more SPN S8 thoughts
I've spent the last few days swanning around in the kind of fannish joy that comes from having had one's views of an entire season validated in a finale that nonetheless managed to completely surprise. (Possibly a little peacocking, on account of the LOL SO RIGHT factor, but mostly warm fuzzy swanning.)
A lot of my satisfaction is just sheer relief. I don't ever expect to stop feeling uneasy about the show's general portrayal of difference. A lot of that comes from the more questionable aspects of S5, which ofc is just one season but is questionable enough that there's, like, seepage of dubiousness. (I don't....I really want to write the post on why it bothered me but, yanno, it really bothers me, to the point where it's unpleasant to think too hard even about a lot of the stuff I did like? IDK MAYBE SOMEDAY. Its questionableness is vast and contains multitudes! If you're having seepage of dubiousness see a physician, is the important takeaway here!) But S8 did so much to break down the things I was most worried about. Because what I really, really didn't want to see was a story which rested on the assumption that Sam and Cas not just would but should aspire to be fully "normal" - ie, physically, metaphysically, and normatively human. That why they suffer and why they screw up is in some way about what they ARE and not what they DO; that their intrinsic Otherness is a thing to be pitied and feared until it can be exorcised which of course ought to be their priority. That is really, REALLY not okay.
So was I ever relieved when, regardless of whatever else, Sam didn't finish the trials and is unlikely to have been "purified" or "cleansed" or otherwise metaphorically Magical Disability Cured.* But also, that even his desire to think of things that way was actually reflective of how a lot of his problems come from the stigma around his condition, not the condition itself. Cas isn't the one who brought up any "purification" process, and in any event you'd think an Angel of the Lord would be able to put a better spin on "demon blood detox" than "you're DAMAGED in ways I can't HEAL," which implies that the change to Sam was something actively cautioned against even by a servant of Heaven. Sam's claim of his own dirtiness in 8x21 was, as I hoped then, a warning sign that he was in a self-destructive place, not something to be taken at face value or celebrated.
*Yeah, yeah. It is PROBLEMATIC!!(TM) to read the demon blood metaphor this way. There wasn't a Social Righteousness Convention where everyone who lives with The Crazy issued a unanimous diet of acceptability. To which I say: eat me. This is a part of the character that resonates with and means a lot to me, and I was fully expecting to lose it in a way that would have been hurtful. Instead, it was shown with maturity and compassion. I am trying to prepare myself for the possibility of having the rug yanked out from under me next season, but for the moment I intend to heave a theatrical sigh of relief. WHEW.
His loved ones have encouraged him in this self-hate, consciously or unconsciously. He has absorbed all kinds of messages - not mixed messages, not confused messages, but veiled and sometimes direct messages - about how the badness of who and what he is outweighs any value he has as an individual. That he is worth less than nothing in and of himself, that he should aspire to the neutral worthlessness of self-annihilation. (Don't even try to tell me that Dean "at least he dies human" Winchester didn't mean it. He fucking meant it.)
My understanding is that the common distinction between guilt and shame is that one is about having done wrong, and the other is about being wrong. I think there are connotations of agency issues in there - guilt, for better or for worse, involves ownership of an action or pattern, while shame encompasses experiences of passiveness and even powerlessness. And Sam's life, thus far, has struck me as an object lesson in just how much those two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Sam's massive piles of guilt and shame have controlled him. They have defined him. His attempts to escape shame as caused by the demon blood condition and about the general disempowerment he feels about his life have led to some spectacularly catastrophic decisions, which results in debasing, punitive fallout that leaves him feeling even more helpless, and the spiral continues.
And so this whole thing, where the trials are a cruel lie told by a petty little pencil-pusher with a grudge against the universe, is a smart story. This is a sharp use of metaphor and an astounding exercise in character psychology in order to make a statement about humanity and self-worth. This matters.
*
Similarly, human!Cas has felt all but inevitable to me for some time and I really didn't like the possibility. I'm less confident in his future storyline than I am in Sam's, because we already have humans and his angel-ness brought a lot to the table. But I appreciate that humanity is not presented as being something that is inherently better for Castiel or his loved ones. Just after we've seen Cas collapse on the ground, we hear Dean calling for him in the hopes that he could somehow miracle up some relief for Sam - something Cas has always given without hesitation before but can no longer offer.
So the fact that Metatron did this to Castiel, as hard as it is to watch Cas being victimized and used this way, is vastly preferable, because it does not imply that the wrongness should be compounded by self-abnegation. Metatron performs the procedure in Naomi's chair, using the equipment she has used to torture Castiel in pursuit of her dedication to her cause. The villain is the person who causes pain, whatever their excuse. Metatron's own cause is a petty, narcissistic type of destructiveness, rooted in his own sense of loss and directed at his own brothers and sisters. He uses Cas against them all, just to throw a cosmic tantrum about how someone didn't love him enough and it's not fair.
The message is that forcing someone to change their identity is, at best, selfish and cruel and has a massive ripple effect of destruction.
This matters.
*
I was honestly worried all season that they would succeed in closing the gates. I didn't think it was a good idea early in the season, nothing that happened throughout the season suggested to me that it was a good idea, I don't even think Sam and Dean thought it was a particularly good idea (indeed, in 8x21 they both had lines to the effect of "we're doing the thing because it's a thing to do"), and with the reveal that Metatron was exactly as sketchy as he seemed, I was quite certain that it was a catastrophic idea well above and beyond the effect it might have on one or both of them. They're ultimately going through the motions, stalling, going on the offensive just because they don't know how not to be on the defensive, bucking up and soldiering on because there is no out and that's just what they do.
And that's how they've approached their relationship throughout the season. Dean says the mean things he says because he thinks that's how they operate. Sam sucks it up and retreats a little further inward every time because he thinks that's how they operate. They're both boxing off their issues, pretending that if they make a HARD enough effort to close off those problems, then they will, through Cosmic Effort Chips, have made it so their problems can be contained and ignored.
And that is crap. It's crap about their relationship, and it's crap about the Gates of Hell. Shutting things out will not work. It does not save anyone. It is a self-serving, self-sabotaging surface effort. Someone who suggests or encourages it does not have your best interests in mind. Burying things and locking them down is not noble, "redemptive," or heroic, just because it happens to eat you alive from the inside out and temporarily distract you from your self-loathing.
What it will do is actually fucking kill you. And it can't possibly be worth that.
This matters. Castiel is right. All of it matters.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/298697.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
A lot of my satisfaction is just sheer relief. I don't ever expect to stop feeling uneasy about the show's general portrayal of difference. A lot of that comes from the more questionable aspects of S5, which ofc is just one season but is questionable enough that there's, like, seepage of dubiousness. (I don't....I really want to write the post on why it bothered me but, yanno, it really bothers me, to the point where it's unpleasant to think too hard even about a lot of the stuff I did like? IDK MAYBE SOMEDAY. Its questionableness is vast and contains multitudes! If you're having seepage of dubiousness see a physician, is the important takeaway here!) But S8 did so much to break down the things I was most worried about. Because what I really, really didn't want to see was a story which rested on the assumption that Sam and Cas not just would but should aspire to be fully "normal" - ie, physically, metaphysically, and normatively human. That why they suffer and why they screw up is in some way about what they ARE and not what they DO; that their intrinsic Otherness is a thing to be pitied and feared until it can be exorcised which of course ought to be their priority. That is really, REALLY not okay.
So was I ever relieved when, regardless of whatever else, Sam didn't finish the trials and is unlikely to have been "purified" or "cleansed" or otherwise metaphorically Magical Disability Cured.* But also, that even his desire to think of things that way was actually reflective of how a lot of his problems come from the stigma around his condition, not the condition itself. Cas isn't the one who brought up any "purification" process, and in any event you'd think an Angel of the Lord would be able to put a better spin on "demon blood detox" than "you're DAMAGED in ways I can't HEAL," which implies that the change to Sam was something actively cautioned against even by a servant of Heaven. Sam's claim of his own dirtiness in 8x21 was, as I hoped then, a warning sign that he was in a self-destructive place, not something to be taken at face value or celebrated.
*Yeah, yeah. It is PROBLEMATIC!!(TM) to read the demon blood metaphor this way. There wasn't a Social Righteousness Convention where everyone who lives with The Crazy issued a unanimous diet of acceptability. To which I say: eat me. This is a part of the character that resonates with and means a lot to me, and I was fully expecting to lose it in a way that would have been hurtful. Instead, it was shown with maturity and compassion. I am trying to prepare myself for the possibility of having the rug yanked out from under me next season, but for the moment I intend to heave a theatrical sigh of relief. WHEW.
His loved ones have encouraged him in this self-hate, consciously or unconsciously. He has absorbed all kinds of messages - not mixed messages, not confused messages, but veiled and sometimes direct messages - about how the badness of who and what he is outweighs any value he has as an individual. That he is worth less than nothing in and of himself, that he should aspire to the neutral worthlessness of self-annihilation. (Don't even try to tell me that Dean "at least he dies human" Winchester didn't mean it. He fucking meant it.)
My understanding is that the common distinction between guilt and shame is that one is about having done wrong, and the other is about being wrong. I think there are connotations of agency issues in there - guilt, for better or for worse, involves ownership of an action or pattern, while shame encompasses experiences of passiveness and even powerlessness. And Sam's life, thus far, has struck me as an object lesson in just how much those two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Sam's massive piles of guilt and shame have controlled him. They have defined him. His attempts to escape shame as caused by the demon blood condition and about the general disempowerment he feels about his life have led to some spectacularly catastrophic decisions, which results in debasing, punitive fallout that leaves him feeling even more helpless, and the spiral continues.
And so this whole thing, where the trials are a cruel lie told by a petty little pencil-pusher with a grudge against the universe, is a smart story. This is a sharp use of metaphor and an astounding exercise in character psychology in order to make a statement about humanity and self-worth. This matters.
*
Similarly, human!Cas has felt all but inevitable to me for some time and I really didn't like the possibility. I'm less confident in his future storyline than I am in Sam's, because we already have humans and his angel-ness brought a lot to the table. But I appreciate that humanity is not presented as being something that is inherently better for Castiel or his loved ones. Just after we've seen Cas collapse on the ground, we hear Dean calling for him in the hopes that he could somehow miracle up some relief for Sam - something Cas has always given without hesitation before but can no longer offer.
So the fact that Metatron did this to Castiel, as hard as it is to watch Cas being victimized and used this way, is vastly preferable, because it does not imply that the wrongness should be compounded by self-abnegation. Metatron performs the procedure in Naomi's chair, using the equipment she has used to torture Castiel in pursuit of her dedication to her cause. The villain is the person who causes pain, whatever their excuse. Metatron's own cause is a petty, narcissistic type of destructiveness, rooted in his own sense of loss and directed at his own brothers and sisters. He uses Cas against them all, just to throw a cosmic tantrum about how someone didn't love him enough and it's not fair.
The message is that forcing someone to change their identity is, at best, selfish and cruel and has a massive ripple effect of destruction.
This matters.
*
I was honestly worried all season that they would succeed in closing the gates. I didn't think it was a good idea early in the season, nothing that happened throughout the season suggested to me that it was a good idea, I don't even think Sam and Dean thought it was a particularly good idea (indeed, in 8x21 they both had lines to the effect of "we're doing the thing because it's a thing to do"), and with the reveal that Metatron was exactly as sketchy as he seemed, I was quite certain that it was a catastrophic idea well above and beyond the effect it might have on one or both of them. They're ultimately going through the motions, stalling, going on the offensive just because they don't know how not to be on the defensive, bucking up and soldiering on because there is no out and that's just what they do.
And that's how they've approached their relationship throughout the season. Dean says the mean things he says because he thinks that's how they operate. Sam sucks it up and retreats a little further inward every time because he thinks that's how they operate. They're both boxing off their issues, pretending that if they make a HARD enough effort to close off those problems, then they will, through Cosmic Effort Chips, have made it so their problems can be contained and ignored.
And that is crap. It's crap about their relationship, and it's crap about the Gates of Hell. Shutting things out will not work. It does not save anyone. It is a self-serving, self-sabotaging surface effort. Someone who suggests or encourages it does not have your best interests in mind. Burying things and locking them down is not noble, "redemptive," or heroic, just because it happens to eat you alive from the inside out and temporarily distract you from your self-loathing.
What it will do is actually fucking kill you. And it can't possibly be worth that.
This matters. Castiel is right. All of it matters.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/298697.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.