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xparrotI haven't seen the last couple eps of SV, am building up strength with the delight of new Who to be able to bear them. I have, however, read ep commentaries, so there may be spoilers in this post, and do not worry about spoiling me. I can't be spoiled for this show; the writers already spoiled it seasons ago. This isn't really about the latest canon events, though; this is to finally articulate a long-standing argument, concerning the entire run of the show.
I've seen the following opinion expressed many times in this fandom, often when questioning Lex's s1-3 Room o' Clark or the Lex-apologist view that if Clark had been a bit more honest much disaster may have been averted:
Only as I see it - Clark's childhood friends had a right to know, too. It drives me up a wall how the show justifies all manners of lies and trickery and worse for the sake protecting Clark's secret. Because the thing is - it's not Clark's secret.
In the original Superman canon, Clark Kent's secret identity is his own to maintain or share as he sees fit. Those who try to ferret out the truth are unethically prying into his personal affairs; his identity is his own business, as is the truth about his origins, Krypton, etc.
Butt SV's kryptonite makes it a lot of other peoples'. The kryptonite isn't limited to hurting Clark; it poisons all of Smallville. Krypton's destruction isn't only Clark's tragedy. Everyone who had their lives altered or destroyed by those damn plot rocks, directly or as a victim of a meteor freak, deserves to know what they are, where they came from. And yes, that includes Lex, budding supervillain or not.
What the show and Clex fans alike tend to gloss over is that Lex's original investigation wasn't into Clark - it was into the accident. Lex should have died, and didn't, and is understandably curious. And just as Clark has a right not to tell people the truth about his own life - so Lex has the right to look into the truths of his own life. That those truths happen to be bound up in Clark's is an unfortunate coincidence for both of them.
This isn't to say Clark owed Lex all his secrets. But Clark's right to not say anything does not invalidate Lex's right to keep looking. Especially once he became aware of the extent of what he was investigating. Once he realized his physiology, his own body, might have been compromised by his childhood exposure to the meteor shower; once he realized how many other people in Smallville were similarly afflicted.
In season 1, Lex explicitly is not investigating Clark Kent's secrets - he warns Nixon away from the Kents. He's after the secret of the whole town, and while he realizes the Kents are involved, he has no way of knowing they're at the center. He wasn't prying into Clark's life because Clark was his friend; Lex would've been investigating them even if he had no friendship with Clark, and probably would've found the truth a lot sooner. (If Lex had made friends with Clark only because he realized Clark was at the nexus of Smallville's enigma, that would've been pretty dastardly. But the show repeatedly made the point in the early seasons that Lex's relationship with Clark was much deeper and more complex than that.) And Clark never sets actual boundaries - he repeatedly attempts to steer Lex away from his investigation, but never asks Lex outright to stop it, for the sake of friendship or anything else. Lex brings him rumors of a spaceship, and Clark tells him he's crazy - doesn't ask him to leave it be. Lex sinks a lot into saving the caves, gives Clark access, and Clark denies they have any significance to him, doesn't tell Lex to stop looking into them.
Even in season 3, with Lex's CoCK (Chamber of Clark Kent) - there's a reason the set designers included those enormous, baffling shots of Clark Kent hanging on the wall, and that is to distract from that fact that most of the stuff in the room a) does not directly relate to Clark, but to kryptonite and other leavings of Krypton; and b) mostly is within Lex's legal and, arguably, moral right to possess. He bought the land with the caves, so the pictures of the cave paintings and the alien parasite are legally his; the kryptonite is likely all taken from LuthorCorp properties in Smallville (and thank goodness someone is cleaning some of it up; it's an incredibly dangerous health hazard, which the government really should've disposed of years before.) The car from the wreck was Lex's own car. As shocking as Clark found the room, it wasn't nearly as terrible a betrayal as the show seems to intend it as, and besides after openly lying to Lex for three years Clark hardly had the moral high ground.
But Clark's not really to blame here. In the first few seasons he was a minor anyway and his parents had the legal power to make the decisions about his secrets (including whether or not to tell Clark himself, and they sure took their time about that, even. Question for legal experts, because I honestly have no idea - does an adopted child have any legal right to investigate his birth parents? Even if those parents don't want to be found? Just wondering...) They also made sure to brainwash him into thinking that any investigation into his secrets was terrible and dangerous - and, moreover, that he had the right, even the responsibility, to stop anyone who tried. Including people trying to figure out what is ruining their own lives, because the Kents chose to define Clark's secrets as not only Clark himself, but absolutely anything to do with his planet of origin.
They weren't being illogical; any investigation into the kryptonite had a good chance of leading to Clark sooner or later. But it was a very morally gray choice to make, to deny an entire community the truth, when people were getting hurt and dying of it. The Kents knew from early season one that kryptonite was mutating people, and they chose to say nothing, to pretend ignorance and let Clark have the burden of responsibility for taking care of the problem. It's a lot to put on a teen's shoulders - even a super-powered teen's - and maybe it's not surprising that Clark is now so hesitant to assume the mantle of vigilante hero, when it was a role forced on him from so young.
The Kents were honestly doing what they thought was best for their beloved son. Sure, they could've anonymously informed the town council that the meteor rocks were a threat, or campaigned to get them cleaned up for any number of reasons that wouldn't require any mention of Clark; sure, they could've claimed Clark was another meteor freak and sponsored the support programs for understanding and accepting meteor freak-i-tude. At the very least they could've trusted their close friends with a little bit of vital, possibly life-saving information, perhaps told them to move - or moved themselves (raising Clark in a meteor-rich environment seems like some sort of neglect, really). But they didn't, out of fear of losing their adopted child; they put Clark's future ahead of the entire town's.
It doesn't really bother me that they did so; such is a parent's love. What gets me is that the show never makes an issue of their choice, never implies that, however understandable and well-meaning, it was hardly the absolute right decision. And Clark, now that he's growing up, keeps making that same decision again and again, protecting his secret at great cost to strangers and friends alike, and never once is questioned or called on it. Except by Lex, who is always cast as the villain - not only for all the truly reprehensible, evil things he's been doing - but also (sometimes primarily) for having the temerity to want to know the truth about his own self, his own home and his own childhood. This is clearest in "Memoria," when Lex seeking to study his own memories is presented as an unforgivable trespass against Clark, for which Lex must apologize; but it happens repeatedly throughout the course of the series.
The only times Clark really pays for protecting his secrets is when it comes to Lana, who keeps breaking up with him over them - and, all right, given her all-encompassing importance to him, that's probably is about the worst punishment he could get; but it hardly seems fair, compared to what so many meteor freaks suffer (untimely death, more often than not; or else commitment to mental hospitals ill-equipped to handle their problems. For many 'freaks, 33.1 is actually their best bet.) There's no programs for the meteor-afflicted, no research being done on the condition except in Lex's horrifically unregulated secret labs, because Clark and his cabal will do anything to shut down any open, above-board investigation. Even when his own friends are looking into it, he'll steer them away from the truth--Lex isn't his friend anymore, but Clark hasn't been anymore forthright with Lois. Or for that matter, Kara, when she had lost her memories, and guess what, even by Kent rules, it was Kara's secret, too. (As far as I'm concerned, not telling amnesiac Kara, far more than keeping things from Lex, was a terrible betrayal on Clark's part. I didn't understand it at all - it's not like it would've been difficult to convince her, even if she was powerless at the time; just bend a steel bar in front of her, for pity's sake. I'm sure she would've come around.) But Clark's secret-keeping is out of control; he doesn't know how to share his secret, only how to protect it. No flight and capes indeed - Justice and the American Way are arguable, but Truth is right out.
Would Clark being honest with Lex have changed anything? Impossible to say. Whether Clark had a moral obligation to tell Lex - and everyone else - at least some of his secrets is an open question, and practically moot at this point. Letting Lex in on the truth now would probably be a mistake - SV!Lex is insane by now (and not in JLU!Lex's awesomely sociopathic way.) I don't hold Clark responsible for Lex's crimes, but I can't really see fit to hold Lex responsible, either. He needs to be committed before he hurts more people; however manipulative he tries to be, he doesn't seem to be in control of anything, including his own life or decisions. I've given up on justifying most of what he does, because they're the actions of a terriblywritten deranged man. But I'll still agree with every time he accuses Clark of the treachery of keeping his secrets, because someone needs to make that too true point, even if it's the bad guy.
I've seen the following opinion expressed many times in this fandom, often when questioning Lex's s1-3 Room o' Clark or the Lex-apologist view that if Clark had been a bit more honest much disaster may have been averted:
I've always wondered why so many thought that Clark owes Lex his secret. Lex was a new friend, someone he was just getting to know, what entitled him to know Clark's secret when friends he had since childhood didn't know it?
Only as I see it - Clark's childhood friends had a right to know, too. It drives me up a wall how the show justifies all manners of lies and trickery and worse for the sake protecting Clark's secret. Because the thing is - it's not Clark's secret.
In the original Superman canon, Clark Kent's secret identity is his own to maintain or share as he sees fit. Those who try to ferret out the truth are unethically prying into his personal affairs; his identity is his own business, as is the truth about his origins, Krypton, etc.
Butt SV's kryptonite makes it a lot of other peoples'. The kryptonite isn't limited to hurting Clark; it poisons all of Smallville. Krypton's destruction isn't only Clark's tragedy. Everyone who had their lives altered or destroyed by those damn plot rocks, directly or as a victim of a meteor freak, deserves to know what they are, where they came from. And yes, that includes Lex, budding supervillain or not.
What the show and Clex fans alike tend to gloss over is that Lex's original investigation wasn't into Clark - it was into the accident. Lex should have died, and didn't, and is understandably curious. And just as Clark has a right not to tell people the truth about his own life - so Lex has the right to look into the truths of his own life. That those truths happen to be bound up in Clark's is an unfortunate coincidence for both of them.
This isn't to say Clark owed Lex all his secrets. But Clark's right to not say anything does not invalidate Lex's right to keep looking. Especially once he became aware of the extent of what he was investigating. Once he realized his physiology, his own body, might have been compromised by his childhood exposure to the meteor shower; once he realized how many other people in Smallville were similarly afflicted.
In season 1, Lex explicitly is not investigating Clark Kent's secrets - he warns Nixon away from the Kents. He's after the secret of the whole town, and while he realizes the Kents are involved, he has no way of knowing they're at the center. He wasn't prying into Clark's life because Clark was his friend; Lex would've been investigating them even if he had no friendship with Clark, and probably would've found the truth a lot sooner. (If Lex had made friends with Clark only because he realized Clark was at the nexus of Smallville's enigma, that would've been pretty dastardly. But the show repeatedly made the point in the early seasons that Lex's relationship with Clark was much deeper and more complex than that.) And Clark never sets actual boundaries - he repeatedly attempts to steer Lex away from his investigation, but never asks Lex outright to stop it, for the sake of friendship or anything else. Lex brings him rumors of a spaceship, and Clark tells him he's crazy - doesn't ask him to leave it be. Lex sinks a lot into saving the caves, gives Clark access, and Clark denies they have any significance to him, doesn't tell Lex to stop looking into them.
Even in season 3, with Lex's CoCK (Chamber of Clark Kent) - there's a reason the set designers included those enormous, baffling shots of Clark Kent hanging on the wall, and that is to distract from that fact that most of the stuff in the room a) does not directly relate to Clark, but to kryptonite and other leavings of Krypton; and b) mostly is within Lex's legal and, arguably, moral right to possess. He bought the land with the caves, so the pictures of the cave paintings and the alien parasite are legally his; the kryptonite is likely all taken from LuthorCorp properties in Smallville (and thank goodness someone is cleaning some of it up; it's an incredibly dangerous health hazard, which the government really should've disposed of years before.) The car from the wreck was Lex's own car. As shocking as Clark found the room, it wasn't nearly as terrible a betrayal as the show seems to intend it as, and besides after openly lying to Lex for three years Clark hardly had the moral high ground.
But Clark's not really to blame here. In the first few seasons he was a minor anyway and his parents had the legal power to make the decisions about his secrets (including whether or not to tell Clark himself, and they sure took their time about that, even. Question for legal experts, because I honestly have no idea - does an adopted child have any legal right to investigate his birth parents? Even if those parents don't want to be found? Just wondering...) They also made sure to brainwash him into thinking that any investigation into his secrets was terrible and dangerous - and, moreover, that he had the right, even the responsibility, to stop anyone who tried. Including people trying to figure out what is ruining their own lives, because the Kents chose to define Clark's secrets as not only Clark himself, but absolutely anything to do with his planet of origin.
They weren't being illogical; any investigation into the kryptonite had a good chance of leading to Clark sooner or later. But it was a very morally gray choice to make, to deny an entire community the truth, when people were getting hurt and dying of it. The Kents knew from early season one that kryptonite was mutating people, and they chose to say nothing, to pretend ignorance and let Clark have the burden of responsibility for taking care of the problem. It's a lot to put on a teen's shoulders - even a super-powered teen's - and maybe it's not surprising that Clark is now so hesitant to assume the mantle of vigilante hero, when it was a role forced on him from so young.
The Kents were honestly doing what they thought was best for their beloved son. Sure, they could've anonymously informed the town council that the meteor rocks were a threat, or campaigned to get them cleaned up for any number of reasons that wouldn't require any mention of Clark; sure, they could've claimed Clark was another meteor freak and sponsored the support programs for understanding and accepting meteor freak-i-tude. At the very least they could've trusted their close friends with a little bit of vital, possibly life-saving information, perhaps told them to move - or moved themselves (raising Clark in a meteor-rich environment seems like some sort of neglect, really). But they didn't, out of fear of losing their adopted child; they put Clark's future ahead of the entire town's.
It doesn't really bother me that they did so; such is a parent's love. What gets me is that the show never makes an issue of their choice, never implies that, however understandable and well-meaning, it was hardly the absolute right decision. And Clark, now that he's growing up, keeps making that same decision again and again, protecting his secret at great cost to strangers and friends alike, and never once is questioned or called on it. Except by Lex, who is always cast as the villain - not only for all the truly reprehensible, evil things he's been doing - but also (sometimes primarily) for having the temerity to want to know the truth about his own self, his own home and his own childhood. This is clearest in "Memoria," when Lex seeking to study his own memories is presented as an unforgivable trespass against Clark, for which Lex must apologize; but it happens repeatedly throughout the course of the series.
The only times Clark really pays for protecting his secrets is when it comes to Lana, who keeps breaking up with him over them - and, all right, given her all-encompassing importance to him, that's probably is about the worst punishment he could get; but it hardly seems fair, compared to what so many meteor freaks suffer (untimely death, more often than not; or else commitment to mental hospitals ill-equipped to handle their problems. For many 'freaks, 33.1 is actually their best bet.) There's no programs for the meteor-afflicted, no research being done on the condition except in Lex's horrifically unregulated secret labs, because Clark and his cabal will do anything to shut down any open, above-board investigation. Even when his own friends are looking into it, he'll steer them away from the truth--Lex isn't his friend anymore, but Clark hasn't been anymore forthright with Lois. Or for that matter, Kara, when she had lost her memories, and guess what, even by Kent rules, it was Kara's secret, too. (As far as I'm concerned, not telling amnesiac Kara, far more than keeping things from Lex, was a terrible betrayal on Clark's part. I didn't understand it at all - it's not like it would've been difficult to convince her, even if she was powerless at the time; just bend a steel bar in front of her, for pity's sake. I'm sure she would've come around.) But Clark's secret-keeping is out of control; he doesn't know how to share his secret, only how to protect it. No flight and capes indeed - Justice and the American Way are arguable, but Truth is right out.
Would Clark being honest with Lex have changed anything? Impossible to say. Whether Clark had a moral obligation to tell Lex - and everyone else - at least some of his secrets is an open question, and practically moot at this point. Letting Lex in on the truth now would probably be a mistake - SV!Lex is insane by now (and not in JLU!Lex's awesomely sociopathic way.) I don't hold Clark responsible for Lex's crimes, but I can't really see fit to hold Lex responsible, either. He needs to be committed before he hurts more people; however manipulative he tries to be, he doesn't seem to be in control of anything, including his own life or decisions. I've given up on justifying most of what he does, because they're the actions of a terribly
