SPN and the underclass

[laespada]

Part 1

Disclaimer: this is pretty much my reading of Supernatural and one of the biggest themes if keep seeing. This will be very subjective, depending on your life exprience, class status, ethnicity, culture, etc, so on and so forth. You may think "Like hell," after you read this. That's fine, you've got your own reading, and I'm not about to

Comments

[randomstasis]

This is something I'm glad to see come out so positive-Show really is rare in showing a positive aspect of the material-advantageless unprivileged portion of the population, and this offers a more objective viewpoint on one of fandom's tropes that reallyreally bothers me; that John is a Bad Parent precisely because he doesn't provide a stable middle class privileged life for his kids.
I grew up (and have taught school)in an area where cable TV didn't happen, subsistence hunting is still fairly common, and nearly everybody knew how to use guns, knives, and kitchen stoves, drive in a pinch, deal with necessary chores and maintenance, take care of household duties,(i.e. "adult work") and be responsible/provide for themselves and younger siblings at least by the time they were 12, and I really object to the idea that there's something wrong with that. It's knowlege, self-sufficiency, independence, and personal responsibility as a matter of course for younger children than the current norm, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I kind of object to the idea that a lifestyle that ingrains these virtues should be condemned as either child abuse, or even underclass, actually!:)
Now I'm off to read the second part of this..

[laespada]

Yes. All of this so much, especially with being allowed to do things as a kid that most adults would consider cruel. Hell, I've helped winch out and transport various dead or dying animals, along with a slew of other things, and I know that about 99% of the people I work with now would consider that fucked it. It was just something that had to be done.

My parents would be considered bad for being and doing a lot of the same shit John did, and yeah while it did suck, it was just something that had to be done.

I had a grow up a lot quicker than my peers in the upper classes, and sometimes I do really wish that I had the luxury of being a child. But I never did, and at 23, I've seen and done things that most people will never have seen or done, and that's helped me a lot.

(Btw, I only use underclass mostly by lack of way of finding another better word. It's also easier to grasp for all kinds of societies, so I admit to taking the easy way out.)

[randomstasis]

Knowing that you can do what has to be done creates a strange sort of disconnect between ourselves and everybody else, doesn't it? And that's kind of fucked up, too.
I had a slightly different experience- my parents owned the grocery store in Isolated Tinytown, which put us solidly in middle class, yes. But it was a family business that only worked because the kids were the help- hurried straight home from school in time to unload the delivery truck, used the shipping manifest to price goods and stock the shelves for 5-6 hours, then eat and do homework- because we by god had to get good grades- and did it again the next day. Ran the cash register, cleaned, asked for help when the boxes were too big or heavy for a fourthgrader to move, got shut in the walk-in cooler for a couple hours;)
I *didn't* think I wasn't getting to be a kid- in a way it sucked, but we had sticker wars and priced each other, snitched comics from the rack to read while "inventorying" the canned goods in back, carried groceries and got TIPS! I was sooo proud in 5th grade, when I got to run the meat slicer for the deli-and learned to take it apart and clean it too!

Like you I learned a lot, did a lot, that fit me to do more things that most people can't and wouldn't ever do- but my friends call all that abuse and negligence these days. I'm insulted, but I'm told that's a defense mechanism, to take pride in being abused. (Now, these friends didn't and couldn't work their way around the world to pay for college like I did-unraped, mostly unrobbed, because their non-abusive parents paid for them, and kept paying when they couldn't keep a job, and paid for counseling when they were victimized...until they learned what I learned while I was being so exploited and abused, which they call being a workaholic and I call enjoying doing my job;)
I've got no objections to underclass, except that as you said in your second post, means people have the right to get derogatory, assume these are somehow inferior or less deserving people. (Sorry, LJ ate that comment, I may rewrite it) I'm all ranty though, because..
You hit a nerve over there; recently a local ranch kid-maybe 10, was crushed in a machine accident helping his parents get the hay in. I talked to some of his friends who'd braided little mini-lariat keychains and hatbands. for a booth to raise money for his med bills. Then I listened to conversations re the donation issue all; why should we help when his parents were so "negligent" in allowing him to "play" around the machinery- I asked where they got the idea he was playing, and the answer was simply- he was just a kid. I'm now indignant on his behalf-he gets killed working like an adult, then gets accused of playing irresponsibly and his parents punished, blamed because they couldn't afford to hire help- in a community steeped in 4H and FFA!

[laespada]

Awesome backstory is awesome. Being a part of the family business is a dying way, but it's definitely been a part of our country's experience up until we started being service based instead of agricultural or industrial based. I never really took pride in what I was doing, because I had no reason to-- I was doing everything everybody else in my community was doing. It was only after I went to college that I learned how goddamn different the rest of the world lived.

I'd like to kick the people that call that abuse and neglect in the teeth, especially when they don't even know the fucking meaning. People in my town were raping their daughters. Beating their children with belts. Breaking their limbs, making them do awful horrible damn things. THAT is abuse. THAT is neglect. Not making them work on the family farm.

In a way, I use the term underclass semi sarcastically. I myself see the people that I grew up with and live around not as an underclass, because like you said, it somehow implies they're substandard or something. My parents started up their farm for the second time when I was 9, and they've been farming ever since. I'd like someone to look me in the eye and somehow tell me they're substandard for having run a successful dairy farm for 14 years. I'd like someone to tell me I'm substandard for bathing in my bedroom with a washbasin full of water because we didn't have running water that winter. I just did what had to be done.

Not to sound inflammatory, but hitting nerves is good. In this case I've hit common ground, and I'm just as fucking pissed at those people as you are. Dumb fucks. (When I start talking about my background and get angry, I tend to slip into swearing like I do there, too. Apologies.)

I'm familiar with all of that kind of commentary, because I've been the subject of it a bunch of times. I've gotten upper respiratory tract infections from breathing in gross particulate matter from living on the farm, and horrified middle class teachers who just didn't get it were going to call CPS on my parents because they left it untreated. Nevermind that you can't fucking treat that kind of shit, but also, we didn't have health insurance.

Things like that are prohibitively expensive, and it's not like I was goddamn dying. I just lived with it. One of the farm kids near me got crushed under a bale of hay as it was being unloaded from the bailer. One of those big round motherfuckers. Of course, he was helping his Dad, but this is what happened. He survived, but he didn't like farming quite so much afterwards.

I've got countless examples, including broken limbs and concussions, but it all boils down to the same thing where people down here are going to get hurt, and the people above us will misconstrue it in a variety of ways, and rarely get it right.

[laespada]

And yes- knowing the things I can do and survive, and have seen- it makes me a very lonely person sometimes. Which is kind of why I empathize with Dean so much, because his attitude mirrors mine so damn much its scary.

[randomstasis]

oh, word. God, you're making me think so hard about stuff i usually just shut up about, because stupid privileged people just don't get it at all.
You should be proud, and use knowing what you can survive, since you've earned it.
Medical care you can't afford for something you just can't do anything about anyway, damn right you just work through it. Calling CPS-shit, my mom had been a social worker, on reservations and in inner cities, she got it. Our little town had no jobs, so if parents worked they were GONE. At 11 I started babysitting, nearly full time in the summer. Sleeping over, cooking dinner for 5-year-olds whose parents couldn't be there, and couldn't afford an adult, but cared enough to have someone big enough to deal around @75 cents/hr.
"People in my town were raping their daughters. Beating their children with belts." Getting wasted and passing out or disappearing for days, too. I (and mom and dad, damrite we all knew who wasn't taken care of, we were the grocery store!)encouraged those kids to come play and hang out with the kids I took care of (break my heart, so proud/happy to have an 11-year-old actual babysitter, for real, they'd run out in the street to show me off to some drugged out older relative!)
And dammit, instead of screaming negligence and calling CPS on the parents that hired me, they backed me, told me to call IF I needed help and let me snag extra food for extra little ones. AND the responsible parents sometimes arranged it that way, since I was cool with it-Because what else can you really do?

No, it wasn't great. I still don't really know how to play, obsessive caretaker, walk straight into trouble, get called a control freak when that's the last thing I am.
But..when I get scared, i get mad. Drunk angry handsy grownups are scary, but a determined *kid* can face them down, or guilt trip them, or just threaten , slam the door and hold it shut.

I so get Dean...and anybody who thinks we should have turned it all over to the authorities is insanely naive.
and btw- the bailer incident is exactly what happened to this kid too!

[threnodyjones]

Like you I learned a lot, did a lot, that fit me to do more things that most people can't and wouldn't ever do- but my friends call all that abuse and negligence these days. I'm insulted, but I'm told that's a defense mechanism, to take pride in being abused. (Now, these friends didn't and couldn't work their way around the world to pay for college like I did-unraped, mostly unrobbed, because their non-abusive parents paid for them, and kept paying when they couldn't keep a job, and paid for counseling when they were victimized...

Just reading through these various metas on the underclass is SPN today, but I just wanted to throw out a Jesus, YES! reply to this bit you wrote so many months ago. I lived below the poverty live with my mother and grandparents until I was in my mid twenties - started working at age 14 to help support my parents and myself,
paid for my college by myself since I didn't qual for grants due to "staying" with my family. My parents, especially my mother, had a lot of stuff that they did wrong in my life, but it ticks me to high hell when people say I was abused and neglected because we were poor. I was walked to and from the bus every morning by my grandmother, I had three meals a day, even if it was food shelf food usually, and by god, I learned to be responsible. I learned carpentry and plumbing from my grandfather, money management from my grandmother, electronics from a neighbor and computers from a coworker.

I clawed my way out of the ghetto, but I would never have been able to do that without those life experiences, nor do I think I would feel as appreciative and happy with my life as I do now without them.