Iolanthealias quoted parts of Neil Bailey's review of Superman Returns, a review I thought was far from excellent. Instead, I thought that Bailey let loose his vitriolic hatred of Lois Lane in that review, while at the same time he mostly exonerated Superman's behaviour. Let's see what Neil Bailey said, in the parts that Iolanthealias quoted:
The hard part of this movie is not giving Lois the bastard kid, and not even Lois being merciless and cruel in the face of it.
Lois has a bastard kid, and she is merciless and cruel.
You can almost extrapolate that from certain versions of her character.
But Lois's mercilessness and cruelty is not surprising, because that is what Lois is like, at least when it comes to certain versions of her.
Lois making this choice to have the child without a father
Bailey makes it sound as if Lois seduced Superman in order to have his child. Moreover, he makes it sound as if Lois knew right from the start that Superman would abandon her, so that her child would grow up without a father. He makes it sound as if she had decided, even before she had sex with Superman, that she would have his child anyway, and damn the consequences. That is really not what it looked like in the movie where the lovemaking happened, in Superman II.
Besides, would it have been better if Lois had decided that she would not have a child without a father, when she discovered that she was pregnant? Would it have been better if she had had an abortion? Personally I believe that Neal Bailey would have poured more vitriolic hatred over Lois if she had aborted Superman's child. But since she decided to keep the child, she is a merciless and cruel woman who set out to have Superman's child, regardless of the consequences.
This is the fault that Bailey finds with Superman:
the puritanical SUPERMAN making the choice to have pre-marital, protection-less sex with a mortal, knowing he's an alien. Superman leaving on the basis of one news story.
Superman is puritanical, so he should not have had sex with Lois. Well, I could tell you of at least two comic book stories where Superman did have sex with women he was not married to. I oculd tell you of a movie, Superman III, where Superman had free and wild sex with a woman he didn't even know (yes, he was under the influence of red kryptonite). I could tell you of another comic book story where Clark floated outside Lois's window and kissed Lori Lemaris the mermaid, even though he was engaged to Lois at that time - and mind you, he was not under the influence of anything when he behaved like that. Lois was really angry at Clark because of what he had done, and a lot of male readers were
furious with Lois because she was angry and bitchy at Clark! Just because he had floated outside her window and kissed another woman!
So in my opinion, Superman hasn't always been puritanical. Neal Bailey, however, assumes that Superman always is puritanical, and therefore his behaviour when he had sex with Lois was out of character. But Bailey thinks that Lois can be seen as cruel and merciless, and therefore her behaviour when she was cruel and merciless (Bailey doesn't say how she was cruel and merciless) was in character for her.
Bailey goes on:
That despite the fact that Lois has a kid, the kid has a father
Yes, the kid has a father. Superman is his father.
she would continue to try and flirt around and kiss Superman
What? Lois wants to talk to Superman when he returns after five years, after he made love to her. And the two of them get a little carried away and kiss each other. Personally I don't find it too surprising that Lois would want to ask Superman why he left. Particularly as he is the father of her child, although admittedly she didn't know that in the beginning of the movie.
It's bad that she would do those things, potentially cracking up the family SHE CHOSE
Oh, she is behaving badly toward her fiancé. And is she behaving badly towards her son? Shouldn't he get to know his biological father? Particularly as he is going to discover, as he grows up, that he is not like his mother's fiancé?
it's not wholly so bad as the fact that though Lois doing these things is reprehensible, she drags SUPERMAN into doing these things, SUPERMAN, who would NEVER in a million years risk breaking up a family or hurting a child's development in any way...
Oh, wow!
Superman's behaviour is reprehensible! And why is that? It can't be because he made a
choice to do these things, because it is not in his character to do reprehensible things. No, he did them because
Lois dragged him into doing them!!! When Superman is doing something wrong it is not his fault. It is Lois's fault, because she made him do it. And it is not surprising that Lois made him do it, because she is merciless and cruel, and she made the conscious choice to wreak all this havoc.
I recently complained that Lois is sometimes portrayed as evil here on these boards, but Clark is basically never portrayed as evil. Lois can be shown to be evil incarnate, or at least to turn into it, but Calrk can not. The point I'm trying to make is not that I want Clark/Superman to be evil. I love it when he is good. I just hate it when Superman is acting cruelly and he gets off the hook completely with no one blaming him at all. Because it can't have been his fault. But Lois can be a woman without a heart or a conscience on whom you can dump all your hatred and all your blame.
God: Adam, why did you eat the apple?
Adam: The woman that you gave me to be with me, she made me do it. It wasn't my fault.
Ann