History & Place: The Devaluation of Clark Kent's Heroism in Late-Seasons Smallville
As I near the end of watching season 8 of Smallville for the first time, I've been stuck with an increasing sense of dissatisfaction that can't be attributed only to the departure of beloved characters. (Given that I'm about to harshly critique him I want to note here that Lex Luthor is one of my favorite characters in the entire show—the critique is made with love!) Many people have mentioned the conservative bent of Smallville, particularly as it increasingly concerns itself with the realization of Clark's "destiny." A few chapters into reading Vine Deloria Jr's God is Red, I'm struck with his articulation of the difference between Western Christian & Native American religious belief as prioritizing time vs prioritizing space. And I wonder if the lens of prioritizing time could explain some of the impetus that's driving these later seasons of Smallville. To be clear I do not claim to know about Native American religious beliefs, I am not trying to speak about it nor am I trying to argue that Smallville is portraying such a thing. I simply found Deloria Jr's way of encapsulating of Western Christianity as a religion that bases itself deeply on a sense of history and the future, Progress as a goal, and a wished-for end state of heaven, very apt. (When I will refer in this meta to "space" it is as a broad philosophical concept—I am not referring to Deloria Jr's far more complex and nuanced description of "space" in a religious sense.)
I: THE LUTHOR WORLD
Lex is a man who prioritizes time over all else; he reaches continually toward a perfect future. Clark's existence disrupts this, because Clark tries to interact with the world that surrounds him and that he shares with a community. And these differing modes come to a head in various instances, especially when Clark becomes involved in activism.
In season 2, a new area of the Kawatche caves is discovered. Joseph Willowbrook, Kyla Willowbrook, and Clark rally Smallville in protesting the destruction of a space that's sacred to them, and which the Luthors intend to destroy. Joseph, Kyla and Clark are successful in saving the caves from destruction, but the Luthors promptly take over a conservancy that puts the caves under their control; the Luthors from then on attempt to wrest secrets from this place—by physical force if necessary—in a way that mirrors the way they attempt to wrest secrets from Clark.
In season 5, Arthur Curry, half-man and half-Atlantean, shows up to tell Clark that Lex is illegally testing a weapon he intends to sell to the U.S. military (a sound-based death ray called "Leviathan") in Smallville's own Crater Lake. In the process of testing, the ray has been causing the death of fish that live in the lake. When Clark confronts Lex about this, Lex admits that the death of fish is an unintended side-effect of the weapon, but one he considers a price worth paying for the ability to use this weapon to protect people (presumably in self-defense, although the viewer must intuit that Lex knows once it's in the military's hands there's no way he can guarantee how and when the weapon is used). Clark and Arthur then take matters into their own hands and destroy the death ray when Lex is trying to show its efficacy to the government. As the government is understandably unimpressed by the ray not doing anything, Lex loses that contract.
As his villain arc continues, Lex's preoccupation with being the one to "save the world" continues. Lex partners with Professor Fine, who wants to create bioweapons, because Lex is convinced that he can make the "ultimate vaccine" that can cure any illness. He conducts a nonconsensual medical experiment on Victor Stone (Cyborg) to save his life, claiming to Victor's face that since being alive is better than being dead, Victor should thank Lex for his intervention. He rounds up Smallville "freaks" to study and place trackers in them that they're not aware of, inputting their existence into his database so he can follow their position at all times and "eliminate" them if any one freak becomes a problem—using the justification that it's best to be able to quickly control or neutralize known dangers to society—such as the meteor freak population, known for its high incidences of violence. Even the tragedy in Onyx, where Lex finds himself split into two selves, comes about because he's been using kryptonite to try to grow seeds that will grow anywhere, and which he can then use to eradicate hunger across the globe.
When Clark and Lex discuss this crop experiment, they have this exchange:
Lex: It's about the future. These are growing in common sand with only a few drops of water as irrigation. Clark: If my dad planted a crop of these, he'd never have to worry about the harvest again.
Lex is a character preoccupied with the future to the expense of the present. He wants to "save the world"—the whole entire world—through the giving of a remedy to cure all ills. In this way his outlook is unavoidably colonialist. He takes artifacts from various cultures for the supposed knowledge imbued in them, but refuses to respect the boundaries and wishes of the living members of those cultures.
Clark, of course, is the "other." Textually he's an alien from another planet; self-identifying as an illegal immigrant; he's a weird kid, an outlier, who wants desperately to be "normal." Subtextually, the creators have incorporated metaphors of queerness and neurodivergence (which are revealed, in episode commentaries from the time, to have been purposeful). The tension between Clark's attempt to perform normalcy and be accepted vs to be his authentic self and be accepted is one that's at play since the beginning of the show.
Smallville begins every episode (and is fairly heavy-handed in the middle and end, too) with the central question of being saved. "Somebody save me" is of course the refrain of the theme song!
While Lex believes in his professional life that he is capable of saving everyone with a one-size-fits-all solution, in his personal life he is deeply insecure and keeps chasing the idea of someone to save him. Lex wants the future. He wants the permanency of having goodness bestowed on him by an angel, after which he will no longer struggle with any impulse towards evil. Clark's occasional reminders to him that goodness is not a permanent state but a set of choices about specific situations is not something that fits within Lex's worldview or that satisfies his yearnings.
II: CLARK KENT'S "SMALLVILLE"
The series opens with a car crash. Clark, seeing that the guy who crashed into him is unconscious in the river, swims to his aid and performs CPR.
Clark's type of heroism, as established from the beginning, is one with specificity—he is not a character who strives toward some overarching code of ethics. (Given the comics source material and where he will end up working, one can classify his type of heroism a "journalistic" one.) He is a character who is curious about situations, and early episodes frequently follow a format where Clark will learn about some problem plaguing Smallville; he will investigate to discover who if anyone is intending harm, who needs help and of what kind, and attempt to resolve the immediate issue. Along the way Clark tries to figure out where societal bias is clouding the stories he's been told—in "Hug," Kyle Tippet is immediately cast as the bad guy because he lives in a trailer at the edge of town, but Clark's investigations prove that false and he defends Kyle from being branded just because of his otherness. Clark talks to individuals, both to figure out what is occurring and to figure out what he can do to help. Sometimes helping is a dramatic fight scene in an alley with lots of flinging bad guys around, and sometimes it's telling a little girl that being different doesn't mean there's something wrong with her.
Clark's heroism becomes such a known feature of his that all his friends (even those not in on his secret) as well as the town Sheriff are aware of this.
Yet something interesting happens as season 7 rolls around. Suddenly, all of Clark's friends and acquaintances, as they pursue their own life paths and careers, find themselves looking at Clark and finding him somehow wanting. Clark, who is metatextually a "gifted kid" has taken over the family farm in the wake of his father's death—a parent he was deeply close to—as he deals with a complex grief made more difficult by the complicity he feels in how Jonathan died. In the process, Clark fails to perform many normal milestones that those around him expect; he drops out of college and remains in his small town, giving the appearance of having lost all his ambition. (Very few people are aware that Clark's attempt to continue his Kryptonian education have been thwarted by Jor-El—who has instead instructed Clark to keep an eye on his cousin Kara, because of their family feud).
Suddenly, all the people who know Clark well are describing him—many times to his face—as unemployed and a shirker, a pervasive attitude which can be summed up in this scathing description of Lana's: "you can do anything, and all you've done is hide out on some farm."
To which Clark's heartbreaking response is: "I protected the people I care about. At least, I've tried to."
This is where the preoccupation with Clark's destiny comes in. Because Clark is capable of anything, he should, says everyone who meets him, be doing everything. Anything less than "saving the world" is an affront to people who feel sure that if they only had Clark's powers they'd do a better job with it.
Lois eventually comes in with a job offer from the Daily Planet that's opened up—Chloe's old job, now available because her boss harassed and eventually unceremoniously fired her. When Clark expresses his disinterest in a position gained in such a manner, Lois says, irritated: "seriously, Clark, don't you think you're destined for greater things in life than working on a farm?"
After losing every social tie he has to Smallville in the season 7 finale, Clark unenthusiastically takes a job at the Daily Planet in Metropolis, stating explicitly that he's only doing so because he has nothing left. At the same time, he spends his time obsessively listening to the police scanner so he can know when to intervene in Metropolis crimes and disasters, running at full speed so he can't be seen except as a "blur" which soon becomes reported on as a new vigilante in town.
Immediately, his friends and acquaintances applaud Clark. He is no longer "unemployed"—having added a prestigious white-collar job as a journalist at a reputable newspaper to his blue-collar job as a farmer. And now he's someone Lana can be proud of, because the blur is being written about in papers, which means he's a real hero—unlike all the stuff Clark's been doing his entire life in the saving-people arena, which was mostly under the radar and therefore didn't count.
More and more episodes, as well as every periphery character in the show, berate Clark for having dragged his feet on fulfilling his destiny, a refrain that used to be taken up only by MorallyDubious!AI!Jor-El.
At the same time, the show takes a marked disinterest in the heroism that has defined Clark till now—stories where Clark helps and identifies with strangers and fights social injustice are largely absent; whatever journalism stories Clark is given are not even afforded screentime; and Clark's saving-people as the blur is something that seems to consist mainly of whisking people out of bodily danger very quickly (also not afforded any screentime).
This disdain for Clark's heroism and his choice to attend to the small things is pervasive; the opinion season 8 seems to have on Clark's heroism is made clear in this exchange between Clark and Tess Mercer, when she finds Clark one afternoon on the farm (after he's spent an entire episode trying to save Davis Bloome's life despite knowing they're fated enemies):
Clark: well, I'm kind of busy. Tess: with what? Farm chores? I'd let you off if you were saving a busload of children, but... cleaning the feeding bin?
This casually-cruel disregard is directed at the fact that Clark has resolved to keep up the farm despite having gained a high-powered city job (and that he's not spending his every waking moment blurring around as a vigilante saving busloads of children, which Tess knows he's capable of, since she's aware of his secret.) The classism inherent in this exchange is extraordinary.
While Tess's accusation on its own could be interpreted as a rich person being rich and insensitive, this is not a one-off statement but a pattern of statements directed at Clark not only by the Luthor heir but by anyone and everyone in his entire life. Tess ends the conversation by claiming, "I have this feeling that you'll never fulfill your great destiny… until you meet your greatest challenge."
Smallville has since its inception been walking a tense tightrope between a mandated, "destined" comics-accurate endgame and its characterization of Clark. Now, it seems, the show has finally bought completely into the Luthor framework—Clark will never be worthy of anything but disdain until he leaves behind his care for individuals in order to "save the world."
