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SPN: the absence of women
The absence of female characters from the ongoing SPN narrative seems to be the subject du jour, so I thought I'd jump in, because I'm usually one of the first to cry "misogyny" in the shows I watch (I'm looking at you, XF) but I don't see that here.
I think my response to this issue is based on the way I read the text, and so I think (a) that there are satisfying textual reasons for the absence of women and (b) that the show itself can be read as making the absence of women a problem. As we see in pretty much every intro for the whole run of the show, the Winchester family is an all-male enterprise, and it's an all-male enterprise because all the women in it were killed off -- not just Mary, but also Jess, at least in part because she was close enough to Sam to be perceived as a threat by the Demon. They didn't decide to leave the womenfolk at home while they went out on the road to do manly things like hunt demons -- they were driven to that when their whole world was thrown into imbalance by an external force which removed (effective) women from the world. Sam and John, at least, would like to return to a world with significant women in it, but they're both particular about who those women are -- they're attached to the idea of women as people as well as women as symbols. Dean's a good deal less particular, but he has all those rejection and abandonment issues, most of which are rooted in the loss of his mother at such a young age; again, the absence of women is a bad thing here.
I guess the short version is -- there are no women in the Winchester family because the Demon killed them all. The Demon is the big Evil, therefore the show does not seem to be telling me that the absence of women is a good thing. The Winchesters cope fairly well with a world which lacks significant women, but that world is not (in my opinion) presented as complete.
I'd like to talk about the guest-stars here, but maybe later -- right now it seems to me that there are villains and victims who are female, and villains and victims who are male or ungendered, and that female guest stars seem about as able to cope with what the Winchesters do as male guest stars. And ultimately, my reading of the show is based on the mytharc, not the MOTWs. Mileage varies.
As for comparisons to Buffy or XF, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the producers used the fact that the main characters are male to sell the show -- it's something to differentiate it on a network which already has a fair number of shows with a strong female presence (I mean, Charmed is still running, isn't it? and every time I catch an episode of Smallville, it seems to be all about the romances). And I don't think that having lots of juicy roles for women necessarily is enough to clear a show. Alias, for example, had a female hero and included good roles for more mature female actresses. It also represented relationships between women as almost universally competitive rather than cooperative, and marriage as a locus for deception and (in extreme but prominent cases) a form of warfare in which the wife is an enemy agent inserted within the husband's territory to undermine and destroy him.
My apologies if this doesn't make sense; I was awake at an unreasonable hour this morning, and lay there thinking about this because I couldn't fall back to sleep.
I think my response to this issue is based on the way I read the text, and so I think (a) that there are satisfying textual reasons for the absence of women and (b) that the show itself can be read as making the absence of women a problem. As we see in pretty much every intro for the whole run of the show, the Winchester family is an all-male enterprise, and it's an all-male enterprise because all the women in it were killed off -- not just Mary, but also Jess, at least in part because she was close enough to Sam to be perceived as a threat by the Demon. They didn't decide to leave the womenfolk at home while they went out on the road to do manly things like hunt demons -- they were driven to that when their whole world was thrown into imbalance by an external force which removed (effective) women from the world. Sam and John, at least, would like to return to a world with significant women in it, but they're both particular about who those women are -- they're attached to the idea of women as people as well as women as symbols. Dean's a good deal less particular, but he has all those rejection and abandonment issues, most of which are rooted in the loss of his mother at such a young age; again, the absence of women is a bad thing here.
I guess the short version is -- there are no women in the Winchester family because the Demon killed them all. The Demon is the big Evil, therefore the show does not seem to be telling me that the absence of women is a good thing. The Winchesters cope fairly well with a world which lacks significant women, but that world is not (in my opinion) presented as complete.
I'd like to talk about the guest-stars here, but maybe later -- right now it seems to me that there are villains and victims who are female, and villains and victims who are male or ungendered, and that female guest stars seem about as able to cope with what the Winchesters do as male guest stars. And ultimately, my reading of the show is based on the mytharc, not the MOTWs. Mileage varies.
As for comparisons to Buffy or XF, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the producers used the fact that the main characters are male to sell the show -- it's something to differentiate it on a network which already has a fair number of shows with a strong female presence (I mean, Charmed is still running, isn't it? and every time I catch an episode of Smallville, it seems to be all about the romances). And I don't think that having lots of juicy roles for women necessarily is enough to clear a show. Alias, for example, had a female hero and included good roles for more mature female actresses. It also represented relationships between women as almost universally competitive rather than cooperative, and marriage as a locus for deception and (in extreme but prominent cases) a form of warfare in which the wife is an enemy agent inserted within the husband's territory to undermine and destroy him.
My apologies if this doesn't make sense; I was awake at an unreasonable hour this morning, and lay there thinking about this because I couldn't fall back to sleep.
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And the main character's quest -- and he's always a he -- is to rescue or avenge the girl, and in so doing circumscribe the parameters of masculinity. It's all about him, and while he cares for her, in the scheme of the story she exists only to be a rag doll in his drama.
It's notable, within the Winchester family dynamic, that we have males acting out traditionally feminine roles -- the psychic, the "selfless mom" role. In the absence of women, the men take on aspects of traditional femininity -- male encompasses female, and female, being dead, encompasses nothing.
Like, there's a long and strong tradition of horror pictures doing the same thing, but, it's kind of dull and irritating to pick up the stereotype without giving it a twist.
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I'm really not sure about that "female encompasses nothing" thing. I think that the dead women in SPN are hugely important as symbols, and that they've been removed from the board (by the Demon) because of their potential power to interfere with whatever it's got in mind. I mean, I agree that that power is never made actual, but I don't think that it's unimportant because of that. And although the male characters do take on aspects of femininity, they do so in an incomplete and unsatisfactory manner -- the whole family unit is in disarray, and no matter how much Dean plays the Mom, he can't fix it. And if the narrative is about establishing and testing masculinity (is that what you think is going on here?) then this must necessarily remain the case, because masculinity is to be defined in opposition to femininity -- the all-male world is going to have to remain incomplete and out-of-balance. Or would you argue that the horror-movie narrative posits the all-male-world as sufficient? Because I really don't think SPN does that.
I think part of the difference in my reading is that I really don't know anything about horror-movie narrative, so I don't pick that up; I do know about reading works in which women play a marginal role against the grain. It's just that I don't think this particular against-the-grain reading stretches the text in an unreasonable way.
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No, this is exactly what I am saying. They're symbols, not people. They exist to be interpreted, shown, worshipped -- to be reflections of the men's drama rather than dramas of their own.
Female consciousness might as well not exist in the Supernatural universe. How is that (a) okay and (b) a long-term strategy for a series?
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Female consciousness might as well not exist in the Supernatural universe. How is that (a) okay and (b) a long-term strategy for a series?
(a) It's OK with me as a reader, because I'm interested in the story. Is it OK in a greater moral sense? I don't know. The Iliad is a better text, but it's not big on female consciousness; this is true of The Lord of the Rings as well. A lot of people don't like these texts for precisely these reasons; I am inordinarily fond of both of them. Are stories about women inherently more valuable to me than stories about men? For me, the answer is "no." Mileage on this varies.
(b) In terms of the evolution of the story's universe over the long term, I actually agree with you -- I think that we will need to see women acting within the mytharc. The character I'd like to see in this context, but rather doubt that we will -- is Monica, the mother from Salvation. (This is because of the way I interpret what the Demon is doing -- so what I want to know is, how will her survival, where all the other mothers were killed -- affect the outcome?)
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But it feels wrong, as a cultural document. I hunt and hunt through that text and I see no female subjectivity and I think, "Who does that?"
In the days of the Iliad, maybe that was normal, although I'm sure little girls of that era were clinging to every Nausicaa and Clytaemnestra they could get their paws on. But we're a bit late-on in the history of culture for that to be normal, don't you think? It just feels unconscious, exclusionary, accidental, clumsy, weird. It feels like a mistake, like the writers didn't even realize what they were doing and have now written themselves into a corner.
I think that's the reason I hook the question of female subjectivity into the question of the show's future growth. I want to ask the writers, "What is your plan??" and kick them in the patoot until they have a plan that is sustainable.
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Hm. I can't do this if I want to keep watching the show, and I do want to keep watching the show. In my experience, the producers and writers of TV shows never have plans which are sustainable. They pull episodes out of their collective asses, and sometimes things actually make sense, but that's almost certainly an accident. I mean, I think I've spun a pretty good story above, and that is how I read the gender dynamics of the show, but it's my reading (I'm not lying -- i think it's a more satisfying reading of the text than your reading, precisely because it examines the text in its own terms -- but obviously this isn't something I'm going to convince you of, because that's not the kind of reading you want.) I know better than to assume it's what the writers intend, and more than they intended your and Mely's reading.
As for who does that -- well, plenty of writers. Patrick O'Brian. Alan Furst. (To name two that I actually like; Furst does manage one female character who's actually a person, but O'Brian actively resists that development in his female characters). And then that whole Tom Clancy and Gerald Setmour school of books about men and their big toys. I mean, you may not like that literature, but it's there.
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FWIW, I also think Tom Clancy could stand a good kick in the patoot (or possibly six weeks of Communist summer camp), and I haven't read much of the remaining authors you cite. I agree, of course, that the literature of exclusion still exists; but to see it on network television, where the whole idea is wide appeal, is a bit mind-boggling.
I mean, wrestling has female characters. Who wear bikinis and have capped teeth, but, within their "stories" those female characters have agency and consciousness.
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I guess that I think that the whole "boys won't read books about girls" thing is ridiculous and something boys need to have beaten out of them, so I also think that it would be hypocritical for me to say "well, I won't watch this because it's about boys." Mileage varies, and I understand if the show doesn't work for you, but I don't feel that I'm letting the side down by not caring about this issue for the reasons I've elaborated on above and below.
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I *like* just the boys in this. I *like* seeing how they cope with their issues, including their women issues. I *like* a show where i don't have to roll my eyes in disgust at some lame-ass cutie-pie crap with stale back-and-forth that leads to UST that might happen next season!!! a la mulder and scully. Gah. Please.
I like my guys. I want my guys. I need my fucked up daddy!son!issues! show. You make interesting points, but i don't want to see them become realities for *this* show.
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Are women nothing but their sex organs? Come on! Is it really so revolutionary and shocking an idea, that a woman might just do her thing and be herself without getting all When Harry Met Sally the nearest available male?? For that matter, what if the introduced character were a sister, as Hossgal (among others) has suggested? Please tell me you don't really think the only oportunity for female presense is as someone to stare longingly after the "main characters."
(And for cri-yi, in the absence of women, fandom is perfectly happy to pair two men, and for that matter, large segments of fandom are perfectly happy breaking incest taboos while doing it. While I agree that forced romance is irritating, good luck legislating it out!)
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That's what we *get*. Perfectly good shows ruined because 'they' feel they *have* to throw together *somebody* and have UST and love-gone-wrong and blah blah blah to make the show have *drama*. They haven't learned that love and death are *not* the only dramatic plot elements out there.
A sister, at this point, would be as forced as a love-interest. Unless s/he meant a sister-like figure? *haven't read all the comments since i posted* A 'real' sister - no. Just...a plot contrivance. A 'sister-like' person...eh. I don't, frankly, trust the writers that far. Some of the fanfic writers? In a heartbeat. But not people who're getting paid to get the biggest slice of the demographic pie.
This show is about a father and his two sons or - really - about two brothers and their father. I *like* it. I enjoy the dynamic. I don't see the need to insert a female character in there just because there isn't one, and i don't feel like i'm 'losing' something because there isn't a female character. There are *plenty* of shows with strong female leads i enjoy - the 'Bones' show springs to mind, as does the SVU law and order show, SGA, hell, even House.
Spn *not* having a female lead or main/recurring character doesn't make it bad, or sexist, or anything else. It makes it what it is.
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I don't need female characters to 'identify' with, I identify just fine with the Winchesters--as human beings. Who cares about their gender? I want to see their story, I don't want to see anyone else's. And I don't want that story being told to focus on romance much and pretty much the only way to get a female into the story is to make her a romantic partner(and we know they'd never be able to resist the temptation to do that even if they brought in a female character who wasn't one initially--just like every military show and every cop show, etc, etc--somehow someway the male / female stars of the show who work together end up coupling up).
I happen to like stories that focus on friendship, family, action, etc too. Once romance gets put into it, it tends to take over and the story just becomes too much like every a million other shows. If anything insisting on certain characteristics as being 'feminine' and 'masculine' which need characters of the proper gender to show them up, either by fulfilling them or opposing them, seems to me to just continue old stereotypes. Dean, Sam and John take on those characteristics because they are HUMAN characteristics and if anything the fact that they do points that up. It's mainly convenience at best and force at worst which have made them 'male and female' characteristics.
The main characters are who they are, I see no need to change that or expand that to include an equivalent female. The other characters, the guest stars--women are portrayed as being no more nor less capable than men are. In fact if anything the female characters are shown as being rather more capable then the male ones in general. So I never feel that Supernatural is showing women in a bad light.