Yet I continue watching it, every week at 9 p.m. I'm parked in front of the TV and screw the homework. Why? The writing is horrible, the premise somewhat inane and the actors, well, they won't be winning any awards for acting anytime soon that's for sure. However, if we had an award (and we should) for 'looking most like you just walked out of one of Katya's more R-rated fantasies' then we'd have some contenders, among them Tom Welling who plays Clark Kent.
Oh yes, "Smallville" is a show on the WB about Superman, except in this version the Man of Steel is a whiny, angst-prone 15-year-old high school freshman just coming into his powers. The preternaturally pretty Kristin Kreuk plays Clark's crush Lana Lang, yummy John Schneider (Bo Duke from "The Dukes of Hazzard") is Pa Kent, Annette O'Toole (the only less-than-attractive actress who off-sets her handicap by being able to actually, well, act) gets a miserable few lines as Ma Kent and Michael Rosenbaum rounds out the cast as the baby-villain Lex Luthor. There's the WB requisite African-American best friend Pete played by Sam Jones III who gets, if he's lucky, perhaps three-and-a-half lines per episode and the cute, pert girl-next-door Chloe (Allison Mack) who's nursing an unattainable crush on Clark (as well as a perfectly horrendous floppy hairdo).
Each episode follows Clark as he deals with yet another newly discovered superpower and fights off a kryptonite-enhanced mutant schoolboy. The show is mildly amusing and about as formulaic as my summary suggests, but the plot is unimportant. Since we start from a completely unrealistic premise anyway and I have no interest in Superman comic book canon as it is, I won't sit here and pick apart the various discrepancies and inconsistencies of the series. Instead, like any good English major with a solid grounding in gender and queer theory, I'm out to discover what, if anything, sets this show apart from other WB staples such as "Dawson's Creek." What keeps bringing me and, if we can believe the Nielsen ratings, most of America's 18-24-year-olds back for more.
Let's talk subtext. Subtext of the kind Jerry Falwell is always warning us about-the queer kind. More specifically, the hints of an unorthodox homoerotic longing in the relationship between the future Superman and his future enemy Lex Luthor. Before you throw down the paper in disgust let me tell you your American ideal of Superman is safe with me-I'm not claiming he's gay. Well, maybe a wee bit in his newest incarnation as Adolescent of Steel, but I'm not championing absolute homosexuality for our childhood's favorite hero.
I'm thinking here more of the type of homosocial behavior Eve Sedgwick identifies in her book "Between Men," a bond that transcends the line between mere sex and mere friendship, a relationship that fluctuates wildly between the extremes of love, dependence and, as to be expected from a show about two future enemies, hate.
The promotional posters for "Smallville" feature Clark trussed up on a cross first and most obviously evoking the connection between the myth of Superman and the Christian version of the Messiah but also, in our media-saturated culture, it cannot help but recall, perhaps unintentionally, gay hate crimes and, more specifically, the tragedy in Laramie, Wisc.
There's more, from the moment in the pilot when Clark saves Lex from drowning, the two develop a more than cordial, mutually beneficial relationship that includes moments of intense homoerotic yearning. Those long stares into one another's eyes, the loaded sentences, the lack of an established three-dimensional love interest on either side-all these that can be written off as foreshadowing ("Ours will be the friendship of legends" says Lex to Clark and I immediately think of Alexander the Great and Hephaestion), or my own dirty mind, yet there's a tendency (in the general media as well, judging by some of the articles written about the show) to take it that one step further into the rocky and murky territory of queer theory.
Tom Welling's flat portrayal of Clark is surprisingly perfect for this role-his empty underwear model's stare, the polished fixed delivery of his every line, the unnaturally sculpted male body, all these amount to an outright fetishizing of the male body on a scale almost unheard of in a media dominated by what film theorists love to call 'the male gaze.' Can we be seeing a revolution in how television portrays men leading to a transformation/equalization of gender portrayal? By eroticizing the male body as much as, or maybe more than it does the female, can "Smallville" be considered a completely new form of entertainment?
Quick answer to that: definitely not, it's a show about Superman for godsakes. But this new trend in blurring the lines between what we've always taken as the masculine way of behaving spells new and exciting things for television in general. What's important to remember is that the WB is first and foremost a commercial enterprise, they have no truck with Art or art as social commentary. So this relationship, whatever it is the writers are getting across with their hints and intimation, through simple economics, sells. "Smallville's" premier brought in 8.4 million total viewers and the highest household and adult 18-49 ratings for any premiere for the WB-they're doing something right, and let me tell you, it ain't the plotlines.
What we have then is something Freya Johnson in her article "Holy Homosexual Batman: Camp and Corporate Capitalism" calls "overtly queer supratext." Signifiers that, as they are shown to a mainstream audience, go above and beyond the text (and over the heads of most viewers), insinuation and allusions that are not hidden but blatantly and explicitly flaunted. These hints, however, will lead to no discernable climax. I'll let you in on a little secret: Clark Kent and Lex Luthor will never get it on.
They won't kiss, they won't declare undying love to one another or even admit to a crush and Lex does not become evil because Clark spurred his affections. Their relationship will follow strictly codified masculine rules of behavior that nevertheless will incorporate a realness and concreteness that eludes the explicitly heterosexual relationships on the show. Clark and Lex's relationship is the most important thing in the series because it is the only thing that, according to canon at least, lasts-Clark will go on to fall in love with Lois Lane, not Lana Lang, and leave behind Smallville to becomes Superman but his friend/nemesis will remain the same throughout his life.
The queer sub/supra-text that titillates the audience is exactly what is missing from a purportedly queer-friendly show like "Will and Grace." This sitcom is so hygienic and asexual it contains nothing in the form of homosexual or even homoerotic content-it's impossible to do a 'queer reading' of the show as it has no ambiguity. Its premise is exactly the same as every other sitcom with the substitution of a male love interest for the usual hip, New York female. Will does not get a boyfriend, Will doesn't even really get a life, but he does, in the form of Grace, get something of a 'wife' as the two share everything but the marital bed. Jack, the more flamboyant friend, is a ridiculous self-parody. The only 'real' gay man on the show is the rich spoilt brat Karen and even that's a stretch.
"Will and Grace" works off an overly-familiar gay ethos that pervades straight life already. The 'gay chic' that everyone is, most literally, buying into requires no signifiers or hidden messages as it has become enveloped by the hetero-normative lifestyle. There's no daring in this show, no risks taken as there are in "Smallville" and, therefore, no culmination achieved, no social change wrought. The male body on "Will and Grace" is desexualized to the extent it appears almost neutered with no desires other than to shop or bicker with the 'wife.' It's safe, it sells, but is it morally right? "Will and Grace" is not a show about gay people, it is foremost a show about class, about being wealthy, healthy and a consumer in America. It's quick, clever, slickly humorous but, at its very core, incredibly tedious and quickly forgotten.
It is significantly more dangerous to label "Will and Grace" the ideal example of a 'gay show' than to speculate on the sexuality of the characters in "Smallville." The gay lifestyle is already being shorn of sexuality, sterilized and disinfected for consumption by a heterosexual viewing public and to hold up Will's daily life as an example to a gay teen or even as a model of a 'safe' homosexual is to deny the gay movement exactly what we've been fighting for for the past several decades. We may be here, we may be queer, but goddamn it, we're not boring.
The paranoia over the 'gay agenda' has infiltrated the gay movement as well-the outcry over Showtime's graphic depiction of homosexual sex on their series "Queer as Folk" has come mainly from inside the gay community itself. The scenes are too rough, gays (gay men in particular, lesbians are not even given a sex life until half way through the first season and their lives are shown only as they relate to the men) are shown as being too promiscuous by half. It goes against the veneer of respectability that the media has tried so hard to superimpose-queers are exactly like you, except for what they do in the bedroom. But where's the fun in that?
The other show on television with a heavily gay-centered viewing public is the prison drama "Oz" on HBO. So far it has escaped censure from both the straight and gay community alike only because of its safety valve-men have sex with men in prison, it's a fact of life but that doesn't make them gay, right? However, "Oz" actually contains one of the most realistically and humanely portrayed gay relationships on air right now (if you get away from the whole 'they're in prison' aspect). The characters are not defined by their sexuality and not even wholly by their race-it is a show that deserves more viewers as it continuously pushes the line both artistically and, socially, something both "Will and Grace" and "Queer as Folk" purport to do but fail miserably.
So "Smallville" then, is all subtext and supratext and pretty actors and the possibility of a less-than-traditional relationship between an all-American hero and the all-American super-nemesis. Add all that up and we've still got a fluff of a show that will fade into the woodwork after its obligatory five-year-run and so what. What's important about "Smallville" is exactly that possibility of a queer reading that goes beyond what happens on the flat screen.
If Vanity Fair can favorably comment on "Smallville's" homoerotic content and for the sponsors and writers to encourage such a phenomenon, then the time for a realistic, fully sexualized depiction of gay life cannot be far in coming, right? Right? Maybe not, maybe it's just empty calories.