Everyday I wake up and remember when Jensen Ackles played a bi man in a poly relationship with a guy named Cass played by Patrick Dempsey (aka the actual Dr Sexy) and I think maybe the universe Does have a plan for us all
I have been having Feelings about Supernatural again, and I am finally ready to drop my most controversial and yet correct take.
Caveat all the below with the facts that 1. I am still on season 8 of a 15 season show and 2. I have largely avoided finding out what was going on around the show itself while it aired. I don’t really know what actors and writers were saying at the time, and I don’t know how it felt to be a fan in (eg) 2013.
Okay, but I am eight seasons in at this point, and here’s the thing: I was not expecting to see the show I’m currently watching. I expected to see manly men shooting werewolves and demons in the face a lot, then going to bars and banging chicks about it. I assumed that Dean and Cas were both just white and symmetrical and near each other, which is why they got shipped together.
But god, was I wrong. I was so wrong. I am so sorry.
Now, my (incorrect) assumptions weren’t totally wrong for the first three seasons. There’s something strange that you can feel, something simmering beneath the surface, lots of funny little moments but … nothing you can put your finger on. I quit watching originally during season 3 way back in 2007 because I just started finding it unsatisfying.
But then. If I’d only stuck around! Then season 4 happens, and then season 5 happens and then season 6 and season 7 just keep HAPPENING and now I’m on season 8 and … listen to me. Please listen to me. I am ready to say it: at least up until season 8, Supernatural is not queerbait.
This show is not queerbaiting anyone. It has been slandered! This is an intensely queercoded text specifically about queer men who have queer relationships with each other (and Sam is also there).
Prevailing fandom wisdom will say at this point that I need to have a lie down in a dark room until I come to my senses. I keep thinking that I’m completely out to lunch and high on fanfic. But then I watch another episode and it is goddamn UNDENIABLE. What I am seeing is text! Supernatural is a fundamentally queer show, just one written at a time where it was still impossible for a mainstream normie tv property to be a queer text.
sorry but it’s really like dean: *kills a bunch of sex traffickers which the show tries to frame as bad* this fandom: no actually he was totally right for that! he was justified in killing them, they were dangerous and horrible and the world is probably safer without them! sam and dean: *kill a bunch of monsters who are preying on unknowing civilians who don’t know how to defend themselves, resulting in the death of who knows how many people* this fandom: well obviously they are evil for that 😤😤 how DARE they kill these poor innocent creatures JUST for not being human and for no other reason??? hunting is such an evil awful practice and these murders are sooo not justified unlike those of the horrible humans who totally had it coming!!!!!! like make up your MINDS
It’s when people get Too Deep in the metaphors for monsterhood and interpret the monsters Every Time as Representing Something Else and often toss the interpretation they’ve chosen over every and all monsters, regardless of what’s happening in the text (or how different metaphors are at play with different monsters / episodes / story arcs / etc). So then they get Really Mad at Sam and Dean for killing those monsters that they’ve decided are a Metaphor for another thing. But they don’t realize that IN UNIVERSE, there are no metaphors! Their material reality IS that these are literal monsters preying on vulnerable, unknowing human populations who do not know how to deal with these threats.
And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE metaphors and lenses of interpretation!!! I am an English Major girlie. I am always looking through lenses. And there ARE many metaphors at play within the text (or ones you can apply to the text) for monsters. But they are often mixed metaphors. What a monster represented in one episode may not be what it represents in another. And especially with such a long show as SPN, the view of monsters changes and evolves, goes forward and back, depends on various inconsistent moving parts. It’s complex and there’s no blanket interpretation or metaphor that will encompass all of monsterhood for the entire show. And these metaphors and interpretations are good for stuff like meta but when discussing the literal actions of these characters we can’t forget that what they are Actually experiencing IS a werewolf that’s about to rip some innocent person’s heart or a Shapeshifter kidnapping and murdering innocent people, or a Shtriga is preying on children and stealing their life force. A monster IS a monster in their real life. Most of the monsters we see them deal with are during cases where the monster literally HAS hurt or killed people. Yes there are grey areas, as always, and there are monsters who do not hurt others, but those exceptions do not represent the majority.
Like, they are not living in a metaphor, they’re living in a horror show where this is their real life and there aren’t many good options to choose from to begin with. Ideally yeah, all monsters wouldn’t be killed. (And they don’t ! kill all monsters. Yes we can talk about their nebulous grey area re: monsters forever but the point is, they know that not every monster ought to die just for existing). Still, there are no other good alternatives within their world. There are no other systems in place. There is no monster rehab or monster jail. We can sit back and look at it with more nuance but they are in the moment, living life in a literal horror show where you gotta act fast or get killed. So it’s either take care of the monster problem yourself or let unknowing people get murdered by monsters (and possibly get killed yourself).
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