Supernatural and the Underclass 6- Cars (b)
Supernatural and the Underclass 6- Cars (b)
Part 1- Intro | Part 2- Dangers of Underclass | Part 3- Music | Part 4- War | Part 5- Clothes | Part 6 a- Cars
Second part of the commentary on cars. This part deals with two characters of Supernatural. The first is the family in the Benders, and the second is Bobby Singer.
Let's look at some specific instances of vehicles having impact on character's interpretation and personalities.
Probably one of the best examples is in the Benders, where the impoverished backwoods family surrounds themselves with the carapaces of victim's vehicles. First, let's look at what vehicles serve, in the most basic way for this family: predation. Either you are a predator or prey, and this is shown in a variety of ways. The first time we are introduced to these characters, it is with the assumption that there is something in the dark there, and it is monstrous. They are heralded by an unearthly screech, sporadic and unsettling. It is constantly on the peripheral of your awareness, nowhere identifiable, and threatening. Finally, when the source of the sound is revealed, the impact is gut dropping- what you thought was inhuman is shown to be in fact human, and suddenly, this is so much worse than what any monster could be. The inhuman quality of their vehicle is transferred to your understanding of their character, because you put together that these people not only seem inhuman, they act inhuman. They catch and kidnap people.
Part of our understanding of their inhumanity is their lack of regard for their vehicles. They are poorly maintained, rusted out clunkers that putter along and make terrible noises, and automatically you are judging them for their inability to take care of their property. Or at least, this is what you're invited to do, especially when considering Dean's reaction to the predatory vehicle as it tools past.
Another aspect of the episode's use of vehicles is the prey aspect. The family kidnaps people from parking lots, like a wolf snatching livestock from a herd. If you think about it, cars parked up all huddled together resemble very much a herd, and the family in their screeching cars circling this herd of cars is like a lone predator. People in parking lots are by and large unaware of possible danger; they're fairly close to establishments, like bars and buildings, and therefore the threat of injury or death is lessened. They believe they are protected by the presence of other people around them. The family uses this to their advantage, and takes them unawares.
When we finally get to see the property of the family, we see countless vehicles littering their property. Culturally in rural areas, keeping dead or useless cars in plain sight is a sign of disrespect for your property and trashy. Rednecks, hillbillies, and trailer trash keep dead cars outside because they can't afford to have them hauled away, they don't have a sheltered place to store them like a garage or other area, and they tend to pile up because they can't afford to maintain them, so series of old, unreliable cars pass through and die shortly thereafter.
This is what the audience is invited to understand when looking at this family. That they live on the fringes of society, barely able to provide means for themselves to go anyway, too poor to maintain their property. Of course this isn't quite the case, and we are given yet another rather visceral shock when we realize that keeping these vehicles is really more from the sociopathic tendency to keep trophies of their victims. The vehicles aren't used, so it isn't out of need that they keep them (and given the amount of time they've been doing this, there would have been enough time elapsed to start using some of the older vehicles without suspicion).
The vehicles that they do use are old and poorly taken care of. The vehicle they seem to use the most when preying is another peek into American psychology. Since the 80s, there has been a kind of "stranger danger" aspect, popularly represented by males driving large, nondescript vans around and abducting small children who are innocently happening by. Of course, this is actually strongly based on reality, since a number of American serial killers use vans to abduct victims for their ease of transporting a human body and whatever other materials they need, as well as keeping people in it out of sight of prying eyes. This is exactly why the family uses a van to kidnap victims, since they are big and nondescript in a town where working people also use vans for their jobs.
Another vehicle they have is an old pickup truck. If anything else, this is probably meant to show the family's roots in an older hunting class, and its poor condition shows the gradual degradation of what once could have been their morality, and their position in the underclass. Pick up trucks are very popular among hunters, because the bed of the pickup can store carcasses and whatever other materials in such a way that it doesn't make contact with the driver and passengers, and is easy to load and clean up after. Another functional, practical addition for a very chilling purpose.
____
Let's look at Bobby. Bobby Singer, all around curmudgeon with a heart of gold, a source of comfort and a wealth of knowledge behind a faded, worn down exterior. A broken man with a cherished past, and a lifetime of happiness and opportunity ripped away, but kept jealously guarded in old memories. A man who values and sees the importance in people and things when no one else can or wants to. Perhaps even more, Bobby can represent the changing of eras, both personal and cultural, while he remains rooted in place in time.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly how Bobby is mirrored through his physical surroundings. Singer's Salvage yard and its evolution through his life points to both Bobby as a character, but also to changing American thought through time.
First off, while Bobby's age is never explicitly stated as far as I know, I'm going under the assumption he is about John's age, and has seen action in Vietnam. Basically, Bobby is a product of the 50's generation, where cars were starting to become luxury items, and as such, were bought and discarded not for practical reasons all the time, but because a newer model came out, and you want to keep up with the Robinsons, as the saying goes. With this development of American consumerism, salvage yards were introduced. People who had the money to buy and discard cars at whim didn't want to keep them around cluttering up their property, to the demand to find a place for them arose.
It's impossible to know the origin of the salvage yard, since it's never outright discussed. One can assume that it was an enterprise that Bobby began, rather than inheriting, much like many of his generations refusal to follow in their parents' generations footsteps. Bobby, imminently practical and humble, and with an eye for recognizing the worth in things, found satisfaction in this kind of work.
In the beginning, it was simply a job. Bobby had a life, and enjoyed making what he could of it beautiful. There's a lot of talk in my meta of respect for your property, meaning maintaining your land and house, and making it pleasing and comfortable. This is Bobby's house to a T when he lived with his wife, with gardens, and picket fences, and fresh paint.
Most importantly, not a car in sight. Not even Bobby's own car.
This is important, because to Bobby, cars were only a job, a means to provide a comfortable living with the woman he loved, and especially later when he uses cars as a way to bury himself.
Essentially, when we first meet Bobby Singer, he is a man living in a graveyard.
Cars are a mode of transportation, a way of freedom, and here they are, inert and mostly useless, and blocking access to come and go. Bobby's progress, his forward movement in life, has been drastically severed by the traumatic incident with his wife. One of the sections of the underclass, interestingly enough, are known as those who are traumatized. This can be through a variety of things, like veterans of war, victims of abuse, witnesses or participants to traumatic events- anything and everything that can stop a person from functioning normally in society.
Even if Bobby were a guy who lived a comfortable life before, he is definitely in the underclass now, kept there by his inability to live in society anymore. Killing his wife broke him, and he surrounds himself with mementos of broken ways out.
He surrounds himself with the discarded and broken detritus of other people, who can't see the value in the vehicles anymore. Now, he lets them overrun his property and swallow his house; other people's ghosts mask his own presence as a person. Bobby has created a wall and a maze from the broken memories of other people, and as such has built his own grave there. Of course, under the guise of practicality.
Bobby's change from what would be a salvage yard to a junk yard is palpable. Bobby may be making a living off of it, may be making a lot of money off it it, but his behavior and inability to move on and function normally, just like John, is one of the ways that keeps him in the underclass. The salvage yard is almost a monument to hoarding, and people would assume that Bobby is uneducated or trashy because of the way that the cars are kept.
As time marched on, and America bought and sold and discarded cars as fast as consumerism would allow, Bobby quietly stored each generation there in his yard. Perhaps it was a way to remember older times when no one else would, much like he refuses to forget his home and his wife and his old life. Perhaps its a way to punish himself, to keep himself in this self-made graveyard of junkers and lost pasts.
Whatever the reason, you can see Bobby there, in those husks of cars that never go anywhere.
Part 1- Intro | Part 2- Dangers of Underclass | Part 3- Music | Part 4- War | Part 5- Clothes | Part 6 a- Cars
Second part of the commentary on cars. This part deals with two characters of Supernatural. The first is the family in the Benders, and the second is Bobby Singer.
Let's look at some specific instances of vehicles having impact on character's interpretation and personalities.
Probably one of the best examples is in the Benders, where the impoverished backwoods family surrounds themselves with the carapaces of victim's vehicles. First, let's look at what vehicles serve, in the most basic way for this family: predation. Either you are a predator or prey, and this is shown in a variety of ways. The first time we are introduced to these characters, it is with the assumption that there is something in the dark there, and it is monstrous. They are heralded by an unearthly screech, sporadic and unsettling. It is constantly on the peripheral of your awareness, nowhere identifiable, and threatening. Finally, when the source of the sound is revealed, the impact is gut dropping- what you thought was inhuman is shown to be in fact human, and suddenly, this is so much worse than what any monster could be. The inhuman quality of their vehicle is transferred to your understanding of their character, because you put together that these people not only seem inhuman, they act inhuman. They catch and kidnap people.
Part of our understanding of their inhumanity is their lack of regard for their vehicles. They are poorly maintained, rusted out clunkers that putter along and make terrible noises, and automatically you are judging them for their inability to take care of their property. Or at least, this is what you're invited to do, especially when considering Dean's reaction to the predatory vehicle as it tools past.
Another aspect of the episode's use of vehicles is the prey aspect. The family kidnaps people from parking lots, like a wolf snatching livestock from a herd. If you think about it, cars parked up all huddled together resemble very much a herd, and the family in their screeching cars circling this herd of cars is like a lone predator. People in parking lots are by and large unaware of possible danger; they're fairly close to establishments, like bars and buildings, and therefore the threat of injury or death is lessened. They believe they are protected by the presence of other people around them. The family uses this to their advantage, and takes them unawares.
When we finally get to see the property of the family, we see countless vehicles littering their property. Culturally in rural areas, keeping dead or useless cars in plain sight is a sign of disrespect for your property and trashy. Rednecks, hillbillies, and trailer trash keep dead cars outside because they can't afford to have them hauled away, they don't have a sheltered place to store them like a garage or other area, and they tend to pile up because they can't afford to maintain them, so series of old, unreliable cars pass through and die shortly thereafter.
This is what the audience is invited to understand when looking at this family. That they live on the fringes of society, barely able to provide means for themselves to go anyway, too poor to maintain their property. Of course this isn't quite the case, and we are given yet another rather visceral shock when we realize that keeping these vehicles is really more from the sociopathic tendency to keep trophies of their victims. The vehicles aren't used, so it isn't out of need that they keep them (and given the amount of time they've been doing this, there would have been enough time elapsed to start using some of the older vehicles without suspicion).
The vehicles that they do use are old and poorly taken care of. The vehicle they seem to use the most when preying is another peek into American psychology. Since the 80s, there has been a kind of "stranger danger" aspect, popularly represented by males driving large, nondescript vans around and abducting small children who are innocently happening by. Of course, this is actually strongly based on reality, since a number of American serial killers use vans to abduct victims for their ease of transporting a human body and whatever other materials they need, as well as keeping people in it out of sight of prying eyes. This is exactly why the family uses a van to kidnap victims, since they are big and nondescript in a town where working people also use vans for their jobs.
Another vehicle they have is an old pickup truck. If anything else, this is probably meant to show the family's roots in an older hunting class, and its poor condition shows the gradual degradation of what once could have been their morality, and their position in the underclass. Pick up trucks are very popular among hunters, because the bed of the pickup can store carcasses and whatever other materials in such a way that it doesn't make contact with the driver and passengers, and is easy to load and clean up after. Another functional, practical addition for a very chilling purpose.
____
Let's look at Bobby. Bobby Singer, all around curmudgeon with a heart of gold, a source of comfort and a wealth of knowledge behind a faded, worn down exterior. A broken man with a cherished past, and a lifetime of happiness and opportunity ripped away, but kept jealously guarded in old memories. A man who values and sees the importance in people and things when no one else can or wants to. Perhaps even more, Bobby can represent the changing of eras, both personal and cultural, while he remains rooted in place in time.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly how Bobby is mirrored through his physical surroundings. Singer's Salvage yard and its evolution through his life points to both Bobby as a character, but also to changing American thought through time.
First off, while Bobby's age is never explicitly stated as far as I know, I'm going under the assumption he is about John's age, and has seen action in Vietnam. Basically, Bobby is a product of the 50's generation, where cars were starting to become luxury items, and as such, were bought and discarded not for practical reasons all the time, but because a newer model came out, and you want to keep up with the Robinsons, as the saying goes. With this development of American consumerism, salvage yards were introduced. People who had the money to buy and discard cars at whim didn't want to keep them around cluttering up their property, to the demand to find a place for them arose.
It's impossible to know the origin of the salvage yard, since it's never outright discussed. One can assume that it was an enterprise that Bobby began, rather than inheriting, much like many of his generations refusal to follow in their parents' generations footsteps. Bobby, imminently practical and humble, and with an eye for recognizing the worth in things, found satisfaction in this kind of work.
In the beginning, it was simply a job. Bobby had a life, and enjoyed making what he could of it beautiful. There's a lot of talk in my meta of respect for your property, meaning maintaining your land and house, and making it pleasing and comfortable. This is Bobby's house to a T when he lived with his wife, with gardens, and picket fences, and fresh paint.
Most importantly, not a car in sight. Not even Bobby's own car.
This is important, because to Bobby, cars were only a job, a means to provide a comfortable living with the woman he loved, and especially later when he uses cars as a way to bury himself.
Essentially, when we first meet Bobby Singer, he is a man living in a graveyard.
Cars are a mode of transportation, a way of freedom, and here they are, inert and mostly useless, and blocking access to come and go. Bobby's progress, his forward movement in life, has been drastically severed by the traumatic incident with his wife. One of the sections of the underclass, interestingly enough, are known as those who are traumatized. This can be through a variety of things, like veterans of war, victims of abuse, witnesses or participants to traumatic events- anything and everything that can stop a person from functioning normally in society.
Even if Bobby were a guy who lived a comfortable life before, he is definitely in the underclass now, kept there by his inability to live in society anymore. Killing his wife broke him, and he surrounds himself with mementos of broken ways out.
He surrounds himself with the discarded and broken detritus of other people, who can't see the value in the vehicles anymore. Now, he lets them overrun his property and swallow his house; other people's ghosts mask his own presence as a person. Bobby has created a wall and a maze from the broken memories of other people, and as such has built his own grave there. Of course, under the guise of practicality.
Bobby's change from what would be a salvage yard to a junk yard is palpable. Bobby may be making a living off of it, may be making a lot of money off it it, but his behavior and inability to move on and function normally, just like John, is one of the ways that keeps him in the underclass. The salvage yard is almost a monument to hoarding, and people would assume that Bobby is uneducated or trashy because of the way that the cars are kept.
As time marched on, and America bought and sold and discarded cars as fast as consumerism would allow, Bobby quietly stored each generation there in his yard. Perhaps it was a way to remember older times when no one else would, much like he refuses to forget his home and his wife and his old life. Perhaps its a way to punish himself, to keep himself in this self-made graveyard of junkers and lost pasts.
Whatever the reason, you can see Bobby there, in those husks of cars that never go anywhere.