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I'm building off of recent posts by Mary Ellen Curtin and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nerodi. nerodi says, succinctly, that "by introducing these insane stones and this really convoluted backstory of witches and ancestors/descendants, the show has gone from a story about nature vs. nurture (in both Clark and Lex's story) to one that is a sci-fi mishmash devoid of human interest." So I started thinking about why Lana's story isn't working for me, and I think "nature v. nurture" is exactly it.
Lana can't work as a third term in the Clark/Lex nature/nurture story because Lana wasn't raised; she just growed, like Topsy. Only more perfect. Her parents are distant icons (then, latterly, fallible and even petty people), they aren't guides or warnings. She can't fit into a story of becoming because she is, her fetishized beauty enough to stop time and disrupt the narrative -- she's so eternal that her face is the face of the Countess. (And the face of Louise, of which more in a moment.)
One version of the Clark/Lex story is that they're destined to be the men they become, so the present is just a situation of insufficient knowledge rather than a situation with various potential outcomes. It's that version that lets Shelby know enough to growl at Lex. I don't like this version; I prefer one where choices matter. But even with the "written in the stars" version, eternal Lana doesn't work because she's eternal in a different way, cycling through time rather than locked in struggle -- I note that neither Naman nor Seget seem to reincarnate.
In "Relic," Louise represents the same earthly fragility to Jor-El as Lana does to Clark, but I think a lot of us breathed a sigh of relief that Lachlan Luthor wasn't Lex in a bad wig; even if he had been, he was never Jor-El's friend. I don't think it would have been a good idea to reincarnate Lex, but at least that would have kept them all on the same story-level. Now we have Clark:Lana = Jor-El:Louise and Clark:Lex = Naman:Seget, but Jor-El has no connection to Naman. And where's the Clark in the Countess's story? The closest we can get is Marguerite:Genevive Teague's ancestor-cum-descendant = Lionel:Lex, maybe, and that's a huge stretch. Lana's manifestations are all the same because Lana is eternally Lana, but they don't all have the same stories, which is what creates the huge conflict with the Clark/Lex mythic storyline. "Destined to interact" (and remember, that's inconsistent with the Countess unless & until Clark & Lex show up in rural France, but let's pretend that Lana is destined to interact with Clark) is not the same as "destined to fight" -- in fact, it's pretty much the opposite, destiny-wise, since it's about possibilities rather than inevitabilities.
Back to nature v. nurture: As far as we can tell, anything that makes Lana different from the Countess is just who she is, inherently, not how she was taught or formed by her specific circumstances. Maybe losing your parents at age three can teach you something, but it's not about why power-lust is wrong. If we could be given enough background on the Countess to see that the Countess was who Lana could have been, the story might come closer to fitting with the Clark/Lex and father/son arcs. But we'd probably need to know more about Laura Lang for that to have a hope of working, and it's really too late for that. (Hmm ... so maybe this failure comes back to SV's failure to care about mothers and daughters at all, much less with the intensity afforded fathers and sons.)
nerodi. nerodi says, succinctly, that "by introducing these insane stones and this really convoluted backstory of witches and ancestors/descendants, the show has gone from a story about nature vs. nurture (in both Clark and Lex's story) to one that is a sci-fi mishmash devoid of human interest." So I started thinking about why Lana's story isn't working for me, and I think "nature v. nurture" is exactly it.Lana can't work as a third term in the Clark/Lex nature/nurture story because Lana wasn't raised; she just growed, like Topsy. Only more perfect. Her parents are distant icons (then, latterly, fallible and even petty people), they aren't guides or warnings. She can't fit into a story of becoming because she is, her fetishized beauty enough to stop time and disrupt the narrative -- she's so eternal that her face is the face of the Countess. (And the face of Louise, of which more in a moment.)
One version of the Clark/Lex story is that they're destined to be the men they become, so the present is just a situation of insufficient knowledge rather than a situation with various potential outcomes. It's that version that lets Shelby know enough to growl at Lex. I don't like this version; I prefer one where choices matter. But even with the "written in the stars" version, eternal Lana doesn't work because she's eternal in a different way, cycling through time rather than locked in struggle -- I note that neither Naman nor Seget seem to reincarnate.
In "Relic," Louise represents the same earthly fragility to Jor-El as Lana does to Clark, but I think a lot of us breathed a sigh of relief that Lachlan Luthor wasn't Lex in a bad wig; even if he had been, he was never Jor-El's friend. I don't think it would have been a good idea to reincarnate Lex, but at least that would have kept them all on the same story-level. Now we have Clark:Lana = Jor-El:Louise and Clark:Lex = Naman:Seget, but Jor-El has no connection to Naman. And where's the Clark in the Countess's story? The closest we can get is Marguerite:Genevive Teague's ancestor-cum-descendant = Lionel:Lex, maybe, and that's a huge stretch. Lana's manifestations are all the same because Lana is eternally Lana, but they don't all have the same stories, which is what creates the huge conflict with the Clark/Lex mythic storyline. "Destined to interact" (and remember, that's inconsistent with the Countess unless & until Clark & Lex show up in rural France, but let's pretend that Lana is destined to interact with Clark) is not the same as "destined to fight" -- in fact, it's pretty much the opposite, destiny-wise, since it's about possibilities rather than inevitabilities.
Back to nature v. nurture: As far as we can tell, anything that makes Lana different from the Countess is just who she is, inherently, not how she was taught or formed by her specific circumstances. Maybe losing your parents at age three can teach you something, but it's not about why power-lust is wrong. If we could be given enough background on the Countess to see that the Countess was who Lana could have been, the story might come closer to fitting with the Clark/Lex and father/son arcs. But we'd probably need to know more about Laura Lang for that to have a hope of working, and it's really too late for that. (Hmm ... so maybe this failure comes back to SV's failure to care about mothers and daughters at all, much less with the intensity afforded fathers and sons.)
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I'd be willing to agree with you, except that they present Lois -- Clark's official OTP and True Love -- as unvirginal (she fails the "hair test"), sexually self-aware (she sees Clark naked, tells herself "Look at his face!", and fails), and *way* too good at holding her liquor. In many respects Lois is the anti-Lana, which is curious given how relentlessly AlMiles have been about presenting Lana as the Perfect Girl.
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I'll have to think about whether I agree with this.
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What I keep hoping for is that she'd break free of the stereotype and start making some hard decisions, and living through the consequences. Whether she shows us a softer feminine side or not, I'd like to see her making some hard choices that lead to her destiny. (Along with Clark and Lex!)
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I'm too lazy to go into all the backstory and come up with a coherent theory like this. I just know I don't like Lana's current storyline. I thought she had improved since last season: going away and finding herself, growing up, acting on her own. But the whole witch thing totally wiped all that away and made her unbelievable yet again. I like the Krypton mythology on the show, but this - it's like Charmed or Buffy have suddenly sprung up in the wrong show.
I agree with you about the underuse of mothers and daughters. Mothers in general. Martha (almost) never gets to say anything of value to Clark. She's just there to look pretty (or not), or terrified, or indignant.
I do like Lois a lot, and I tend to agree with your analysis of her being an honorary guy. I have always accused the writers of being unable to produce full, rounded female characters. Although so far, Lois is not a full character yet, she's a caricature still. At least she's worthy of being the center of the story in their eyes. But that may also be because they wanted a "show about Lois" in the first place, so I'm not sure that counts. What I want to say: Lois is treated as a full character by them, but I'm afraid they'll over-caricaturize her instead of making her real.
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Lana, as you say, is always the same, never grows: just glows in the light of her own perfection. If I thought the writers were clever enough I would say this is a reflection upon her future role as some memory stored in Clark's mind that is tied to the staticness of a remembered childhood. Sadly, I think it's because having invented her as perfection they can't see that perfection is inherently disatisfying to the viewer because it allows for no movement in the narrative.
I gave up on Smallville when I realised that they were going to do little with Lex beyond walloping him on the head every other episode. I thought we'd get the slow set of compromises that drew him deeper and deeper on the path to hell - but so slowly that it wasn't apparent to him or to those closest to him. Instead we got, well, what we got. Which is not terribly interesting to me. Smallville makes me made because I think it seems to ignore endlessly any interesting ideas it generates in favour of yet another round of Kryptonite fueled mayhem.
As to what Lana learned from her parents' death, I thought it was how to cry prettily while wearing pink. It was, apparently, a well-learned lesson.
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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/03/06/x_ed_out?pg=full
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