SV's Fanatic 5.10: The Mythological Context

I'm a myth-whore so I'm shooting straight for the classical reference. At the hospital, responding to Clark's questions about his future, Lex says, It's like Apollo asking Icarus why he's building wings. At first, I unconsciously inverted the comparison: it seemed natural that Lex would view himself as Apollo, the sun god, the voice of reason; not only does Lex have a god-complex, but he's famous for his jealous skinning of Marsyas, what might seem a hint of things to come between Lex and Clark, the violent physical reaction to jealousy. (Er, and the jealousy in the classical case is over who plays his instrument better--need I say more?). Superficially, Apollo makes more sense, not Lex as Icarus, the handsome, pliable young boy. Then I realized the truth, and it fit.

Lex calling Clark "Apollo" is another declaration in an ocean of them, one of those coded confessions of love and worship; notice, for instance, how he places himself in the subservient position, a mortal envying a god's ability to flee with ease? It's a gorgeous elevation of Clark, a mark of deep reverence, since Apollo's generally viewed as the best of the gods: beautiful, rational, the cause of the sun's rise and set.

But Lex's mythological allusion reveals a nice Freudian slip: Icarus doesn't build his own wings, of course. He's not the creative genius, the man who invented the labyrinth, who helped Pasiphae satisfy her wild lust for a bull--that was his father, Daedalus. (See Ovid's Metamorphosis 8.) The truth fits a little too tightly for Lex, so he avoids it, denies Lionel's role as the one who built his wings, the one who formed him with the gift of The Art of War at fourteen. The allusion also reveals Lex's secret fear, that like Icarus he's doomed, destined to fly too close to the sun, which will melt his wings and kill him.

I wonder too if Lex deviates from Ovid's version of the story because there Dadaelus, though using his son to test his theory of flight, demonstrates concern and regret, something we never see in Lionel:

As he worked and talked the old man's cheeks were wet with tears, and his fatherly affection made his hands tremble. He kissed his son, whom he was never to kiss again: then, raising himself on his wings, flew in front, showing anxious concern for his companion, just like a bird who has brought her tender fledgelings out of their nest in the treetops, and launched them into the air.

Finally, Lex surely invokes the myth of Icarus because, as the opening of Marlowe's Faustus shows, in the Christian era Icarus became a symbol of another babe with wings, Lucifer, whose pride drove him up then down, down, down:

...Till, swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His wax wings did mount above his reach
And melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.
For, falling to a devilish exercise
And glutted more with leaning's golden gifts... (1.20-24)

What Lex's psyche coughs up, therefore, is this: pure goodness (Apollo-Clark) and proud, doomed wickedness (Lex-Icarus-Lucifer).

It's lovely little moments like this that make me SV's bitch, these telling references that show both slash and psychology--um, not unlike Chloe's immediately-immortal zinger about being a Krypto-hag.

For those no longer watching the show because they think the gay died back in S3, watch this episode. You've got Lex (again) declaring his love, Clark refusing to bang his girlfriend, and Chloe outing her big gay alien to the tv audience. What more could a girl ask for?