![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Okay, so I'm going to take a break from advertising (which might actually break me more successfully than writing a thesis on Marco Polo ever did) to bring out the Supernatural. Last night, while talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
una__sola about her thesis, tsukumogami, next month, next week, the presidential race, serial killers, M, and gang violence, I finally finished reading Catherine Tosenberger's "The epic love story of Sam and Dean": Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction. (If you're an academic, a Supernatural fan, have an interest in Romantic/Gothic/incest fiction, or ever wonder why those Supernatural fans are insane, it's worth a read.)
For the most part, I sat there and went, "Yes, yes, yes, this, this." Tosenberger manages to articulate what I think a lot of fans feel, but have trouble expressing.
She writes, "If heterosexual exogamy is made possible by blocking incest, what happens when heterosexual exogamy is itself blocked? Supernatural cuts off all avenues for exogamous heterosexual marriage for Sam and Dean; both Kripke (note 3) and actor Jared Padalecki (note 4) have indicated that no long-term romantic prospects for the brothers are likely. While such blockage is certainly commonplace in serialized narratives, which don't want main characters bogged down in relationships that distract from the plot, Supernatural goes far beyond simple avoidance of long-term romance: all of Sam and Dean's serious romantic relationships with women are doomed to failure—and if Sam is involved, usually violent failure."
All of this is quite true. The show proves, over and over again, from the deaths of Madison and Jess, to Cassie's rejection of Dean, that Sam and Dean are incapable of having any kind of long-term traditional relationship. They are blocked by their own emotions and by Kripke's deus ex machina.
"Supernatural sets up Sam and Dean as, to use a fannish term, the show's One True Pairing. Their love is the kind that can, within the context of the show, literally destroy the world... The series is deeply concerned with love, obsession, and obsessive love; the discourses of romantic and familial love are often so tangled within it that they are indistinguishable from one another in outcome and effect. Sam and Dean are far more likely to be taken for a couple when their cases concern family conflict; it's as if the show has a particular ratio of romantic to familial attachment it needs to maintain, and if the case is using up the allotted quota of family, romance is channeled through the brothers. Sometimes this takes the form of eroticizing Sam and Dean's bodies, but just as often the show will posit, through other characters, that their attachment is more than brotherly."
and
"The series is deeply concerned with love, obsession, and obsessive love; the discourses of romantic and familial love are often so tangled within it that they are indistinguishable from one another in outcome and effect. Sam and Dean are far more likely to be taken for a couple when their cases concern family conflict; it's as if the show has a particular ratio of romantic to familial attachment it needs to maintain, and if the case is using up the allotted quota of family, romance is channeled through the brothers. Sometimes this takes the form of eroticizing Sam and Dean's bodies, but just as often the show will posit, through other characters, that their attachment is more than brotherly."
Bah. Go read it. It really goes pretty far to explain why the fandom is strange (I mean, if this kind of thing is what you're based on, the fandom is only going to weirder).
However, in her notes, she brings up an issue,
"9. Unfortunately, especially for a series in which the heroes are gleefully queered Others, Supernatural does not have a good track record when dealing with more overt types of Otherness. Both openly gay characters have been killed off (although the second, Corbett in 3.13 "Ghostfacers," saved everyone by a heroic self-sacrifice). Black men fare even worse—of the five who have been on the show, only one has survived. The creators don't appear to know or care about the "dead minority" cliché, which has caused fans no small amount of frustration. And while the continual blockage of Sam and Dean's heterosexual relationships creates an intensely queer space, many fans express discomfort with the manner in which women are depicted on the show."
Okay. Yes. The show does kill off women and black people left and right. And I've seen a lot of complaints about this.
However. However.
I would like to point out that I think we have one recurring character and one semirecurring character who haven't been killed off. That brings the grand total of Characters Who Kripke Hasn't Killed Gruesomely up to... two. Sam and Dean have both died, rather gruesomely. Putting Mystery Spot (3.11), where Dean's death became practically slap-stick, aside, Dean was electrocuted in season one (1.12 Faith) and then torn apart by hell hounds at the end of season three (3.16 No Rest for the Wicked). Sam, of course, was stabbed to death at the end of season two (2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One) and we learn that his attacker severed his spinal cord (2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two).
Do I think it's sad that the show cannot keep a character for more than one season? Of course I do, and I'm crossing my fingers that Bobby isn't magically killed off this season - his one season tenure is up, man, and I like him more than I like Sam or Dean. However, I don't think that the Supernatural folk are picking on black people or women and playing Star Trek's old Minority-in-a-Red-Shirt game. They kill EVERYONE. I mean, seriously. Not even Buffy killed this many people. But only Sam and Dean get to come back because they're Sam and Dean Winchester, full of demon blood and bad machismo.
The show started off by killing off women (hai Mary and Jess on the ceiling), but, to be fair, they also kill off all of the cool white guys. Ash and Andy? I adore both of them. Ash didn't deserve to die just for the sake of his mullet. Andy was adorable. But they both died rather brutally. As did John, another white man. And Pastor Jim. And Caleb. So, sure Gorden and Victor and Bela and Madison all died painfully. But damn it, I view this as apocalyptic literature, where, yeah, most of the people have to die. Look at it like a Shakespearean tragedy but complete with hints of incest and cockblocking.
(I don't necessarily count Ruby as a woman. 1) She's a demon which in this show, like vampires in Buffy, makes her Evil. 2) Ruby could be a male demon inhabiting a female meatsuit. But back to issue one, I do think that being Evil overrides being in a female body in how Dean (and Sam) treat her. She lived, she died, she burned in Hell, and her goal is to get Sam to lead the demon army as her personal Antichrist. Oh, and she doesn't care who she kills to get there. Yeah, I'm not Dean, I wasn't raised to hate and kill things like that, but if someone was trying to do that to my brother, I'd hate them outside of gender. And I am still not sure that we can unequivocally call a demon the gender of the body they happen to be inhabiting.)
All of this said, I honestly think that the only two people who have any chance of surviving through to the end of the show are Sam and Dean. And I really only give that a 50-50 chance. I really do think that the show is going to end with everyone we ever saw (except maybe Missouri Mosley) dead on the ground. And then Kripke's laugh will be an evil laugh.
What's that saying? It's not prejudice if you hate everyone equally? Maybe it's not incest just because you hate everyone but your brother.
I will leave you with that. I need to go find a baseball bat to kill a mouse with.
ETA: I want to call this meta, "Why Supernatural is like the Evil Dead." Because, dude, in the Evil Dead series, you're not supposed to care about anyone but Bruce Campbell. Just replace "Evil Dead" with "Supernatural" and "Bruce Campbell" with "Sam and Dean."
una__sola about her thesis, tsukumogami, next month, next week, the presidential race, serial killers, M, and gang violence, I finally finished reading Catherine Tosenberger's "The epic love story of Sam and Dean": Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction. (If you're an academic, a Supernatural fan, have an interest in Romantic/Gothic/incest fiction, or ever wonder why those Supernatural fans are insane, it's worth a read.)For the most part, I sat there and went, "Yes, yes, yes, this, this." Tosenberger manages to articulate what I think a lot of fans feel, but have trouble expressing.
She writes, "If heterosexual exogamy is made possible by blocking incest, what happens when heterosexual exogamy is itself blocked? Supernatural cuts off all avenues for exogamous heterosexual marriage for Sam and Dean; both Kripke (note 3) and actor Jared Padalecki (note 4) have indicated that no long-term romantic prospects for the brothers are likely. While such blockage is certainly commonplace in serialized narratives, which don't want main characters bogged down in relationships that distract from the plot, Supernatural goes far beyond simple avoidance of long-term romance: all of Sam and Dean's serious romantic relationships with women are doomed to failure—and if Sam is involved, usually violent failure."
All of this is quite true. The show proves, over and over again, from the deaths of Madison and Jess, to Cassie's rejection of Dean, that Sam and Dean are incapable of having any kind of long-term traditional relationship. They are blocked by their own emotions and by Kripke's deus ex machina.
"Supernatural sets up Sam and Dean as, to use a fannish term, the show's One True Pairing. Their love is the kind that can, within the context of the show, literally destroy the world... The series is deeply concerned with love, obsession, and obsessive love; the discourses of romantic and familial love are often so tangled within it that they are indistinguishable from one another in outcome and effect. Sam and Dean are far more likely to be taken for a couple when their cases concern family conflict; it's as if the show has a particular ratio of romantic to familial attachment it needs to maintain, and if the case is using up the allotted quota of family, romance is channeled through the brothers. Sometimes this takes the form of eroticizing Sam and Dean's bodies, but just as often the show will posit, through other characters, that their attachment is more than brotherly."
"The series is deeply concerned with love, obsession, and obsessive love; the discourses of romantic and familial love are often so tangled within it that they are indistinguishable from one another in outcome and effect. Sam and Dean are far more likely to be taken for a couple when their cases concern family conflict; it's as if the show has a particular ratio of romantic to familial attachment it needs to maintain, and if the case is using up the allotted quota of family, romance is channeled through the brothers. Sometimes this takes the form of eroticizing Sam and Dean's bodies, but just as often the show will posit, through other characters, that their attachment is more than brotherly."
Bah. Go read it. It really goes pretty far to explain why the fandom is strange (I mean, if this kind of thing is what you're based on, the fandom is only going to weirder).
However, in her notes, she brings up an issue,
"9. Unfortunately, especially for a series in which the heroes are gleefully queered Others, Supernatural does not have a good track record when dealing with more overt types of Otherness. Both openly gay characters have been killed off (although the second, Corbett in 3.13 "Ghostfacers," saved everyone by a heroic self-sacrifice). Black men fare even worse—of the five who have been on the show, only one has survived. The creators don't appear to know or care about the "dead minority" cliché, which has caused fans no small amount of frustration. And while the continual blockage of Sam and Dean's heterosexual relationships creates an intensely queer space, many fans express discomfort with the manner in which women are depicted on the show."
Okay. Yes. The show does kill off women and black people left and right. And I've seen a lot of complaints about this.
However. However.
I would like to point out that I think we have one recurring character and one semirecurring character who haven't been killed off. That brings the grand total of Characters Who Kripke Hasn't Killed Gruesomely up to... two. Sam and Dean have both died, rather gruesomely. Putting Mystery Spot (3.11), where Dean's death became practically slap-stick, aside, Dean was electrocuted in season one (1.12 Faith) and then torn apart by hell hounds at the end of season three (3.16 No Rest for the Wicked). Sam, of course, was stabbed to death at the end of season two (2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One) and we learn that his attacker severed his spinal cord (2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two).
Do I think it's sad that the show cannot keep a character for more than one season? Of course I do, and I'm crossing my fingers that Bobby isn't magically killed off this season - his one season tenure is up, man, and I like him more than I like Sam or Dean. However, I don't think that the Supernatural folk are picking on black people or women and playing Star Trek's old Minority-in-a-Red-Shirt game. They kill EVERYONE. I mean, seriously. Not even Buffy killed this many people. But only Sam and Dean get to come back because they're Sam and Dean Winchester, full of demon blood and bad machismo.
The show started off by killing off women (hai Mary and Jess on the ceiling), but, to be fair, they also kill off all of the cool white guys. Ash and Andy? I adore both of them. Ash didn't deserve to die just for the sake of his mullet. Andy was adorable. But they both died rather brutally. As did John, another white man. And Pastor Jim. And Caleb. So, sure Gorden and Victor and Bela and Madison all died painfully. But damn it, I view this as apocalyptic literature, where, yeah, most of the people have to die. Look at it like a Shakespearean tragedy but complete with hints of incest and cockblocking.
(I don't necessarily count Ruby as a woman. 1) She's a demon which in this show, like vampires in Buffy, makes her Evil. 2) Ruby could be a male demon inhabiting a female meatsuit. But back to issue one, I do think that being Evil overrides being in a female body in how Dean (and Sam) treat her. She lived, she died, she burned in Hell, and her goal is to get Sam to lead the demon army as her personal Antichrist. Oh, and she doesn't care who she kills to get there. Yeah, I'm not Dean, I wasn't raised to hate and kill things like that, but if someone was trying to do that to my brother, I'd hate them outside of gender. And I am still not sure that we can unequivocally call a demon the gender of the body they happen to be inhabiting.)
All of this said, I honestly think that the only two people who have any chance of surviving through to the end of the show are Sam and Dean. And I really only give that a 50-50 chance. I really do think that the show is going to end with everyone we ever saw (except maybe Missouri Mosley) dead on the ground. And then Kripke's laugh will be an evil laugh.
What's that saying? It's not prejudice if you hate everyone equally? Maybe it's not incest just because you hate everyone but your brother.
I will leave you with that. I need to go find a baseball bat to kill a mouse with.
ETA: I want to call this meta, "Why Supernatural is like the Evil Dead." Because, dude, in the Evil Dead series, you're not supposed to care about anyone but Bruce Campbell. Just replace "Evil Dead" with "Supernatural" and "Bruce Campbell" with "Sam and Dean."
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
I'm going to have to read the rest of that article soon.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I snickered, because this is so true. And honestly, that's part of what makes this show so much fun. Everytime anyone gets in on the "they treat x bad", all I can think is that no, they treat everyone bad equally.
From:
no subject
YES THIS. YES.
I love you. That is all. Just. This post is so... yes.
To be honest I haven't seen that MANY people whinging about the whole zomg evil stereotypes thing. Perhaps the ones who do are just loud. But this is horror and everybody fucking dies. These are the rules.
From:
no subject
And we'll walk away still loving him for taking us on this ride.
Or maybe that is just me, with my epic love for Kripke.
(Omigod, he is bringing us Show in 5 hours. Bzuh! <3 <3 <3 <3)
From:
no subject
Oh, I don't know about that :-)
But seriously, yes, everything you said. Everyone dies - cherrypicking certain deaths that support your argument and ignoring the ones that don't just isn't going to work.
From:
no subject
Zaz
From:
no subject
And it's true, everyone dies, even the boys! I never got into the minority dying though - maybe because the minority were such aweseme characters that I didn't even notice it happening. I mean, Gordon and Henrinkson - white guys would have killed to play those characters.
And I thought both Bela and Ruby were grade A bitches anyway, so I didn't see their gender as relvenant either.
From:
no subject
YES. And that is why the show isn't racist or sexist. Everyone except Bobby and Ellen (although we no longer see her) dies. How many other show kills their lead in the first season? Practically kills both of them in the second season? Sends lead to hell in the third season?
*ponders*
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Got that one right. Isn't it fantastic that our show is willing to do all that and more?
From:
Late for the party
From:
no subject
One thing I'd like to point out, though: 2) Ruby could be a male demon inhabiting a female meatsuit.
In the episode 'Malleus Maleficarum' another demon referred to Ruby as a woman, several times, stating that she used to be a witch when she was human, and calling her a "whore" (a pejorative that I have never noted being used for men on the show, only women). While we have now seen a male witch on the show (and referred to as a witch, not a warlock), I still think it's fair to assume, using the pronouns given in this instance, and the fact that Ruby has never, on the show, possessed a male body, she is assumed by the writers to be female.
Whether or not Ruby is Evil, and therefore should be exempted from analysis of possible misogyny on the show is perhaps too long a conversation to have in these comments, but I must say that my views slightly differ on this topic
Um, and, ok, this post is getting epic, but mind if I friend you? I've read this post of yours, as well as several others that refer to gender and disability issues on the show and in fandom, and they're great food for thought. I'm actually currently in the middle of writing a thesis on gender in supernatural and fan reactions to it and I'd love to discuss it with you more, if you don't mind :)
ETA: Wow, lots of stupid typos. My bad.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject