A question...

[ash48]

for my thinky flisters.

A while ago bythedamned and I posted figures and meta on deaths of males and females on Supernatural. It generated some healthy discussion and some interesting questions.

One thing that came up a few times, was that how many men or women died isn't as important as HOW they died.

The question is: What is critical or important

Comments

[fannishliss]

I'll take a stab at this (no pun intended

[ash48]

Thank you! This is great. I have to say I wouldn't have considered a lot of those sexualised and therefore I can see that approaching any sort of meta or thinky thoughts on the topic would be quite controversial (and why it's not something that talked about that often I suspect.). It would be interesting though.

We might look at purely getting the stats on this. Just list how each character died. We're not sure how hard or time consuming that will be yet. I figure that if we had a list of that stuff then people can draw their own conclusions. Because I think where one person sees a death as sexualised another may not. I'm not sure there are hard and fast rules on that. Or...*head scratch* .. maybe there is. :)

Thanks so much for the info. Just what I was after.
,3

[greenpear]

You do know that this is exactly the type of information I could plug into the networking program I have at work.

Talk to me...

[ash48]

So curious...

I've pm'd you. :D

[rhymephile]

The one sexualized death that sticks out for me is definitely Ruby. When it happened, I even pointed it out to my girlfriend. Sam holds her shoulders while controlling her from behind and leads her into Dean, who is standing in front of her and thrusts the knife in an upward movement, not high on her chest or near her head, but low near her abdomen. That scene always struck me as some weird symbolic sexualized threesome and always bothered me.

[ash48]

Yes. Ruby. I've heard this example a few times and I tend to agree. Out of all the deaths this would be the one I would consider the most sexualised. Though I suppose if you take that element out (and how I initially saw the scene) it could be seen as Sam finally acknowledging he wrong doing and offering up his mistake to Dean to kill. Also a way of showing Dean his change of direction. I also saw them as (finally) working together to make a kill. I didn't see the sexual nature of it until I started to see the scene being discussed. (I'm kinda slow on the uptake sometimes..)

Thanks hun.
xx

[galwithglasses]

I don't have the best memory for show scenes but some of the sexualized violence happens to people before the Now portion of the show or by the monster of the week. Seems to me we've had a woman murdered in the shower, Lucas's mom was almost murdered naked in the bathtub, and then there was the makeout session gone wrong at the beginning of My Bloody Valentine. Does that count? If clothing makes it sexualized, there's a whole cadre of women in white nightgowns (some mentioned elsewhere) including Lilith and the virgin pitched in the hole to become Eve. Ellie's death is caused by a midrift stab wound. I'm not sure how much of the sexualized deaths are men vs women. There are plenty of stabbed angels, etc. Seems like there is a lot of sexualized violence in general on the show not always leading to death, including a pile where both Sam and Dean are victims. Don't guess I know where that leaves this discussion but it's an interesting one.

[ash48]

These are great examples. There's a hell of a lot of stabbing on the show and if each one of those is considered a sexualised death then there sure are a lot of them.

I'm pretty naive when it comes to knowing what would be considered a sexualised death or not. I am suspecting I might need to search out some further reading. I sure many essays have been written about it in context of movies and other TV shows.

We're (my meta partner in crime *g*) considering listing the types of deaths on the show and leaving it open to interpretation. I know that where some would see a a death as sexualised others wouldn't.

Hmmm... I wonder if "almost" deaths would count. Lucas's mum in the bathtub for instance...

Thanks so much for this.
xx

[galwithglasses]

A list by type of death might be interesting but without the context such as position, clothing, aggressor, it might not answer the sexualized violence question. Still it might be worth doing. These kinds of discussions seem to come up often and it's nice to have concrete details to add to the discussion. On this show you'd have to have column for death by falling piano, crazed mannequin, garage door, fork in the dish drainer.....

[ash48]

Yes. I was just thinking about all the other relevant info that could go with that and suddenly the whole thing looks like an enormous amount of work. But also... with a show like this it's not so cut and dried.

I was thinking about the Woman in White for example. She's a ghost who has already died and then she gets "killed" by the boys (or rather, helped to leave by the boys.). We'd have to have a rule about which deaths we count. Argh..

Hee.. and yes. The methods of deaths would be quite something to read I reckon. We could have death by window or maybe list it as "decapitated" and then list "by window". Or "strangled" by "hands", "cord" etc. Jeeez... might be counting left for a rainy day. :)

(sorry, musing out loud there. I think if bythedamned sees this she'll be shaking her head. *G*)

xx

[elliemurasaki]

The woman who died in Crossroad Blues, her death was very definitely sexualized. Contrast Dean's death by hellhound, which was very definitely not.

[ash48]

Ahh... interesting. I remember reading someone's comment on the stats meta that said they considered Dean's hellhound death as being sexualised because of the way he was laying on the table. ( And yet, he was ripped off the table and mauled). So maybe the lead up was sexualised but not the tearing apart.

Hmmm... has I've mentioned above a couple of times. This is a huge can of worms and I can see that peoples interpretations will varying. And hence running a mile from any potential meta on the subject.

Purely a list of types of deaths maybe. :)

Thank you.
xx

[amonitrate]

Yeah, I thought Dean's death was pretty sexualized, perhaps even more explicitly sexualized than the woman in Crossroad Blues. He was splayed out crotch to the camera at one point, etc. The show inflicts more sexualized violence on Dean than on the other male characters, in my opinion. I think there's a tendency to not read violence against male characters as sexualized even if the same scene would be read as sexualized if the character was a woman, and there are some good reasons (violence towards women is more often sexualized in reality and in entertainment) but I think we do a disservice to the topic if we ignore when violence towards male characters is sexualized. As you said earlier, the cabin scene with YED!John is another example, though it's less blatant than Dean's death in 3.16.