comments on SPN S3

[vaznetti]

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.

Comments

[cofax7]

Part of the reason is that it was exactly the ending I expected, and have expected for the past few weeks

Yes, this. Narratively and, um, show-ly (in the sense of this being a show told on television in a certain format with seasons and hiatuses and so forth), it had to end with Dean dead. Therefore I was more divorced from the emotion, just watching what would happen next.

W/rt to the misogyny issue, I have mostly been able to divorce my distaste for the writing from my fondness for Dean, but I am definitely finding myself growing away from the characters.

This is how one gives up a fandom, isn't it? Sigh.

I do feel very much out of step with the fandom, since my flist is covered with squeeing and flailing (except for you & Vee).

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. When was the last time there was a female character on the show who wasn't a demon, a total victim, or portrayed as the evil bitch (Bella, I'm looking at you)? On my side, it leaves me with almost zero to identify with. I don't have anything in common with the characters, guest-starring or lead, and I'm starting to like it that way.

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

I'm still invested in Dean, but I'm getting to care less about him all the time if misogyny really IS going to be a character trait.

I could have even bought the skank insults if Ruby had ever tried to seduce anybody. But she's been straightforwardly badass since she arrived. She fights and hunts. The only person we saw her try to seduce was the demoness in Malleus Malefecarum - which still makes me incredibly angry as an episode.

I can't help but believe it's because of the shift in the writing staff. They used to have TWO women. Now they have one.

And they've added a guy who has served up the VAST MAJORITY of the sexist Dean crap we've seen this season. Go and cut out the Edlund episodes and see what you get. It's a much less offensive show.

I think we should write some letters, those of us who are feeling that way. To counterbalance the "kill all the girls" crap that's on the message boards from the teenyboppers. I don't know that it will help, but at least we'll have tried and we can drop the show in good conscience.

I am THIS CLOSE to dropping it now. I'll give it a few eps next season, becuase I like what I saw of the badass Sam setup and dormant powers and I'd like to see how he gets Dean out of hell, but if the sexism continues turned up to 11, I'm done. Because that wasn't the Dean we all were invested in for 2 solid years. We have a half season of this shit, and I'm hoping they'll fix it if they get enough complaints, seeing they've written characters out of the show based on fan complaints.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

In most of S1 and S2 I felt I could say with some confidence that Dean likes and respects women.

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.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I now look at Dean and think, "yeah, he'd definitely smack a woman around."

Not having watched last night's episode, that's the thing I've been dealing with. I don't want to think of him that way, and I don't want to look back on earlier episodes and feel like they're fraudulent, like they're the clever come-ons of somebody who secretly hates me-the-viewer in the midst of his attraction.

Which would be why I can't watch old episodes right now.

[butterflykiki.livejournal.com]

*blinks at above explanation of donkey show* Since I am ignorant enough that I had *no* idea what that was, I didn't get any impact from that. (Until now. Ugh! Bleah!) And the insults to Ruby probably had less impact because I don't like her, but they did jar me, because slutty? She doesn't even dress like Dean (or anyone's) definition of a slut. Is he getting this because she pesters his brother? What? What is that? "Bitch" has no impact with me because he calls Sam that and because I regard it in some ways as a compliment, but slutty? WUWT?

Then I got back into the show, but yeah, it's a splinter in my consciousness. Most of the time I blame the writing staff, like loligo does above, but sometimes... I just wonder if the eps I can't watch due to gross-out issues are the ones where Dean is being even more of a jerk, and if I'm idealizing him based on seasons 1& 2.

He didn't treat whatshername in the GhostFacers ep too badly, but they didn't interact much. And I look at some of his protectiveness in this ep of the possessed little girl, saying that they can't give her a 'Colombian necktie' and see the Dean I know. But yeah, I do wonder if a write-in campaign telling the writers to watch their mouths isn't at least something to try, you know?

[angryhamster.livejournal.com]

i actually liked bean hitting ruby, because i saw it as a smackdown between near-equals that gender didn't even really enter into, but there has been a definite downturn in the portrayal of women this season. bella annoyed me, but i felt her ending was very unjust, and the total absence of ellen and jo or any strong or even not-evil female chars this season left the show unbalanced, as you said, and reeking of testosterone.

i'm not sure that it's intentional, though, so much as it is trying to make the show darker and show how far the chars have come (like your point about the treatment of the meg-host vs the ruby-host) by showing how they care less about people, but the underlying point is that they're demonstrating that by using the they-don't-even-care-about-girls-and-girls-are-weak line, so... yeah, annoying.

as you said, i was not remotely surprised by this ending and have been expecting it since about halfway through the season, so yes, big let-down for me.

[zarahemla.livejournal.com]

Yes, agreed, the only redeeming thing about him is that he hesitated for ten seconds about giving a ten year old girl a colombian necktie. Nice job, boys!

The way he treated Bella last week was it for me. I was like, is he so up on his desperate fscking high horse that he doesn't remember he commits credit card fraud, lies, cheats, steals, hustles, and generally creates mayhem wherever he goes? How does he get to pass judgment on her?

I was kind of secretly rooting for him to go to Hell and there he'd find Bella (or Ruby, I'm not picky) and he'd beg her to help him get out of there and she'd be all, UH NO, and then find a way to escape and be like, LATER SUCKER.

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've been thinking about the fact that I was sort of "meh" about Supernatural, although I did like some of it, but I enjoyed the Smallville finale a lot more Thursday night, despite some issues that I had with it. A lot of my flist has been up on Supernatural and down on Smallville lately, but I've been enjoying Smallville even more (for the most part - they still have some really bad episodes) than ever, whereas my enjoyment of Supernatural has been sliding downhill slowly (and only slowly due to my love of Sam, Dean and Bobby). I think part of that is that, not only do they have regular female characters, but in general, Smallville's been making pretty good use of them the last couple of seasons.

[bofoddity.livejournal.com]

Found you while searching reactions to the Supernatural-finale, and I just wanted to say I completely agree with this post. 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. Which is a pity because Dean used to be so sympathetic, but it's hard to feel anything for him now.

Sorry for going all tl;dr on your journal, but I just wanted to say that I agree with you.

[bossymarmalade.livejournal.com]

YES. This right here is exactly why my sister turned to me after one episode early in s3 and said, "We should stop watching this show before we start to hate Sam and Dean." I'm ... not exactly glad to know we made the right choice, though. Sigh.

[camille-is-here.livejournal.com]

Although there are many things I disliked about this season, it didn't push the "I can't watch this" button quite like the decision that killing Ava would be more fun than have her be a romantic foil for Sam, or the decision that Sam should sleep with Madison and then kill her did. But those decisions underlined a fundamental philosphical problems for me--that dead girls are sexier than live girls, which is all over the television and really squicks me.

I give Dean a pass on some of the stuff he has done this season because the egregiously misogynistic comments, like the donkey show, seems intended more to make Sam angry and distract him from the desperation at hand than to express how he might actually feel, and in fact seem designed exactly to hide what he really wants. When he's not talking, but we see what he thinks and wants, it seems to be a family with a woman he can talk to and respect. But he doesn't want Sam to know that, because it would just make Sam sadder about their lives. So I sort of see the tragedy in the gaping wound of his life, between what he says and what he wants in his own head.

His response to Ruby seems tied up in Sam's reliance on her, and his fear that Sam will follow in the family tradition and give her his soul to find a way out for Dean. And the line about you all look alike, stated soon after admitting he could see demons, clearly had to do with the demon inside and not Ruby the girl.

I have a feeling that they've had to move away from the smoke-leaving demon banishing to the magical killing everything weapons for budgetary reasons--smokey columns probably cost more than a few sparkly red lights. Which is a pain. But it is easier for me to accept a budgetary shift in the mythology than to accept sleeping with girls and then shooting them, even if they are werewolves.