Girls Don't Get It
As many on my f'list have been talking about, there were some disappointing things in SPN last night, including a glaring one along gender lines. It actually relates to my last post about the exhibit I saw on scenes from American life. I mentioned that I learned that women's shallow attraction to material things was a popular subject in the nineteenth century, shown in different ways in the pictures I saw. One picture, for instance, showed an "image peddler" showing his wares to a family. The women admired a bowl full of plaster fruit (decorative fluff) while the man looked at a bust of George Washington (serious history!).
One might think we hadn't come far since then to judge by SPN last night.
So many people have commented on the very hard to avoid gender weirdness in last night's ep. We'd already been introduced to a fan of the show's in-universe fictional book series also called Supernatural, that created a fandom much like the one the show itself has in the real world. Fan Becky runs morethanbrothers.net, presumably a slash site slanted towards Wincest. She's also got a thing for Sam, inappropriately touching him whenever she can and now seeming to actually believe that her fictional crush creates some form of actual relationship between them. Enough so that when she starts going out with Chuck, the author prophet she has to "break-up" with Sam. After which, almost as an afterthought, she makes sure that Sam knows that Bella didn't give the Colt to Lilith after all, but to Crowley.
Becky knows this about the Colt because she has a fan's encyclopedic knowledge of the books (far surpassing the author's knowledge, which is realistic) and has given this a lot of thought. This hint gives the brothers actual help in their quest to save the world.
I don't mind that sort of help from a fan. I like the idea of making the things fans actually do useful within a fictional conceit. But let's compare Becky's contribution with those of LARPers Barnes and Demian.
First, I'm sure a collective "WTF?" went up in fandom the moment we panned out at the audience of an SPN con and saw...a roomful of guys. I recently had a weird conversation with a guy in the Bat-fandom who was also under the impression that SPN was not watched by women. His reasoning was that the themes of the show-brothers and fathers, monster hunting, violence and gore-only appeal to men. He thought the only reason the few women who watched it did so was because it was on the CW so, you know, they were still there after Smallville or were hoping for previews of Gossip Girl and as long as there were hot guys on the screen there was a chance they'd stare at them. I had to dig up actual ratings demographics to show what's obvious in the fandom: chicks watch SPN. According to the source I found the viewership was fairly evenly split, skewing slightly female.
But you wouldn't know it from looking at this fictional con! Perhaps starting with a desire to have a room mostly filled with fake Sam and Dean's it didn't occur to the creators that women can all-too-easily dress as either of them. (They could also dress as actual female characters!) I heard it suggested that maybe LARPers were mostly male, but I'm not so sure about that and even if it's true, the "game" set up by this con was totally appealing to females. Basically the con had set up a How-to-Host-a-Murder type game where players were given notes from Dad about a ghost haunting the premises and a mystery to solve. Women would be all over that.
Sam and Dean stumble across Demian and Barnes, the only two faux-Sam and Deans who explore the attic and find an old map that ties to the real ghosts that are actually haunting the place which Sam and Dean are also hunting. Demian and Barnes then go on to be the butt of jokes about fandom, the people Dean yells at for treating his life as entertainment, and, most importantly, the voice of fandom's redemption. When Dean demands that Demian and Barnes think of "how Sam and Dean would feel" to know they were acting out painful past arguments of theirs or pretending to be hunters, Demian witheringly replies that they wouldn't think anything because (as far as he knows) they're fictional. Later, Demian explains to Dean that it's not about the excitement of hunting, it's about the appeal of having a life that matters, that makes a difference, and having a transcendent relationship of the sort Dean and his brother share.
In between those two discussions, Demian and Barnes are terrified by the sight of a real ghostbusting. Realizing that the danger is real, they offer to help. Dean snaps at them for still treating this like a game, but they're not. They're terrified. But if the other people at the con are really in danger, they want to do something to help. "Why?" Dean asks angrily, still furious that anyone would choose the burden of protector. "Because," they reply, "that's what Sam and Dean would do."
I'm a sucker for that kind of line. I think it gets right to the heart of what's awesome about fandom and why all the haters can suck it. It's like a similar line in the XF ep "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" as spoken by a guy willing to stand up to some menacing Men in Black: "I didn't spend all those years playing D&D and not learn a little bit about courage." We become what we admire, or at least try to imitate it, and courage, compassion, heroism and sacrifice are fine things to admire.
The trouble is, it's hard not to compare the boys to Becky and see something very different. Someone questioned whether Becky's help of a clue was necessarily less valuable than the boy's help in banishing the ghosts, since fighting shouldn't be the only thing valued. But it's really far more than that. Becky relates to heroism less as a quality she's striving for herself and more as a quality she seeks in a boyfriend. When she recognizes heroism in Chuck (when he acts like Sam) she transfers her romantic fantasies from Sam to Chuck. She then has to break up with Sam, because that's the fantasy she's shown to be living--Demian and Barnes are pretending to be brothers and hunters, Becky is pretending to be in a relationship with a brother and hunter. The help she gives Sam might be very useful, but it takes no courage for her to give it (the way Demian and Barnes had to overcome their terror to help). Not only that, but she gives it as an afterthought. Sam's walking away, having given his blessing to Chuck/Becky's new relatively domestic arrangement (Chuck has even agreed not to write any more books, meaning both of them will probably now be leaving the world of fantasy for a more mundane but happy, real life), so Becky has to run after him to give him her advice. Her romantic aspirations are always a distraction that comes first.
The even more glaring thing is that, of course, Demian and Barnes are also in a domestic partnership. Upon learning that the two of them met in a Supernatural chatroom, Dean makes an unfounded and un-called for remark about how it's good they could get out of their mom's basements and make a friend. That's when they tell him they're more than friends, they're partners (as in they're a gay couple). They've been a couple all this time. It's just that unlike Becky, their romantic situation was the afterthought. They established themselves as two friends with a common interest in gothic stories, who both value heroism, courage and protecting others. Knowing that, you can't help but imagine their romance as being deep and lasting--not to mention fun for them, since they interact like bffs.
Becky, otoh, is introduced as being starry-eyed for Sam--to the point where she's even dismissive of Dean for not looking like she thought he'd look. Chuck wins her transferred interest when he is brave, but she already has his interest for whatever reason. She's Chuck's prize for being brave. Chuck's her prize for…noticing he was a prize.
So I think it goes beyond something even so simple as when you want to show the fans as crazy and out of touch you pick a girl, when you need to redeem them you get guys. There's all sorts of traditional gender ideas at play here relating both to male/female relationships versus male/male relationships and male interests vs. female interests. And maybe part of it does come from the creators looking at slash fandom and not understanding it, so imagining women must only be watching for the hotties and the guys must be the ones who "get" the higher ideals of the show and want to live them themselves.
Which is a pretty amazing attitude to have when your fanbase is in fact mostly female. In my head I keep imagining a parallel ep where at least Demian and Barnes were two middle-aged matronly lesbians who kicked ass, and we only learned about their relationship after Dean's nasty remark about it being nice they were both able to make a friend who wasn't a cat.
One might think we hadn't come far since then to judge by SPN last night.
So many people have commented on the very hard to avoid gender weirdness in last night's ep. We'd already been introduced to a fan of the show's in-universe fictional book series also called Supernatural, that created a fandom much like the one the show itself has in the real world. Fan Becky runs morethanbrothers.net, presumably a slash site slanted towards Wincest. She's also got a thing for Sam, inappropriately touching him whenever she can and now seeming to actually believe that her fictional crush creates some form of actual relationship between them. Enough so that when she starts going out with Chuck, the author prophet she has to "break-up" with Sam. After which, almost as an afterthought, she makes sure that Sam knows that Bella didn't give the Colt to Lilith after all, but to Crowley.
Becky knows this about the Colt because she has a fan's encyclopedic knowledge of the books (far surpassing the author's knowledge, which is realistic) and has given this a lot of thought. This hint gives the brothers actual help in their quest to save the world.
I don't mind that sort of help from a fan. I like the idea of making the things fans actually do useful within a fictional conceit. But let's compare Becky's contribution with those of LARPers Barnes and Demian.
First, I'm sure a collective "WTF?" went up in fandom the moment we panned out at the audience of an SPN con and saw...a roomful of guys. I recently had a weird conversation with a guy in the Bat-fandom who was also under the impression that SPN was not watched by women. His reasoning was that the themes of the show-brothers and fathers, monster hunting, violence and gore-only appeal to men. He thought the only reason the few women who watched it did so was because it was on the CW so, you know, they were still there after Smallville or were hoping for previews of Gossip Girl and as long as there were hot guys on the screen there was a chance they'd stare at them. I had to dig up actual ratings demographics to show what's obvious in the fandom: chicks watch SPN. According to the source I found the viewership was fairly evenly split, skewing slightly female.
But you wouldn't know it from looking at this fictional con! Perhaps starting with a desire to have a room mostly filled with fake Sam and Dean's it didn't occur to the creators that women can all-too-easily dress as either of them. (They could also dress as actual female characters!) I heard it suggested that maybe LARPers were mostly male, but I'm not so sure about that and even if it's true, the "game" set up by this con was totally appealing to females. Basically the con had set up a How-to-Host-a-Murder type game where players were given notes from Dad about a ghost haunting the premises and a mystery to solve. Women would be all over that.
Sam and Dean stumble across Demian and Barnes, the only two faux-Sam and Deans who explore the attic and find an old map that ties to the real ghosts that are actually haunting the place which Sam and Dean are also hunting. Demian and Barnes then go on to be the butt of jokes about fandom, the people Dean yells at for treating his life as entertainment, and, most importantly, the voice of fandom's redemption. When Dean demands that Demian and Barnes think of "how Sam and Dean would feel" to know they were acting out painful past arguments of theirs or pretending to be hunters, Demian witheringly replies that they wouldn't think anything because (as far as he knows) they're fictional. Later, Demian explains to Dean that it's not about the excitement of hunting, it's about the appeal of having a life that matters, that makes a difference, and having a transcendent relationship of the sort Dean and his brother share.
In between those two discussions, Demian and Barnes are terrified by the sight of a real ghostbusting. Realizing that the danger is real, they offer to help. Dean snaps at them for still treating this like a game, but they're not. They're terrified. But if the other people at the con are really in danger, they want to do something to help. "Why?" Dean asks angrily, still furious that anyone would choose the burden of protector. "Because," they reply, "that's what Sam and Dean would do."
I'm a sucker for that kind of line. I think it gets right to the heart of what's awesome about fandom and why all the haters can suck it. It's like a similar line in the XF ep "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" as spoken by a guy willing to stand up to some menacing Men in Black: "I didn't spend all those years playing D&D and not learn a little bit about courage." We become what we admire, or at least try to imitate it, and courage, compassion, heroism and sacrifice are fine things to admire.
The trouble is, it's hard not to compare the boys to Becky and see something very different. Someone questioned whether Becky's help of a clue was necessarily less valuable than the boy's help in banishing the ghosts, since fighting shouldn't be the only thing valued. But it's really far more than that. Becky relates to heroism less as a quality she's striving for herself and more as a quality she seeks in a boyfriend. When she recognizes heroism in Chuck (when he acts like Sam) she transfers her romantic fantasies from Sam to Chuck. She then has to break up with Sam, because that's the fantasy she's shown to be living--Demian and Barnes are pretending to be brothers and hunters, Becky is pretending to be in a relationship with a brother and hunter. The help she gives Sam might be very useful, but it takes no courage for her to give it (the way Demian and Barnes had to overcome their terror to help). Not only that, but she gives it as an afterthought. Sam's walking away, having given his blessing to Chuck/Becky's new relatively domestic arrangement (Chuck has even agreed not to write any more books, meaning both of them will probably now be leaving the world of fantasy for a more mundane but happy, real life), so Becky has to run after him to give him her advice. Her romantic aspirations are always a distraction that comes first.
The even more glaring thing is that, of course, Demian and Barnes are also in a domestic partnership. Upon learning that the two of them met in a Supernatural chatroom, Dean makes an unfounded and un-called for remark about how it's good they could get out of their mom's basements and make a friend. That's when they tell him they're more than friends, they're partners (as in they're a gay couple). They've been a couple all this time. It's just that unlike Becky, their romantic situation was the afterthought. They established themselves as two friends with a common interest in gothic stories, who both value heroism, courage and protecting others. Knowing that, you can't help but imagine their romance as being deep and lasting--not to mention fun for them, since they interact like bffs.
Becky, otoh, is introduced as being starry-eyed for Sam--to the point where she's even dismissive of Dean for not looking like she thought he'd look. Chuck wins her transferred interest when he is brave, but she already has his interest for whatever reason. She's Chuck's prize for being brave. Chuck's her prize for…noticing he was a prize.
So I think it goes beyond something even so simple as when you want to show the fans as crazy and out of touch you pick a girl, when you need to redeem them you get guys. There's all sorts of traditional gender ideas at play here relating both to male/female relationships versus male/male relationships and male interests vs. female interests. And maybe part of it does come from the creators looking at slash fandom and not understanding it, so imagining women must only be watching for the hotties and the guys must be the ones who "get" the higher ideals of the show and want to live them themselves.
Which is a pretty amazing attitude to have when your fanbase is in fact mostly female. In my head I keep imagining a parallel ep where at least Demian and Barnes were two middle-aged matronly lesbians who kicked ass, and we only learned about their relationship after Dean's nasty remark about it being nice they were both able to make a friend who wasn't a cat.