Entry tags:

sixes, smallville

Jonathan Kent
I received this interesting response to my essay on Lex Luthor, and I asked her if I could post it up on the Enneatrek website. She kindly obliged:

Smallville's Jonathan Kent as a counterphobic Six:
Creating the enemy

I read with fascination Teresa Malcolm's article about the TV show Smallville. I too find Lex Luthor a compelling character, and his relationship with Clark the biggest reason that I love this show. I would like to offer an examination of the role Jonathan has played in the creation of Lex as Clark's archenemy. I will begin with the hypothesis that Jonathan is a self-preservation, counterphobic Six. I believe that his actions demonstrate well how the Six style can further endanger the person they want to protect.

As the series starts, it is clear that Clark's parents have done a great job of raising an exceptionally nice teenager. He is a loyal, helpful, polite and obedient son. He has nice friends, does well in school and is generally liked. We also see that he is unsure of himself, hesitant to go after his desires, and doesn't have a clue as to the impact he makes on others. He is almost too good, no shadow is evident. Of course, not much is allowed under the tight, guilt-inducing style of his parents. Up to this point his parents have probably been correct to discourage arrogance and showing off. The fact that Clark is a Nine probably helped them to have that much influence on his personality and character. However, Clark's growing needs to be respected, noticed and trusted, and to become more independent are being thwarted by his parents. Martha, his mom, almost always goes along with dad, and when she protests, it is generally ignored by him. She is a poorly developed character, but probably also is a Nine.

Along comes Lex, an older, seemingly sophisticated man to whom Clark immediately is drawn and has a good feeling about. As a Four, Lex can certainly offer a lot to Clark about manifesting his individuality and learning to pay attention to his needs. He offers a sense of danger and mystery, which is all new to Clark. Lex also immediately perceives Clark's longing for Lana, and begins his friendship as a guide in encouraging Clark to go for what he desires, including several generous acts to help. In all, there is much that he has to offer Clark in friendship at this stage of his life, things that have been lacking so far.

Jonathan has some traits as a parent that seem typical for a Six. He is loyal, and as the series progresses, the loyalty is to a fault. He is filled with doubt, worries and fears. He knows the character of Lionel and correctly sees danger in personal interactions with him, and he assumes that Lex is a danger too. He doggedly hangs on to that impression, even in the face of many kind overtures by Lex. Like anyone with paranoid traits, once he made up his mind, every action of Lex's gets twisted to prove his point of view. I often was disappointed or disgusted by this paranoid process (as a social Seven I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, and trust generosity as just that). Jonathan is unable to listen to and trust Clark's perceptions, even though he had a big part in shaping them. Sixes often doubt the evidence in front of them of their child's growing abilities to judge the world. They can't see their child's internalization of a cautious style of interacting with the world that they have been so rigorously taught.

We watch Clark as he is guided by his central need as a Nine to make sure everyone around him is good and OK -- an impossible task in the best of circumstances. A central conflict in this series is Clark trying to be kind, loyal and fair to both of these key men in his life. On the one hand he sees Lex as a very good friend and has a strong desire to spend time with him and learn from him. On the other hand is the loyalty and respect he has for his father whom he is so afraid of going against and disappointing. Jonathan is blind to the fact that Clark is a good kid with great judgment of character, especially for a teenager, and thus loses the opportunity to see Clark's emergence from childhood. This pushes Clark even more to spend time with a man who treats him more as a man. As in Teresa's article, Clark stays with his father's wishes to not reveal his secret, disappointing Lex. In trying to please both Lex and Jonathan, Clark truly pleases no one, and further falls into self-forgetting and loss of faith in his own abilities to choose how to act.

Once in on of Helen Palmer's trainings, someone, maybe Helen, described a process in which a Six is so busy looking for danger out of the back of his head that he falls into an open manhole cover. There are many times I watched as Jonathan, who has become a lower functioning Six over time, quite rudely, and with no clear reason, reject kind and generous overtures by Lex. We see the pain, confusion and devastation on Lex's face. As Teresa Malcolm makes so clear in her article, Lex doesn't just want the friendship of Clark, but even more wants a relationship of respect and affection with Jonathan.

Alice Miller has examined many of the most evil people of the 20th century, looking for the childhood roots of their evil. Certainly, Lionel created a fertile ground for this. But the repeated rejections by Jonathan, whom Lex sees as a good man, unlike his own father, are probably more destructive to the fragile decency Lex has held on to to honor his mom. By repeatedly rejecting Lex, and creating ongoing doubts in Clark's mind about him, Jonathan has created the enemy for his son that he has been trying to protect him from. As we saw in the final cliffhanger episode for season three, Clark gets an extra push from Lionel and the mystery girl, and finally, like Jonathan, Clark rejects Lex, leaving us waiting for the unfolding of the tragedy to come.

Michelle Indianer, D.O.
mindianer@verizon.net