vaznetti | SPN: the absence of women

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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.

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Hmmm. I agree, in the most part, particularly with the "there is a reason the boys don't have women around" and "not having women around is shown as having a negative effect on all three of them.

The other thing that's not working for me is the comparisions to Buffy, mostly because Buffy (and Buffy) never worked for me. (I think you're absolutely correct in choosing Alias as a point of comparision, for reasons I'll get to at the end.) I know Buffy was an affecting show, female role wise, for a lot of people, and yah! to it for that. But when I watched it, I didn't see the sort of independent and capable women that I prefer on my tv shows, and too much of the "we're going to mock men because we can." And it was about childern, and teenagers, not women. YMMV, obviously, and there were moments of brilliance.

If SPN is about a group of guys saying, "We don't have women in our lives, and it is fucking us up" then maybe Buffy could be read as "We don't need no stinking guys! And besides, guys are stupid and break things."

Finally, the calls for more women (which sometimes seem to say "we need more strong women of any sort! Anywhere!") seem, to me, to be done without regard for the underlying theme of family. The Winchesters are screwed up because (in part) they don't have a female balance within the family. That's not something that adding a gal character is going to be able to fix - she's still going to be not a Winchester.

For me, the main diff between Buffy and SPN is that Buffy priviledged "found" families over devotion to blood family - which is a common theme in modern tv and lit, I think. (Alias being one with a strong family dynamic that still doesn't match SPN's.) As you say with F/SF shows with lots of gals, there are lots of shows that emphasize companions and causes and romantic partners over family. Not so many the other way, I think.

Anyway. Maybe more later.

(Did you get the email?)

- hossgal

I would posit, rather, that the ritual shearing of women out of the story is important because the women symbolically reflect on the men. Carol Clover's got a whole chapter on this, in Men, Women and Chain Saws, about this subset of horror movies where it's all about establishing and testing masculinity, and masculinity is tested via its "opposite" -- the women in the main character's life are possessed, or kidnapped, or tortured, etc. etc.

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.

maybe Buffy could be read as "We don't need no stinking guys! And besides, guys are stupid and break things."

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.

Well, if we're looking at the entire run of Buffy, and only one season of SPN, then that doesn't give us a terribly deep look at SPN, I think.

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

In the absence of women, the men take on aspects of traditional femininity -- male encompasses female, and female, being dead, encompasses nothing.

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.

I mean, Jess wasn't family, was she? Not blood family. What if she had lived and gone on the road with the boys?

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.

Buffy's "need" of him was as a teacher/mother figure, not as man or, I would argue, particularly as father.

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."

I swore I wouldn't get into this, but...

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.

I think you are getting at something I hadn't been able to verbalize - yes, women are absent, and the text itself says that THIS IS BAD.

(I always wonder if I am a "bad" feminist, because I so rarely see sexism. With SPN, I have sort of a, "... yes, there are no women? But, like, that's the show?" reaction.)

I look forward to seeing your discussion of the guest-stars. :)

the dead women in SPN are hugely important as symbols

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?

I think, ultimately, it's the narrowness of viewpoint that will priove to be the biggest problem, and it is the absence of women that point big blinky arrows at the viewpoint problem.

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?

I feel like we're talking at cross-purposes (or possibly reading at cross-purposes), but here goes. It's a story. Everything is a symbol. Stories are about symbols; that's how they have meaning. John's a symbol; so is Max. Being a symbol is not a gendered situation in this narrative universe. Stories are also about actors -- in this case, that primarily means Sam and Dean; all the symbols in this story -- yes, Mary and Jess, but also Max and John and Cassie and that girl from the Wendigo episode and the son in Bugs and the whole Bender family etc. ad nauseam -- serve to reflect and amplify their drama. In this case, those people are male; I think that there maleness matters because it is a token of their incompleteness. (And as an aside, I think that's kind of cool because I have a vague memory of the argument that women are incomplete/imperfect men, possibly in Aristotle's gynecology.)

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?)

The show certainly can't stay this narrow forever, although how much the focus can/should expand is up for argument. I don't ever remember seeing the "there are no women!" issue framed in terms of that, though. If that were how it was phrased, my reaction would be different (see below, which got awfully long, sorry).

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.

I look forward to seeing your discussion of the guest-stars. :)

Heh. I was thinking of ducking out of that, really.

And thank you. I'm glad this line of argument worked for you.

I focus on wanting women because we have men. I think the absence of women is a signal of the absnece of other things, and I think it points to a fundamental flaw in thinking among the show creators: male is the default, and female is some kind of Other, extraordinary, special.

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.

I read an article once on Disney heroes that was talking largely about the fairy tale convention of absent or ineffectional parents, particularly mothers.

That's how SPN reads to me.

Mother is dead and acts only as a motivating force for revenge, Father is absent, to free up children to go have adventures. It's pretty standard mythology stuff.

How much more deeply do we need to read it? This is STOCK plot stuff from forever.

YMMV, of course.

"Ineffectional". clearly the sinus headache has killed my brane.

I think I get where you're coming from -- you're working from within the confines of the story. Yes, Dean and Sam are the only main characters (although John gets a healthy chunk of time). Yes, their both being male and having no female peers marks them out as damaged weirdoes. Yes, in that sense, the intentional exclusion of female subjectivity may serve a thematic purpose, although I'm not sure it's entirely intentional.

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.

Hee - well, duck out if you want to, obviously, but I am curious. :)

For all that SPN is not the highest quality show, I think that it stands up well to meta. It also seems to afford for a lot of violently different perspectives, but hey! ;)

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.

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.

First off, I'm glad this hasn't turned into the writerly version of a screaming contest.

Secondly, as a way of introducing my perspective on gender roles in the media, one of the things I hate about commercials (aside from the fact that they exist) is how subtley or explicitly gendered they are. Every product is specifically geared to appeal to the masculine or feminine gender, or both but in completely different ways.

In story based media (movies, television, books, etc.) I am also particularly irked both by archaic depictions of women as well as attempts to "modernize" them. I use quotations because it is often assumed that the way to modernize the female is to make her more like the male, which assumes that the male standard of behavior is the right one.

I remember being particularly frustrated during my first watching of "Bloody Mary." I don't remember her name, but the girl who didn't die, I just wanted to strangle her. It was such a typical female role in the horror genre.

On the other hand, the Sherrif in "The Benders" made me smile (if only because I like the actress). She was tough, she was able to handle Dean's bull, but she was also "in touch" with her emotions with regard to her brother. She didn't strike me as an attempt to masculinize (is that a word) a female character, but rather an attempt to depict an actual human being. That's what I look for in stories, authentic human characters.

*sputter, cough, sputter, dies*...So, I've run out of steam. Phooey

I don't think you're wrong about the absent-parents thing (although that requires a second explanation for Jess -- but it's not really hard to work one in.)

My understanding of the way money in TV advertising works is that the most-desired demographic is young men -- and I can imagine that SPN was deliberately gendered to appeal to men as well as (or even rather than) young women.

I don't disagree with anything you say here; persobnally, I think a number of the guest stars (both male and female) "come to life" as individuals (even though I think many of them also do serve as symbols or motivators for Winchester family drama.)

You have some really interesting thoughts here. I occasionally wonder about this. Because usually I'm very concerned with the role of women on a show I'm watching, their importance and how they interact. Either a couple or partnership show like The X-Files, or an ensemble like The West Wing.

Mary and Jess do serve as symbols more than anything else, but not in a way that diminishes who they were when they were alive. I honestly don't know what to make of the role of women on SPN, whether it is a concern for me or not. The guest star women are usually fairly strong/independent types, with a few exceptions. But the show really isn't about the women in their lives. It's about the Winchesters.

And as you point out, there are shows with more prominent roles for women that in many ways undermines their strength with the story arcs. Despite frequently being victims on SPN, on the whole I think women come across positively on SPN--they're cops, they're friends, or lovers, they're smart, intelligent, incredibly strong, sweet or just plain evil. The random Dean chippies are not shown as victims of his seductions, they're shown as happy, willing, and able to have fun as much as he is.

But on the whole, I dont know what to make of it usually, and decided to relax and not think about it. The show has never offended me in that way. Maybe there aren't enough good roles for women on TV overall, but I think women have done well on TV lately, and we don't have to be looking over our shoulder because there's a guy-driven buddy show. SPN isn't kind to its female characters, but it doesn't denigrate them. The women are never caricatures. There are plenty of women there just as scenery, but the show does that to its male leads (Sam in a towel) as much as it does to the women.

Christ, I'm so good at missing the really interesting discussions. I've been thinking about this since our first exchange (and, I confess, since a couple of meta posts that struck me as pretty wide of the mark--what mark, I'm still not sure). Thanks for posting this. I'll be sending you email that's hopelessly after the fair, no doubt.

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SPN: the absence of women

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