comments on SPN S3
May. 16th, 2008 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiLook 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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-17 02:29 pm (UTC)Sorry for going all tl;dr on your journal, but I just wanted to say that I agree with you.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-17 06:09 pm (UTC)Everything about Dean has been screaming hateful to me during this season (which seems to be underlined by Jensen Ackles's acting, at least to me), and his fight with Ruby and how he got to win despite her having perfectly good reasons to beat the hell out of him made sure I felt nothing for him by the end of the episode.
I was hoping during the fight between Ruby and Dean that she was beating him up in part to get Sam to use power to save him, but sadly, I was mistaken, and it was just a chance for Dean to get the better of her. Although when he came up with the knife, I did rather think it was a move he must have learned from Bela.
Part of the issue, too, is that JA is a relatively good actor for a show like this, so when he says these lines, he really does sound like he means them, and that impacts my opinion of the character and the whole show. But I was still surprised by how little I felt for him.
Thanks for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-17 08:24 pm (UTC)With Ruby bringing up Sam's powers, it would have made perfect sense if they had re-surfaced during the Ruby/Dean-fight, especially since Sam's darkness is something they've concentrated on this season and there have been hints about his demon side still being there. The trick with the knife was something that Bela would have done, though, so it's definitely nice to think of it as a nod to her.
And the problem with Ackles is that he seems to be doing his best with Dean, so it's really Dean saying these things in my eyes, meaning that this ugliness really is a part of Dean. I know it's not how everybody feels like, but it's what makes it hard for me to think of S1-2 Dean and S3 Dean as separate beings.