In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural

by Supernatural. tv,

  Smallville is a male-gaze32 show: its threats mostly take the form of science, weaponry, science-fiction violence-all classic male tropes. Its development and history descend directly from the most classic possible masculine wish-fulfillment story since Hercules, a story that has been told month in, month out, through every medium, for the last sixty years-Superman’s. Smallville’s strong female characters are gifted with independence and strength within this world, and recommend it highly, but the cast is unified by their connections to and disconnections from Clark’s “secret,” Superman being the story’s endpoint and reason for existing to begin with. The show’s characters and props represent elements of a masculine world and narrative: an environment which is itself bent on investigation, invasion, domination. By regularly focusing on-and then protecting or transcending-the “secret,” and the vulnerability that goes with it, the show reinforces and protects Clark’s own sovereign male nature against invading masculine intent.

  Buffy, on the other extreme, is a story about magical and intuitive threats, written from a feminized viewpoint. Its world is dreamlike, as subconscious elements-dream-figures, classical nightmare tropes, and monsters representing figurations of the characters’ own secrets and fears-arise to be conquered, vanquished, or assimilated. The world of Buffy itself is a female landscape; to say this is pejorative only to the degree that we as a culture undervalue women’s experience. Changeable, unlawful, and illogical, as only dreams can be, Sunnydale is a Land Without Fathers, without strict categories or unbendable rules. The feminine gaze orders itself around self-defined concepts of rule and systems of control and justice, rather than taking external cues. In a masculine environment, these concepts are handed down from the father and other authority figures; in Buffy’s world, the rules are a lot bendierthe world itself seems to withhold absolute answers, and often it’s up to Buffy herself to define basic morality. There is little rigid division between the emotional lives of Buffy’s characters and the world that they inhabit, because that world, too, is bendy. Situational ethics triumph over traditional rules, patriarchal systems of control are regularly deconstructed and overcome, and the inner world is privileged over orthodox social construction: friends become enemies become lovers and so on.

  To put it another way: While it’s possible that Jack Bauer (from the less magical, but no more realistic 24) will-like Buffy in her final battle against season four’s Adam-dream himself into an avatar of prehistoric feminine power, and then use that magic to turn bullets into doves, it’s unlikely at best. He lives in a male world and plays by male rules.

  So then, why am I talking about Smallville and Buffy when we should be talking about cute boys? Because in both those cases, the gender basics of the shows in question are not compromised. A dreamland visit in Smallville will always find itself bound to scientific mental manipulation or male control, while Buffy’s first experience with a scientific and martial threat (Adam again) leads back to the show’s most dreamlike and evocative occult investigations yet, which in turn leads directly to an episode that takes place within the subconscious minds of the characters themselves.

  Smallville’s season four storyline involving reincarnated witches, and Buffy’s season six story about alienated male “geek” villains, are both gradually and completely subsumed into the show’s respective mythologies. In the former case, Lana’s supernatural abilities eventually lead the story back to Clark’s Kryptonian heritage. In the latter, the trio of geeks eventually leave the ranks of the hard science-fiction stereotypes that once defined them. One is murdered by another in a magical ritual and thus connected bodily with the forces we’re talking about, the second is skinned alive by a vengeful witch (see the Season Eight comics for the continuing story there) and becomes an embodiment of the First Evil, and the last eventually becomes a (mostly) trusted member of Buffy’s own organization. Like any given psychological system, be it the personal psyche or a religion, the rules remain the same: While any story necessitates the introduction of antithetical characters or worlds, eventually you find you can’t escape the specific qualities of the unique narrative universe forever. If you could, no show would be definable or contiguous with itself, and the serial nature of television being what it is, viewers would simply desert camp. Every world must obey its own rules, or explain very carefully that the rules have been retroactively changed.

  Supernatural, having finished three seasons at this writing, puts both concepts-the masculine coming-of-age, the feminine emotional landscape-in a blender, by placing two classic male Hero archetypes in a classically intuitive realm. Like Smallville, the viewpoint characters are undeniably male both in representation and in their response to the genre elements the show throws at them: overpowering, self-insinuating, destructive. But like Buffy, the narrative universe of Supernatural is one where the landscape itself can rear up and swallow you if you’re not careful, and where blood and birthright and spiritual states are quantifiable and often dangerous. Like Buffy, the boys are hunters of the supernatural, and like her, their resistance to its influence often presents obstacles to their own self-understanding and empowerment.

  Masculine characters traversing a female landscape, addressing it through archetypally male modes of heroism: that’s a gender double-twist. What this should mean is that anyone can find a place to stand in order to experience the show, involving as it does both male and female aspects of the supernatural adventure. But the show still draws upon a classically male gaze, leveling desire and objectification at bodies, and rejoicing in its images of violence and physical terror and destruction.

  Where is the place for the female or queer viewer in such a strongly defined masculine story? Whence the show’s overwhelmingly female fan base? This is a show created by men, about men, but watched in great numbers by women. Yet the show is self-consciously meticulous about defining the gender of its perspective: Whenever the less typically male lead (Sam) goes too far into alien (feminine) territory, the more strongly delineated male lead (Dean) is there to mock him back into place; queer characters, when they are introduced at all, are mocked or killed in shockingly blasé ways. (When Ghostfacer Corbett is duped into sacrificing himself by squicked-out straight man Ed, his death is shrugged off with a snarky, “You were teaching us about heart, about dedication, and about how gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day” [“Ghostfacers,” 3-13].) And yet fan response is often predicated on queer issues seen to be lingering around the edges of the show, imputing homosexual desire even to the normally off-limits fraternal relationship. Is it simply the fact that the male characters themselves are just as objectified by the camera’s eye, or is there something more going on? And in an age where fan participation, ancillary and derivative works like licensed novels and recaps, and fan creative output are just as important to the demographic as the canonical work itself, is describing any given television show as having one centralized “gaze” even still a workable concept?

  II: THE CHALICE OF BLOOD

  (A demon girl speaks to her father, face reflected in the blood of an innocent.)

  The story of Supernatural is, as all good fairy tales should be, a story of deferred contact with the parent. Sam Winchester begins the story having distanced himself from his father and brother, choosing college and the real world over their demons and monsters. Sam’s attempt to ignore his world’s magical content is invalidated by his girlfriend’s supernatural death, and older brother Dean returns to tempt Sam into that most classic of Hero’s Journeys: to locate and reconnect with their father. The journey will mean contact with the supernatural, and the transformation this implies.

  The first present-day supernatural event in the show, Jessica’s death at the hands of Azazel, carries with it a connection to Mary, the boys’ mother. The search for the father will also, clearly, necessitate contact with the mother: both parents dwell in and are marked by the night world of the supernatural through their layered and mysterious relationships with Azazel, and
John through his chosen vocation. Both searches will involve personal experience with demons and ghosts for the boys. The further they press into the shadow, both their own and that of their narrative world, the closer they will come to reconciliation with both parents.

  The feminine nature of the shadow, as is typical with a male hero and show, is terribly evident, especially in the first season. A woman in white, a water wraith, a murderous ghost, a girl possessed by an evil preacher, a demon with a chalice of blood, and a vampiress (who is sacrificed for the magically phallic Colt) are among the overwhelmingly feminine iterations of darkness. And, as in any hero trope, the victims are female as well: the story is predicated on saving women from themselves, or in Jungian terms, redeeming the innocent feminine from its own darker appetites.

  The rules become more complex in season two, as is usual as a show (or person) becomes more sophisticated. The boys defend a group of nonviolent vampires against a rogue hunter, upending their season one loyalties, almost at the start. And while there are female zombies and a rampaging female ghost, there is often a sense that the most apparently pure threats are less generic shadow content and more sympathetic, human aberrations: sad in effect but not horrific in and of themselves. Vampires begin to question their own lifestyles; poltergeists are revealed as victims in their own right. One episode balances the dark and light sides of the mother archetype by pitting the boys against a classic “black widow” nurse ghost, while allying them with a brave female public defender. We meet the Crossroads Demon, who becomes intimately tied to the boys’ own troubled relationships with the shadow as, until Sam kills her mid-season three, she mediates their deals and administrates their communications with Hell itself. In a fascinating pair of episodes, the female “client” turns out to be the monster of the week-a ghost, and the next week a werewolf-and in both cases the client is even more sympathetic and pitiable for her association with dark forces.

  This latter episode is a major turning point for Sam: he learns the truth only after sleeping with the client, and finally-after a speech on her part that echoes his own two episodes earlier, begging Dean to kill him to stop his demon-possessed destruction-agrees to kill her himself, even after Dean offers to do the deed on his behalf. It’s an important and brutal step toward Sam’s acknowledgment of his own connection to the underworld, accepting this responsibility for violence in order to protect the greater world. Perhaps only a werewolf could properly symbolize the uncontrolled violence that unmediated contact with the subconscious, which is to say unfiltered experience of his own supernatural potential, might inspire in Sam. The werewolf is a universal symbol of that moonlit madness: a narrative gloss on psychosis, or worse.

  The feminine supernatural is tweaked further in the third season, as two female foils are brought in for the boys. While Ellen and Jo provided a season two mirror for Dean’s relationship with John, Dean’s double in season three is Bela: whereas Dean has always kept his distance from the supernatural by commodifying it, retaining his identity as an impersonal hunter, rather than a killer, Bela approaches hunting from an amoral, capitalist viewpoint. There is no honor in her dealings with the underworld. She represents the dangerous aspects of Dean’s ongoing estrangement from the subconscious by illustrating its endpoint: dangerous and mercenary vigilantism. And in the end, Bela’s fate-though it arises from what you might call a more selfish place-lands her in the exact same place as Dean: ripped from the world by the hounds of Hell. Although we do learn more about her reasoning and justifications, it’s worth noting that in both cases, what drives these two hunters’ destiny is denial: of accountability, of debts come due, and of the encroaching darkness that eventually claims them both.

  While the show’s first seasons focused on Dean’s search for their father, and collaterally Sam’s own rekindled bond with John, John’s final release into death opens the way in season three for a radical shift: not Dean’s search for the father, but Sam’s search for the mother. Ruby, as emissary and guide through the grayer areas of the darkness, takes on a nearly maternal role, spurring Sam to discover Mary’s story while entering into a secret alliance with Dean to prepare Sam for the coming war. Where season two began with a whispered secret from John to Dean, we now find Sam holding back information about Mary.

  If season two radicalized the boys’ relationship with darkness and the feminine, in season three the lines are almost completely redrawn. Hints throughout point to the season’s Big Bad, Lilith. A newly freed demon queen, she views Sam as a rival, implying equality and possibly shared characteristics; her overarching plans involve everything from Dean’s Crossroads deal and coming death to Ruby’s presence. She the third season’s dark mother, as implicit and unmentioned as Mary is in the earlier seasons. We are told explicitly in the final acts of the season that she holds all the cards: she holds Dean’s contract and Bela’s, she employed the now-dead Crossroads Demon, and she deliberately constructed the season’s final battlefield in order to trap the boys and send Dean to Hell.

  An early episode brings all three levels of the motherhood question-parental, mythic, and narrative-into alignment: The boys fight a “mother changeling” who steals human children, just as it’s suggested that Mary was more involved in Azazel’s demoneering than originally believed. Dean learns he may have a son of his own, and must contend with the threat of adulthood, new responsibility, and fears that he might reenact his father’s effect on his own childhood. Most importantly, Ruby begins to influence Sam’s investigations into Mary’s life and death. In another episode, we encounter a town being slowly corrupted-in parallel to Lilith’s manipulations-by a female demon, Casey, who is powerful enough that she is able to give the boys new information about both Azazel and Lucifer.

  For the first two seasons the show never personifies its darkness as anything larger than something the boys can kill, with one exception-Azazel, whose position as a dark and paternal influence on Sam extends back (it is implied) to before Sam’s birth. While Azazel was eventually destroyed, of course, this came at the cost of John’s own life, another parallel between the show’s real parents and their demonic counterparts. Several of the demons that appear in the first season (in particular Meg) and the Special Children like Sam in the second are both referred to as Azazel’s children. He is a dark father. In season three, after both John and Azazel have been shot by the Colt, and killed, the tables turn: the darkness itself has a feminine presence and name, and it’s closing in from every corner. Each mystery seems linked, week by week, to the central storyline of Lilith’s involvement in the boys’ lives. Even female monsters of the week are newly drawn, ever more complex and sympathetic-most memorably the unwitting vampire in an early episode, whom the boys protect, unthinkably, from a fellow hunter.

  An episode featuring a seemingly textbook coven of suburban witches (who affect Dean viscerally and eventually with life-threatening physical responses, while Sam is virtually unaffected) resolves with the revelation that its least impressive member, the passive and seemingly powerless Tammi, is actually a demon, impervious to the Colt and connected with Lilith herself. We learn that Bobby (another surrogate father) had to kill his wife, who was possessed by demons; Sam learns that Mary was involved with Azazel in an unspecified manner and that all her friends have died mysteriously. Even Dean’s complex relationship with John, a lynchpin of the show and its masculine tropes, takes a beating in Lilith’s presence: a mysterious phone call from “John”-even though the episode itself revolves around similar phone calls causing suicides left and right-leads him to track down Lilith even after numerous warnings.

  The truth and beauty of the familial, fraternal, and filial love between the three men has been the show’s one constant; if Lilith can pervert even these connections, how much power does she really wield over the narrative itself? The answer is implicit in the season’s final act: the black dogs of the Crossroads are not defeated, Lilith easily overcomes Ruby’s usually reliable strength, the Knife is no help, and even Sa
m’s newfound ability to deal with demons and willingness to kill has no effect. Dean is carried off, physically, to his damnation. A tense balance, played all season long, ends in perhaps the most shocking way imaginable when Dean’s fate is finally sealed. The story’s strongest bastion against the dark, whose person seems entirely dedicated to defending his brother from any growth or transformation, finds himself in the bowels of Hell, being ripped apart. And if Ruby and his own visions are correct, his own transformation has begun.

  III: THE DOUBLE

  (Two identical men stand in a dusty cellar: one with black eyes, the other holding a candle against the darkness.)

  As befits a story with dual protagonists, the Winchester brothers have a marked predisposition, like twins, for dividing and intensifying the characteristics of the singular Hero, a metaphysical Everyman. Their competition within the story, the way the story switches story priority and vulnerability between the two, creates a dynamic, alternating current of transformation and personal change. If Dean is the Body and Sam is the Soul of this hypothetical ego, only by developing and broadening both characters in tandem can the show accomplish its remit as a true Hero’s Quest.

  Dean is the strong, well-versed, street-smart brother: grounded, connected to the earth. His fear of flying serves the dual purpose of demonstrating this essential quality while enhancing his connection to the Impala: he “prefers to drive.” As a male symbol, and the more sexually virile of the two characters, Dean represents a viewpoint that seeks to conquer and destroy subconscious content. He moves from hunter, focused only on tracking the next monster, to a rogue blamed for the opening of the Devil’s Gate, to a man marked himself by the supernatural.