weekends well-spent
With the help of snickfic's list of the good parts to SPN, I've watched all the arc episodes of the first season. I'm waffling between going back and doing the whole season and finding out WHAT HAPPENS NOW OMG. but, reactions!
The show seems to have the same interest I do in the questions raised by sf/f stories. Where does the internal self end, and the external influence begin? Skin shows us a sort-of-Dean under a mystical influence, maybe uninhibited and maybe influenced, and Asylum does the same with Sam. It lest their relationship and feelings about each other remain complicated, but because the misgivings and resentments get forced into the open, I don't have to wonder that they're secretly rotting away at the brotherly bond. I also - I don't know if the people behind the episode are Catholic or know much about Catholicism, but the use of priest collars is an interesting choice. Suicide (bolded for heads-up) is considered a mortal sin in Catholic dogma, even today. And it's a thing that bothered me for a long time before I had some level of understanding about mental illness issues/epic post-Catholic rage, but it always struck me as particularly horrible, that people who die of an illness are considered deserving of damnation if that illness is depression. But given the way the show looks at journeys of the mind like this, I wonder if the use of the priest collars isn't a deliberate choice to raise that very issue.
Can someone relinquish their claim on humanity by acting inhumane? Dean doesn't draw the distinctions between monsters ad monstrous humans. Because, of course they have to deal with the mundane world, and of course the people like Sue-Ann and Max can't actually be stopped by that world. I know Gilligan isn't perfect, but they're such a vivid picture of care and justice ethics. As opposed to Max's uncle and father, who were horrible people, but still, the brothers don't come close to justifying Max killing them.
And what is the nature of evil? Do you step in and do something about the bad things that happen to good people (and good things that happen to bad ones)? (And how much are the Winchesters doing this, swooping into town by the whims of Sam's visions, and leaving everyone else to perish?) Faith, certainly, was probably the episode I was most impressed with in the way it actively engaged with that particular question, even if there were others that were scarier or more fun.
And where does "horribly wrong, selfish and misguided" become "evil"? Their father is just horribly irresponsible! Molding Dean into his little child soldier so he could go fight monsters. Even leaving all that aside, locking kids in a room with not even enough food? The story does explain how he got that way, certainly, but there's no excuse for any of it, he had anchors and obligations in the normal world and he let go to get sucked into the darkness, and it pulls his children in, too. (also, not the sharpest strategic thinker - makes sense as he's basically a man on a self-destruct mission, but still, it's downright irresponsible. Shouldn't they dig the kill-anything bullets out of the bodies when they get a chance? Surely they shouldn't just waste those bullets.)
I love both Winchesters a lot. As predicted, I've glomped onto Dean without reservation. I feel like I should be identifying with Sam, the bookworm, alienated from his family's orthodoxy, but it's Dean all the way. But oh, Sam, he's so sweet. He had a little bit of protection from the atrocities of the world, and so he an engage a little with what it all means, he can wonder about the whys and what ifs and acknowledge that the weirdness they come up against might have something to do with weirdness they don't.
But Dean can't let himself believe in anything else, anything that might conflict with the mission, because never thinks to question his father, he HAS to believe in that way he gets so irked at the faith healer's congregation for believing. Because if he questions at all, then it'll all sink in, the total fucked-up-ness of his life, how isolated he is from the mundane world just by knowing about the paranormal, and the fact that his father's obsession did him as much damage as the death of his mother, probably more. He has to believe entirely, just to keep his world from collapsing in on itself. He comes so close, so close to dying of a broken heart. Well, it's a dangerous life. He doesn't expect better.
But Sam does, and that's what saves them both.
And in trying to fix his father's mistake in letting the family get torn apart, he's perpetuating the whole tragedy, pulling Sam into his world. Sam doesn't want this life, because he can imagine one outside of it, but at the same time, the things that go bump in the night go bump whether you fight them or not so you might as well fight 'em. And how could he, someone so sweet and idealistic live with the knowledge that he could be helping but isn't? But mostly because it'll kill Dean to go off by himself. Sam wants a better life, but not without his brother.
I'M SORRY. I JUST. SOMETHING IN MY EYE.
The stand-alones are much more enjoyable than MOTW-type episodes usually are for me. Provenance genuinely freaked me out, which I don't think has happened in a while. I really appreciate the Whedon-Davies-like use of emotional metaphors. The shadow demons that can't survive in the light, the stories that take on a life of their own by way of people believing. A+ use of a twist on the vampire mythology I haven't seen before in a Winchester-heavy episode. They bond for life; they were once human but they were dragged into being something else whether they liked it or not. (Also the GUEST STARS! Darla! Fred! Jammer! WHOMP WHOMP.)
The grotesque misogyny is my one complaint - granted, that's a big one, and I really think that's why I'm not IN LOVE with the show, because it's otherwise good, it's smart, it's funny, it's genuinely scary, I can completely connect to both of the leads. But the lack of women - and the way they're introduced just to be sexy/die horribly - that's a fail that I'm really not willing to put a lot of energy into overcoming. I wanted to latch onto Meg just because she was there more than once, but I couldn't quite, though I have to hand it to the actress for playing that disconnect of possession without giving it away. But it's distressing, that even the one female character we thought we had this season was actually some bigger force using a female body for its own purposes. Gross.
And generally, I'm a little apprehensive about the normalization of "real 'Murka," you know? White, physically able-bodied, straight men, in that weird class space where they have working-class coding but scrubbed clean of any of the actual burdens of financial insecurity by their supernatural occupation and by frequenting low cost-of-living parts of the country. I mean, I don't think the show so far has normativized it, and I do like that it's a story about parts of the country that are simultaneously fetishized and dismissed by mass media, but I really worry about the way everyone who is in any way deviant from this idealized modern cowboy image basically shows up to die RFN.
LA LA LA "Because I'm the oldest, which means I'm always right." FACT.
The show seems to have the same interest I do in the questions raised by sf/f stories. Where does the internal self end, and the external influence begin? Skin shows us a sort-of-Dean under a mystical influence, maybe uninhibited and maybe influenced, and Asylum does the same with Sam. It lest their relationship and feelings about each other remain complicated, but because the misgivings and resentments get forced into the open, I don't have to wonder that they're secretly rotting away at the brotherly bond. I also - I don't know if the people behind the episode are Catholic or know much about Catholicism, but the use of priest collars is an interesting choice. Suicide (bolded for heads-up) is considered a mortal sin in Catholic dogma, even today. And it's a thing that bothered me for a long time before I had some level of understanding about mental illness issues/epic post-Catholic rage, but it always struck me as particularly horrible, that people who die of an illness are considered deserving of damnation if that illness is depression. But given the way the show looks at journeys of the mind like this, I wonder if the use of the priest collars isn't a deliberate choice to raise that very issue.
Can someone relinquish their claim on humanity by acting inhumane? Dean doesn't draw the distinctions between monsters ad monstrous humans. Because, of course they have to deal with the mundane world, and of course the people like Sue-Ann and Max can't actually be stopped by that world. I know Gilligan isn't perfect, but they're such a vivid picture of care and justice ethics. As opposed to Max's uncle and father, who were horrible people, but still, the brothers don't come close to justifying Max killing them.
And what is the nature of evil? Do you step in and do something about the bad things that happen to good people (and good things that happen to bad ones)? (And how much are the Winchesters doing this, swooping into town by the whims of Sam's visions, and leaving everyone else to perish?) Faith, certainly, was probably the episode I was most impressed with in the way it actively engaged with that particular question, even if there were others that were scarier or more fun.
And where does "horribly wrong, selfish and misguided" become "evil"? Their father is just horribly irresponsible! Molding Dean into his little child soldier so he could go fight monsters. Even leaving all that aside, locking kids in a room with not even enough food? The story does explain how he got that way, certainly, but there's no excuse for any of it, he had anchors and obligations in the normal world and he let go to get sucked into the darkness, and it pulls his children in, too. (also, not the sharpest strategic thinker - makes sense as he's basically a man on a self-destruct mission, but still, it's downright irresponsible. Shouldn't they dig the kill-anything bullets out of the bodies when they get a chance? Surely they shouldn't just waste those bullets.)
I love both Winchesters a lot. As predicted, I've glomped onto Dean without reservation. I feel like I should be identifying with Sam, the bookworm, alienated from his family's orthodoxy, but it's Dean all the way. But oh, Sam, he's so sweet. He had a little bit of protection from the atrocities of the world, and so he an engage a little with what it all means, he can wonder about the whys and what ifs and acknowledge that the weirdness they come up against might have something to do with weirdness they don't.
But Dean can't let himself believe in anything else, anything that might conflict with the mission, because never thinks to question his father, he HAS to believe in that way he gets so irked at the faith healer's congregation for believing. Because if he questions at all, then it'll all sink in, the total fucked-up-ness of his life, how isolated he is from the mundane world just by knowing about the paranormal, and the fact that his father's obsession did him as much damage as the death of his mother, probably more. He has to believe entirely, just to keep his world from collapsing in on itself. He comes so close, so close to dying of a broken heart. Well, it's a dangerous life. He doesn't expect better.
But Sam does, and that's what saves them both.
And in trying to fix his father's mistake in letting the family get torn apart, he's perpetuating the whole tragedy, pulling Sam into his world. Sam doesn't want this life, because he can imagine one outside of it, but at the same time, the things that go bump in the night go bump whether you fight them or not so you might as well fight 'em. And how could he, someone so sweet and idealistic live with the knowledge that he could be helping but isn't? But mostly because it'll kill Dean to go off by himself. Sam wants a better life, but not without his brother.
I'M SORRY. I JUST. SOMETHING IN MY EYE.
The stand-alones are much more enjoyable than MOTW-type episodes usually are for me. Provenance genuinely freaked me out, which I don't think has happened in a while. I really appreciate the Whedon-Davies-like use of emotional metaphors. The shadow demons that can't survive in the light, the stories that take on a life of their own by way of people believing. A+ use of a twist on the vampire mythology I haven't seen before in a Winchester-heavy episode. They bond for life; they were once human but they were dragged into being something else whether they liked it or not. (Also the GUEST STARS! Darla! Fred! Jammer! WHOMP WHOMP.)
The grotesque misogyny is my one complaint - granted, that's a big one, and I really think that's why I'm not IN LOVE with the show, because it's otherwise good, it's smart, it's funny, it's genuinely scary, I can completely connect to both of the leads. But the lack of women - and the way they're introduced just to be sexy/die horribly - that's a fail that I'm really not willing to put a lot of energy into overcoming. I wanted to latch onto Meg just because she was there more than once, but I couldn't quite, though I have to hand it to the actress for playing that disconnect of possession without giving it away. But it's distressing, that even the one female character we thought we had this season was actually some bigger force using a female body for its own purposes. Gross.
And generally, I'm a little apprehensive about the normalization of "real 'Murka," you know? White, physically able-bodied, straight men, in that weird class space where they have working-class coding but scrubbed clean of any of the actual burdens of financial insecurity by their supernatural occupation and by frequenting low cost-of-living parts of the country. I mean, I don't think the show so far has normativized it, and I do like that it's a story about parts of the country that are simultaneously fetishized and dismissed by mass media, but I really worry about the way everyone who is in any way deviant from this idealized modern cowboy image basically shows up to die RFN.
LA LA LA "Because I'm the oldest, which means I'm always right." FACT.