As H.G. Wells once opined: If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting.
Two for flinching
Here we have a big guy in a blue suit who can't be killed, who thanks to his super speed and flight only pays lip service to the limits of space-time, and who thanks to a host of other incredible powers need only acknowledge the laws and mores of society when it suits him best, usually when he is in the guise of Clark Kent. He can look through women's clothes, beat up cops, and with a glance he could melt the face off anyone who offends him - this man does not care about your H.O.A. by-laws.
Earth could be like a waking dream to him, one in which the sleeper knows he is asleep, but walks on the cotton-candy border between the conscious and unconscious minds, one in which he could give his ego wholly over to his id with no mind on repercussion since he knows none is coming. Like that same sleeper, he could enjoy any manner of indulgent impulse and, should he indulge to excess and tear the very world apart, he would only have to close his eyes and drift back into the waking dream (or, in Superman's particular case, fly to another planet - he's done it plenty of times before).
Screw you guys, I'm going home
But he doesn't, and that's the one thing I find fascinating. For David Carradine's character in Kill Bill, the interesting aspect of Superman was his secret identity, and in that identity the character saw a criticism of humanity as being weak, clumsy, and incompetent. That, supposedly, is how Superman sees the world into which he was thrust.
I don't agree.
Clark Kent is pretty "beta," that's true. Then again, nobody at the Daily Planet can tell that Clark Kent minus Glasses plus Spit Curl equals Superman, so what does that say about the world at large? I think we have to take bumbly-stumbly Clark with a grain of salt, not the first sprinkle of which has to come from the utter obliviousness of everyone around him, and the second dash coming from the dimness of the alter-ego when contrasted with the dazzling Alpha-plus-plus perfection of the hero.
Glasses are a little twee, but the suit is straight-up /fa/
In other words, it's not Clark Kent's fault that he sucks - he doesn't, really, not compared to, say, Jimmy Olson. Arguably, Clark Kent is the most compelling aspect of Superman not because he is the Man of Tomorrow's ultimate criticism of the human race, but because he is the one thing that allows Kal-El to join it.
In the guise of Clark Kent, Superman can express frailty, incompetence, and insecurity, and it is liberating and comforting. He can hide behind those glasses just as all of earth must hide behind him when Darkseid, Braniac, or General Zod come knocking (albeit only ever for a moment or two, one last laugh with Jimmy Olsen, one last kiss with Lois Lane).
I said kneel, douchenozzle
This persona satisfies something in Superman that his Fortress of Solitude never can - that arctic fortress, a repository of esoteric knowledge in the middle of a frozen and unapproachable wasteland, is where Superman can go to gather strength. Hell, for six months out of the year it's unrelentingly pounded by that energizing yellow sunlight that any Superman needs to grow up big and strong.
But if the Fortress of Solitude is where Superman goes to learn how to fight, it is when he is confined to the ordinary every-man role of Clark Kent that he learns why. Superman himself can no more be touched by the hearts of earth than he can be by its bullets and knives; but Clark Kent is pitiful, non-threatening, weak - he needs to be mothered, guided, and encouraged. Superman can only be admired and feared, but Clark Kent can be pitied and loved.
I didn't post any here - I have my standards of academic decency to maintain.
There's a lot in a name: Clark, presumably from middle English, is a mangle of clerk, or cleric - a scholar (Kent, we may assume, is just nice and alliterative.) That one is pretty obvious. Superman, however, is not as unsubtle as it appears.
Siegel and Schuster (Superman's co-creators), while apparently no great scholars themselves, were nevertheless aware of Nietszche's concept of the Uebermensch - the superman. But "super" has different connotations in German than it does in American English. On this continent, we tend to make "super" mean good, so Superman is just "really extra good man." In German, ueber means across, beyond, or above. It means "over," (and most Nietszhean philosophers make clear this distinction by talking about the "overman," and not the "superman.") It's interesting, and telling, that Superman started out as a villain based on Nietszhe's concept of unrelenting perfection and fascistic morality.
But the creative team behind Superman, perhaps inspired by Hitler's perverted interpretation of Nietszche's already dark and rigid philosophy, grappled with Superman's awesome power and lack of limitation early on, and they did what any loving creator would do: give the Man of Steel something really awesome, and then make sure he knew that he could never have it, all while telling him he had to be on his best behavior all the time.
Obvious metaphor is obvious
Enter Ma and Pa Kent - good Kansas farm people, salt-of-the-earth, America-loving, god-fearing and just. What must that childhood have been like? Taught the conservative values of the Midwest by parents who by all accounts were loving and kind but who surely must have known that their adopted son could kill them with a flick of his wrist if he was overtaken by a fit of adolescent angst.
How do you put Superman over your knee?
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter - a little temporary suspension of disbelief and some deus ex machina later and you've got "the big blue boyscout," the goodest of the good guys, and not good in some ambiguous sense, as in "you can just tell he's a good person." Hell, the citizens of Metropolis think Lex Luthor is a benevolent philanthropist (no wonder these people need Superman: he's the only thing keeping the Metropolitans from giving all their money to the widows of Nigerian princes.) No, Superman is a code-of-ethcis kind of guy, a look-both-ways kind of guy - the kind of guy who will, on a very solemn occasion, swear a pledge.
got codpiece?
In Also Spraecht Zarathustra, Nietszche says that the superman must "go down" among the people to lift them up, and this is what Superman does as Kent, but Siegel and Schuster open an interesting can of worms with the dichotomy, and expose a critical flaw in the Uebermensch philosophy: one so high (as Superman) can never descend so low, and one so low (Kent) can never lift so high. Living above people, Superman can never be among them, and living among them, Kent can never be above them.
At the end of the day, Clark Kent is not some weak version of Superman. Clark Kent was there first. Superman is a strong, cold, and distant avatar of Kent. He is pomp and circumstance, a symbol, and a force of nature. He is a hero, and in so being a hero he is ready to die for the greater good.
Everyone knows that Superman's "weakness" is Kryptonite, the radioactive chunks of his own home planet which rob him of his super powers, but this is only a mortal weakness. Kryptonite is no more superman's weakness than arrows were the bane of Achilles, or knives that of Julius Cesar. Kryptonite is a tool, and nothing more.
Superman's real weakness is people - don't talk to him about kryptonite - he'd eat a bucket of it to save Lois Lane's little toe. He sees in us something worth protecting from a cruel galaxy for which we're not quite ready, and for him our frailty must be maddening - but he goes out and fights for us anyway because it's what he's been taught. It's how he was brought up - in going down, the Superman himself was elevated into the rank and file of the warm-blooded and mortal. He was shown love and compassion, brought up with human ideals and virtues, and grew to love and care for those around him.
Superman needs people.
I think that's nice.
"I guarantee you he blows his load like a shotgun right through her back"
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