Incest in My Canon?

[chasingtides]

So, anyone who pays any attention at all to Supernatural canon or fandom knows that incest is part of the package deal. We get an awesome soundtrack, a kick-ass car, supernatural bad guys, and incestuous (or vaguely incestuous) heroes. It's all good. It's why we're here. (Actually, I'm mostly here because of the music and the car, but the mythology and the incest keep cropping up.)


Now, to recap: Bugs (1.08) is, I believe, the first time anyone thinks that the boys are sleeping together (that we see on screen). Sam and Dean are informed, several times, that the housing complex is welcoming to people of all sexual orientations. And then Dean slaps Sam's ass and calls him honey. This pattern continues. In Something Wicked (1.18), Michael, the young boy at the motel, asks the now famous question, "Two queens or a king?" and then, when Dean responds, "Two queens," says, "Sure, I'll bet." In Playthings (2.11), Susan asks if they're antiquing and Sherman, the bellboy, shares this assumption. Dean can't imagine why everyone thinks they're gay, but Sam suggests, "Well, you are kind of butch. Maybe they think you're overcompensating." In A Very Supernatural Christmas (3.08), Dean and Sam pose as a gay couple when inquiring about Christmas wreaths. In Lazarus Rising (4.01), we get more of this. Pamela offers to have a threesome with Sam and Dean and Kristy (Ruby?) asks, "So, are you two, like, together?" ("What? No, no, he's my brother." "Oh, I got it... I guess.")

I'm going to disappoint everyone in fandom before I get any further and say that I don't think Sam and Dean are having crazy, mad, incestuous sex. Really, I don't. And that's not what this meta is about.

However, after talking this over with several people, I do think they're romantically involved with one another and that is, arguably, a form of incest. They are, I argue, romantically involved with one another to the exclusion of romantic involvement with others.

Romance, you say, in my Supernatural? It's more likely than you think.

For one, there's the romance of Dean's pendant. Dean doesn't take it off and views it as a violation when it is removed from him (Skin, 1.06). We learn that it was a gift from Sam, originally intended for John (A Very Supernatural Christmas, 3.08). When Dean dies, Sam won't even let it be buried with Dean's body and, instead, wears it next to his skin (Lazarus Rising, 4.01). Upon Dean's return to life, Sam gives it back and Dean is pleased that Sam has been keeping it safe.

When one can't sleep, the other tends to keep watch and look after the first's sleep habits. When Sam has nightmares after Jessica's death, Dean is always there, ready to help him out. On the few occasions Dean has had sleeping troubles, Sam has been there for him. When Sam had his visions, Dean was always there, ready to hold him and help him and talk him through it and help him save people. (This is important, considering that Dean is suspicious of everything he can't fully comprehend, including angels.)

Sam gives up his dreams of a normal life - or adjusts his life dreams - for Dean. While he does initially return to hunting to avenge Jessica's death, he, at first, makes it clear that he wants to go back to his normal life when the Yellow Eyed Demon (Azazel) is dead. However, when Dean shoots Azazel with the Colt, Sam continues to hunt. Even after Dean's death (both in Mystery Spot, 3.11, and No Rest for the Wicked, 3.16), he continues to hunt. His life plans have adjusted to include Dean's.

They have trouble living without one another. Normally this is described as codependence, which it is to a certain extent, but it can also be viewed as a form of devoted romance. They, by the end of season two, cannot bear to be parted. When they are forcibly separated, bad things happen. The most obvious examples are, of course, the deaths of Sam and Dean. Dean can't imagine a world without Sam. That is a world in which he cannot bear living. Sam, as we see in Mystery Spot (3.11) and Lazarus Rising (4.01), shuts down into a sort of unemotional trauma victim. But, even beyond that, when they are still alive separation is difficult. In Sin City (3.04), Sam completely freaks out when Dean disappears with the possessed woman and in The Magnificent Seven (3.01), Sam refuses Dean's fairly rational offer of saving Sam and Bobby and sacrificing his already doomed self.

As Bobby tells them in Tall Tales (2.15), Sam and Dean are like an old married couple. They argue; they fight; they have their differences. Sam has demon blood. Dean was chosen by angels. Yet, they cannot imagine life or the world without one another. Even after separation, death, or hell, they move as a unit. They save each other. They manfully share their lives. While they both have sexual encounters with various women on the road, they don't need someone else emotionally. Sam doesn't, as far as I can tell as a viewer, long for the comfort and pleasure of having a long-term relationship with someone anymore. Dean, in my eyes, hasn't desired that since the beginning of the series. The romance is in the little things, like in any relationship. The food they buy. The car. The hugs. The fact that they're apparently named after a married couple.

Now, you say, that's all very lovely, but why talk about this now?

Last night, I watched In the Beginning (4.03) rather than look at Palin's face, like many other Supernatural fans. And while I do stand by my theory that the angel or demons are not the same as the bodies they possess, the incestuous overtones of this episode is undeniable. So let's analyse it.

It begins, for me, not in the Marty McFly dinner, but after Samuel has been possessed by Azazel.

Samuel has pinned Dean, in the chair to the wall, and asks, "Oh, hey, if that slug (slut?) marries your mommy, are you one of my psychic kids?" He then leans over Dean and proceeds to smell him up. I was half expecting to see Mitch Pileggi's tongue licking Dean's neck. (And not because I'm a sick fuck. That scene is creepy.) This is the body, at least, of Dean's grandfather, sniffing him up and pinning him to the wall and covering him with his body. Also, Samuel's not dead yet, so Grandpa gets to know all of this.

Check it out:




Azazel-as-Samuel then pontificates as to why he's hanging around Lawrence, Kansas in 1973 instead of slaughtering goats on the Arabian Peninsula (blah blah Master Race blah blah). He then explains, "They're ideal breeders. Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. No one's breeding with me. Though Mary? Man! I'd like to make an exception. So far, she's my favorite."

Okay. I get that this is Azazel talking and Samuel probably doesn't want to jump his daughter. While Samuel and Mary seem to have their issues, it doesn't seem like incest is one of them. However, Azazel is using Samuel's body to explain to Samuel's grandson that he'd like to breed with Mary, Samuel's daughter and Dean's mother. I don't care how you spin it, that's deeply wrong. If Azazel bones Mary using Samuel that is, still, a form of incest. Potentially non-consenual incest on both parts? Ewwww.

After Azazel-as-Samuel breaks John's neck and argues a bit with a distressed Mary (a tableau that looks very similar to Dean holding Sam's body at the end of season two), he offers her, "Let's kiss and make up." And then that's just what they do. Azazel-as-Samuel is kissing Samuel's daughter. I do realise that demons kiss to seal deals, but the kiss Dean shared with the Cross Roads Demons was significantly less intense than the one shared between Mary and Azazel-as-Samuel.





Dean is clearly horrified, realising at last that his mother made a deal (and made out with Grandpa):




Now, I haven't been able to come to any clear conclusions about what all of the incest means in this show. It is there and I don't think that it is just a case of fans seeing what they want to see. I've been making jokes about incest being a family value for the Campbell-Winchesters, but there is a point here. There's incest and it's here for all to see.

Chekov's gun states, "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired." This pistol hasn't just been hanging on the wall since the first act, people have been commenting on what a nice pistol it is since then. And last night, someone took the pistol off the wall, played with it, and put it back up there. I don't know what it means, but I'm going to be mighty interested to see this particular pistol fire.

ETA: I am clearly losing my mind, because I missed a major line of incest. Dean/Mary. Dean thinks his mom is hot, vocalises it, and thinks that Sam would share his point of view. ("Sam, wherever you are, Mom is hot. And I'm going to hell... again.") While this is a very true fact - Amy Gumenick is gorgeous - Dean, though he clearly realises this is a 'wrong' thought, doesn't seem to be terribly bothered by the fact that he finds his own mother attractive. This deserves more thought.

Comments

[samidha.livejournal.com]

Kripke is such a magnificent bastard. :D

Also, your meta rules. Of course.

[glorify.livejournal.com]

.....:D I enjoyed this a whole lot, bb.

[jameserin.livejournal.com]

i always say they're emotionally married as a joke. i just think that they're really, really co-dependent(and really, who could blame them?).

[batgurl10.livejournal.com]

not just that...((although that was awesome))

remember the boy with the dead farmer dad? Wouldnt he have had to kiss the "guy" he made the deal with?

so sneaky yet blatent! Man, I love El kripmaster!! :-)

[aimeewinchester.livejournal.com]

You've totally posted my thoughts! Would it be completely crazy to think that, perhaps down the road when everything comes to a head, Dean will have to kiss Sam in order to save him/break a deal/make a deal/etc??? Or is that just one of my twisted thoughts coming up......

[senor-coconut-1.livejournal.com]

You should peruse this journal. http://sargraf.livejournal.com/134643.html#cutid1

She did an excellent manlove meta for each episode up until the secondish season. With pics and everything.

It was a great read but she stopped suddenly. The first season is a must read.

[starlaangel.livejournal.com]

There is one line they're not crossing yet: for what I read (this is a SPOILER), while Dean is in hell, Sam wants to make a deal with a demon. Well, instead of Sandy or any other female demon, there is a guy (demon) showing up this time. But unfortunately there was no deal, and hence really unfortunate no "kiss the demon" for Sam (which would have been interesting, I believe Sam was so desperate, he would have kissed him).

[mosaic.livejournal.com]

While I have a problem with you saying that incest is "all good" and "why we're here," I agree with you about Sam and Dean's relationship. My last quarter of college, I wrote a paper about incest in 19th century American literature. I wrote about Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables" and Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." I don't want to bore you with the details, but it was pretty much the same thing. The family members in the stories are so obsessed with each other that they don't marry or seek out any other relationships, romantic or platonic. In fact, they hole themselves up in their respective houses and hide away from the world to be with their family members. While sex is implied in Poe's short story, Hawthorne's novel is all about the emotional and mental connection, nothing physical. I think that Sam and Dean have a very similar connection, though of course not going as far with it as the characters in the stories I've mentioned.

The other thing that I want to comment on is the fact that the incestuous scenes in "In the Beginning" are all perpetuated by a demon. Mary and Dean are the victims of the sin/crime. Yes, Mary seems to be willingly kissing her father's lips, but it isn't because she wants to (I assume); it's because he's forced her into that decision by killing everyone she loves. We never see the good guys perpetuating the acts of incest. To me, that indicates that (physical) incest is something done by evil creatures, not something that good people do. It's painted in a negative light and it's certainly not glorified in any way.

But I must admit, there is a bit of a paradox there when physical incest is seen as evil and wrong and emotional incest has been shown to us from the two protagonists since day one. Interesting.

[jessicamee.livejournal.com]

i LOVE the relationship between Sam and Dean, but the stuff with grampa Samuel just grossed me out. that's just nasty. WRONG WINCEST, KRIPKE!!! evil bastard is teasing us.

[bc-calling.livejournal.com]

Just a thought, but isn't incest a pretty common theme in gothic literature? And Supernatural is, essentially, a pretty gothic text, so it does make sense in context...

But anyway, fascinating argument. I may need to borrow some of your thoughts for the paper I'm writing this semester (with appropriate quotes and citations, of course).

[bowie28.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I love literary analysis.

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

I mean (and I feel like you must have pointed this out somewhere or just expected everyone to get it) last night Mary was in Dean's place and John was in Sam's which goes even further down the incest road.

I'm not going to talk about Wuthering Heights. I always talk about Wuthering Heights as it relates to the boys though I have yet to choose who's Cathy and who's Heathcliffe.

Anyway, this meta is completely awesome and your points are all so well thought-out. I mean, Dean has been constantly aligned with their mother and Sam with their father, in temperament and this episode just took that further as you pointed out by lining them up with another couple. And a love that goes beyond even death is generally reserved for couples. It's a Western, I guess it kind of had to end up with romantic undertones, siblings or not.

And there are moments where they have Dean consciously rejecting a long-term relationship with a woman (with kids) in favor of Sam and his life on the road. And while I think both the women and the children were meant to be representative of a certain lifestyle, I also think they simply are what they are to some degree. I think the only hitch in it, really, is Dean's dependence on Sam to validate his existence, because that is co-dependence right there and that's unhealthy. I think they're slowly trying to unravel that part of it, though, so who knows. It was all kind of a joke until the Trickster made it serious, so it could be the emotional gun on the mantle, you're right.

[clipsie.livejournal.com]

*Applause* Thank you for this. This was so wonderful, and you are exactly right.

[rei17.livejournal.com]

Love your meta and you´re so very right about everything.
Dean and Sam absolutely share a kind of deep and romantic love - even though I agree with and don´t think they´re having crazy, mad, incestuous sex either.
But they´re kind of exclusive in a way since they don´t love anybody else the way they love each other.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/Reilein/4x03-picspam/bscap047.jpg
Wincest has always been kind of canon ... ;P

[http://users.livejournal.com/meredith_/]

Let's not forget that Dean was lusting after his mom's younger self when he first saw her...

On a completely unrelated note, I had this dream last night that Kripke decided to make wincest a canon thing. MAYBE I'M HAVING A PREMONITION HERE FOLKS. (I wish).

[red-handed.livejournal.com]

Your meta is wonderful as always my dear.

On a semi related note: did you read this?

You said, "I'm going to disappoint everyone in fandom before I get any further and say that I don't think Sam and Dean are having crazy, mad, incestuous sex. Really, I don't." and that's what made me think of the above article.

I think that sentiment is actually held by more than a few Wincest shippers, myself included. I don't think they have hot wild kinky sex on the daily, but I do see it as a possible progression of their relationship. I'd even go so far as to say an *obvious* progression of their relationship based mainly on your points about their emotional entanglement (emotional Wincest, hehe) above. And as the linked essay states, for some writers it isn't about the hotdirtywrongness of the incest but about giving Dean and Sam the happy ending that the show is so Hell-bent on depriving them of.

So yeah, sorry, only semi-related I know, but most of your posts seem to get me thinking tangentially.

[stopwatch-plz.livejournal.com]

It is way too early in the morning for me to make any sense, but I think you raised a lot of interesting points!

I think the boys have become dependent on each other for everything other than physical love, and we haven't really seen them getting that much recently I refuse to believe Sam would be sleeping with Ruby, that's just wrong!) Spending too much time with someone can skew your view of the "outside world" too and when you interact with it as randomly as they do it probably doesn't help either.

Ooh, reminds me I was going to do a mini-meta on SPN as relating to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs! Just, y;know, because I can...

:D

[satanael.livejournal.com]

Whenever deep emotional relationships are shown on TV slash basically writes itself. We are not used to seeing men showing their emotions or weaknesses in the media. Unfortunately SPN gave us two extremely nice specimen and even though they are brothers on the show fandom automatically saw the sex as a natural progression. They love each other, they are even depending on each other, they are all they have left and it would be much too risky to let a civilian or anyone else into their demonic world.

In the beginning Kripke and the writers gave us some funny gay jokes because, to be honest, it is not the normal thing to travel around with your bro and to share practically everything. They share the same room, brush their teeth together, they are much more like an old couple for me but an old couple which doesn't have sex. I swear I tried reading wincest, I'm reading slash now for 10 years but it never worked for me. Maybe also because I have a brother and it's just a disgusting thought for me. It's too unrealistic to become physical love. As I said before, the writers added some jokes, then it somehow got out of hand. Manners is most probably still forwarding wincesty fics to everyone on set, Jim Beaver keeps wearing weird t-shirts and even Kripke now calls it „bromance“(which made me shriek, I can't laugh atm since I have a terrible influenza and my thoughts are completely jumbled, hooray!). In a way bromance really sums it up. SPN's appeal is Sam and Dean's relationship (I also blame the actors for it). And Kripke knows it even if he started the show with a different premise.

What works really well are the demonic possessions. Whether it was John, Sam or Samuel ... and I just realized that Dean is totally victimized here lol Don't we just love him pinned to a wall or a chair? Anyways, the only slash fics which work for me, apart from the demon ones, is J2. I just hate to admit it but sometimes I wished they would stop playing around with the wincest undertones in real life. Can they not be a little more subtle about it? They are feeding the fans and I feel so overweight and can hardly digest that they are living together or take care of each other's eyelashes ... adds also fuel to the wincest fire :P

Thank God they have added Castiel ... now Sam needs a male demon for himself.

[madame-meretrix.livejournal.com]

I like your thoughts about the incest needing to mean something besides fan gratification. If that's true, it's a whole lot scarier than i thought.

I figured all of this was sort of...accidental by-product? well, i did up until mitch pileggi's awesome (and terrifying) guest spot. if it means something within the narrative, i'm almost too scared to know. somehow, making incest visible and not just subtexty good fun feels like it's a monster.

maybe it is? maybe it's correlated with their monsters, much like other MotW reflect other aspects of Sam and Dean's relationship? Maybe we're being built up for something?

I wrote a short little post (http://madame-meretrix.livejournal.com/37694.html#cutid1) about other ways that incest is canonized in this episode, if you want to check it out. All of the mirroring between Sam and Dean and their parents and grandparents is what struck me most.

[yukisherry.livejournal.com]

this was interesting to read. i, too, am intrigued as to where the whole incest thing is going to lead. :)

[venilia.livejournal.com]

I went to comment on this (in short: Word!) and accidentally metaed.
I am myth geek, here me squee like a mad, mad thing re: the bromance of Sam and Dean (http://venilia.livejournal.com/33714.html)

*grins*

[tularia.livejournal.com]

Great points. I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I'm not into the Wincest of SPN either, except as it relates to what you've written here. Even then, I'm uncomfortable with the terminology.

Also, let's not forget that this whole thing started with Daddy dearest. Because Dean grew up being the good little soldier, the one in charge of keeping Sammy safe, the one ultimately responsible for the care and welfare of his younger brother. That right there is enough to create a bond to rival the best romantic relationship. John made them codependent, so they know nowhere to turn other than to each other for everything they need, except sex.

[riveryklown.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is an amazing meta. Made all the better by the fact that you're not a Wincester. You see what actually is there and not what you want. I'm saving this for re-reads, great work.

[violetlemon47.livejournal.com]

I love it when you meta. :)

[bridgetmc.livejournal.com]

I can't help but nod and agree with pretty much everything you wrote here. It also makes me think about the other sibling pairs that have shown up on the show, particularly Andy and his twin Ansem. I don't know about anyone else, but Ansem's complete obsession over his long lost brother, even to the point that he was happily killing off their birth mother and doctor for separating them, creeped me out. That trumps the Sam/Dean incestuous emotional relationship because the boys grew up depending on each other so whatever happens, I can understand why. Ansem only recently found out about his brother and just went crazy like that for Andy. Needed him as badly as Sam needs his brother.