I'm obsessed with Smallville

My girlfriend, being an immense fan of the television series Smallville, urged me to begin watching and lent me her copies of the first 4 seasons so I could begin catching up to the 7th season just completed a couple weeks ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the CW show, Smallville depicts the maturation of Clark Kent as he experiences adolescence and young-adulthood coping with and mastering his exceptional abilities while grappling with and confronting the strange and unusual truth of his existence. Smallville carefully avoids being the story of Superman, or rather Superboy, and embraces the telling of the story of Clark.

After watching several episodes I was intrigued, but admittedly I reached a point where I confided in my roommate that if Clark Kent didn't start changing in phone booths and flying around soon I was going to lose interest. Thankfully, I was wrong.

I remember watching Christopher Reeves glide across the Metropolis skylines as a young boy wishing that I had the ability to do the same, but I know that many of the students I work with are a bit too young to have such memories. Thus, I've grown to appreciate how the story of Clark Kent has been brought into a contemporary setting to reintroduce the hero's secret identity to a younger audience. I also appreciate how we as its audience are being asked to identify solely - at least presently - with the mild-mannered Clark as opposed to the Man of Steel. While we can all dream of having super-strength and x-ray vision, it's not exactly easy to identify with these attributes. However, Clark's character traits and the personal conflicts he encounters are absolutely relatable. Though compounded by extraordinary circumstances, his battle to know himself and be himself to the greatest extent he can is not at all unlike the battles we all must fight to find our true selves and our places in the world, battles that continue and may become more or less difficult as we mature and embrace new challenges in life.

Smallville effectively completes - or is in the process of completing - the primary chapters of the Superman mythology. This intentional use of the word mythology is a point I want to stress. Numerous cultures around the globe have histories much longer and more extensive than that of Americans - or USAians to be precise. These cultures have adopted mythologies that romanticize and popularize the histories of their ancient societies. I've encountered the argument that the Lord of the Rings stands alone as a mythology for English culture, and I support it. Likewise, I support the notion that comics and our stories of superheroes are our Mythology. Inspired by the truly great stories cherished by other cultures, we've reinvented the characters and retold the tales in our own time.

I enjoy and applaud Smallville for updating and adding a new dimension to the mythology of Superman. I haven't caught up on the entire series yet - I'm really not even that close - but I'm committed to doing so and, knowing how the 7th season ended, eager to keep watching. However, some flying would be nice.