affably

"How deep can two actors' voices be?" - Jensen Ackles on Jeffery Dean Morgan and Fred Lehne, in the commentary on "In My Time of Dying"


Genderblended
"The return to biology as the ground of a specific feminine sexuality or meaning seems to defeat the feminist premise that biology is not destiny." - Judith Butler

As tired as I am of the gender complaints in Supernatural, I do find this genderswap exercise to be somewhat visually interesting.

Though I do take issue with the subject that "rehymenated" doesn't make sense canonically, since the entire point of that line was to argue against the concept that only females can be virgins.

While I find hypothetically casting new images for canonical characters to be pretty interesting (and I've had some fucked up extremely hot dreams about that version of Castiel) I would have to veto Katee Sackhoff for Dean, because 1) as a character I don't actually want to replace Dean with Kara Thrace — whose character I find to be extremely abrasive and not able to pull off that fantastic (masculine) vulnerability — 2) Dean being blond is an extreme pet peeve of mine (what is this, Smallville? Enough already!).

So I think "Dee" Winchester would look ( something more like this )

and oh hell might as well —
( Sam )

That being said, the greatest miracle of the show is the performative chemistry between the leads, and lassiterfics's point was in fact about recasting the show and starting from scratch which well, is not something I'm interested in watching. Ever.

Casting is not just about how an actor looks (okay okay sometimes it is BUT) but also how they act and also how they act against/with other people, which is where Supernatural struck gold. We've only got two main characters to view this narrative through, so part of what is compelling about the show besides the excellent production set design and camera work and all that "invisible" effort is watching these two brothers interact every episode — and that's 100% Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki — so "recasting" the show for the gender and remapped acting dynamics is not something that appeals to me. If you want to talk about what you think a character would look like when that inevitable witch's curse changes their genitals for some pointless, plot-related excuse or renegotiating the narrative through inversions, well. That's a more interesting mental exercise.

That being said, the "Rufio" picture and the "Ben" conception both make me laugh.

Oftentimes unfortunately I find that fanfiction handles genderbender dynamics extremely poorly; though I do believe pandarus still has written the best, most thoughtful version of a genderswap story of any fandom I've come across. The thing about fanfic is that people are often exploring concepts and politics, both in terms of gender and sexuality, through their writing, so it is often experimental and in large part the unconscious mores they've been carrying around are injected and propagated in their stories. And yeah sometimes it's examination and negotiation, and sometimes it's more problematic than they might be aware. Which is fine, free to be you and me and all that. Doesn't mean I want to spend my time reading the terrible ones.

And as far as discussing it, well. It's like someone saying "There are sexual politics going on in porn? Really? Well, whatever. I just want to get off, stop making me have to think about this." Everybody wants something different out of their fandom experience.

Does that mean he's been reading tracy_loo_who's Dean/Castiel recs?






Awesome!

Okay, this definitely can't just me be hallucinating; my favorite author talking about my brain filter. y/n? Have I finally snapped?

And I definitely agree with her points regarding Show, and one thing I've always been impressed with her is that she's very lovely at delicately disagreeing and letting everyone space to enjoy their own sandbox. I've seen others take up the same issues with Show much more vitrolically — and emotively — which always seems to lead to either cries of "Hear hear!" or bitter defensiveness. Whew, I see intellectual dialogue really happening there!

Yeah, Supernatural is not a good example of shows for promoting the girls, though there is strong narrative grounding for that:

1. the show's inherent genre choice is horror and tragic heroism


2. the two main characters' only female role model was murdered when they were kidlets, on their vengeance quest they were raised essentially homeless, and their caretakers (when they weren't left alone) were strange bachelors like Bob Singer and Pastor Jim while their father was off accidentally making families with other people.

Yes, the treatment of chicks in the series could definitely be better; but the show's textual axis revolves around familial/domestic trauma. Consider the basic premise: two brothers drive around the continental United States (1) fighting violent supernatural entities that are almost always located within normative society. In this show the supernatural is disruptive and traumatic to domesticity.

Therefore, by it's premise there can't really be any longterm love interests, and latent female characters are almost always going to be civilians or sites of domestic disruption (read: sekritly evil). For narrative intrigue, this kind of domestic trauma is often going to be located in unexpected places; so in The Benders, not only are there adults that participate in ritualistic cannibalism that dehumanizes their victims, but the apparently innocent, timid girl assists and participates. These narrative twists in the series maintains suspense.

So anyway, disruption of domestic normality but as located in familial trauma it's unsurprising that then our "normal" expectations are overturned. Therefore apparently innocous characters will actually be evil/possessed/have a secret dating back fifty years of drowning their bff.

Which is a really long way of saying that not only are random male characters, ghosts, and demons often evil, but also women and little girls. Seriously, every time there is a child on the screen they are either going to be evil or be rescued (2) at the last minute by Sam or Dean (3).

So with that in mind, consider:
In Dean Winchester's universe, there are two types of people: people he has to protect (civilians/Sammeh) and things he has to kill (ghosts/demons/girl-demon-ghosts/chupacabras). His adult role models growing up were men who were either priests or widowed (and also involved in sites of domestic trauma), he's got his mom as the virgin martyr figure extraordinaire, and moved around too often to make friends so all of his female interactions are either as possible one-night stands or further sources of supernatural trauma. The only girl we've seen him actively "date" for any amount of time rejected him when he told her the truth about his life. Hell, the first friend he's narratively given on the show as someone for himself in whom he can confide his doubts and shit (4) took the series four years. The episode Sex and Violence articulated the problem excellently.

Sam is much better at interacting with wimmin but then again, due to the premise of familial trauma, they die for either being evil or in evil's way. So within the series I find the character's treatment of chicks to be legit. I mean it's shitty, but seriously, it's not supposed to be about a healthy situation. You barely need to see half an episode to see how fucked up these kids are.

Now I'm not in any way advocating the treatment of women on the show Supernatural to be normative; like episodes about cannibals or childhood murder, it's supposed to be wrong, a site of trauma/disruption, and an incredibly basic one at that.

The question the series poses as a whole is whether it is possible to recover from familial trauma; individual episodes indicate that it's possible — civilians are forced to learn that their nightmares are real (usually through really horrible practical experiences thereof) but at the end of the episode the family is shown to be beginning to recover from that disruption of normality. (5) So um, I'm actually hopeful that this whole thing isn't headed for a terrible wreck (though like a good tragedy that's what we expect), though it's just as likely that we'll get a Bonnie and Clyde/I Am Legend ending.

Basically no, the show is not a good/healthy example of powerful, progressive women (though you can't deny that Meg, Ruby, Ellen, and Jo all have pretty significant agency. Jury's still out on Anna though*). To be honest I'm much more disappointed with fandom's response to female characters/possible love interests for the characters than in the show itself.

The racial problems are of course, another matter entirely. But on a different note, this show is one of the first I've seen to significantly deal with class structure — particularly lower class — though not extremely overtly. (6)


tl;dr version: I <3 Show, but if I want awesome chick power I'm not going to be going to the show about the violent trauma of having your mom burned alive when you were a kid.(7)


(1) LOL they can't fix Europe because Dean can't fly.
(2) Kripke would totally kill kids if he could get away with it.
(3) Or be the angel Castiel.
(4) Since Sam falls under Dean's "people to protect" umbrella, it's very difficult for Dean to confide his doubts and fears to him since he has to keep his "game face" on.
(5) Unless it's the Winchesters.
(6) Ask me later.
(7) Okay, Calisto is a special case.

ETA: As of 5x13 "The Song Remains the Same," it's pretty well-established that Anna has plenty of agency, though ultimately not narratively rewarded with success. Still, what a badass.