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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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This is a very shallow reading. If you didn't watch much of Buffy, that may explain why you didn't notice the importance of both Giles and Xander. Xander played the buffoon, often, in the early seasons, but both characters were distinctly "needed" from the very first.
You make an interesting point, that a new female character would disrupt the focus on blood-family among the Winchesters, but, I think that might be kind of interesting. I mean, Jess wasn't family, was she? Not blood family. What if she had lived and gone on the road with the boys? It would have been a different show, but it would have been pretty interesting.
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(Anonymous) 2006-08-28 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)I saw Xander as the constant butt of jokes, of most typically being the one who did nothing that could not be done by some else, who was most constantly in shadow while the others - Buffy, Willow, Faith - were pushed into the spotlight. When he did get his spot, at the end of S6, it was in the same way that Dean opperates on SPN - I'm not going to let you go. And that was after 6 seasons. So I'm fairly satisfied that my read isn't incorrect.
Giles was also played for laughs more often than not, I thought. (Granted, a lot of BtVS was played for laughs. And me and comedy are not the best of buddies. So, put that in the balance, too.) He was also not cast as masculine (tweedy glasses wearing librarian?) although that, too, faded somewhat - in later seasons. Buffy's "need" of him was as a teacher/mother figure, not as man or, I would argue, particularly as father.
In response to what you say below re: the men of SPN taking on female roles, I saw the same thing in BtVS, only with girls taking on the male traits of violence, killing, and casual sex, but, at the same time, rejecting the "female" traits of emotional intimacy, nurturing, and community. I think the trade wasn't a particularly good one.
(And while I say all this, please, this is what *I* got out of Buffy. It didn't work for me, didn't talk to me. Other people, other gals, it told them that they could be the kick-ass heroes of the story, too, and that is *great.* It's like scowling at how Dumbledor is a scheming manipulator and not to be trusted and the HP books are overly simplistic and *ignoring* the fact that kids who never read were gobbling down the books. *waves hands* There are a variety of scales to measure success on.)
What if she had lived and gone on the road with the boys? It would have been a different show, but it would have been pretty interesting.
Yes, that would have been interesting (I'm going to respond to your comment in Mely's post about what sorts of gals I wouldn't mind seeing in the show) and there have been more than a couple brilliant fics running with this idea. But, as you say, it would shift the story from a clan-saga to yet another "found family" drama.
There are thoughts running around in my head about Ponderosa and Dallas, as well as about Everwood, which is another male-heavy family story.
*sigh* Dean pretty. Guns loud. Sam good.
- hg
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1. Buffy has a mother. She doesn't go to Giles for hugs; she goes to him for guidance into her vocation. (How is teacher a gendered word? I don't get it.) His father-figuredom is made explicit in season 3, but earlier than that he is already very much involved in her life, and caring, and guiding.
2. Since Buffy season 1 was only 13 episodes long, I'm not sure I see the point in discussing only the 1st season. Considering the first 2 seasons, there is that great bit in "Passions" where Giles wields the flaming baseball bat (I love that part!!), as well as the introduction of his bad-boy backstory. He's pretty good with an axe, too.
3. I do think that being unable to respond to the comedy may hamper your ability to analyze the series in depth: Xander being the butt of jokes doesn't make him any less important; not least because he is the representative Joe Ordinary in the cast. Everybody else is magical: Giles's knowledge Willow's magic; Oz's wolfiness; Buffy's Slayerdom -- and Xander is our normal guy, who of course can't compete with all that, but he's wanted and needed anyway.
He's the butt of jokes -- especially his own -- but he also gets to say things like, "I told you so."
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Wasn't the point that Sam was on the point of asking her to marry him? At which point she might well have been considered family (since I don't think SPN has the jaundiced view of marriage that Alias does).
I agree that it might be interesting to see a new female character interact with the Winchesters, but I also like their wretched family dynamic very much, and would want to see most of the attention remain on that.
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Jess wasn't family, was she? Not blood family. What if she had lived and gone on the road with the boys? It would have been a different show, but it would have been pretty interesting.
For me, at least, that bit I bolded is the point. Yes, it could have been pretty interesting, but that's not THIS show. You (Generic, with that big capital G) are watching this story and seem to be wanting a different story, and so are often reading it as a different story, which just...yeah, I know authorial intent is dead and all, but that doesn't work, and I'm going to stop there, because I keep wanting to compare this to all the people demanding their version of whatever from J.K. Rowling, and bringing HP into something never leads anywhere good.
As for wanting to see female hunters, too, that's a different issue. I imagine they're out there, but since there's been absolutely no indication of an official Hunter Network/League/Whatever -- from what we've seen, you know who you've stumbled across, and maybe if you're lucky, they know someone else -- it doesn't particularly strike me as out of line in this canon that Dean and Sam don't currently know any. In every way, we are watching a show with a very tight POV; there is no greater entity or organization providing context, and if Dean or Sam don't know about it, and also don't say or do something to indicate that they know it, we don't know about it. So female hunters? Well, unless they stumble across some -- and since they haven't stumbled across any hunters except for Elkins in 121, I'd say hunters aren't exactly thick on the ground -- our best bet is that John might know some, but as we've seen, John knows all kinds of people that his sons don't know he knows, and he appears to have alienated to some extent every single one of them. At any rate, I not only wouldn't have any problem with Dean and Sam meeting a female hunter in any upcoming season but expect that I would enjoy it, much like I would enjoy them meeting, say, another young hunter of any gender, because all the ones we know of so far are John's age or older. However, I would rather that they just "meet" her/him/them, because like hg, I don't even really want John there full-time.
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Where will this show go? I mean, you can get away with a very narrow universe for a season, just like you can get away with nobody noticing demons in a high school for a season. But you've got to move on, haven't you? Unless you want the characters to stay exactly the same from year to year, something's got to change.
Right now, we've got an interesting all-male dynamic, that while interesting, has its problems. (As you've noted, E, what are they going to do with John next season??) One of those problems, a huge and nagging one, is Why don't women exist past the end credits of any given episode?
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One of those problems, a huge and nagging one, is Why don't women exist past the end credits of any given episode?
Well, one, I'd say that they do. Beyond Meg and Sarah, I know you say to Vanzetti below that you don't count Mary and Jess, but I do. No, they can't contribute any new dynamic, but as she said in the post, that's the point. The story so far has been a story where the women have been deliberately removed and where that's been shown to have both general and specific bad consequences. So far. The story is just getting started. And if Mary and Jess hadn't been removed -- if it had just been two random women in their lives, like a babysitter and a girl in calc class -- Dean and Sam would be in an entirely different place as characters, because for the story as an ongoing story it's not that Mary and Jess aren't there in a "were never there, because the writers are ignoring them" way, but that they were there and that they were taken away. There is a difference in how that affects the characters we do see on a weekly basis, and their presence is felt on a weekly basis in Dean and Sam's actions, imo.
But two, and this is what really confuses me, why separate out the women in order to frame that "how can this story continue?" question? To me, the question is more "Why does hardly anyone exist past the end credits of any given episode?" Although really, a more constructive question would be "Isn't it more likely that this story won't stall out if the pool of players is a bit bigger?" Leaving aside the Winchesters (which, in my mind, include Mary and Jess) Pastor Jim and Caleb are the only repeated "good" presences for a very long time, and even they hardly show, while The Demon is the only repeated "bad" presence. Then we get Meg on the bad side, which, the people who complain that the face of the bad guy is a woman, whatever. But Sarah is the only repeated reference on the good side, and yet all of the victims have the potential to be like Jerry the airline guy; they could all call on Dean and Sam again, or refer other people to them, and I'd love to see the writers use past one-offs like that across the board.
Frankly, though, it seems to me like part of the point of the story up until now has been that Dean especially holds off from making a true connection with the people he saves. Even Jerry, who doesn't exactly call as a friend; he calls as a pleased former client. Dean and Sam are contractors, basically, who need to get to know their clients, but who certainly don't need to become friends with them, and Dean actively discourages continued friends-type contact with almost everyone he talks to. That makes sense as part of the life of someone who doesn't settle down, but for Dean, I think, it's also a fundamental part of his character that will have to be changed slowly, because it ties right back in to Mary's death and is how he functions. His mom and everything that, at four, he was just beginning to truly understand as "life" were taken from him, and then between, a) apparently moving around a lot growing up, so even if he did make friends, it's highly likely that he did it knowing that he wasn't going to be keeping them, b) Sam deciding to leave the family for college, c) Cassie deciding she doesn't want to be with him (twice, now), and d) John just taking off on him, and then doing his damnedest to get himself killed...if Dean's form-no-deep-ties approach to life had done anything other than solidify, I'd have been shocked.
So the way I see it, having people repeatedly pop up in their lives is something that will be good for the story, but will have to be introduced gradually and logically. And it only makes sense for the story that those people to be both women and men, so focusing only on wanting women doesn't make sense to me.
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Now that flaw lies side-by-side with the show needing to grow; it's possible to outgrow that flaw along with a bunch of other ones. I mean, I'm not terribly optimistic, because, that's a realy serious flaw that betrays a lack of deep thinking -- but anything's possible.
I'll answer the thing about whether dead women are "really there" below, because it is the key to my argument, and I don't think I've made that point clearly.
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Anyway, yes, first season of a show with only two people -- men -- in the credits. That alone really tells you something about what you should be expecting.
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(Anonymous) 2006-08-30 02:08 am (UTC)(link)- hg
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Jumping in here, because this conversation is fascinating, but also look at some of the characters that were victims. I know not everyone agrees on popularity, but I especially liked Sarah and Andrea.
Neither of them faded into the background like "damsels in distress," but, more importantly, I think they were the most admired by Dean, who is supposed to be the stereotypical man's man. But what did he tell Sam when Sarah wouldn't run away? "Marry her." And I seriously don't think he was kidding. At least, not in the sense that this was an awesome woman who was worth time and effort.
And I know Cassie wasn't particularly popular, but I didn't see her calling Dean because she was a victim, but because, he was the expert. And it's pretty obvious that Dean's long term attraction to her was because she wasn't one of those blonde bimbos he claims to like.
And Layla. Her strength was that she wasn't the victim that Dean thought she was.
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I think that for some viewers, the show's tight focus is an issue -- I mean, I can't think of another show I watch which has quite such a small permanent cast. Most of the shows on TV are ensemble or lead-with-large-supporting-cast.
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