the answer is: everyone loses

[affablyevil]

Is it more sexist to prefer to map onto male leads than female secondary characters,

or

is it more sexist to demand that female-bodied viewers map onto female characters?








This is in a cisnormative vacuum, I think. Oh, fandom.


On another note, I get particularly annoyed when fans argue that as characters, there is no differentiation between Castiel and Anna besides their (vessels/bodies'/etc.) sex, so the reason that fandom prefers one over the other is primarily due to sex. That sort simplification really bothers me, because there are other thematics at work in the story — humanism, faith, redemption, trust — alongside nuances like mistrust of executed romance storylines, gender difference, or Dean reading as queer to a lot of viewers, that all plays into it.

On a more personal note, I may be a minority in this, but one of the reasons I find Castiel so relatable is because he isn't human. So a storyline about a character who enters the narrative as a human and becomes an ally is much less emotionally interesting to me than a character who has to learn how to relate to humans and becomes an ally.

That being said, I would love to see Anna again. I was the most impressed with her when she decided to kill the two characters that make the show happen.

Comments

Largely tangential response to your post, sorry

[22by7.livejournal.com]

I think there are also very many contextual factors to this. As you rightly point out, there's more to the Castiel-Anna differentiation, and to extend your reasoning I'll say, even, that Castiel's journey towards a certain kind of humanity - if simply through contact - is much more compelling than what we are given with Anna: we meet her after her decision has been made, to fall. There's sex and chocolate cake, and then there's more or less a whole season's worth of character development. Let's also blame the writers for not thinking/wanting to give Julie Niven more to do.

With Castiel we have the entirely delicious scenario of a character who has to stumble his way through it - but you mention this! I think sometimes I see Castiel as every bit the troublesome interloper Castiel-haters find him to be, except that I love that about him. In a show where a man saves the world WITH LOVE he stands there at the end almost as elusive as he was when he first entered the show. The Castiel who goes back to Heaven is too changed to easily fit in there, but he also resists assimilation into the 'fully' human(-as-we-know-it).

And here, again, I entirely agree with your last sentence. That's it, exactly. Anna becomes, in that one episode, far more transgressive than Castiel is now allowed to be - and of course we can't have that in the show. What I find interesting is the lack of exploration of what her (temporary, yes?) death meant to Castiel. I know, minor character, Spn is about teh boyz. But that little interchange with Sam and Dean later... I'm almost sure that Anna's solution had also occurred to him - or, having heard of it, on some level he had to recognise that it was a pretty good one, seeing how it both prioritised the continued existence of humanity and the world in general and lived up to that previously vaunted angelic notion of 'the big picture'.

So that episode is the one that very decisively tells me how much Castiel's way of thinking has tilted - it's a little hard, even without getting into the whole problem of shipping, to detach this change from Castiel's peculiar relationship with Dean.

Who are we left with? Someone who kind of vaguely gives a shit about mankind, but we don't know how abstractly ('works of art' is not very promising). Someone who kind of vaguely gives a shit about this one human and his brother, but we don't know how much anymore. Someone whose interior life we have almost no access to. The more we learn the less we know.

Re: Largely tangential response to your post, sorry

[affablyevil.livejournal.com]

Let me apologize for the lateness of my reply; I recently was doing a lot of overseas traveling and in the jumble I seemed to have missed your comment. I need to be more on top of my inbox if little gems like your response here are going to hide away in it!

I think there are also very many contextual factors to this. As you rightly point out, there's more to the Castiel-Anna differentiation, and to extend your reasoning I'll say, even, that Castiel's journey towards a certain kind of humanity - if simply through contact - is much more compelling than what we are given with Anna: we meet her after her decision has been made, to fall. There's sex and chocolate cake, and then there's more or less a whole season's worth of character development. Let's also blame the writers for not thinking/wanting to give Julie Niven more to do.

I definitely agree that there was much more interesting and fascinating aspects of her character that ought to have been explored: unfortunately in the narrative confines of the show minor characters have not/cannot really be explored in depth unless it has direct connection to Sam and Dean; I suspect that the writers already had concerns about how much they were attempting to juggle, with the angels, the apocalypse, the arc of the brothers, all of which had various degrees of success. That being said, you're absolutely right: we encounter Anna already human, already having made that choice to be human so we are unable to go with her on the journey of discovery. One might argue that such a journey could have been conducted vis-à-vis a flashback or some other narrative device, but the storyline in question would have been the how rather than the if: her choice to fall would've had to have been a foregone conclusion (assuming they did not modify how her character was introduced).

Which, oddly enough, I find to be personally discomfiting and even threatening: in that kind of narrative, it's not impossible to imagine the writers unconsciously advocating normalizing your self-identity as a prerequisite for participating in humanity/social culture.

With Castiel we have the entirely delicious scenario of a character who has to stumble his way through it - but you mention this! I think sometimes I see Castiel as every bit the troublesome interloper Castiel-haters find him to be, except that I love that about him. In a show where a man saves the world WITH LOVE he stands there at the end almost as elusive as he was when he first entered the show. The Castiel who goes back to Heaven is too changed to easily fit in there, but he also resists assimilation into the 'fully' human(-as-we-know-it).

Castiel's mirroring/foiling of Dean and Sam's outsider status utterly fascinates me, and it very much saddens me the way some fans act so resentful of it. On the other hand, I do see how they might see his storyline as obtrusive to the more private party of the Winchester Codependence Circus that had been running for three years, but since I personally find the expansion in seasons four and five — in its general narrative but also of course in its mythic way — to be much more intellectually rewarding.

I agree Castiel's storyline is especially interesting because of the line he straddles between human and divine, especially at the end of the finale — I think its subtlety highlights better the differences than again, the either-or story where Anna fully gives up what she was to experience the world as God made it for humans.

Re: Largely tangential response to your post, sorry

[affablyevil.livejournal.com]

And here, again, I entirely agree with your last sentence. That's it, exactly. Anna becomes, in that one episode, far more transgressive than Castiel is now allowed to be - and of course we can't have that in the show. What I find interesting is the lack of exploration of what her (temporary, yes?) death meant to Castiel. I know, minor character, Spn is about teh boyz. But that little interchange with Sam and Dean later... I'm almost sure that Anna's solution had also occurred to him - or, having heard of it, on some level he had to recognise that it was a pretty good one, seeing how it both prioritised the continued existence of humanity and the world in general and lived up to that previously vaunted angelic notion of 'the big picture'.

I think that that solution was heavily implied when he was standing around in the Green Room in Lucifer Rising and Dean was trying to make his case. Or at least, as a solution for establishing paradise after the apocalypse or whatever we were supposed to expect with a clear angelic victory.

I adore that Anna had the self-will to be doing what she thought was the most right, best thing at the time and was exercising agency as an antagonist. Then again, if she killed John and Mary and the brothers never existed she never would have changed back into an angel (or rather, that sequence of events would be modified) so perhaps her motives were not entirely unselfish.

I want to see more of her and Castiel's relationship, especially as his commanding officer: like if her investment and fascination with humanity influenced his own admiration of them, how "familial" or soldier relationships functioned in heaven: I can never get enough.

And hell yes she better be coming back. I need her to be on my screen and fighting Mary again as soon as possible.

So that episode is the one that very decisively tells me how much Castiel's way of thinking has tilted - it's a little hard, even without getting into the whole problem of shipping, to detach this change from Castiel's peculiar relationship with Dean.

Who are we left with? Someone who kind of vaguely gives a shit about mankind, but we don't know how abstractly ('works of art' is not very promising). Someone who kind of vaguely gives a shit about this one human and his brother, but we don't know how much anymore. Someone whose interior life we have almost no access to. The more we learn the less we know.

The show pretty baldly states that Castiel is placing his humanity frame of reference specifically on Dean; while he does reach out a bit later to Sam and uh, foundered conversations with Bobby about loss, but it's pretty clear that his locus of loyalty sits on the guy who made such a case for preventing the apocalypse. I agree with you: I love how opaque and unknowable Castiel can be, even as we're getting to know him. But who are we kidding, I would watch The Castiel Show in a fucking heartbeat. But I think then we wouldn't get the lens of Sam and Dean so that might be less entertaining.