MAN PAIN two point aha! a field guide

[pocochina]

I’ve started to realize that when we say MAN PAIN, we don’t just mean MAN PAIN. Like “insomnia,” MAN PAIN is something different from “occasional sleepless night”/”fictional man suffering in one way or another.” Rather, it is an umbrella term for several distinct but possibly overlapping conditions.

Comments

[percysowner]

One of the reasons I love Sam, and the writing for him frustrates the heck out of me, is because he has real, legitimate reasons for man pain and yet he just kind of soldiers on. Jess was fridged to start him on his journey, but she was more than that. He keeps remembering her at least through the end of season 6 when his Hell self tells him to go find Jess. We saw Jess for maybe 10 minutes tops, but Sam still thinks about, remembers and loves her.

Then Sam has suffered being thrown out of the family by John, finding out John ordered his death, finding out he was tainted by demon blood, watching Dean die over a hundred times, trying to save Dean from Hell and failing, becoming an addict, being manipulated into releasing Lucifer, and spending 180 years tortured by Lucifer. Yet somehow he doesn't go on and on about it. He just keeps going. Sam has every right to show the pain he feels over the crappy life he has had, but no how all that pain affected him is just brushed over. Instead all of these things become about how the affect DEAN, which is where my frustration comes in.

[pocochina]

Yeah. Supernatural is such a big offender on this front.

I think that was why Sam didn't click for me earlier? Because *so* much of his development in those first couple of seasons is really reliant on fridging, and so I kind of wrote him off? Like, "if all you have to tell me about him is stuff that has nothing to do with him, whatever." It didn't feel like it was really about his damage until S3, at which point I latched in for good.

Instead all of these things become about how the affect DEAN, which is where my frustration comes in.

Ugh, yeah. My impatience with Type 3 up there started way before I saw the show, but Dean is the worst offender on that front I have ever seen. Like, the idea that I would have an ounce of sympathy for him in Levee - "it's so hard for ME to lock up the deviant, deny him medication, and let him die in agony, CRY CRY" - says a ton about how much MAN PAIN writers expect to get away with, and how dependent it is not just on maleness but on social power hierarchies.

Sam has every right to show the pain he feels over the crappy life he has had, but no how all that pain affected him is just brushed over.

Yeah, exactly. Dean expresses his issues in those typically masculine ways - having volatile emotions while saying he's too macho to talk about them, drinking and fighting and kicking down on the vulnerable. And we privilege that in real life. We assume that because people feel entitled to act that way, they are entitled to act that way, and that power play becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas Sam, I think, feels like *he* is not entitled to express his pain, because he thinks he deserves it, and so he gets a lot less leeway from...if not from the narrative, then from the audience...because he holds himself to a higher standard.