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comments on SPN S3
Look at the tags. Consider what you know about me. Move on if all you want is squee and flail.
Reading my friends list this morning, I felt out of step with the fandom. It's not that I didn't enjoy the episode. The things everyone is pointing to -- singing in the car, everything about Bobby, the callbacks to IMToD and earlier -- also filled me with glee. But I was left completely unmoved by the ending.
Part of the reason is that it was exactly the ending I expected, and have expected for the past few weeks. Part of it is that once you show the torments of Hell, they seem a lot less scary. Most of it, though, is that I just don't have much sympathy left for Dean as a character.
It's no secret that I've found the misogyny this season hard to take, although I haven't written about it all that much. What I didn't realize was how strongly it had affected my view of the characters, and especially of Dean. I can't think of the last time Dean said something nice to a female character. I'm sure he must have (OK, it was the virgin in the episode with Henriksen, what was her name?) but it's been drowned out by the torrent of sexist abuse he's been hurling around. Obviously, there are reasons for that abuse -- his adversarial relationship with both Bela and Ruby -- but there hasn't been enough to balance it out. I think that this is a real change in Dean's character, and it's a change that makes him a lot less likable for me.
In most of S1 and S2 I felt I could say with some confidence that Dean likes and respects women. "Wendigo" does a great job in establishing this -- of showing Dean as a guy who flirts a lot and is kind of a jerk but who, on a basic level, sees women as people who are like him. It helps that Haley was set up by the story as a Dean-analogue, but it mattered more that I got the sense that Dean himself saw the similarity, and that his interactions with her were based on a kind of instinctive liking and respect (which, because it's Dean, also includes halfhearted flirtation). That's the kind of episode I think of when I think bout Dean and girls in S1 -- Wendigo, Faith, Route 666, Providence, The Benders -- episodes where Dean interacts with female characters as people, not as things. This may start to change in S2, but I see the same Dean with Ellen, and at least some of the time even with Jo.
I can't even recognize that guy in the Dean who punched Ruby in last night's episode. Sure, she's a demon, and not technically a girl (although she's in the body of a girl, and enough people have talked about the change from their concern for Meg-the-girl in S1 to where they are now, with possessed people), and she's capable of hitting back and doing some damage. And I was very happy to see her doing that. But I didn't see Dean hitting a demon. I saw him hitting a girl. I think that the reason for this is that the insults Dean has been hurling at Ruby are so often so strongly gendered. He calls her a bitch and a slut -- he sees her as female as well as demonic -- and then he hits her.
The misogyny in the text this season has gotten so strong that I now look at Dean and think, "yeah, he'd definitely smack a woman around." I had no idea I'd reached such an explicit point, and when I think back to the character I liked in S1, it seems a real shame. So yeah, Dean's in Hell. But when I look at him, that's what's in the back of my mind, so really, I can't bring myself to care.
Reading my friends list this morning, I felt out of step with the fandom. It's not that I didn't enjoy the episode. The things everyone is pointing to -- singing in the car, everything about Bobby, the callbacks to IMToD and earlier -- also filled me with glee. But I was left completely unmoved by the ending.
Part of the reason is that it was exactly the ending I expected, and have expected for the past few weeks. Part of it is that once you show the torments of Hell, they seem a lot less scary. Most of it, though, is that I just don't have much sympathy left for Dean as a character.
It's no secret that I've found the misogyny this season hard to take, although I haven't written about it all that much. What I didn't realize was how strongly it had affected my view of the characters, and especially of Dean. I can't think of the last time Dean said something nice to a female character. I'm sure he must have (OK, it was the virgin in the episode with Henriksen, what was her name?) but it's been drowned out by the torrent of sexist abuse he's been hurling around. Obviously, there are reasons for that abuse -- his adversarial relationship with both Bela and Ruby -- but there hasn't been enough to balance it out. I think that this is a real change in Dean's character, and it's a change that makes him a lot less likable for me.
In most of S1 and S2 I felt I could say with some confidence that Dean likes and respects women. "Wendigo" does a great job in establishing this -- of showing Dean as a guy who flirts a lot and is kind of a jerk but who, on a basic level, sees women as people who are like him. It helps that Haley was set up by the story as a Dean-analogue, but it mattered more that I got the sense that Dean himself saw the similarity, and that his interactions with her were based on a kind of instinctive liking and respect (which, because it's Dean, also includes halfhearted flirtation). That's the kind of episode I think of when I think bout Dean and girls in S1 -- Wendigo, Faith, Route 666, Providence, The Benders -- episodes where Dean interacts with female characters as people, not as things. This may start to change in S2, but I see the same Dean with Ellen, and at least some of the time even with Jo.
I can't even recognize that guy in the Dean who punched Ruby in last night's episode. Sure, she's a demon, and not technically a girl (although she's in the body of a girl, and enough people have talked about the change from their concern for Meg-the-girl in S1 to where they are now, with possessed people), and she's capable of hitting back and doing some damage. And I was very happy to see her doing that. But I didn't see Dean hitting a demon. I saw him hitting a girl. I think that the reason for this is that the insults Dean has been hurling at Ruby are so often so strongly gendered. He calls her a bitch and a slut -- he sees her as female as well as demonic -- and then he hits her.
The misogyny in the text this season has gotten so strong that I now look at Dean and think, "yeah, he'd definitely smack a woman around." I had no idea I'd reached such an explicit point, and when I think back to the character I liked in S1, it seems a real shame. So yeah, Dean's in Hell. But when I look at him, that's what's in the back of my mind, so really, I can't bring myself to care.
no subject
Yeah. The only reason I'm not where you are now with regard to the show is that I can hold onto initial characterizations pretty tenaciously when I don't see the changes as being organic to the story. I've managed a whole season of "BZZT! Wrong! Dean wouldn't really say that!" and I can probably squeeze out another half a season before it really starts to wear me down and I start feeling compelled to integrate the crap into my view of his character.
The sexist antagonism directed toward Ruby and Bela, that I can kind of buy. Dean grew up with (as far as we know) no female influences in his life beyond his perfect dead mother, and as a very hot guy it's unfortunately true that a lot of the women he encounters are going to choose to sexualize their interactions with him even if Dean doesn't go there first. So I can see where he would both idealize women in that sort of courtly, old-fashioned sexist way, and be over-focused on their sexual availability. Neither of these are necessarily going to cause big problems when he's dealing with women he likes and respects, but they'll turn toxic with women who are Bad and Evil (in part because being "bad" is a betrayal of idealized womanhood).
So I can kind of live with that aspect of Season 3. What's really pissing me off are the casual slams against women that the writers have been adding in all sorts of unnecessary places. Like, would Dean go to Tijuana and try to pick up hot Mexican women using cheesy pick-up lines in bad high school Spanish? Totally. Would Dean go to Tijuana and get turned on by economically exploited Mexican women forced into bestiality in tourist-trade sex shows? NO. I don't even think he'd crack jokes about it. That is some bad, bad writing.
no subject
Yes. This. It bothers me, but I just excise it when I write him, so I can kind of keep the Dean in my head and the Dean of season 3 separate. Of course, I also don't believe he doesn't know a lot of the shit they have him not knowing, so it's helpful in other ways, too.
no subject
Neither of these are necessarily going to cause big problems when he's dealing with women he likes and respects, but they'll turn toxic with women who are Bad and Evil (in part because being "bad" is a betrayal of idealized womanhood).
I see what you mean by this, and I think that if we'd had more balance in the kinds of women seen on the show I would be more tolerant of Dean's attitude toward Bela and Ruby (although I still find the sexualization of his attacks on Ruby weird) if I had anything else in the text to remind me that Dean doesn't think that all women are evil skanks who are only getting what's coming to them. I mean, seriously, a guest appearance by Ellen would probably have done a lot to reconcile to me to what we got.
I think that I'm a little surprised that the writing is so bad that it's made me stop caring about a character I really liked. I mean, that's unusual.