...And another thing!
Wow, Supernatural, all you seem to do lately is drive me to angry nerd ranting.
So in the latest episode, aside from the troublesome soul business (see this post for my issues with that), we have this lovely bit of dialogue:
Alpha Vampire: When we freaks die, where do we go? Not heaven, not hell. So?
Dean: Legoland?
Alpha Vampire: A little rusty on our Dante, boys?
Dean: Purgatory? Purgatory's real?
Alpha Vampire: Stupid cattle... Of course! And it is filled with the soul of every hungry thing like me that ever walked this earth. Now, where is it? That is the mystery, and that is what your kind-hearted granddaddy is trying to beat out of me.
Ok, let's start with the "where do monsters go when they die?" question. The traditional answer for monsters that start out human (such as vampires) would be that the human's soul is either trapped inside the monster and freed for judgement upon its death or moves on to the afterlife when the body is turned. The monster, not having a soul but instead being merely a body animated by some other dark force, doesn't go anywhere - it just ceases to exist. The fact that this question has been addressed often enough before in monster lore makes it a bit odd that Dean has apparently never considered it, but that's a very minor complaint.
Given that two weeks ago they showed us that a vampire can actually be turned human again, the "trapped soul" explanation seemed to be the answer this show was going with, because if vampires don't have souls, then where did Dean's soul go while he was a vampire? Now, we could easily say that it was in either heaven or hell and part of what the cure does is yank it out of the afterlife and put it back in the body, but just like with the pluralistic explanation for the soul business, the show hasn't actually bothered to tell us this. This time, though, I'm choosing to hold out some hope that they will actually get around to doing so eventually and some variant on the Campbell Cure will at least be attempted as a means of getting Sammy all soulful again. So this is also a minor complaint.
Where we really start getting into hot water is with all this purgatory stuff. In Christianity, purgatory is, simply put, where good people who die with some sins still on their consciences go to be cleansed of those sins prior to entering into heaven. It is a state of temporary suffering in preparation for eternal paradise. In the Supernatural 'verse, however, it is apparently where literally soulless monsters go when they die. Ok, ok, so they took the trappings of Christian teaching and applied it haphazardly to their own made up nonsense - that's nothing new. But this is a particularly egregious example, because the nature of purgatory is reflected in the very meaning of the word itself. "Purgatory" comes from the Latin purgatorium, which literally means "cleansing". Using this term to describe the eternal resting place for vampires and other monsters is just plain nonsensical, unless one is trying to imply that said monsters are actually being cleansed in preparation for entrance into heaven, which of course raises a whole new crop of philosophical questions.
But the writers were not content with making a pig's breakfast of Christian theology - they had to go drag Dante into this mess, too. The Alpha Vampire introduces his explanation on what the place he calls purgatory is by chastising the boys for being "rusty on their Dante" - which is just absurd, because Dante certainly doesn't describe purgatory as some kind of afterlife for the soulless. Anyone who actually is familiar with the Divine Comedy can tell you that he describes purgatory as a mountain which the dead ascend as they are cleansed of their sins - a depiction at least thematically in line with the real Christian idea of purgatory. (And as for where it is, Dante actually gives it a precise location in the southern hemisphere, directly opposite Jerusalem.) So clearly the Alpha Vamp (and by extension, the writers) is either equally "rusty" or is just name-dropping Dante because it sounds cool while totally disregarding whether or not the context of the reference makes sense with anything Dante actually wrote.
Additionally, this whole idea of the monster afterlife further complicates the soul issue. If monsters do in fact go somewhere when they die, that means they, like humans, must have some metaphysical aspect of their beings which survives the destruction of their physical bodies. Yet we are told they do not have souls - so what exactly do they have? Perhaps, in our speculated pluralistic explanation, monsters lack the soul but retain the metaphysical part or parts responsible for will and/or intellect*, and these are what goes to "purgatory". But if the soul is being equated with emotion, why are vampires able to feel fear, grief, loneliness and so on as they have been previously shown to do? Were Lenore (2.03) and Dixon (3.07) just faking it? Once again, that would retroactively ruin significant thematic elements of those episodes.
I know that a lot of my complaining seems to amount to "But that's not real Christianity" even though the show long ago made it clear to anyone who actually knew anything about real Christianity that they weren't even trying for accuracy in that regard (nor, to be fair, were they ever particularly concerned with staying within the confines of established mythos regarding any of the other supernatural elements they incorporated - though one could argue there's a subtle difference between legend and religion that would make it wise to give more prudent treatment to the latter). And to a certain extent that does bother me. But if they're going to make up their own mythology, it should at least be internally consistent. In the end I'm less fussy about whether they're playing by my rules or their own, so long as they are actually sticking to one set of rules and giving some thought to the world they're constructing. What they seem to be doing instead is just grabbing names and aesthetic elements and vague concepts from different sources and throwing them all together without paying any heed to whether or not those things are at all compatible or whether the way they've used them even makes sense, and that is what I really can't stand.
*While we're on the subject, the question of monsters having free will is another interesting one. I think Lenore and her ilk prove that vampires, at least, are not slaves to their instincts - which raises questions about the ethicality of killing all vampires out of hand, and to a certain extent brings up the same issue for other types of monsters, who are usually treated by hunters as incapable of being anything other than mindless killers. But then there's episode 4.04, "Metamorphosis", in which it is implied that Rugaru are unable to resist the urge to consume human flesh. Whether or not the show accepts or challenges the "monsters can't change" premise varies depending on who's writing and what direction they need to push Sam and Dean in that week, but frankly that's the sort of thing that happens on a lot of shows, so I'm not really going to hold it against them, especially seeing as the question "can monsters help being monsters?" could easily have different answers depending on the type of monster in question.
Yeah, I need to either stop thinking about these things or stop watching the show.
So in the latest episode, aside from the troublesome soul business (see this post for my issues with that), we have this lovely bit of dialogue:
Alpha Vampire: When we freaks die, where do we go? Not heaven, not hell. So?
Dean: Legoland?
Alpha Vampire: A little rusty on our Dante, boys?
Dean: Purgatory? Purgatory's real?
Alpha Vampire: Stupid cattle... Of course! And it is filled with the soul of every hungry thing like me that ever walked this earth. Now, where is it? That is the mystery, and that is what your kind-hearted granddaddy is trying to beat out of me.
Ok, let's start with the "where do monsters go when they die?" question. The traditional answer for monsters that start out human (such as vampires) would be that the human's soul is either trapped inside the monster and freed for judgement upon its death or moves on to the afterlife when the body is turned. The monster, not having a soul but instead being merely a body animated by some other dark force, doesn't go anywhere - it just ceases to exist. The fact that this question has been addressed often enough before in monster lore makes it a bit odd that Dean has apparently never considered it, but that's a very minor complaint.
Given that two weeks ago they showed us that a vampire can actually be turned human again, the "trapped soul" explanation seemed to be the answer this show was going with, because if vampires don't have souls, then where did Dean's soul go while he was a vampire? Now, we could easily say that it was in either heaven or hell and part of what the cure does is yank it out of the afterlife and put it back in the body, but just like with the pluralistic explanation for the soul business, the show hasn't actually bothered to tell us this. This time, though, I'm choosing to hold out some hope that they will actually get around to doing so eventually and some variant on the Campbell Cure will at least be attempted as a means of getting Sammy all soulful again. So this is also a minor complaint.
Where we really start getting into hot water is with all this purgatory stuff. In Christianity, purgatory is, simply put, where good people who die with some sins still on their consciences go to be cleansed of those sins prior to entering into heaven. It is a state of temporary suffering in preparation for eternal paradise. In the Supernatural 'verse, however, it is apparently where literally soulless monsters go when they die. Ok, ok, so they took the trappings of Christian teaching and applied it haphazardly to their own made up nonsense - that's nothing new. But this is a particularly egregious example, because the nature of purgatory is reflected in the very meaning of the word itself. "Purgatory" comes from the Latin purgatorium, which literally means "cleansing". Using this term to describe the eternal resting place for vampires and other monsters is just plain nonsensical, unless one is trying to imply that said monsters are actually being cleansed in preparation for entrance into heaven, which of course raises a whole new crop of philosophical questions.
But the writers were not content with making a pig's breakfast of Christian theology - they had to go drag Dante into this mess, too. The Alpha Vampire introduces his explanation on what the place he calls purgatory is by chastising the boys for being "rusty on their Dante" - which is just absurd, because Dante certainly doesn't describe purgatory as some kind of afterlife for the soulless. Anyone who actually is familiar with the Divine Comedy can tell you that he describes purgatory as a mountain which the dead ascend as they are cleansed of their sins - a depiction at least thematically in line with the real Christian idea of purgatory. (And as for where it is, Dante actually gives it a precise location in the southern hemisphere, directly opposite Jerusalem.) So clearly the Alpha Vamp (and by extension, the writers) is either equally "rusty" or is just name-dropping Dante because it sounds cool while totally disregarding whether or not the context of the reference makes sense with anything Dante actually wrote.
Additionally, this whole idea of the monster afterlife further complicates the soul issue. If monsters do in fact go somewhere when they die, that means they, like humans, must have some metaphysical aspect of their beings which survives the destruction of their physical bodies. Yet we are told they do not have souls - so what exactly do they have? Perhaps, in our speculated pluralistic explanation, monsters lack the soul but retain the metaphysical part or parts responsible for will and/or intellect*, and these are what goes to "purgatory". But if the soul is being equated with emotion, why are vampires able to feel fear, grief, loneliness and so on as they have been previously shown to do? Were Lenore (2.03) and Dixon (3.07) just faking it? Once again, that would retroactively ruin significant thematic elements of those episodes.
I know that a lot of my complaining seems to amount to "But that's not real Christianity" even though the show long ago made it clear to anyone who actually knew anything about real Christianity that they weren't even trying for accuracy in that regard (nor, to be fair, were they ever particularly concerned with staying within the confines of established mythos regarding any of the other supernatural elements they incorporated - though one could argue there's a subtle difference between legend and religion that would make it wise to give more prudent treatment to the latter). And to a certain extent that does bother me. But if they're going to make up their own mythology, it should at least be internally consistent. In the end I'm less fussy about whether they're playing by my rules or their own, so long as they are actually sticking to one set of rules and giving some thought to the world they're constructing. What they seem to be doing instead is just grabbing names and aesthetic elements and vague concepts from different sources and throwing them all together without paying any heed to whether or not those things are at all compatible or whether the way they've used them even makes sense, and that is what I really can't stand.
*While we're on the subject, the question of monsters having free will is another interesting one. I think Lenore and her ilk prove that vampires, at least, are not slaves to their instincts - which raises questions about the ethicality of killing all vampires out of hand, and to a certain extent brings up the same issue for other types of monsters, who are usually treated by hunters as incapable of being anything other than mindless killers. But then there's episode 4.04, "Metamorphosis", in which it is implied that Rugaru are unable to resist the urge to consume human flesh. Whether or not the show accepts or challenges the "monsters can't change" premise varies depending on who's writing and what direction they need to push Sam and Dean in that week, but frankly that's the sort of thing that happens on a lot of shows, so I'm not really going to hold it against them, especially seeing as the question "can monsters help being monsters?" could easily have different answers depending on the type of monster in question.
Yeah, I need to either stop thinking about these things or stop watching the show.