SPN month: best young version of a character
So, women on Supernatural. TAMPONS, AMIRITE, LADIES? I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can add to the conversation about SPN and gender overall, though GOD KNOWS I am self-important enough to try. I'm sure at least a fair amount of what I have to say about the narratives of the women on this show comes from me, as a viewer, applying what I think and like to characters that are often more likely meant to be ciphers, foils, and plot devices.
That said: Without making excuses as for the narrative or metanarrative context, I really don't think I'm re-inventing or reading much if anything into the narrative when I say that there is sheer brilliance in the backstory of one Mary Winchester.
It's not that she's awesome, though whenever she comes onscreen, awesomeness does ensue. It's that just by getting fleshed out as a character at all, she yanks the rug out from under us on the narrative convention of the fridging. The barest bones of her characterization undercut the Dead Madonna the Winchester men all have in their heads as a placeholder for Mary-the-person.
Mary is a fantastically interesting narrative construct because she's built backwards. I mean, she died in the pilot, in one of the nastiest displays of Women in Refrigerators this side of AtS. And honestly, that was her only role in the series. You could erase any and all appearances of Mary from there on out, and no key plot points would change. The fact that we got to know her at all plays with the WiR paradigm in and of itself.
But we did see her again. The groundwork for Mary's complication was set in from the very beginning in the S1 episode Home. She apologizes to Sam - to Sam, who is quickly putting the pieces together of what his mother's death was about, enough that he blames himself by the end of the season - thus telling us that she's done something we're supposed to think is wrong. As we eventually find out, that deal was a secret thing, made under duress so grave Sam couldn't possibly not forgive her for it, a deal he himself tried to make for Dean.
Arguably, the deal could have cast Mary as a morally ambiguous figure, but I think it set her up as quite a sympathetic one. It's a little scary that she knew what she what she was signing on with, unlike a lot of other victims of the crossroads scam, but I can't help but understand how much the supernatural death of a loved one is this hunter-raised girl's worst fear, and how badly she wants out.
And by the way, there's a lot to be said for the fact that when she was rationalizing her feelings for John Ticking Time Bomb Winchester, she was all, MARY CAMPBELL, THAT'S YOUR JOE NORMAL. Because to her, John's attitude WAS normal. Was better than normal, because John, as a recent vet, doesn't have to hide the reasons behind it. Mary's hunter upbringing did, in John's own words, a hell of a number on her head.
NOT PICTURED: a catch.+
Even if it did make her a total badass. If we missed back in S1 how Mary was going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than the dead saint placeholder the Winchester men have written into their own life narratives, she smacked it out of us good and proper when she appeared in 4x3 and beat the crap out of that sketchy hunter tool following her around the back alleys of Lawrence.
The best Mary moment, though, is this one:
SAM: No, this is the way. Leave John.
MARY: I can't.
DEAN: This is bigger than us. There are so many more lives at stake -
MARY: You don't understand. I can't. [pause for tears] It's too late. I'm pregnant.
because. because.
IT'S TOO LATE.
On the list of "shit you say when you are emotionally committed to and satisfied with your life choices," "it's too late" ranks only marginally higher than "warblgrbl yak vomit." Mary Winchester, a character who is ultimately portrayed as deeply loving and good and and admirable and even heroic, is less than thrilled with the prospect of being Martyr Mommy.
That? Is such a taboo. The standard for prospective mothers in fiction is impossible. It is so fucking unfair and unreal. It's not just about doing the best you can as a parent after the kid is born, noooooo, it's about always being so thrilled about the one and only goal of momminess which is what all women want NO EXCEPTIONS EVER. Even Bad Mommies (TM) rarely get to acknowledge ambivalence about the desire to become mothers. They're either straight-up monsters, or they're horrible mothers and NEVER WANTED YOU ANYWAY!! NO WIRE HANGERS!! or they get a heartwarming moment where they ALWAYS WANTED YOU MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF. Sometimes - faaaaaaar too frequently for my taste - she has that moment at the abortion doctor's office (because it's not like lots of women, like, one out of three American women, think about it before they get there). The closest comparison I can draw to Mary is The Hunger Games, where the kids in question are afterthoughts and ciphers, not the main characters.
The MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF!!! clause is key here. You'd think there would be a little more respect for diverse reactions among women whose survival is threatened by pregnancy, but you'd be as wrong in fiction as you'd be in modern American jurisprudence. Self-sacrificial ewes make for great easy drama. Women are supposed to CHOOSE THEIR CHOICE, give a big tearful scene about how you can't make them NOT die! for! their! baby! no matter how marginal the chance of benefit, or gigantic and irrevocable the cost, and then absolve us of any discomfort we might feel about those expectations with sweet, beatific smiles, even (usually) from beyond the grave. NOT OUR GIRL, even though we know the tragedy her future holds. She didn't even have that Road to Damascus moment where she decides she's happy to go through with it no matter what, because Big Brother blitzed in and mind-zapped her. We just know that Mary loved these boys she didn't even know, and that she didn't want to die. Mary is a person in a complicated situation, and she has a conflicted reaction. She is, go figure, human.
Crowbarring her into the motherhood narrative is scary and awful and it's supposed to be. Angels roofied her into loving John; an angel came and took away her ability to make a meaningful decision about her pregnancy; by the time she's getting close to coming to term, she's come over all sweet Stepford smiles and vapid platitudes about how she just knows angels are watching out for her. This is one of those horrible things that dick angels force people to do. And because this is SPN and there is nothing we can't troll, the show adds mockery to injury by identifying the Trickster as Gabriel, rather than Raphael or another archangel. That's a jarring deflation to the Annunciation. like, I just have this image of him Sassy Gay Friend-ing it up with the Blessed Mother?* Angels, like every other monster, are simultaneously terrifying and ridiculous, no more so than in Mary's story.
One of this show's greatest strengths is the way it can and does take gripping emotional moments which would normally be played as fully heartwarming, and turn them around to include some vicious commentary on the main characters, and this is no exception. Mary's having this MOMENT of her own existential conflict, and she tells them she's pregnant, and they totally change their attitude toward her. Their cute little puppy dog eyes start to glow, they're struck dumb and passive from the plan they were making up two seconds ago to SAVE HER LIFE. This needn't have changed anything. It's 1978; as a point of historical and legal fact, it wasn't too late for Mary. They were (heartbreakingly) fine with never having existed a moment ago; now neither of them even thinks of suggesting she tarnish herself with an abortion. Saving Mary for Mary stops being their priority; idealizing the Sacred Vessel becomes their all-consuming thought. Their reaction is on a lot of levels understandable, for sure, and the scene sticks the hell out of the emotional landing, but this is not a flattering reflection of Our Heroes.
(The fact that they are both apparently too stupid to count back from Dean's birthday and figure out what was up on their own is just icing on the cake. GUYS, COME ON, YOU DIDN'T EVEN NEED ALL YOUR FINGERS FOR THAT ONE.)
But what the hell, right? This is definitely reading too much into it. You couldn't think the show means that! Anyway, YOU HATE AUTHORIAL INTENT, P, YOU CALLED AUTHORIAL INTENT'S GIRLFRIEND WHEN YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE WAS CHEATING. And I say: (a) whatever, was I wrong about his nasty ass? yeah no, that's what I thought. and (b) look at the rest of S5&6. After this episode where Sam, Dean, and the angels collapse her into the motherhood narrative, Mary-the-character disappears.
My Bloody Valentine dismissively drops the bombshell that Mary and John didn't even like each other until the Cupids manipulated them into getting along and keeps right on walking. (Honestly, even given how much I liked the arcs for the three leads here, this is the episode I could most stand to forget, because of the totally unacknowledged number the dubcon does on the Mary/John relationship. Yes, even more than 7x9.) Manipulated into place to die for her destiny, nothing to see here.
Then in Dark Side of the Moon, we do see her face again, but it's not Mary. It's the Matrix-heaven simulation of her, existing to be used for the purposes of others. Which is clear from her first appearance, since I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to buy that the memory she wanted to relive for eternity was that time Prince Charming ran off and left her alone with a toddler and an infant. (Granted, a really good toddler and a really cute baby, but still.) Zachariah's manipulation of her image at the end is sick and cruel, but it can only work because the Mary-entity in the episode, the episode meant to be the final statement on the Winchester family history before the end of this massive story arc, is mere projection.
And so when S6 rolls around and Samuel Campbell shows up, willing to sell Mary's own children out to demons to rip her out of the afterlife, nobody even thinks to excuse him. It's sketchy, end of. The last we've seen of "Mary" was a readily-acknowledged projection by Eve. Eve, the mother of all, couldn't even appear as herself, who had to take some other woman's virginial female form - I mean, a virgin mother. Mary is ultimately a tragic figure, but in a vicious deconstruction of the show's own very first scene, it'd be hard not to understand that her tragedy is hers.
+Screencap from Home of the Nutty
*CHALLENGE: POSED. YOUR MOVE, INTERNET.
That said: Without making excuses as for the narrative or metanarrative context, I really don't think I'm re-inventing or reading much if anything into the narrative when I say that there is sheer brilliance in the backstory of one Mary Winchester.
It's not that she's awesome, though whenever she comes onscreen, awesomeness does ensue. It's that just by getting fleshed out as a character at all, she yanks the rug out from under us on the narrative convention of the fridging. The barest bones of her characterization undercut the Dead Madonna the Winchester men all have in their heads as a placeholder for Mary-the-person.
Mary is a fantastically interesting narrative construct because she's built backwards. I mean, she died in the pilot, in one of the nastiest displays of Women in Refrigerators this side of AtS. And honestly, that was her only role in the series. You could erase any and all appearances of Mary from there on out, and no key plot points would change. The fact that we got to know her at all plays with the WiR paradigm in and of itself.
But we did see her again. The groundwork for Mary's complication was set in from the very beginning in the S1 episode Home. She apologizes to Sam - to Sam, who is quickly putting the pieces together of what his mother's death was about, enough that he blames himself by the end of the season - thus telling us that she's done something we're supposed to think is wrong. As we eventually find out, that deal was a secret thing, made under duress so grave Sam couldn't possibly not forgive her for it, a deal he himself tried to make for Dean.
Arguably, the deal could have cast Mary as a morally ambiguous figure, but I think it set her up as quite a sympathetic one. It's a little scary that she knew what she what she was signing on with, unlike a lot of other victims of the crossroads scam, but I can't help but understand how much the supernatural death of a loved one is this hunter-raised girl's worst fear, and how badly she wants out.
And by the way, there's a lot to be said for the fact that when she was rationalizing her feelings for John Ticking Time Bomb Winchester, she was all, MARY CAMPBELL, THAT'S YOUR JOE NORMAL. Because to her, John's attitude WAS normal. Was better than normal, because John, as a recent vet, doesn't have to hide the reasons behind it. Mary's hunter upbringing did, in John's own words, a hell of a number on her head.
NOT PICTURED: a catch.+
Even if it did make her a total badass. If we missed back in S1 how Mary was going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than the dead saint placeholder the Winchester men have written into their own life narratives, she smacked it out of us good and proper when she appeared in 4x3 and beat the crap out of that sketchy hunter tool following her around the back alleys of Lawrence.
The best Mary moment, though, is this one:
SAM: No, this is the way. Leave John.
MARY: I can't.
DEAN: This is bigger than us. There are so many more lives at stake -
MARY: You don't understand. I can't. [pause for tears] It's too late. I'm pregnant.
because. because.
IT'S TOO LATE.
On the list of "shit you say when you are emotionally committed to and satisfied with your life choices," "it's too late" ranks only marginally higher than "warblgrbl yak vomit." Mary Winchester, a character who is ultimately portrayed as deeply loving and good and and admirable and even heroic, is less than thrilled with the prospect of being Martyr Mommy.
That? Is such a taboo. The standard for prospective mothers in fiction is impossible. It is so fucking unfair and unreal. It's not just about doing the best you can as a parent after the kid is born, noooooo, it's about always being so thrilled about the one and only goal of momminess which is what all women want NO EXCEPTIONS EVER. Even Bad Mommies (TM) rarely get to acknowledge ambivalence about the desire to become mothers. They're either straight-up monsters, or they're horrible mothers and NEVER WANTED YOU ANYWAY!! NO WIRE HANGERS!! or they get a heartwarming moment where they ALWAYS WANTED YOU MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF. Sometimes - faaaaaaar too frequently for my taste - she has that moment at the abortion doctor's office (because it's not like lots of women, like, one out of three American women, think about it before they get there). The closest comparison I can draw to Mary is The Hunger Games, where the kids in question are afterthoughts and ciphers, not the main characters.
The MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF!!! clause is key here. You'd think there would be a little more respect for diverse reactions among women whose survival is threatened by pregnancy, but you'd be as wrong in fiction as you'd be in modern American jurisprudence. Self-sacrificial ewes make for great easy drama. Women are supposed to CHOOSE THEIR CHOICE, give a big tearful scene about how you can't make them NOT die! for! their! baby! no matter how marginal the chance of benefit, or gigantic and irrevocable the cost, and then absolve us of any discomfort we might feel about those expectations with sweet, beatific smiles, even (usually) from beyond the grave. NOT OUR GIRL, even though we know the tragedy her future holds. She didn't even have that Road to Damascus moment where she decides she's happy to go through with it no matter what, because Big Brother blitzed in and mind-zapped her. We just know that Mary loved these boys she didn't even know, and that she didn't want to die. Mary is a person in a complicated situation, and she has a conflicted reaction. She is, go figure, human.
Crowbarring her into the motherhood narrative is scary and awful and it's supposed to be. Angels roofied her into loving John; an angel came and took away her ability to make a meaningful decision about her pregnancy; by the time she's getting close to coming to term, she's come over all sweet Stepford smiles and vapid platitudes about how she just knows angels are watching out for her. This is one of those horrible things that dick angels force people to do. And because this is SPN and there is nothing we can't troll, the show adds mockery to injury by identifying the Trickster as Gabriel, rather than Raphael or another archangel. That's a jarring deflation to the Annunciation. like, I just have this image of him Sassy Gay Friend-ing it up with the Blessed Mother?* Angels, like every other monster, are simultaneously terrifying and ridiculous, no more so than in Mary's story.
One of this show's greatest strengths is the way it can and does take gripping emotional moments which would normally be played as fully heartwarming, and turn them around to include some vicious commentary on the main characters, and this is no exception. Mary's having this MOMENT of her own existential conflict, and she tells them she's pregnant, and they totally change their attitude toward her. Their cute little puppy dog eyes start to glow, they're struck dumb and passive from the plan they were making up two seconds ago to SAVE HER LIFE. This needn't have changed anything. It's 1978; as a point of historical and legal fact, it wasn't too late for Mary. They were (heartbreakingly) fine with never having existed a moment ago; now neither of them even thinks of suggesting she tarnish herself with an abortion. Saving Mary for Mary stops being their priority; idealizing the Sacred Vessel becomes their all-consuming thought. Their reaction is on a lot of levels understandable, for sure, and the scene sticks the hell out of the emotional landing, but this is not a flattering reflection of Our Heroes.
(The fact that they are both apparently too stupid to count back from Dean's birthday and figure out what was up on their own is just icing on the cake. GUYS, COME ON, YOU DIDN'T EVEN NEED ALL YOUR FINGERS FOR THAT ONE.)
But what the hell, right? This is definitely reading too much into it. You couldn't think the show means that! Anyway, YOU HATE AUTHORIAL INTENT, P, YOU CALLED AUTHORIAL INTENT'S GIRLFRIEND WHEN YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE WAS CHEATING. And I say: (a) whatever, was I wrong about his nasty ass? yeah no, that's what I thought. and (b) look at the rest of S5&6. After this episode where Sam, Dean, and the angels collapse her into the motherhood narrative, Mary-the-character disappears.
My Bloody Valentine dismissively drops the bombshell that Mary and John didn't even like each other until the Cupids manipulated them into getting along and keeps right on walking. (Honestly, even given how much I liked the arcs for the three leads here, this is the episode I could most stand to forget, because of the totally unacknowledged number the dubcon does on the Mary/John relationship. Yes, even more than 7x9.) Manipulated into place to die for her destiny, nothing to see here.
Then in Dark Side of the Moon, we do see her face again, but it's not Mary. It's the Matrix-heaven simulation of her, existing to be used for the purposes of others. Which is clear from her first appearance, since I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to buy that the memory she wanted to relive for eternity was that time Prince Charming ran off and left her alone with a toddler and an infant. (Granted, a really good toddler and a really cute baby, but still.) Zachariah's manipulation of her image at the end is sick and cruel, but it can only work because the Mary-entity in the episode, the episode meant to be the final statement on the Winchester family history before the end of this massive story arc, is mere projection.
And so when S6 rolls around and Samuel Campbell shows up, willing to sell Mary's own children out to demons to rip her out of the afterlife, nobody even thinks to excuse him. It's sketchy, end of. The last we've seen of "Mary" was a readily-acknowledged projection by Eve. Eve, the mother of all, couldn't even appear as herself, who had to take some other woman's virginial female form - I mean, a virgin mother. Mary is ultimately a tragic figure, but in a vicious deconstruction of the show's own very first scene, it'd be hard not to understand that her tragedy is hers.
+Screencap from Home of the Nutty
*CHALLENGE: POSED. YOUR MOVE, INTERNET.