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superman theory

I'm having something of a stressful morning, so I think I'd like to take an hour off and write a little more about the Superman mythos. So some of you can go "HEY WHAT ABOUT SUPER-HORSE" and I just have a big, steamy make-believe look at you through the computer monitor like "Yeah, what about Super-Horse?"

Anyway, like many folk characters, Superman finds himself acting as protagonist in a number of differently themed stories - primarily he indulges in straight heroic adventure, but he's also got his share of farces, satires (a few), and looking at them in the right light, origin myths and nature myths.

The story of Superman is also a series of love stories, although I've never been much a fan of the central romance; the triangle between Lois, Clark and Superman. Which is a shame, because it is a pretty fundamental romance, if you read it in the right light: The champion, for his own reasons - to better pass unnoticed among friends and hide from his enemies - disguises himself, and walks the streets of the city as a timid, unremarkable youth. In this disguise, he falls in love with a brave, beautiful woman. She, however, scorns and mocks him for her love for the champion himself! Ho Ho! So freed from his disguise, he in turn mocks and scorns her, so that eventually she learns humility and soft-heartedness, and comes to love the timid youth, who then may reveal himself as his true self, the end. Ta-da, that's Byronian shit right there up in this piece, enjoy it.

(The persistent cheap soap opera theatrics of their relationship has basically made it impossible for me to enjoy the romance between them, and the marriage itself has been pretty boring to my mind; mostly, Superman flies into their apartment, they talk about transparent relationship issues, then Superman hears a cat catching fire and has to leave and Lois makes some supportive remark about how it's like being married to a firefighter or a doctor, and away flies Superman. Dull, demeaning. As the perennial outsider, I'd love to see Clark and Lois as a married couple ... at Lois' family's place for Thanksgiving! Or baby-sitting her sister's kids. Or Clark having to throw a bachelor party for Lois' brother or something - essentially, using the marriage as a reason to take an outsider orphan and jam him into family situations with which he has no familiarity - character-building and comedy gold, really)

The romance which DOES work for me is also the most straight-up mythical, it's about as Norse as Thor drinking the ocean and Babylonian as tiny men getting abducted by birds (I think that's how it went). Superman and his love for Lori Lemaris.

Here's how it goes; As a young man in college, Clark Kent is captivated by the exotic beauty of a foreign-born student, confined to a wheelchair. He approaches her, and despite their mutual attraction, she pulls away from. Clark follows her every night to the caravan she keeps by the sea. Thinking she must be embarrassed by her infirmity, he resolves to cure her with his superpowers, and uses his X-Ray vision to peer through the walls of her caravan to reveal - the girl speaking hurriedly in hushed, secretive tones over strange radio equipment. Is she a spy for a foreign power, he begins to wonder?

He confronts her and discovers that she is indeed a foreign agent, but is she from an enemy nation? No, she is a mermaid! Holy shit and hot damn! And worse yet, although they have a passionate and brief affair, she must return to her people where Superman cannot follow (Don't get smart, you know why. You wouldn't want to read Clark Kent swimming to an underwater newspaper every month)

I love this story because IT IS A DAMN NATURE MYTH, the Sky and the Sea, a folk explanation of the tides.

Here, allow me to stitch something up from whole cloth: Every evening, the young figure of the Sky cloaks his burning countenance in night, and steps towards the earth, glowing as the moon. And every night, he sees a beautiful maiden seated upon the rocks by the ocean. He falls immediately in love, but she spurns him. He returns to her each night to her side, and by pieces wins her heart. Embracing her, he spies what he believes to be a knife in her hand, and puts her away from him, fearing she is an enemy of his court, and intends to harm him. She reveals that, no, as he is the Sky, she is the Sea, and he saw only the reflection of his own brightness shining upon her waters. So rebuked, she pulls away from him, and returns to her separate ocean.

That's how I always read the Superman/Lori Lemaris story.NICE HUH? Here's another way, the song "Fish & Bird" by Tom Waits:

Since my time is up, I'm not going to bother with Sally Selwyn and Lyla Ler-Rol, much less Lana Lang, who is a romantic blip. I leave it to you guys, and Matt Rossi, who can probably do this as well if not better than I can, given his credentials. And his credenza.