Smallville, et al.

Over New Year’s weekend, the bellatrices of Camilla rode again – this time in the sleepy town of Louisville…. Sarah had brought the fourth season of Smallville along and persuaded Ashlea and me to try it. We got hooked. I think we watched something like episodes 5 through 19 over two days. And, considering the dispositions of the viewers, much discussion was put into the story’s more interesting elements. All of this (mixed with a dash of Ben’s blog and Dr. Bates’ lectures) gave rise to the following thoughts…

The characters of Smallville are largely unsatisfactory because they are morally shallow. Clark, our “heroic” main character, has only trite moral aphorisms, with no reason backing them. His morals are simply “the done thing.” Except, they’re rarely even that. While he holds that other people ought to abide by certain rules, he is, after all, the “ubermann” – those morals don’t always apply to him.

He has a form of morality, but denies the power thereof – love. [In fact, most of the first bit of 2 Tim. 3 is rather applicable…] Without love, all the virtue in the world is not ultimately sufficient. Intriguingly, the series seems to be exploring this idea (albeit more like a man blindly groping through a cave than a spelunker with a map).

Take, for instance, Clark’s current relationship with our future bad guy, Lex Luthor. Lex is one person with whom Clark’s trite aphorisms simply don’t fly… but Clark doesn’t have anything more substantive to offer. Because of this he alienates Lex in a reverse Beauty and the Beast fashion. In rejecting Lex, Clark makes him more “rejectable.” In L’engle-ian terms, it’s the reverse of “naming” – one person sees the essence, potential, of another and “names” him, and brings out that potential. Yet the true knowledge necessary to such a task can only come part and parcel with love. Without love, the knowledge will inevitably be mistaken and will not benefit the other person but warp and distort him.

Fortunately, unlike the denizens of Smallville, we do not have to rely on other people for this love/knowledge. We are blessed with a perfect Creator who knows us intimately and loves us deeply – He is the Author of our self-knowledge and destiny. Yet we cannot pass off Smallville as unmeaning. We do impact each other. Of all people, we Christians must not forget this. Lewis said it better than I ever could, so I’ll defer to him :) :
"The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner, no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ 'vere latitat' the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."