SPN 5.09 The Real Ghostbusters
I don't think a tv show has ever hurt my feelings until now. I'm over-invested, just a little, in SPN. But that's mostly because of Sam and Dean. I'm invested in their storyline and relationship. I need things to end well for them when the last episode rolls around.
Meanwhile, I'm quite happily here on LJ with the rest of you. Got to go to a panel at ComicCon and to Wincon a couple years ago (and will go again when I can). I gladly watched the first five minutes of Lazarus Rising that got leaked from ComicCon onto the Internets, with the screaming audience. Reports from other cons, run by Creation or by fans, also give the impression of a female dominated space. I'm here. I'm a girl, and everywhere you go in this fandom, there are some guys, but mostly women.
When I saw the spoiler clip from this ep, with the boys showing up at the hotel and Becky greeting them, I sort of had the impression the demographics would be close to realistic. Or at least hanf and half. Because there was a fangirl. A slashfan with a Web site devoted to Wincest, and we all know who mostly reads that.
(This is hard to write without seeming to minimize male inclusion in the fandom, which is not something my intent. Please bear with me here.)
So, I dunno. They walk into the hotel, and the camera pans out, and it's a sea of guys. The few girls in that shot were dressed as male characters. In the auditorium, you can count out a few token women not in costume.
If I wanted to be melodramatic, I would call it a slap in the face. The first word that comes to mind, though, is erasure.
And it's so totally unfair. The entire creative team goes to cons. All of them, except maybe JA, and especially Kripke, eat up the adoration (or at least, the enthusiasm) of the attendees. Supposedly Kripke stalks us on TWoP and elsewhere Thursday nights. (Did anyone ever come forward as the one who anonymously gave supernatural_tv a permanent account? I've always kind of suspected someone from the show.) They should all know better.
A few responses to some of the reactions I keep seeing: Some have pointed out that LARP is mostly a guy thing. All right. The only larping I've ever done was battling my brother with masking-tape swords in the street outside our house. (Now he's a black belt, so we don't do that anymore.) So I'm not familiar with it much. But what about cosplay? Isn't that kind of the same thing? Could it be we have two gendered terms for essentially the same activity?
Others have said that the con full of guys was a way to avoid breaking the 4th wall, or to distance the story from the female fanbase in order to avoid hurt feelings. I'm not buying it. Mainly because it assumes that female fans can only be depicted in a way that humiliates us. And yeah, if the con had been peopled with Becky clones, then that might be the case. However, it is possible to write women respectfully and realistically, even women such as we. :P
The writers had a choice here. They could write an episode poking fun at real fans, or they could write one making fun of the kind of fan everyone makes fun of all the time anyway. The latter is easy pickings. (I was expecting a "parents' basement" joke somewhere in there.) But to depict real SPN fandom in its special combination of weirdness and brilliance, that would take work. And only a portion of their 3 million viewers would get it, though maybe the rest wouldn't mind watching anyway.
It makes me wonder.
Sometimes I miss the first season quite a bit. I think the creative team discovered fandom in the hiatus between seasons 1 and 2, and the tone of the writing has changed a bit since then. We began seeing more female monsters of the week in S2, and a line of disposable recurring women, starting with Ellen and Jo, and ending with Anna and Ruby. We lost Raelle Tucker and her subtle touch on emotional story arcs and developed a writer's bullpen that even Sera Gamble describes gamely as a boys' club in terms of the humor and atmosphere.
Strangely, I have meta in the works that actually interprets the women characters as playing essential roles in a cohesive storyline. However, in order for that to be true, I'm gonna have to do a close reading and leave out any idea of authorial intent. Because all I see from this creative team is passive-aggression.
Okay, and some good episodes when they're not "meta-ing." (How do you do meta on a made-up fandom?) Can we get the show on the road, please?
Meanwhile, I'm quite happily here on LJ with the rest of you. Got to go to a panel at ComicCon and to Wincon a couple years ago (and will go again when I can). I gladly watched the first five minutes of Lazarus Rising that got leaked from ComicCon onto the Internets, with the screaming audience. Reports from other cons, run by Creation or by fans, also give the impression of a female dominated space. I'm here. I'm a girl, and everywhere you go in this fandom, there are some guys, but mostly women.
When I saw the spoiler clip from this ep, with the boys showing up at the hotel and Becky greeting them, I sort of had the impression the demographics would be close to realistic. Or at least hanf and half. Because there was a fangirl. A slashfan with a Web site devoted to Wincest, and we all know who mostly reads that.
(This is hard to write without seeming to minimize male inclusion in the fandom, which is not something my intent. Please bear with me here.)
So, I dunno. They walk into the hotel, and the camera pans out, and it's a sea of guys. The few girls in that shot were dressed as male characters. In the auditorium, you can count out a few token women not in costume.
If I wanted to be melodramatic, I would call it a slap in the face. The first word that comes to mind, though, is erasure.
And it's so totally unfair. The entire creative team goes to cons. All of them, except maybe JA, and especially Kripke, eat up the adoration (or at least, the enthusiasm) of the attendees. Supposedly Kripke stalks us on TWoP and elsewhere Thursday nights. (Did anyone ever come forward as the one who anonymously gave supernatural_tv a permanent account? I've always kind of suspected someone from the show.) They should all know better.
A few responses to some of the reactions I keep seeing: Some have pointed out that LARP is mostly a guy thing. All right. The only larping I've ever done was battling my brother with masking-tape swords in the street outside our house. (Now he's a black belt, so we don't do that anymore.) So I'm not familiar with it much. But what about cosplay? Isn't that kind of the same thing? Could it be we have two gendered terms for essentially the same activity?
Others have said that the con full of guys was a way to avoid breaking the 4th wall, or to distance the story from the female fanbase in order to avoid hurt feelings. I'm not buying it. Mainly because it assumes that female fans can only be depicted in a way that humiliates us. And yeah, if the con had been peopled with Becky clones, then that might be the case. However, it is possible to write women respectfully and realistically, even women such as we. :P
The writers had a choice here. They could write an episode poking fun at real fans, or they could write one making fun of the kind of fan everyone makes fun of all the time anyway. The latter is easy pickings. (I was expecting a "parents' basement" joke somewhere in there.) But to depict real SPN fandom in its special combination of weirdness and brilliance, that would take work. And only a portion of their 3 million viewers would get it, though maybe the rest wouldn't mind watching anyway.
It makes me wonder.
Sometimes I miss the first season quite a bit. I think the creative team discovered fandom in the hiatus between seasons 1 and 2, and the tone of the writing has changed a bit since then. We began seeing more female monsters of the week in S2, and a line of disposable recurring women, starting with Ellen and Jo, and ending with Anna and Ruby. We lost Raelle Tucker and her subtle touch on emotional story arcs and developed a writer's bullpen that even Sera Gamble describes gamely as a boys' club in terms of the humor and atmosphere.
Strangely, I have meta in the works that actually interprets the women characters as playing essential roles in a cohesive storyline. However, in order for that to be true, I'm gonna have to do a close reading and leave out any idea of authorial intent. Because all I see from this creative team is passive-aggression.
Okay, and some good episodes when they're not "meta-ing." (How do you do meta on a made-up fandom?) Can we get the show on the road, please?