And it's fun how a progressive tv show like
Supergirl can still fail the Bechdel Test
. Lena and Kara talked about Lex Luthor and Maggie and Alex discussed about the suspect in the assassination attempt (that at the time they believed he was Mon-El, a man).
Well, Bechdel isn't something that has to be passed in every single instance. It's more an aggregate thing, to call attention to gender bias in an entire series or an entire medium. If a certain body of multiple works fails the test more often than it passes, then there's a problem. But if it passes a reasonable majority of the time, then the exceptions aren't indicative of a systemic bias, they're just normal variations.
Isn't the "Clark-Kent-is-a-klutz" trope dead and buried like, thirty years ago? At least from Crisis?
Adaptations can draw on elements from numerous earlier incarnations, at the discretion of the adapter. There's no expiration date; indeed, these things tend to be cyclical, as creators react against recent versions of a story by drawing nostalgically on elements of earlier versions. For instance, the reaction to the campy, light Batman of the Silver Age and the Adam West TV show was to make Batman darker and evoke the more violent vigilante loner of the early 1939-40 comics; while in recent years, we've begun to see a reaction against decades of dark, violent Batman and a renewed embrace of the campy fun of the Adam West era. So it's no surprise that we're seeing a renewed embrace of Richard Donner's Superman as a reaction to Zack Snyder's.
Something else I was thinking about last night: the cop mentioned that her ex-girlfriend learned english through a touch telepathy power. Which kind of begs the question: how do all these other aliens do it?
...
But how did Astra, Non and the other Fort Rozz escapees do it?
They'd been on Earth for 12 years by the time we met them.
How did Mon-El do it (who was seemingly speaking perfect english in less than 48 hours)?
That did bug me. I'd like to think they were actually conversing in Kryptonian and the show translated it for our benefit, but that wouldn't explain how Mon-El was able to communicate with the astronomer.
Yes. However, it's more accurate to attribute the bumbling persona to the movies, rather than the comics.
I dunno, I think the Golden Age comics portrayed Clark as something of a klutz. That was the standard
Scarlet Pimpernel/Zorro secret-identity model they were drawing on -- the strong, brave, virile action hero adopts a weak, fumbling, timid, even effeminate persona so nobody suspects a connection.
In the Golden and Silver Age, Lois saw Clark as a rival for stories.
Yes, but at least in the Golden Age, she also held him in contempt as a man, finding him cowardly and oafish. Much the same was true in the '40s radio series. Indeed, it often seemed incongruous how much scorn the radio version of Lois had for Clark's lack of courage and manhood, given that he often demonstrated great courage and valor as Clark, e.g. unhesitatingly racing into danger so that he could change into Superman once he was out of the others' view, or standing up to a thug's intimidation rather than backing down from a story. And yet despite all that, Lois still routinely sneered at his supposed weakness and cowardice, which was quite odd.
And, yes, the clumsiness was an element of his comics and radio secret identity. Clark would sometimes knock out a bad guy with superstrength and then handwave it to Lois or Jimmy by saying "Gee, I must've tripped him by accident in the dark" or the like. Or he'd fake tripping and falling out of sight so he could get an opportunity to change to Superman and then say "It's okay, I caught Clark as he fell." More generally, pretending to be physically inept gave him an excuse to hang back from the action and change to Superman, at the cost of earning Lois's contempt.
