Lois & Clark revisited
Aug. 5th, 2006 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bohemiancachet the other day had reminded me of this, and so I went and rented the first season of Lois & Clark. I hadn't seen those episodes since they were originally broadcast, but I was always fond of the show, and I think it's probably my favourite incarnation of the Superman myth in terms of sheer fun and relaxation. Not the most fascinating or interesting: that would be what JMS did in Supreme Power, with Mark Milton/Hyperion as his version of Superman in a truly chilling take on what it would be actually like if a superpowered alien baby ended up on Earth. But Lois & Clark uses the screwball comedy narrative of the 30s and 40s in an inspired way, and it still holds up very well compared to what came after. Teri Hatcher is probably my favourite screen Lois (sorry, Margot Kidder fans); she and Dean Cain as Clark come across as an updated version of your basic Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy or Jimmy Stewart pairing. Superman expert searose would know, but I think Lois & Clark was probably the first to interpret Clark as the genuine self and Superman as the mask, whereas comicverse and to some degree the movies had it the other way around - Superman as the real self and Clark as the mask. Anyway, the Lois & Clark interpretation allowed for Lois' swooning about Superman not to feel sexist today, because the narrative itself presents it as misguided; in the tradition of romantic comedy, the being-swept-of-her-feet relationship is wrong way for the heroine to go, whereas the relationship that consists of banter and an equal partnership is the one to ultimately win out. It's just the twist of this particular narrative that both male rivals are the same man.
His wish for Lois to love him as Clark, not as Superman aside, what strikes one when watching this incarnation of Clark/Superman in the post-Jossverse, post-Smallville etc. world is how utterly angst-free he is. As I said, he's very much the bemused hero of a screwball comedy, with a deadpan sense of humour ("I get it; you like to be on top"), playing straight man to the energetic, high strung heroine, but basically at peace with what he is. One can't imagine him being written this way today, and certainly by and large, I prefer my superheroes angsting, but not here. The very relaxedness of Clark and the traditional Superman wink has its charm, and looking at all the gloom and doom elsewhere (i.e. any incarnation of the Batman myth, page or screen), it seems almost necessary.
bohemiancachet the other day had reminded me of this, and so I went and rented the first season of Lois & Clark. I hadn't seen those episodes since they were originally broadcast, but I was always fond of the show, and I think it's probably my favourite incarnation of the Superman myth in terms of sheer fun and relaxation. Not the most fascinating or interesting: that would be what JMS did in Supreme Power, with Mark Milton/Hyperion as his version of Superman in a truly chilling take on what it would be actually like if a superpowered alien baby ended up on Earth. But Lois & Clark uses the screwball comedy narrative of the 30s and 40s in an inspired way, and it still holds up very well compared to what came after. Teri Hatcher is probably my favourite screen Lois (sorry, Margot Kidder fans); she and Dean Cain as Clark come across as an updated version of your basic Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy or Jimmy Stewart pairing. Superman expert searose would know, but I think Lois & Clark was probably the first to interpret Clark as the genuine self and Superman as the mask, whereas comicverse and to some degree the movies had it the other way around - Superman as the real self and Clark as the mask. Anyway, the Lois & Clark interpretation allowed for Lois' swooning about Superman not to feel sexist today, because the narrative itself presents it as misguided; in the tradition of romantic comedy, the being-swept-of-her-feet relationship is wrong way for the heroine to go, whereas the relationship that consists of banter and an equal partnership is the one to ultimately win out. It's just the twist of this particular narrative that both male rivals are the same man. His wish for Lois to love him as Clark, not as Superman aside, what strikes one when watching this incarnation of Clark/Superman in the post-Jossverse, post-Smallville etc. world is how utterly angst-free he is. As I said, he's very much the bemused hero of a screwball comedy, with a deadpan sense of humour ("I get it; you like to be on top"), playing straight man to the energetic, high strung heroine, but basically at peace with what he is. One can't imagine him being written this way today, and certainly by and large, I prefer my superheroes angsting, but not here. The very relaxedness of Clark and the traditional Superman wink has its charm, and looking at all the gloom and doom elsewhere (i.e. any incarnation of the Batman myth, page or screen), it seems almost necessary.
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Date: 2006-08-06 04:15 am (UTC)The first season of The Adventures of Superman (1952, B&W syndicated television show, USA) had a Clark Kent (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) team-up that was interesting for its day. Phyllis Coates' Lois was not as sweet as the Lois portrayed by Noel Neill, and there was very, very little suggestion that she had romantic inclinations toward Superman. That first season Lois was all about her job, being the best, and she was shown to work well with Clark Kent who was also portrayed as a great reporter. Superman fans claim she was a bitchy Lois (to Clark), but I've watched the series for myself, and there are too many examples of Coates' Lois relying on Clark Kent to be her competent partner when the going got rough. For instance, when she thinks there's going to be trouble, she calls in to the Daily Planet and requests that Clark join her, insistent on it being Clark more than once as I recall.
The series has a very hard-line stance that none of the other characters could recognize George Reeves' Clark Kent as a glasses-wearing Superman, not even with a load of double-entendre joke lines from Clark for the audience at home, but the first season of The Adventures of Superman was an all-ages program, not a kiddie program. (The sponsor of the syndicated show demanded a change in that, iirc.)
George Reeves' Superman also enjoyed his abilities with zero angst about them. But he also enjoyed his life as Clark Kent in Metropolis, with friends and friendly contacts all over the episodes. That character was an adventurer-type.
Something you probably couldn't get your hands on would be the Ruby Spears cartoons from 1988. (No release yet of those on VHS or DVD, that I know of.) The Spears cartoons were a synthesis of Silver Age and post-COIE Superman, with adult Clark Kent being somewhat mild-mannered but not a doormat. That series also had Smallville-based segment to each show that was the same basic youth-of-Clark premise as Smallville but with 85% less dark childhood angst.
Lois & Clark was fun for the first two seasons in its focus on a budding romance, the first Superman television series to do so to that extent. Late Bronze Age and, of course, post-COIE comics were doing so as well, a break from the notion that such was impossible. Lois & Clark's third and fourth seasons were a mixed bag, but I don't know why. Maybe screenwriterly panic at how to keep a romance fresh to the audience once it was an every episode thing? The plotlines went bizarre, but I saw that happen for about four to five years in the comics when the writers seemed stuck on how to portray a married Superman without repelling readers (no template established and maintained from 1938, maybe).
And I will admit that I have seen and read too much Superman for me to think that Superman Returns is the best version that the year 2006 could produce. It's pretty, though, and does focus on emotion, romantic and paternal.
When you see Superman Returns, please do not try to reconcile it with Richard Donner's two Superman movies, even though the movie relies on at least the first one for an origin up to the debut in Metropolis, with one retcon of Clark's youth. Bryan Singer has already stated when questioned that he went AU on certain key points, even with claims that it is a later-day sequel. (It's a thematic sequel, basically, with the importing in of Marlon Brando as an actor.)