Bad Romance

I’ve been trying to write a story inspired by Bad Romance ever since sisabet released it, because it is everything I love about Lex and Clark/Lex and Superman vs Lex Luthor, and I keep failing, because it is in fact EVERYTHING I love about them. The thing that this vid does—which vids can do, like poetry and song, in a way that narrative can’t—is tell ALL the stories at the same time, the underlying emotional story. I also keep failing to pick out specific clips so you are going to have to watch the whole vid with me once through first and then we can move on together!

So one of the most amazing things Bad Romance does is use the whole sweep of the Superman mythos and all the different canons we have for this story. By doing that, the vid pulls us away from the underlying narrative of any one canon, and that helps it tell this ur-story. I love how right at the opening sisabet starts with literally SUPERFRIENDS and the wacky Legion of Doom headquarters rising out of the swamp, then goes to the lurid Beyond The Grave! comics cover before we get Smallville. Even though the vid leans heavily on Smallville’s Clark/Lex relationship, it isn’t a Smallville vid that uses outside source. Smallville canon is clearly just one of the possible Superman canons here, and that makes the Smallville canon also just one of the possible stories of the Smallville universe.

When we do get to Smallville source, we start with this awesome horror-movie sequence: the hallway, the Frankensteinian torture flashes, Lex’s bloody hands on the piano.

By the time we get to the brief light at the end of that tunnel, the gold and red of Clark interrupting the piano playing, it’s completely clear that we’re not actually inside a single “real” story—we’re inside Lex Luthor’s head, that hallway tunnel is leading us down into the full depths of his obsession, and look, he is REALLY REALLY OBSESSED.

destruction is not a deterrent

I also have to talk about the vid description for a second here—sisabet has captioned it as “When mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent” and I love that because when I watch this vid, I always think of watching the computer in Wargames play out all the different scenarios of nuclear war, trying to see if there’s any way to win:

Bad Romance is Lex playing out every possible scenario of his relationship with Clark, trying to find a way to make it work. And he clearly can’t imagine anything healthy or good or simple for more than a few moments, this is not a vid where we are allowed to imagine him being satisfied with true love or a happy ending—he’s Lex Luthor all the way through, he’s power-hungry and furious and he doesn’t just want Clark to love him, he wants Clark to love him totally: he wants to conquer him, and he wants to conquer the world, and he’s totally unwilling to compromise. And Lex Luther is also a genius, so he can see perfectly well that no matter which way he goes, it all ends in flames, but unlike the computer, he will never in a million years end up at the conclusion that the only winning move is not to play. I love how sisabet uses the Lex Luthor: Man of Steel comic, the part where Lex says I have hope—because that’s the fundamental point, he does have hope, he won’t quit trying no matter what. And the whole Beyond The Grave!!! opening is echoed again to emphasize it, not even death is going to stop Lex Luthor, he is going to keep coming:

Someday

Someday, as Lex says in the vid, he’s going to make it. He believes! (And Clark’s death isn’t going to stop him, either!) And what keeps them both trapped in this bad romance is that Clark is in Lex’s reach. Clark keeps fluttering around Lex like a moth to a flame. I love these repeated sequences where sisabet cuts rapid fire among closeups creating this sense of the two of them circling each other:

In these and throughout the whole vid, we get this amazing nonstop whiplashing movement between the highest moments of love and connection and collaboration and the moments of PURE RAGE and violence. There is no downtime. This is all drama, all high intensity, and ultimately that is what Lex wants the most. Screw friendship! HE JUST WANTS ROMANCE.

And for me the core tension in the Superman story is exactly that Superman the character belongs at that high-drama level, but that doesn’t mean Clark wants to be there. A central question in any piece of Superman canon is always who is the actual person, Kal-El or Clark Kent, and where does the canon come down between making him the distant alien who puts on a thin shell of human disguise to walk among us and loves us but is never one of us, and making him the ordinary human being who has to struggle with understanding and using his ludicrous alien powers and trying to stay human while he does.

And here in this vid, Lex is the human being who has sacrificed his humanity so he can operate on that insane high drama level, and he is desperate for Clark to come with him to high drama land! Because who else is he going to hate/love/fight, there’s nobody else out there he considers a worthy opponent. Because Clark does have these unimaginable powers, he can be dragged there and is constantly tempted by it. And Lex knows that he’s courting destruction when he tries to pull Clark towards his own dark side, but he doesn’t care. He’s as hungry for the worst of Clark as for the best of him, maybe even more, because that puts Clark on his level and in his reach:

Of course what makes this all so satisfying is also that the vid also says what fandom says, the vid is our voice too—we don’t want Clark and Lex being “friends,” we want them to go to those intense moments and push them further. The vid is one long howl demanding the climax that the canon refuses to give us—on multiple levels, both because as slash fans we want the romance that they won’t show, and because this is as open-ended as canon gets. Superman is never going to stop. Superman won’t stay dead and Lex Luthor won’t stay dead and so Lex is right to have hope, he can keep coming and keep coming and keep trying to play until he gets it right.

striving for climax

One of the most brilliant choices in this vid that helps to build this sense of striving for climax for me is the way sisabet uses the scene of Clark kneeling and giving Lex his hand. First of all, the scene, which in the canon was actually Zod possessing Lex, is beautifully decontextualized—by the time we get to the first appearance of this clip, we’re so firmly situated in Lex’s desires that I don’t think of Zod for a second; I immediately read this as a scene of Clark kneeling before Lex.

But the really spectacular thing is, this clip—which is also visually a pop of bright primary color, a moment of purer fantasy breaking through—gives us this beautiful moment of delayed gratification, because sisabet cuts it up and gives us the setup of it very early in the vid:

And then she delays the final payoff moment of the clip until really late in the vid, on the howl of I just want romance:

She could have used this as a closing clip or even just on a line that ends a song section, made it feel like a conclusion—but she doesn’t: instead the clip lands in the middle of a section, and so this moment remains Lex’s desire, not reality. He keeps howling for romance, he’s still trying to find a solution, this one or something else.

The actual ending is a furious descent into pure madness, Lex in the Oval Office vision—which from canon we know ends with the whole world dying—and Joker-laughing up into Clark’s face, until we end with Lex coming out of his terrifying hallway, and the door closes behind him, but all the demons are still in there, the simulations are still playing out.