WTF pic of the day #17
Actually, today it's not a photo but a very interesting article with the title ""The epic love story of Sam and Dean": "Supernatural," queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction"
by Catherine Tosenberger
'This article examines incestuous slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural. I argue that "Wincest" fan fiction is best understood not as perverse, oppositional resistance to a heterosexual, nonincestuous show, but an expression of readings that are suggested and supported by the text itself. I examine the literary, cultural, and folkloric discourses of incest and queerness invoked by the series, paying special attention to Romanticism, the Gothic, and horror as underliers to those discourses, and how those genres inform both the series and the fan fiction. I discuss a number of Wincest stories in detail, focusing upon how these stories build upon thematic elements within the series. In conclusion, I argue that the most resistive aspect of Wincest fan fiction is that it gives the main characters a lasting happiness that the series eternally defers'.
Her thesis is long but it's worth to read and feel free to agree/disagree.
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30/36
The fact that Sam and Dean are brothers in no way detracts from the slashy vibe. In fact, as brothers, they are given a pass for displays of emotion that masculinity in our culture usually forbids, which intensifies the potential for queer readings. Executive story editor Sera Gamble described her conception of the show as "the epic love story of Sam and Dean" (Borsellino 2006); while she quickly avowed that her comment was made in jest to tease creator Eric Kripke, many fan writers consider her statement to be a perfectly accurate description of the show, and they use their own narratives to explore all the implications of the "epic love story." These fan-fictional narratives are known as Wincest.
Far from shying away from its queer, incestuous implications, Supernatural frequently calls attention to its own homoerotic energy; while the show's most overtly queer moments are those instances when Sam and Dean are taken for a couple, the show's "broader thematic project" of valorizing the brothers' Romantic, transgressive Otherness is profoundly queer...Supernatural slash writers' most significant subversion of the text is not that they make things queer, but that they make things happy-a consistent theme of Supernatural slash is that a romance between Sam and Dean will give them a measure of comfort and happiness that they are denied in the series.
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. The series begins by killing off Sam's girlfriend Jessica; Sam had never told her the truth about his life before college, and his silence left her vulnerable to demonic attack (1.1 "Pilot," 1.5 "Bloody Mary"). Dean has numerous one-night stands, but Cassie, Dean's only serious girlfriend, rejected him when he told her the real nature of his work (1.13 "Route 666"). Madison, the only woman Sam has slept with since Jessica's death, turns out to be a werewolf, and he must destroy her (2.17 "Heart") (note 5). Carmen, Dean's perfect girlfriend, is merely a djinn-induced fantasy construct (2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be")...even stories that overtly depict incest are understood as being more about symbolic relationships to general constructs of desire than about incestuous desire itself. However, Supernatural, by blocking Sam and Dean's chances for normative sexuality, enables incest to escape from the realm of the safely symbolic. Sam and Dean are unable to form romantic attachments to others, and therefore their love is locked in an eternal feedback loop, referring back only to itself. They don't have anyone but each other (and their father) to love, and since their father's death, they love none but each other. All others are expendable-Sam is even willing to kill Bobby, their surrogate father figure and only trusted friend, if doing so will save Dean. The intense, exclusive, excessive nature of their love is not only central to the plot, but also named by the creators, actors, critics, and fans as the show's primary strength. While this love is not necessarily romantic, our culture codes romantic love as similarly excessive, so the show makes it very easy to read Sam and Dean's excessive love as romantic.
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. Fans remark upon the excessive nature of the brothers' attachment and cite it as one of the chief incitements to slash them. Setissma, a fan, explains, "They don't have a normal sibling relationship…They need each other, deeply and overwhelmingly, and I don't think they would ever be OK living separate lives...Sam and Dean go out there looking for things that are strange and unfamiliar and they end up seeing themselves and their relationship more clearly.
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.
Romanticism, and its sister, the Gothic, provide several other important tropes for both show and fan fiction, including the formal study of the folklore Sam and Dean track, a fascination with the otherworldly, and, most importantly, persistent discourses of both queerness and sympathetic sibling incest.
The bond forged between Sam and Dean when they were children on the road, with an unreliable, often-absent father, is the deepest and most profound relationship that they will ever have with anyone. As mentioned earlier, the most intense Sam/Dean moments-and the moments when they are mistaken for gay-often take place in episodes that concern family relationships, especially when those family relationships involve children.
The first episode of Supernatural sets the tone for the brothers' relationship: as fire consumes their house after Mary's murder, John shoves the infant Sam into 4-year-old Dean's arms and tells him to run; at the end of the episode, Dean again saves Sam from the demon fire that follows Jessica's murder. Later, the show relies upon flashbacks that directly comment upon Sam and Dean's present-day relationship. As the brothers' relationship becomes more intense in the present, we are afforded more glimpses of their past, which reflect our greater understanding of their bond. Episodes 1.18 "Something Wicked" and 3.8 "A Very Supernatural Christmas," both of which feature extended flashbacks, reflect the show's pattern of never lingering too much upon familial love, especially Sam and Dean's brotherly bond, without linking it to romantic love: both of these episodes feature Sam and Dean being read by other characters as a couple.
The episode 2.11 "Playthings," as mentioned earlier, is the most Gothic episode of the series, and, in keeping with the genre's concern with incest, it makes perfect sense that this episode contains the most significant instance of the brothers' being taken for a gay couple. Sam and Dean come to investigate, in Dean's words, "an old-school haunted house," an inn where mysterious deaths have been occurring. The old inn has all the Gothic acquierements, up to and including dark corridors, mysterious servants, creepy (rather than adorably innocent) children, and, of course, a secret in the attic. The central mystery is a mirror of Sam and Dean's worst-case scenario...
In keeping with the general patterns of the show's depiction of love, since the case is so overtly about familial love-and an explicit analogy to Sam and Dean's own situation-"Playthings" contains some of the most eroticized brotherly interaction in the series. Upon their arrival, Sam and Dean are asked by the hotel owner if they are "antiquing," and when Dean agrees, she says, "Well, you just look the type. So, king-sized bed?" Sam quickly informs her that they're "just brothers," and Dean wants to know what she meant by "look the type." The scene ends with the arrival of the valet, who provides the punch line: "Let me guess: antiquers?" Once alone, Dean asks, "Why do these people assume we're gay?" Sam offhandedly replies, "Well, you are kind of butch; they probably think you're overcompensating."
This scene both calls attention to and undercuts the show's performance of hypermasculinity; Sam's response locates their identification as queer in Dean's machismo, the performance of which is traditionally intended to fend off accusations of homosexuality. Sam is consistently presented as being more sensitive than Dean to matters of gender and cultural difference, and his response affirms this-and allows him to get a dig in at Dean, who often twits Sam for being less masculine than himself. Unusually, Dean pursues the issue; in 1.18 "Something Wicked" and 1.8 "Bugs," he simply laughed it off, even slapping Sam's ass and calling him "honey" in "Bugs." Perhaps he is more jocular there because the cases in those episodes involve conflict between fathers and sons-the brothers do not speak freely until there are no fathers present. There's also the fact that "Playthings," as a Gothic, is meant to be claustrophobic, and so the tighter focus forces the eroticism out into the open. In a later scene, Sam gets drunk and begs Dean to kill him if he starts turning evil; this begging involves stroking Dean's face and pulling him close. Dean shoves him off, but the camera-and Dean's eyes-linger upon Sam's body writhing drunkenly upon the bed.
The Trickster, in 3.11 "Mystery Spot," remarks, "The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it!…Dean's your weakness. The bad guys know it too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam." Sam and Dean's all-consuming devotion is of the kind, in our culture, usually reserved for romantic partners...many fans argue that their love is so excessive that sexual desire will not fundamentally alter their investment in each other.
Therefore, fans, whether writing Wincest or not, often use folklore much as the show itself does: as a way of reflecting and commenting upon Sam and Dean's relationship. The series takes place within a supernatural universe, which means that fan writers can justify just about any situation, no matter how outlandish, with "it's magic!"
Despite the popularity of using supernatural means to overcome Sam and Dean's resistance, incest in Wincest fan fiction does not usually function as a pure fetish; fans often write the incest taboo as just one more social norm that is ultimately irrelevant to the Winchesters' lives.
Wincest writers tell stories in which Sam and Dean carve out some joy for themselves-a joy that defies all codes of normative sexuality, but has a profound depth and intimacy that epitomizes ideals of romantic love.
by Catherine Tosenberger
'This article examines incestuous slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural. I argue that "Wincest" fan fiction is best understood not as perverse, oppositional resistance to a heterosexual, nonincestuous show, but an expression of readings that are suggested and supported by the text itself. I examine the literary, cultural, and folkloric discourses of incest and queerness invoked by the series, paying special attention to Romanticism, the Gothic, and horror as underliers to those discourses, and how those genres inform both the series and the fan fiction. I discuss a number of Wincest stories in detail, focusing upon how these stories build upon thematic elements within the series. In conclusion, I argue that the most resistive aspect of Wincest fan fiction is that it gives the main characters a lasting happiness that the series eternally defers'.
Her thesis is long but it's worth to read and feel free to agree/disagree.
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30/36
The fact that Sam and Dean are brothers in no way detracts from the slashy vibe. In fact, as brothers, they are given a pass for displays of emotion that masculinity in our culture usually forbids, which intensifies the potential for queer readings. Executive story editor Sera Gamble described her conception of the show as "the epic love story of Sam and Dean" (Borsellino 2006); while she quickly avowed that her comment was made in jest to tease creator Eric Kripke, many fan writers consider her statement to be a perfectly accurate description of the show, and they use their own narratives to explore all the implications of the "epic love story." These fan-fictional narratives are known as Wincest.
Far from shying away from its queer, incestuous implications, Supernatural frequently calls attention to its own homoerotic energy; while the show's most overtly queer moments are those instances when Sam and Dean are taken for a couple, the show's "broader thematic project" of valorizing the brothers' Romantic, transgressive Otherness is profoundly queer...Supernatural slash writers' most significant subversion of the text is not that they make things queer, but that they make things happy-a consistent theme of Supernatural slash is that a romance between Sam and Dean will give them a measure of comfort and happiness that they are denied in the series.
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. The series begins by killing off Sam's girlfriend Jessica; Sam had never told her the truth about his life before college, and his silence left her vulnerable to demonic attack (1.1 "Pilot," 1.5 "Bloody Mary"). Dean has numerous one-night stands, but Cassie, Dean's only serious girlfriend, rejected him when he told her the real nature of his work (1.13 "Route 666"). Madison, the only woman Sam has slept with since Jessica's death, turns out to be a werewolf, and he must destroy her (2.17 "Heart") (note 5). Carmen, Dean's perfect girlfriend, is merely a djinn-induced fantasy construct (2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be")...even stories that overtly depict incest are understood as being more about symbolic relationships to general constructs of desire than about incestuous desire itself. However, Supernatural, by blocking Sam and Dean's chances for normative sexuality, enables incest to escape from the realm of the safely symbolic. Sam and Dean are unable to form romantic attachments to others, and therefore their love is locked in an eternal feedback loop, referring back only to itself. They don't have anyone but each other (and their father) to love, and since their father's death, they love none but each other. All others are expendable-Sam is even willing to kill Bobby, their surrogate father figure and only trusted friend, if doing so will save Dean. The intense, exclusive, excessive nature of their love is not only central to the plot, but also named by the creators, actors, critics, and fans as the show's primary strength. While this love is not necessarily romantic, our culture codes romantic love as similarly excessive, so the show makes it very easy to read Sam and Dean's excessive love as romantic.
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. Fans remark upon the excessive nature of the brothers' attachment and cite it as one of the chief incitements to slash them. Setissma, a fan, explains, "They don't have a normal sibling relationship…They need each other, deeply and overwhelmingly, and I don't think they would ever be OK living separate lives...Sam and Dean go out there looking for things that are strange and unfamiliar and they end up seeing themselves and their relationship more clearly.
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.
Romanticism, and its sister, the Gothic, provide several other important tropes for both show and fan fiction, including the formal study of the folklore Sam and Dean track, a fascination with the otherworldly, and, most importantly, persistent discourses of both queerness and sympathetic sibling incest.
The bond forged between Sam and Dean when they were children on the road, with an unreliable, often-absent father, is the deepest and most profound relationship that they will ever have with anyone. As mentioned earlier, the most intense Sam/Dean moments-and the moments when they are mistaken for gay-often take place in episodes that concern family relationships, especially when those family relationships involve children.
The first episode of Supernatural sets the tone for the brothers' relationship: as fire consumes their house after Mary's murder, John shoves the infant Sam into 4-year-old Dean's arms and tells him to run; at the end of the episode, Dean again saves Sam from the demon fire that follows Jessica's murder. Later, the show relies upon flashbacks that directly comment upon Sam and Dean's present-day relationship. As the brothers' relationship becomes more intense in the present, we are afforded more glimpses of their past, which reflect our greater understanding of their bond. Episodes 1.18 "Something Wicked" and 3.8 "A Very Supernatural Christmas," both of which feature extended flashbacks, reflect the show's pattern of never lingering too much upon familial love, especially Sam and Dean's brotherly bond, without linking it to romantic love: both of these episodes feature Sam and Dean being read by other characters as a couple.
The episode 2.11 "Playthings," as mentioned earlier, is the most Gothic episode of the series, and, in keeping with the genre's concern with incest, it makes perfect sense that this episode contains the most significant instance of the brothers' being taken for a gay couple. Sam and Dean come to investigate, in Dean's words, "an old-school haunted house," an inn where mysterious deaths have been occurring. The old inn has all the Gothic acquierements, up to and including dark corridors, mysterious servants, creepy (rather than adorably innocent) children, and, of course, a secret in the attic. The central mystery is a mirror of Sam and Dean's worst-case scenario...
In keeping with the general patterns of the show's depiction of love, since the case is so overtly about familial love-and an explicit analogy to Sam and Dean's own situation-"Playthings" contains some of the most eroticized brotherly interaction in the series. Upon their arrival, Sam and Dean are asked by the hotel owner if they are "antiquing," and when Dean agrees, she says, "Well, you just look the type. So, king-sized bed?" Sam quickly informs her that they're "just brothers," and Dean wants to know what she meant by "look the type." The scene ends with the arrival of the valet, who provides the punch line: "Let me guess: antiquers?" Once alone, Dean asks, "Why do these people assume we're gay?" Sam offhandedly replies, "Well, you are kind of butch; they probably think you're overcompensating."
This scene both calls attention to and undercuts the show's performance of hypermasculinity; Sam's response locates their identification as queer in Dean's machismo, the performance of which is traditionally intended to fend off accusations of homosexuality. Sam is consistently presented as being more sensitive than Dean to matters of gender and cultural difference, and his response affirms this-and allows him to get a dig in at Dean, who often twits Sam for being less masculine than himself. Unusually, Dean pursues the issue; in 1.18 "Something Wicked" and 1.8 "Bugs," he simply laughed it off, even slapping Sam's ass and calling him "honey" in "Bugs." Perhaps he is more jocular there because the cases in those episodes involve conflict between fathers and sons-the brothers do not speak freely until there are no fathers present. There's also the fact that "Playthings," as a Gothic, is meant to be claustrophobic, and so the tighter focus forces the eroticism out into the open. In a later scene, Sam gets drunk and begs Dean to kill him if he starts turning evil; this begging involves stroking Dean's face and pulling him close. Dean shoves him off, but the camera-and Dean's eyes-linger upon Sam's body writhing drunkenly upon the bed.
The Trickster, in 3.11 "Mystery Spot," remarks, "The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it!…Dean's your weakness. The bad guys know it too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam." Sam and Dean's all-consuming devotion is of the kind, in our culture, usually reserved for romantic partners...many fans argue that their love is so excessive that sexual desire will not fundamentally alter their investment in each other.
Therefore, fans, whether writing Wincest or not, often use folklore much as the show itself does: as a way of reflecting and commenting upon Sam and Dean's relationship. The series takes place within a supernatural universe, which means that fan writers can justify just about any situation, no matter how outlandish, with "it's magic!"
Despite the popularity of using supernatural means to overcome Sam and Dean's resistance, incest in Wincest fan fiction does not usually function as a pure fetish; fans often write the incest taboo as just one more social norm that is ultimately irrelevant to the Winchesters' lives.
Wincest writers tell stories in which Sam and Dean carve out some joy for themselves-a joy that defies all codes of normative sexuality, but has a profound depth and intimacy that epitomizes ideals of romantic love.