An Incoming Decline Part Three

No New Ideas

Dwelling in past cliches and plot points

In a prior essay, I said that Smallville was an influence on Arrow up to the extent where you have a mandatory black sidekick/chum of sorts (though that's not unique to Smallville, it's obvious that Diggle is Pete Ross of the 2010s), a failed blonde love interest (Chloe in Smallville, Felicity in Arrow and both women dumped the protagonists in favour of businessmen for boyfriends) and a protagonist who's a toned down version of his comics counterpart. Smallville took a long time to introduce superheroic characters and even they're pretty toned down. Arrow does something similar though more immediately with the Flash programme, itself a botched reboot of the original 1990s series.

Botched in the sense that he's finally getting it on with Iris West after her relationship with Barry was omitted in the New 52 comics but instead the writers made Iris into his sister. Iris West was an adopted child in the comics but she's never his adopted sister. The biggest issue with this one is not because the Wests are black but because why would a stepfather like Joe West tolerate his adoptive son flirting with his own daughter? To make matters worse, he's a police cop and he should know better. Also the 2010s programme reiterates a plot point in the original programme: the protagonist is motivated by the ordeal of his relative. In the 1990s version, he got motivated by the death of his brother. In the 2010s version, he got motivated by the death of his mother.

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an influential programme, it had a rather minimal to moderate impact on latter CW programmes. Buffy had a pretty female hacker but later on she becomes a lesbian witch. Smallville and Arrow have female hackers who were made into love interests but that didn't push through. Consider the differences between Buffy and Supernatural. Buffy has a heroine who fights monsters and is allied with other women in the programme. Supernatural does have some female characters in it but it's mostly about men who fight monsters. Smallville, Arrow and Flash all have/had male protagonists. Stories with male protagonists aren't anything new and rare. So it's appropriate to say that Smallville had an influence on Flash and Arrow. Both of them are toned down live action adaptations of superhero properties with the latter two being based on lesser known second tier franchises.

Smallville wasn't Superman's first telly programme. He had a telly programme before where he was portrayed by George Reeves, then another one in the 1990s called "Clark and Lois" featuring Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane. He and his DC friends have also made an appearance in an obscure 80s live action programme if one is not mistaken. Then you've got several cartoon adaptations such as the DCAU Superman series, Superfriends, Young Justice and Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes. The Flash had a relatively better start than Green Arrow did, not only with a couple of earlier live action appearances and several animated ones. But the latest iteration could probably be worse off than Arrow if it weren't for incest. Arrow is like an accelerated Smallville, for the reasons I mentioned before. The Flash is going to end up like Oreimo, Flowers in the Attic and ImoCho. All four stories have an incestuous romance between brother and sister.

It's a case of history repeating itself. Smallville's ending preempted the production of Arrow while the Dollaganger series' success mainstreamed incestuous romance since its first appearance in the late 1970s. If weren't for these two, we wouldn't have gotten Arrow and Flash in their present forms but also Oreimo, A Song of Ice and Fire, ImoCho and The Royal Tannenbaums at least if you trace at least the latter five to VC Andrews's influence. Flowers in the Attic sold over 40 million copies and VC Andrews's novels have been translated in other languages, including Japanese. This would mean that Flowers in the Attic is a very influential and popular book at that.