Our favorite reporters, Lois and Clark, are really a lot more fascinating than many FoLCs may realize. There is so much more to these two lovebirds than the ABC TV show, which is also why a couple like Robin Hood and Lady Marion can't hold a candle to Lois and Clark. The love story of Robin and Marion is a rather shallow modern Disneyesque product, which has nothing to do with the original myth about Robin Hood, so there is no true story behind this romance at all. A few other fictional couples are famous enough, and sufficiently strongly linked together to be a "real" couple, such as Tarzan and Jane. But in their case, Jane is a rather bland and boring girl who is more of an accessory or a function than a person; she is, basically, just the girlfriend the hero needs to be a real man.

A few classic fictional couples really exist, where the woman is a strong character and very important in her own right. One obvious example is Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. Juliet defies her parents when they try to force her to renounce Romeo and marry a man she doesn't love, and she ultimately commits suicide with her loved one rather than living her life without Romeo.

But the couple we really should compare Lois and Clark with is probably Samson and Delilah. You must remember that Lois and Clark (and Superman) were originally created by two seventeen-year-old boys, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, back in 1934. Jerry Siegel once said in an interview that he came up with the idea of Superman because he wanted to create a hero who was like Samson in the Bible, only even more fantastic.

Ah, but the name of Samson is inextricably linked to that of Delilah, isn't it? Delilah is the woman who tempted the divinely-powered Samson with her sexuality, and when he gave in to her and slept with her, she robbed him of his strength. Delilah is the ultimate femme fatale, the mighty man's only weakness and fateful flaw.

So, if Jerry Siegel was inspired by Samson when he created Superman, then there has to be a Delilah waiting in the wings to tempt the superhero. You bet there is, and the name of the temptress is... Lois Lane. Well, people, are you surprised?

But Superman was created to be better than Samson. Therefore, unlike Samson, he had to be able to resist his own Delilah, Lois Lane. Because if he didn't, Lois would emasculate him and weaken him, like Delilah did to Samson.

Superman's supremely effective weapon to keep Lois at bay was his double identity. Lois always fawned over Superman and despised Clark Kent. But in his Superman persona, our hero was strong and self-confident and was able to easily rebuff Lois. As Clark Kent he very much desired her - and would have given in to her - but because Lois despised the mild-mannered reporter, Clark's virtue, and Superman's strength, was never in danger.

Ultimately, then, Siegel and Shuster's Superman was a man who was really, honestly attracted to Lois Lane, but who also knew he could never allow himself to get too close to her, because if he did she would destroy him. Simpler put, Superman loved Lois, but he also feared her more than anything in the world.

When I was a kid, I didn't understand Superman's fear of Lois. I thought he meant it when he proposed to her in a story from 1969. And I waited patiently, for eleven years, for them to really get together. I saw Superman kiss Lois, date Lois (in public and in his Superman suit), propose to Lois, possibly make love to Lois as Clark in a story from the mid-seventies, and even marry Lois in an alternative reality, Earth-2, where the goings-on had no bearing on the "real" story of Superman, and so didn't really matter. But for all of this he never once let his guard down around Lois, and never once told her about his double identity. (In the Earth-2 reality, he proposed to her when he was suffering from a bad case of amnesia, and Lois figured out that he was Superman on her own.)

I said that I waited for eleven years for Superman and Lois to come together. From 1969 to 1980. That was when the second Christopher Reeve Superman movie arrived, Superman II. And never has there been such a prefect illustration of Superman's strong attraction to Lois, and his even more overwhelming fear of her.

In the movie, Clark accidentally revealed his Superman identity to Lois. Thus robbed of his best defence against her, he wasn't able to resist her, and he flew her to his Arctic Fortress of Solitude to make love to her. But in his Fortress, his Kryptonian mother showed herself to him and informed him that he couldn't make love to Lois as his superpowered self, because then he would kill her. If he really wanted intimacy with Lois, he would have to relinquish his powers for her. And indeed he did just that. Deliberately destroying his powers, he transformed himself from a demigod into Mister Nothing Special just because he wanted to embrace the tempting flesh of Lois Lane. So tell me now that this movie was not a modern version of Samson and Delilah!

You can imagine that the gods, whoever they might have been, were displeased with Clark for giving up his powers. So they punished him appropriately. During his night of tenderness with Lois, the Earth was invaded by three totally merciless and supremely dangerous - and superpowered - Kryptonians. And when Clark found out about this catastrophe, he was weak as a kitten because of Lois and unable to do anything about the horrible threat.

Well, Clark managed to regain his powers and defeat the Kryptionians. Afterwards, restored to his super self and acutely aware of the extreme danger of getting too close to Lois, he informed her that they could never be lovers again. Because she was despondent over this, which was difficult for Clark to deal with, he took away her memory of everything that had happened between them with an amnesia-inducing super-kiss. Not only did Lois forget that she and Clark had been lovers, but she forgot that he was Superman, too. So Clark's ultimate weapon against Lois, the secret of his double identity, was restored as well. And Superman was safe. At the end of the movie, we saw Superman fly away, beatifically smiling and ecstatic in his knowledge that he was free from the clutches of Lois Lane. And I was upset, disgusted, horrified and more despondent than Lois had ever been, and I would have nothing more to do with Superman until he proposed to Lois for real in the comic books in 1990.

So why are Lois and Clark such a compelling, classic couple? It is because their relationship is based on equal amounts of attraction and fear. They dance around each other cautiously, and you have to wonder if they will ever overcome their mutual fear and learn to trust one another enough to become, in the best sense of the word, lovers.

In the ABC TV show, Lois's fear is greater than Clark's, and many excellent fanfic stories have been written which tell us how Lois overcomes this fear. To me, however, the real problem has always been Clark's fear. Superman's fear. Every time he lies to Lois about his double identity, I see it as an act of fear and as an attempt to keep her at bay. Even when he makes love to her without telling her about his double life, even when he proposes to her and even marries her without telling her, I still see it as an attempt to protect himself against Lois. He may be willing to bare his body to her, but not his soul.

Every time I read a Lois and Clark story, I like nothing better than to be told, and to be shown, how Clark overcomes his fear of Lois. I want him to find it in himself to give himself entirely to her, just as I expect her to give herself entirely to him. Because to me, that is what the incredible attraction of Lois and Clark is really, ultimately about.

Ann

You have got to be kidding!!

Interesting, Ann. Not sure I totally buy the Samson and Delilah anaolgy , but i can see some parallels.

And I think you're onto something about men fearing a loss of power if they love a woman. It does change what they're about, just as loving a man changes a woman.

On a more frivolous note, wasn't there a belief among atheletes that to have sex the night before the big whatever meant you'd drain your strength? Am remembering someting from Rocky 1 (the classic example of a flim that should never have had a sequel, let alone bred sequels like dust bunnies).

Adrian tries for a bit of action that night before the big fight, and he turns her down, mumbling something about having to keep his strength.

thanks for sharing your idea.

c

Interesting take on the mythos of Lois and Clark and I wonder if it informed how DC is playing out the current incarnation of them in the DCnU.