09.16.06
Superman, Lois Lane and the loving cuckold Richard
I just saw Superman Returns. It seemed like a good relaxing film to watch. But What really bugs me about this film is the glorification of being a cuckold. If you’ve watched the film, it was revealed that Lois Lane’s son Jason is biologically the son of Superman. And Lois Lane’s live-in partner is a willing cuckold.
I wasn’t the only one who commented on this. Check out what Mike Mennono of Boston had to say about this issue:
This postmodern feminista has it both ways. We see that she (Lois Lane) has settled for her would-be mate, Richard (Dick), who needs a proxy–an airplane–to fly, poor sod. In addition, Richard has a stubby nose that makes him look, at times, like a little hedgehog. But he is a loving cuckold, and never betrays any suspicion that the child he treats as his own isn’t. He is as devoted a father to his bastard son as he is a slave to his cheating fiancee. There is more than a whiff in this triangle of theories of behavior advanced by Evolutionary Psychologists. Women, according to theory, settle down with men like Richard, the gentle, loving, doting types, but especially when they are ovulating they go for guys like Superman, who prance around in their underwear showing off their big bulge and flexing their muscles. These big, hunky dudes don’t make good partners (mainly due to the fact that they’re all gay), but they’ve got the DNA the ladies want. Their job is simply to inseminate and then fly off in their blue leotards with their underwear on the outside, leaving the parenting to the pussies. It’s rough, I know, but that’s evolution.
So Lois is an avatar of both a pop-feminist-infused culture and a slave to her evolutionary instincts as well. This does not make her character compelling, however, just confused. And she never transcends confusion to experience catharsis, which the complexity of her character seems to point the way towards. She never summons the courage to choose between the men who love her (for what reason is the only real mystery in the film). Perhaps she wasn’t ovulating at the time.
Check out Mike’s blog.
