First, the comfort-food frontier narratives: yep. I confess this is no small part of my academic stock-in-trade, how frontier narratives are *the* American weakness, how we gotta tell ourselves over and over the one about that "primitivized" European (white dude gone native, ya know, and maverick and rebel and individualist and gunslinging anti-colonial colonizer) who went into the wilderness and won it (and we do tell ourselves that story, over and over, in film and TV and ads that sell SUV's by planting them on the tops of buttes and the political rhetoric we buy that we shouldn't. Fallout: yeah, xenophobia, whitewashing, erasure, the current-events baggage you're referring to, etc etc. They feel good, yeah, national-mythic-good, that story that connects a diverse people to a land (but leaves out the diversity); all the stuff you said. Paired with the American anti-Nazi war hero--also as you said, a devastating double song-of-self. Laughablelament was hoping for anti-fascist plots this season, I think she said, but how much of what we got was really, richly, that? I think of of SPN as sort of trying to evade the explicitly political (despite LOTUS, heh) but...there's a way in which you know that more than usual they might have thought about how a conservative element of the fanbase (as opposed to fandom, though that's here, too) might respond in a different way to some of these stories than the not-conservative element. I don't read the Sam-led farmers-with-pitchforks raid as simply fuckyeahAmerica because I don't want to, but, well...these kinds of stories do warrant the projection you spoke of. I think they do.
I was gonna say something about SPN's history with frontier fictions, Winchesters and hunters and class/underclass, monsters and natives and other stuff, hmm...for later.
I also confess that despite what I said about the possibilities of metalandscape I am not generally into post-apocalyptic/dystopian. Or at least some of the most common modes of it. I like "The End". *You* could write the hell out of post- (post-) apocalypse, which I guess this one is. I wonder what they'll do?
Fave things from S12: witch twins! "Asa Fox" and "Twigs & Twine." Yes, the "Regarding Dean" witchery and mirror and brother stuff. Parts of "The Raid" and "The Foundry" and "Middle". Some particular Sam and Dean bits, which I'll have to think more about. The way they made Mary not what the boys thought/wanted/expected.
One other interesting thing is the mirroring with Sam and his hunter posse storming the BMoL in their compound and the vampires doing the same in "The Raid.'' Same motive--survival of the species. I feel like there's something in that that could be capitalized on more, tapping into that rich vein (heh) of how vampires have served as multifaceted mirrors throughout the series.
that story that connects a diverse people to a land (but leaves out the diversity) Yeah, exactly.
I don't know if it was trying to evade the explicitly political...I'd say floundering, like it wanted to say something but couldn't find a voice that rang true? I do think there's an anti-fascist thread, but it never quite hits close to home, because it's a sin that originates in a foreign country that doesn't share our values and that American hunters prove largely immune to--for all the frontier-narrative reasons you mentioned. Of course, that foreign country is also the one most commonly called our motherland--(which is kind of funny in a season as much about mommy issues as anything). It's the original empire that we've defined ourselves against--against their rigid class system and colonial exploitation and church/state issues. Telling ourselves that we do things differently--better.
*You* could write the hell out of post- (post-) apocalypse, which I guess this one is. I wonder what they'll do? Aww, flattered you think I'd be good at writing the thing <3! I've no idea what they'll do. If I had my way, we'd have at least ten episodes of Sam and Dean on a road trip to find Mary in the no-deal verse, and they'd still be doing cases-of-the-week, they'd just have to adjust to the different rules of this next-door universe. And I'd probably wind up going totally indulgent and have them gratuitously run into the full angsty gamut of people they knew before. Jess. Gordon. Ava. Uriel. Harvelles (all three of them would be alive!). I'd be shameless.
First, the comfort-food frontier narratives: yep. I confess this is no small part of my academic stock-in-trade, how frontier narratives are *the* American weakness, how we gotta tell ourselves over and over the one about that "primitivized" European (white dude gone native, ya know, and maverick and rebel and individualist and gunslinging anti-colonial colonizer) who went into the wilderness and won it (and we do tell ourselves that story, over and over, in film and TV and ads that sell SUV's by planting them on the tops of buttes and the political rhetoric we buy that we shouldn't. Fallout: yeah, xenophobia, whitewashing, erasure, the current-events baggage you're referring to, etc etc. They feel good, yeah, national-mythic-good, that story that connects a diverse people to a land (but leaves out the diversity); all the stuff you said. Paired with the American anti-Nazi war hero--also as you said, a devastating double song-of-self. Laughablelament was hoping for anti-fascist plots this season, I think she said, but how much of what we got was really, richly, that? I think of of SPN as sort of trying to evade the explicitly political (despite LOTUS, heh) but...there's a way in which you know that more than usual they might have thought about how a conservative element of the fanbase (as opposed to fandom, though that's here, too) might respond in a different way to some of these stories than the not-conservative element. I don't read the Sam-led farmers-with-pitchforks raid as simply fuckyeahAmerica because I don't want to, but, well...these kinds of stories do warrant the projection you spoke of. I think they do.
I was gonna say something about SPN's history with frontier fictions, Winchesters and hunters and class/underclass, monsters and natives and other stuff, hmm...for later.
I also confess that despite what I said about the possibilities of metalandscape I am not generally into post-apocalyptic/dystopian. Or at least some of the most common modes of it. I like "The End". *You* could write the hell out of post- (post-) apocalypse, which I guess this one is. I wonder what they'll do?
Fave things from S12: witch twins! "Asa Fox" and "Twigs & Twine." Yes, the "Regarding Dean" witchery and mirror and brother stuff. Parts of "The Raid" and "The Foundry" and "Middle". Some particular Sam and Dean bits, which I'll have to think more about. The way they made Mary not what the boys thought/wanted/expected.
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that story that connects a diverse people to a land (but leaves out the diversity) Yeah, exactly.
I don't know if it was trying to evade the explicitly political...I'd say floundering, like it wanted to say something but couldn't find a voice that rang true? I do think there's an anti-fascist thread, but it never quite hits close to home, because it's a sin that originates in a foreign country that doesn't share our values and that American hunters prove largely immune to--for all the frontier-narrative reasons you mentioned. Of course, that foreign country is also the one most commonly called our motherland--(which is kind of funny in a season as much about mommy issues as anything). It's the original empire that we've defined ourselves against--against their rigid class system and colonial exploitation and church/state issues. Telling ourselves that we do things differently--better.
*You* could write the hell out of post- (post-) apocalypse, which I guess this one is. I wonder what they'll do? Aww, flattered you think I'd be good at writing the thing <3! I've no idea what they'll do. If I had my way, we'd have at least ten episodes of Sam and Dean on a road trip to find Mary in the no-deal verse, and they'd still be doing cases-of-the-week, they'd just have to adjust to the different rules of this next-door universe. And I'd probably wind up going totally indulgent and have them gratuitously run into the full angsty gamut of people they knew before. Jess. Gordon. Ava. Uriel. Harvelles (all three of them would be alive!). I'd be shameless.
Reply
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