Stamping out alien-human freaks

smallville's moral duty

pp. 187-196

in: Jan Jagodzinski, Television and youth culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

T he symbolic death of Clark (Christ) would be to sacrifice his superpowers in such a way that they can be put to use to help overcome the 'sins' of humankind—to negotiate the transcendental and secular worlds. The voice from the Real, Jor-El, never entirely leaves him. He is still "heard" in the seventh season (702, "Kara"; 708, "Blue"; 710, "Persona"). Psychoanalytically, all this simply means is that Jor-El is none other than Clark's superego. The superego "is nothing other than… jouissance at the core of being—which we encounter in anxiety, in an altered form [as a power]" (Copjec 2006, 108, author's emphasis). Clark's ad(hear)ance or disobedience to this Voice in "Solitude" is all related to how, what, and why he is able to enjoy (jouissance); here I signal this affectivity as the entwinement of both joy and suffering—painful pleasure/pleasurable pain.