) doesn't mean he lacks virtue or doesn't have a conscience. But this could be why the heroes think Lex is evil: because they don't see him treating the mutants as more than assets, and that he doesn't let the mutants live in total freedom (to wreak havoc in the future, because it's Clark's job to stop them? I dunno).

Maybe we're just looking at this wrong, and we're not supposed to analyze the ethical standards employed in this show. Maybe we're supposed to believe that if it hurts Clark, Chloe or Lana, or it makes them sad, then it's wrong, and that's it.

*facepalms*

It hurts.

[ladydreamer.livejournal.com]

They've really screwed Chloe's character since the introduction of 33.1 and even more as S6 progressed. I REMEMBER Chloe being the kind of reporter that didn't sit on her ass at her cushy job at The Planet and would break into top secret facilities with her uberhaxxx0rz and stuff she got on eBay, either to help her friends or because she just thought something hinky was going on! Now she has Clark by her side... do they actually make each other so weak? Clark uses her as his brain, and since he's around, Chloe gives up her heroics? If so, SEPARATE THEM.

Not to mention that this season they've retconned her attitude on meteor freaks to make Lana look better. Chloe had her revelation that freaks are people too in S4, and she never suggested that just killing them off was a good idea (lol Lana). Her main motivation was spreading information about what was going on because people had a right to know. Now Lana, for no good reason other than, well, the fans don't like her, so we need to make her "heroic," gets to be the explorer/defender of mutants (although she too isn't doing much in the way of helping mutants who aren't Clark or can tell on Clark), and Chloe is cocking guns and just sitting on information. This whole plot with Chloe as a freak could have been very cool, but like anything else they've done, it's been inconsistant, illogical, and half-assed.

I'd be happier if they spent one line of dialogue in the earlier part of the season from Chloe lamenting being able to find any hard evidence that she can really pin on Lex, despite knowing what he's up to generally. On the part of any of the heroes, unless Lex has convinced the government that what he's doing is necessary, they could always contact the higher authorities. Lex isn't the president or GOD (yet); they were perfectly willing to try to take down Lionel. There are a lot of things that COULD be done, even from Martha's pov as a senator (She's remarkably unhelpful in getting the contaminents out of SV and so unaware of everything else that's going on).

How about a line of dialogue regarding what Chloe's mother told her Lex did to her? She could have told her about Lowell threatening her. That would seem pretty wicked from their perspective if Chloe didn't know the test was controlled. Moira could have lied to her (which I suspected she did anyway, since someone pointed out to me that Chloe's hands weren't bandaged in the flashback, and in order for Moira to be telling the truth about committing herself soon after that, Chloe's hands would still be healing). The problem is that the writers don't feel the need to explain themselves, and they SHOULD (or they should have a bible to help them remember that Moira wasn't catatonic in Tomb and she left Chloe at five and was institutionalized when Chloe was 12). They shouldn't expect us to believe that Lex's actions from babyfaking to eating dinner or picking flowers and kissing puppies are all dag nasty evil. I should have to just take Lana's mystical word for it that Lex faked her pregnancy because that's a leap of logic that requires evidence.

Pettification. This is a scientific term.

[ladydreamer.livejournal.com]

You're right that the heroes need to be more proactive, and not in a personal grudge sort of way. They took that plot and made it all more petty (which from now on I will call pettification). That scene in Freak was horrifying, if Lex was having them killed (which, I agree with you, would be dumb and unlikely). Oliver, good god. Does he not have a brain at all? Those idiots caused an environmental hazard to be released into the air of Metropolis by blowing up that building in 33.1. I know people winced when Lex called them terrorists, but they ARE. They're trying to wage war on Lex by blowing shit up and trying to scare him into meeting their bizarre demands. And Oliver is just psychologically unbalanced. He has no idea what Lex is really trying to do.

Lex's "extremely questionable methods" go largely unseen, so he could very well be using underground means of creating a freak support network. The government sure as hell hasn't been supportive. We have an unstable freak who... for some reason thought they were going to let him out of the looney bin, more freaks who don't seem to care to leave 33.1, and a bunch of hands reaching out for Lex with him ignoring them (wft? do they think he's hot? do they want his attention because he's the bossman? are they waving "wazzup!!"?). While cool, the music video doesn't make that much sense. It looks in other episodes like he usually runs 33.1 facilities like a cleaner, more orderly and comfortable version of Belle Reve. Why the dungeon? You'd think Lex would need a cleaner space to conduct his evol experiments.

[fiercynn.livejournal.com]

Mm, thinky thoughts. Not much to add except that any rational thoughts that Clark and Chloe had about Lex and his actions seemed to go out the window as soon as Lana became involved. Of course, they were unreasonable about him even before, but I don't think Clark had written him off completely until mid-S5. It's one of the things that has bothered me so much about S5 and S6. I don't actually hate Lana and I don't have that much against Lex and Lana together, but somehow combining Smallville's Perfect Princess and Bad Boy Extraordinaire took out the potential for a lot of interesting complexity and logic, dammit. I can't stand the idea that the Rift between Clark and Lex could be caused by fighting over Lana instead of over their different ideals or methods, and I hate that Clark can excuse anything away by saying "Well, Lex must be evil, he seduced my ex-girlfriend to the Dark Side" inside of looking for actual evidence.

I'm thinking at this point that we need more of Lois's influence, because while Chloe and Lois have a lot in common and Chloe is certainly a lot closer to Clark, Lois didn't experience the befuddling Smallville atmosphere that seems to have weighed everyone else down. Lois may hate Lex but she's more likely to look for actual reasons, I think. This is especially true given what we've seen of her reporter instincts, which at this point are stronger than Chloe's, if less refined.

A whole universe of WORD

[trienne-hovus.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to comment on the ongoing Lex-meta, but my computer was being wierd. Now I can, mwahahaha!

I stopped watching SV altogether after Onyx, and only watched that one because of the double dose of Lex. The reason I stopped watching - as you know; I've said this oh so many times - is because I could no longer believe in Clark as a hero because he was too dumb and too selfish, and I certainly could never believe in this Lex as a bad guy because he was forever being wanked by Fate and yet - unlike Clark - was still fighting it every step of the way.

That being said, your meta blows me away. The way you've analyzed Lex's actions within the show's canon to show he is dealing, alone and as best he can, with a threat that should be obvious to everyone, is breathtaking because it not only preserves Lex as a heroic person, it also makes so much sense. Now you've done an amazing job of analyzing the soi-disant "heros" as well - and, boy, do they come off poorly.

What I wonder about now is whether TPTB are in any way aware of what they're doing. Their boneheadedness is so wierdly consistent I wonder if they aren't putting an enormous, subversive twist on the whole Superman/Luthor mythos. It's a subversive twist that's only apparent to people who are paying attention, not taking things at face value, and not accepting the "obvious" storyline... but it is there.

Thank you again for another excellent post. (And thanks, too, for your fic: I've been loving everything you write!)

[jakrar.livejournal.com]

I think I showed up too late to add much to this discussion, aside from agreeing wholeheartedly with pretty much everyone here. I can't decide whether TPTB have an extraordinarily warped value system, which they're trying to pass on to the SV audience, or whether they simply don't think it's necessary to go beyond the simplistic motto of 'everything Clark and his friends do is automatically right, and everything Lex does is automatically wrong' which we as viewers are apparently expected to believe. *grinds teeth* I have yet to see anything in the aired series to convince me that Lex is a villain, nor have I seen anything to convince me that Clark and his friends are heroes, and I somehow doubt that that's going to change. *deep sigh* But at least Lex and Clark are pretty.

[ender24]

this is somewhat totally illogical (or maybe its logical because I am not watching all the eps constantly) , I know, but in my mind, chloe and clark somehow are still so young, despite they are not, and they are entitled to be selfish, egoistical and have no brains :D

(which is also a very brainless opinion, since they are suppose to have learned and evolved over the past 5 seasons, and show compassion, thinking ahead and so on, only.... they dont, and lex takes all the blame for everything anyway..)