Journalism in Smallville: A Case for Human Interest

By Bader Noaimi on Friday, June 20th, 2014

“It’s good to step out of your own shoes every once in a while, get a closer look at the situation and see how complicated people are. It’s okay to put up a fight every once in a while, but other times, you’ve got to dig a little bit deeper.” – Clark Kent, One on One

Smallville was a good, albeit problematic show, that revamped many aspects of the Superman mythology in really interesting ways. But one thing Smallville did not do well was meaningfully incorporating the Daily Planet and Clark Kent’s career in journalism into the show’s narrative.

The earlier seasons of the show were promising; Chloe Sullivan’s character and her passion for journalism set an entertaining investigative tone to many of the episodes. You put Clark Kent into the mix and we were lead to believe that Clark was being nudged in the direction of the news bullpen.

But that’s not exactly what happened. Clark did eventually get a job at the Daily Planet but his intentions weren’t for the sake of getting a job or a passion for journalism, it was to create a “disguise” that would allow him to be close to the action without drawing suspicion.

Essentially, this started making Clark Kent a disguise, and The Blur the real identity.

Early on in the show, journalism was portrayed as a noble profession, on par with superheroing on the crime fighting level. And through Chloe Sullivan and later, Lois Lane, we were shown that punching super villains in the face wasn’t always the answer and that there are other ways to help people.

Smallville talked on and on about how much of an inspiration Clark Kent would become for the people of Earth, but the irony is that the show doesn’t seem to have realized how much good he could done on a personal level with journalism.

In the last two seasons of the show, I think that Clark might have spent more time on the farm than he did working at the Daily Planet. We barely saw him work on anything and he seemed not to care. Almost like telling us that there was no point in being a journalist when you can be a superhero.

But the most painful part of this is the fact that by making journalism so unimportant to Clark Kent, this made it unimportant altogether.

Smallville spent so much time drilling the idea that Lois and Clark have an equal partnership based on love and trust and that they would save the world together into our heads, but the show made it really obvious to us who was able to do more good.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to argue that telling the story of someone pushing a planet out of orbit is the same as actually pushing a planet out of orbit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to give journalism its own flavor in the fight for truth and justice.

In recent stories in the comics and revisions of Superman’s origins, they show that Clark Kent chose to become a journalist, that he wanted to tell stories, and that he knew he could help people that way, in addition to being a superhero.

Clark Kent writes human interest stories. Stories of people like you and me who have struggles, aspirations, dreams and frustrations. And he writes them because he wants to help people, and to touch the hearts and minds of his readers. Sometimes you just can’t punch your way into people’s hearts.

Besides, why would he have fallen in love with Lois Lane in the first place if he didn’t love storytelling?

Bader Noaimi is an aspiring writer with a love for all things Lois Lane, Clark Kent and Superman (at least for now). They like to write about social issues in comic book culture and seeks to ruin their friends' lives on the internet. A "Literature" student for nearly all of their life, they want to prove to people that comics are serious business. No matter what their mother says.