The Fandoms you never thought would Occupy the same post
In which I have waay more feelings than is probably necessary OR even halfway normal about Dean Winchester, Beck Oliver, Noah Puckerman, and Nam Woohyun.
[This is a FEELINGS post about Boys OR: That moment when Kelsey takes away your Penis and then tells you what that means]
This is a post about BOYS. OR: That moment when Kelsey takes away your Penis and then tells you what that means
I would like to caveat this post first by saying - I’m only through about 8 episodes of SPN S5 and have not ~fully caught up to Victorious (I’m one episode shy of finishing S3)... so if some of this doesn’t make sense anymore - I will figure it out once I’m there. Also - I’m one of those “hazy on the details” people - so I may not cite episodes/moments with the same alarming accuracy as most of you are able (my brain just gets too FULL sometimes, kk?). Also - a signficant portion of my Woohyunny feelings went straight from
penny_lane_42’s brain into my soul.
And a furthermore: my opinions are mine. I fully believe many of you will disagree (especially re: my inclusion of Dean Winchester in this post)
Also - and this is just a bit of a ~rant/soapbox - the thing about Pop Culture is that it is a series of moments, therefore as students of Pop Culture - or Pop Culture enthusiasts - it all comes down choosing the moment and sticking to it, knowing that the moment is slippery and will fall away more quickly than we can ever recognizing it happening. So here’s my moment. And I know that it is already gone, already being reworked, the site of this moment already being contested by everything that comes after (and before).
Dean Winchester
This all started with little Dean Winchester and how he is just too pretty to be real. And then I started shipping Dean/Feminine Space so hard it hurt! BECAUSE he defines himself according to how women see him. Not according to “how other men see him because the ladies are attracted to him and will sleep with him” - Nay, Dean is a Woo-Girl. He goes into bars - not to prowl or to conquer - but to be conquered. His worth is proven to him when a female opts to flirt with him - if women don’t see him, he isn’t seen. It’s a fine line - and one that I think relies almost solely on Jensen Ackles’ acting prowess - between “Sleeping with as many women as you can is the most important because it proves that you are viril and masculine and awesome” and “Women wanting to sleep/flirt/connect with you gives you meaning and proves that you are the hero you so desperately want to be” … The show-writers seem to think that Dean (in the first 4S) is the first - a chauvinist who believes his worth is made in the dehumanizing and commodification of women. I argue, have argued, and will continue to argue - that Dean makes himself into a commodity for women to use - and that is where he finds his worth.
I was dancing around this idea with Dean for a while and it really clicked in 4.13(??) - which was a flashback episode that centered on Sam, actually. In it - Dean appears to be this background character with no real purpose other than to force Sam into a prescribed notion of masculinity, while also finding a lot of extra time to fool around in the janitor’s closet with a cute girlfriend - and some other girls. In the end, Dean is rejected by ALL of the females (good girls, they are! fierce and lovely)::
Amanda: You spend so much time trying to convince people that you're cool, but it's just an act. We both know that you're just a sad, lonely little kid. And I feel sorry for you, Dean.
Dean: You feel sorry me, huh? Don't feel sorry for me. You don't know anything about me. I save lives - I'm a hero. A hero!
And this was it - this solidified my ~feels for this boy. He finds his self-worth in sex. This is common for both gender norms. What I find is that Dean defines himself and his relationship towards sex in a more Feminine way. Feminine literally meaning: the socially-assigned gender norms, not necessarily a “truth” across the board - but a site upon which meaning is made. Women need to be Wanted. Men want to Possess.
Dean needs to be Wanted. He’s using the dialogue prescribed to his Hyper-Masculinity by society - but it’s all a performance.
There are a dozen or so instances in which Dean is revealed to be sensitive/have humanity because of his connection to a female - Females in his working identity prove that he is Human. That he is Real. There are just as many examples in which Dean pushes someone else into a sexual relationship in order to prove (to them) that they are Human/Real/Have-Worth. When he pushes Sam into relationships on the road, his reasoning generally is that if Sam doesn’t “connect” with people, he will forget what he is fighting for. Likewise, Dean buys sex for Castiel - if Castiel can be with a woman just once, maybe he will be human like him?
I often claim that it is just an unfortunate accident that Damon Winchester/Jensen Ackles has a penis. Because his BODY is so very masculine - it is hard to wipe that away and think about him from another angle. When I do, when I engineer a gender reversal for him - there is a person there who thinks (very sadly) that the sexual attentions of the opposite sex prove his worth. And on a female body/character? This would not be chauvinism - this would be the consequence of low self esteem, daddy issues, etc. etc.
And so - while I acknowledge that Dean is written - in many cases - to BE the atypical, hyper-masculine, chauvinist of the show... I find that to be a performance that is easily knocked down.
The baseline of all this rambling, is that for me - Dean uses his body for the female gaze in order to prove/find/assume some sense of worth; a trait we so often attribute to the Feminine. Likewise, just for more context, Jensen Ackles’ body is on display for his (primarily) female audience … it is a fact so ingrained in the make-up of the show, it’s hard (for me) to find the line between my gaze/Jensen and the Female gaze/Dean. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME. They inform upon each other. And this is one reason why I love television - because in NO other form of performance/production (other than RL - which is just a series of performances) could this happen.
Beck Oliver
This character is a little more difficult to place. He’s on a kid’s sitcom-style show, for one - he isn’t allowed the same emotional ~moments that Dean has. He also is a pretty reserved kid. What we do see is women falling all over himself for him EVERYWHERE. I mean - it’s no surprise to me that his girlfriend gets frustrated. Television execs drool over him during auditions, random women in foreign countries get personal with his hair, girls follow him around just to watch him, girls lie about him asking them out to get more popularity - he’s taken about as seriously as Paris Hilton by 90% of the people in his world. Even though he’s a genius in talent and has a genuinely empathetic personality - that is only seen by the females around him as further proof that he is omg so hot!!! And he’s a 16yr old boy! It doesn’t matter what age of women - everyone falls all over themselves when he walks into a room.
If this was a female character we would find this SO DISTURBING. If adult producers asked Tori during an audition if she was single or not - it wouldn’t be a joke, it would be scary and sad. And if Jade couldn’t go anywhere without men of ALL AGES following her around like sick puppies, stroking her hair and ignoring her ~words in order to focus on ooh pretty! We’d be terrified for Jade’s life. We’d be terrified that someone was going to proposition these girls for sex in order for them to “make it” in the performance industry. (I’m specifically not using Cat as an example in this, because I GENUINELY WORRY about that girl’s relationships with the opposite sex. So.) This problem isn’t brought up in scenes with Beck - just because he is male.
And it drives me utterly to distraction.
I wonder how much of this is a joke by the writers/cast on Avan Jorgia. Does he like the joke? Is it based on reality? How damaged is this poor child going to be after years of being treated like this? Where is the line between Beck’s pretty, pretty hair and Avan’s pretty, pretty self?
Noah Puckerman
I already did a post about this - so I will be brief.
Noah Puckerman sleeps with his (female) teachers to get better grades, it is CANON that married women sleep with him, he starts a physical relationship with his baby’s adoptive mom, he is the victim of so many instances of statutory rape it’s LITERALLY TERRIFYING TO ME. This wouldn’t happen to a female character in a HS show during primetime without there being real consequences for the men who are taking advantage of her. Instead, Puckerman is a joke. No one looks into his life or tries to help him. He’s continuously abused - told that he has no worth except his body.
I can’t spend too much time on him - it makes me too sad. Literally. The series ended his plotline without me getting enough ~catharsis. Beast stood up for him eventually, but I just... THIS BOY!!!! How is it even possible a character like this exists and isn’t LOVED TO DISTRACTION?!?!
If Noah Puckerman is the one character in this post that has the least amount of blurring between character/actor (because I don’t see nor know of any connection between Puck and Mark Salling the way Beck/Avan and Dean/Jensen seems so apparent) - Woohyun is the one in which there’s no real blurring - because there is no line.
Nam Woohyun
Nam Woohyun is an idol - a Korean pop-Prince. Yes, in the idol world there is a HIGH level of performance - far more so than anything we have in the West, because it is accepted, and expected. He’s performing all the time. There are brief moments in his (very little) personal time that idols are allowed to just be - but being “the Greasy One” extends to every performance, video, photoshoot, appearance. Being “greasy” means that he is the one in the group who is the most sexual - his bandmates tease him for being so greasy. And he puts SO MUCH into it. This boy practically blooms under the Female Gaze. He’s admitted to starving himself for the concept - in order to be pleasing to our eyes, a child is starving himself.
I want to say so much about Woohyunny - he’s so precious to me.
What is so different, I think, about Woohyun - is that his dedication to the Female Gaze, the conscious use of his body as a commodity, is not so easily passed over as something that proves his masculinity - rather, it proves his vulnerability. And it almost seems silly for me to be SO desperately upset over this man starving himself in order to be more aesthetically pleasing, when thousands of girls suffer from eating disorders and are not given the proper attention.
Which I think leads into the point of this post - these MALE characters who I am pointing out portray such quintessentially FEMALE attributes … is such a conflicting and fluid issue.
My reading of Dean is the most conflicting (and longest because of FEELS) - because his performativity still allows for a certain amount of freedom in his physical status as male that almost counteracts what his actions reveal about his low self esteem - but HIS character starting me thinking about the ways in which we take things for granted - both in female characters and in male characters - in the ways gender and sexuality are connected. And also how our society - right now - responds to males vs. females.
Beck and Puck are two tragic examples of how far that presumptuousness can go - two characters that are so lost in their sexual worth they accept abuse, but it isn’t recognized because they are male.
Woohyun almost seems to be an example of how much attention we should pay to the construct of bodies = worth. Though he is male, focusing on his pain shouldn’t distract us from this EPIC problem. Feeling SO STRONGLY about him abusing his body for the sake of his fans almost seemed to make me aware of how much we have desensitized ourselves to how often this happens to females - especially young girls who are not in the public eye. It is the “norm” for a HS/College aged female - just a NORMAL girl - to suffer from an eating disorder, but not for a man in a pop group. WHY IS THAT EVEN AN EMOTION THAT I HAD?!
Anyway. I’m full of feelings. I have no conclusion to these feelings - it just makes me so epically sad the way we treat each other. This isn’t even an issue of male vs. female. It’s just sad.
This was mainly prompted by my EPIC feelz about Nam Woohyun and Beck Oliver... but turned into mostly a Dean Winchester STAN - primarily because he's how I started thinking about all of this. Also because he's just a great baseline to start from - once I argue the hell out of his characterization, everything else seems like a repeat. He carries the weight of all of these things.
Gender Performativity is a huge kink of mine and these four men are such PRIME wonderful examples of that performativity - and they subvert things in such lovely ways. What's troubling is how much they are made a joke. How their bodies are a joke - a site upon which desire can sit without consequence.
And yes, my icon of Daesung's bare abs is deliberate.