Next fall the WB debuts a new series, Smallville, about Clark Kent’s teenage years in the Midwestern farming community.
We’ve seen many screen variations on the Superman story, of course. Playing Pa Kent this time out will be: John Schneider, best known for playing Bo Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard.
This is all wrong. Schneider has the right “country” look to him, I suppose (Pa Kent is a farmer), but he’s young (only 41) and still trim and athletic-looking.
Pa Kent should be much older than that by the time Clark’s a teenager. Remember, according to the conventional mythology Jonathan and Martha Kent were a childless couple, and baby Clark arrived at the latest possible time they could have passed him off as there own. So they should be in there 50s or 60s.
Eddie Jones, who had the role in Lois and Clark, was great. So was Glenn Ford in Superman: The Movie. Paunchy, bespectacled, cheerful, but wizened: that’s Pa Kent.
…I just took another look on the WB, and while I don’t know the actress who’ll play Ma Kent, she seems to be in her mid- to late thirties, and she’s slim and blonde.
Sigh. This just sucks. I guess this is less about them messing with the mythos than it’s about the typical Hollywood mindset that everyone has to be young and beautiful.
I was never a huge Superboy fan, but I seem to remember some bizarre thing happening to Ma and Pa in the comicbooks back around 1970 or thereabouts.
They suddenly changed from wizened old farm people with a twinkle in their rheumy eyes to fairly robust brown-haired middle-aged farm people. Like, Brainiac Jr. shifted their shapes, or Young Luthor hit them with a Youth Ray or something. Taking revenge on Superboy by restoring the youth and vitality of his adoptive parents, fuck knows what the rationale was.
So perhaps WB has chosen to depict these Fresh Young Kents rather than the Golden-Age Kents?
Actually, the change from the old-to-young parents in Superboy had one of my favorite rationales in all of comics.
Someone from the future was recording Superboy’s adventures and then broadcasting them on a weekly show. The marketing people loved it – except for the parents. “Too old,” they said and ordered the producer to hire other actors. The producer, not wanting to admit that the show was real (obviously, this was in the days before “Survivor”), put a drug in the Kent’s water that made them younger.
It’s fairly obvious where the writers got the idea for this.
Another great change was when they realized that they couldn’t keep Smallville in the 1930s (as it was originally set up) when Superman was in the 1970s (made the Man of Steel the Old Man of Steel). So they put a note in the beginning of the comic and said, from now on, Superboy would be in set in the 1950s.
Secondly, justification in the comics aside, I’m guessing the real reason for this is the WB’s guiding philospophy and rule: “No wrinkles. Old people bad.”
Thirdly, I’m hoping like crazy that we get to see Superboy and family racing around Smallville county in the General Lee.
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That remind me, I had tuned into Toonami on CN and they had Superman on. Other superheroes had gone back in time to save the young Clark only now the time was the late 70’s when Clark was a teen. A point driven home when Ma said to Pa that “The Dukes of Hazard” was one. shudder
OK, Superman was first published in 1938, right? Say that’s a 30 year old superman, so he should be a young man in 1924. Ok, so I grew up picturing him growing up in the 30s, I don’t know why but dustbowl seems very appropriate. Ok, maybe I can deal with the 50s, sock hop superman. 60s, getting a little away from it, but the late 70s, early 80s!!! shudder NO!
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and it just makes it even worse to have blow dried Bo Duke out there trying to be his Pa. The one comic that I read in the 90s and had lots of respect for was Mike Grell’s Green Arrow, I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to have a superhero who actually had birthdays. sigh, time sucks
Well, brother rat, I think that’s one of the advantages of Clark’s rural upbringing, with regard to having trouble imagining the story in different time periods.
In the public imagination, farming communities have timeless, ahistorical quality, isolated from national trends and changing values (farmers’ daughters and sons needn’t chime in to argue this point; we’re talking perception, not reality). So Smallville in the 80s isn’t going to be much different from Smallville in the 30s.
If the WB even bothers to set it in the 80s, of course. They may put it in the present day without regard to continuity. Fuckwaffles.
And to sorta defend John Schneider–he hasn’t had the “blow-dried” shag in years, and from a few guest-starring roles and TV movies (the Michael Landon telefilm) I’ve seen, he is a decent television-caliber actor. Nothing to write home about, but fairly capable. He may make a good, youngish, rugged father figure to young Clark.
I saw him on ET or something earlier this year, they were doing some kind of Dukes reunion or maybe even making a movie. He had the look then. But actors can change their spots as quickly as a chameleon.
god how I love mixed metaphors. A penny saved is worth 2 in the bush. An Elephant never forgets not to throw stones in glass houses giggles giggle snort
As a huge Superman fan for the past 30 years, I have no problem with a somewhat younger version of the Kents. There has never been any shortage of tampering with this aspect of the character’s background. There have been times when, for the adult Superman, both Kents were dead, Pa Kent was dead but ma was alive, and more recently, both Kents alive.
It’s not unusual to tamper with the side issues of comic character’s histories. Because characters either don’t age, or age very, very slowly, continuity becomes a problem. (Peter Parker was 16 in 1961, 40 years later, he’s what, about 25?) Superman has been “reinvented” every decade or so since the 1950’s. I say, give it a chance before declaring that it sucks.
Are they doing yet another Duke’s Movie? Hazzard in Hollywood was aired just last year - that’s 2 re-union movies so far…
Anyway, here’s a page with pictures taken during the filming of that movie - gives you an idea of the old (yet recent) ‘Bo’ http://www.boduke.com/dukes_2000_movie.htm
