Misogyny and "Supernatural"

[fannishliss]

This post goes out to my livejournal friends who are troubled by the apparent misogyny of “Supernatural.”    Spoilers up to and including 3.12, Jus in Bello.

In this essay I would like to propose a slightly different way of viewing the position of women on the show. I’ll argue that “Supernatural” does not so much promote a misogynistic view of women, but that it does use the idea of separate spheres to create an atmosphere of fragility for the everyday world, in contrast to the brutal realities represented by the Winchesters.   The world of women is a sunlit world, a world in peril, that represents all the Winchesters long to protect and all they long for for themselves but cannot have due to their chosen role as warriors. Moreover, the Winchesters themselves are placed in a position of suffering by their exclusion from the “softer side” of life.  The world of Hunting is brutal and terrifying, yet having once acknowledged its reality, the Winchesters take upon themselves the onus of protecting the innocent from that world. On “Supernatural,” a kinder, gentler world is represented by women, but I argue that women are not limited to the less than fully human pedestal perfection of misogyny, but rather live fully fledged human lives that Sam and Dean cannot allow themselves to join.

 I will begin by positioning my theoretical background. I am a trained literary scholar with a women’s studies certificate and an avowed feminist.  That said, I’m not going to take the position that “Supernatural” is misogynistic even though many thoughtful women whose opinions I respect have come to that conclusion.  For better or for worse, my thinking represents what Keats would call “negative capability” – the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in my head simultaneously – this does not make me a better arguer, but it does allow me to enjoy Show even when it portrays women as less than fully realized characters. 

I wrote my dissertation on the novels of Mary Shelley, basing my arguments on her representations of what I call “utopian domesticity.”  I argue that Shelley represented the family and the home as the site of perfectable society, in keeping with the progressive political theories of her mother, feminist thinker Mary Wolstonecraft, her father, anarchist political theorist, William Godwin, and her husband, radical visionary poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.  So, I bring to the table in this conversation about “Supernatural” a certain set of ideas about the role of women, the nature of home, and the ideals of utopia, that are not usually part of the feminist conversation but that I argue can be both progressive and feminist in potential.

Let’s turn first to the sunlit world of women represented by Mary Winchester, Jessica Moore, and Lisa Braeden.   Because we are introduced so briefly to Mary and Jess before they are killed, we don’t know a lot about them, except for what they represent:  their murders represent the catalyst for turning the Winchester men into driven, homeless warriors. They represent the potentiality for home, love and security that is taken away and replaced with a never-ending series of seedy motel rooms and a mobile arsenal in the back of an antique muscle car. In the Djinn’s dream, Dean longed for his mother, her touch, her birthday celebration, the engagement of Jess and Sam, and the beautiful sunshine on the green grass while he mowed the lawn.  What he got instead was a midnight conversation with his dead dad, and a self-inflicted knife wound that woke him up to his own reality.

The fact that Mary and Jess are never fully explored as characters is troubling, yet for me, the idea that they represent home and love to Sam and Dean is not misogynist.  They are victims, but not because they were weak or deserved to die.   They were victims in the tragic sense: their deaths are senseless and random. In actuality they seem like mature, strong and interesting women, if only we had gotten to know them. In misogynistic systems, women’s characters are flattened and limited, so that “pure” characters and “fallen” characters do not have fully-fledged human identities.  I don’t think that “Supernatural” maintains Mary and Jess as pedestal pure, but rather as complex, fully human women we didn’t get a chance to know.

We do get a little more knowledge about love interests Cassie, Lisa, Sarah Blake and Madison the werewolf.  Of all these characters it’s Madison that interests me the least.  She’s a very sexy werewolf and there doesn’t seem to be that much more to it except that Sam is susceptible to her attractiveness.  She does die a noble death – facing her death without complaint when she realizes that she is doomed – so that can be admired. The equation of the sexy woman with the destructive animal – a step toward misogyny – is mitigated by her bravery and humanity when she accepts death as a way to keep from becoming a  beast and killing again. The witch in Malleus Maleficarum who tries to escape the demon by attacking it with a spell makes a similar move – regaining fuller humanity by resolute action in the face of doom.  By facing death bravely or by taking a doomed last stand, these women put themselves exactly in the subject position of the Winchesters.

Jo and Ellen are even more closely positioned as parallel characters to the Winchesters.  Ellen, though not a hunter, has the knowledge of a hunter and gives the boys vital leads and advice. Missouri is also introduced as a wise woman who understands the nature of the supernatural yet survives that knowledge.  Jo is two years younger than Sam and is itching to go out into the world as a hunter, a goal she eventually realizes.  I’ve never understood why there is so much animosity in fandom toward Jo.  She is young, and inexperienced, but she is ready to learn and ready to experience.  To my mind, neither of the Harvelles is a woman limited by the blinders of misogyny, but rather are women making a go of it in the Hunters’ world.

Back to love interests, we see in Cassie a sceptical view of the Winchesters’ world, and in Sarah Blake a more open-minded one.  When Sarah is convinced of the reality of a vengeful spirit, and is ready to work with them to take it on, Dean says to Sam, “Marry that girl”  -- meaning, here’s a woman who is your equal, a potential partner, someone you can be happy with – the kind of woman Cassie didn’t turn out to be. I’m sympathetic toward Cassie: as a sceptic she turns on Dean when he first reveals his identity as a hunter to her, and her scepticism is justified because unlike Sarah she does not see any evidence of the supernatural that we know of. When later she tells Dean that she doesn’t believe things would work out between them, I feel like this is her prerogative.  Dean leads a dangerous and nomadic life.  It would be like being in a relationship with an armed forces serviceman without any of the guarantees or community of that life  -- he could get killed or possessed and she might never even know about it – a rough row to hoe.

Lisa Braeden is another love interest Dean seeks out after he’s made the deal with one year left to live. (My husband always wonders how she has such a nice big house in that gated community on a yoga instructor’s salary....)  We see that she is important to Dean beyond her position as the mother of his possible son when we see her again in the dreamroot vision, clearly representing the same sunlit world of women that his mother and Jess represent to Dean. To me, it is fair that she represents that world to Dean, with her big beautiful house, the elaborate birthday party she throws for her son, her bravery in the face of danger, her love for her son, and above all, the tentative offer she makes to include Dean in that life.  He is forced by his circumstances (the Deal) to reject her offer though it clearly pains him to do so; he falls back on the idea that the role of the Hunter is the only role he is fit for: “this is not my life.”  Dean chooses to dedicate his remaining years to killing as many evil sons of bitches as he possibly can, instead of getting to know Lisa and her son. He exiles himself from the sunny world she represents even as he longs for it.

Let’s turn next to the world of women allies beyond the Harvelles.  We’ve met several women in law enforcement who see, understand, and meet the challenges represented by the Winchesters and their world of Hunting.  Two examples include Deputy Kathleen Hudak, who teams up with Dean so that they can learn the fate of their respective brothers, and Detective Diana Ballard, who teams up with Sam to solve a string of murders that we eventually learn were actually committed by her partner. Both these women are strong and capable law enforcement officers who come to respect the Winchesters’ dedication to Hunting, and are respected by the Winchesters in turn.  Oddly, both these women are faced by threats that are actually not supernatural, but rather stem from brutal men. They end their respective episodes saddened but alive.

Another woman character I enjoy is Lenore, who attempts to lead her family of vampires out of the realm of the supernatural into the realm of sunlight, by convincing them to drink cow’s blood and have dayjobs instead of preying on humans.  She is portrayed in marked contrast to the horrific Hunter gone mad, Gordon, who killed his own sister after she became a vampire. Lenore, though placed in the tragic position of having her family hunted down and destroyed one by one, refuses to allow her bloodthirsty nature as a vampire to triumph over her ethical understanding.   She cleverly arranges the abduction of Sam in order to convince him of her trustworthiness, developing the Winchesters as allies, and opening the eyes of Dean to  the true nature of Gordon, whom Dean had empathized with as a dedicated and self-sacrificing Hunter.   Lenore survives!  And leads her remaining family to a new safe location. Lenore, as a woman, represents a choice away from the darkness of the world of the supernatural, and toward the daylight world of home and family – not a misogynistic, but a women-centered (feminist) outcome.

I’m willing to discuss other woman characters such as Ava, Layla, Tamara, etc. but don’t necessarily think that their identities as women defines their character. Even the two new girls, Bela  and Ruby, though certainly cast as sexy women, do not seem to be woman characters first and foremost.

One more thing before concluding:  the attitude toward Sex on the show. Dean is a sex-positive thinker.  He sees sex as recreation and wants to enjoy it with whatever willing partner he comes across.  I get the impression that Dean would be an enthusiastic, attentive, and respectful partner.   I’d actually be more wary of getting involved with Sam, who seems to have a welter of expectations as to what sex might entail. I think Sam chooses rightly to keep himself reined in, and I believe that the two brothers both respect women as sexual creatures in their own ways – Dean by having a lot of fun, and Sam by staying unentangled. I especially liked Dean’s astonishment in Jus in Bello that the very kind and attractive Nancy is a virgin – he’s like, “no one is a virgin” -- she says she is and very earnestly defends her status as “a choice”.  He seems to respect that and yet conveys his willingness to help her out should she change her mind.   For Dean, it is not whether or not Nancy is a virgin, but whether or not to intentionally sacrifice a human in order to win their battle. His respect for Nancy’s life is not tied to her status as a virgin, but to her identity as a human being (not a demon).

In conclusion, I acknowledge that women are often put into the position of “victim” on the show.  This seems to be a feature of the horror genre.  (Show actually parodies this trope in the Hollywood Babylon episode.)  While Sam and Dean are Heroes, roaming about fighting evil and sacrificing themselves, they have cut themselves off from much of human life, a fact that Sam initially rebelled against, the character of Gordon played out to a horrific extreme, and something Dean is coming to understand and regret.   It is a show about two brothers, something the Show’s creative team strives to keep free of an encumbrance of supporting characters (no matter how much we long for the return of Ellen). I might even posit that the wealth of wincest represents a desire on the part of fandom to create a deeper sense of home for the boys by uniting them into romantic love, since they have denied all attachments to anyone but each other.  The world of love, home and safety has been assigned to women in our patriarchal society, but that world also serves as a utopian model of perfected society if women are allowed to be fully human and men are not always excluded from it by their status as warriors.  In my opinion, the narrative desire of the Winchesters, constantly deferred by the generic demands of serial television, is to fight their way through all the evil of the supernatural and finally win a place in the sunlit home.

Comments

[koosh2012.livejournal.com]

Hi Fannishlish. I swung by this evening in response to your response to my comment on Mary's blog about the "creeping misogyny" I see progressively permeating my favorite show. While my background is extremely eclectic, my more current training has been in anthropology, and it is through this lens, along with my own spiritual interests, that I tend to view and critique Supernatural.

I hear what you're saying and tend to agree with you up to the first couple of S3 episodes, but something's changed. The show used to complexify moral and spiritual issues, but they have more recently come to negatively parody "other" worldviews. It is an interesting coincidence that pagan religions tend to appeal as alternative sources of power for women, and it is precisely these alternative spiritual traditions that the writers of Supernatural have taken it upon themselves to blaspheme in the most arrogant of ways. This is unforgiveable to me on a personal level, and don't think that I'll be getting over the "Christmas" episode anytime soon.... Next, enter MM, wherein modern day witches conspiring with demons vertibly rubber stamps as justified, patriarchal "status quo" interpretations of the burning times. The truth is, women of power, healers, were murdered because they threated colonial power (refrains from going into a diatribe about neocolonialism, let alone historical colonialism). Finally, we choose the name "LILITH" to call the new big bad... The mythical first wife of Adam, who was cast out simply because she refused to be controlled. One person's demon. Another person's freedom fighter! This added to the dehumanizing portrayal of Bela, and the complete absence of substantive female characters, makes me fundamentally question where they're going and what in the world they're doing... Because. Prior to these new "mythology" twists, I was on board with your argument... But now, I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think about what they're consciously defining as evil and taking moral offense to it.

Anyway. That's my full "bitch." Thank you for taking the time to write about this issue. I do understand and appreciate what you're saying. Time will tell, I guess. Perhaps I should know better than to expect anything culturally sensitive from a mass media product. There were reasons I've gone through long periods of avoiding television altogether... Thanks for the analysis, and tipping me to it!

Namaste.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Namaste! I appreciate you reading my essay. I agree with you that Show hasn't treated earth and pagan religion with respect -- I didn't address this in my essay as I see it as a separate though clearly related issue. I guess we saw the first anti-pagan story in season one actually with the evil scarecrow and the sacred tree that the boys burned. I have an inkling that the Show people are trying to go by a "nothing is sacred" rule but haven't really taken into account how these stories are extra offensive because of the history involved. It's not as though a priest who thinks he's an angel, or a preacher's wife who binds the reaper, plays into anti-Christian sentiment as strongly as the anti-witch storyline, or the anti-pagan elements of the "Christmas" episode play into those negative stereotypes. As for Lilith I think of her as a spirit of fire (unwilling to bow to Adam, and so exiled) and the mother of the ifrits (unlike the other demons we've met, who are either fallen angels like Casey believed, or wrecked humans as Ruby claimed) -- I'm interested just because she is a completely different type of being than these other demons, and might have her own agenda. I hope the show people take notice of people's distress at these story elements and turns themselves around!

[koosh2012.livejournal.com]

I didn't address this in my essay as I see it as a separate though clearly related issue.
*smiles* I don't. My biases are the quirks that make me, me! For example, it never occured to me to think of the show as misogynistic until they started goddess bashing! But in my defense, there was a co-occuring demoralization of Bela and marginalization of strong (positive) female characters.

Scarecrow. Yes. I've thought of that too. It didn't bother me the way the later stuff has. I think perhaps because of the Nordic derivation (no accounting for stereotypes, huh?!), along with the purely human intention - I was able to rationalize that the townspeople created the "scarecrow god." It was more the Devi thing in Shadow that raised my eyebrows and rankled my attitude a bit. Knowing what I know about Hinduism (next to nothing), I had a hard time swallowing demonic devas, but I let it slide.

I guess the little things have been just building up, you know? I don't believe in absolute evil, just conflicting positions, and so I have appreciated the show problematizing the concept of evil (Bloodlust, Houses of the Holy, Roadkill and Heart leap to mind). That little speech Meg gave in Shadow, for example, about acting from a position of love and loyalty? I believed her. And I loved the fact that they wrote it in.

In a way, the show has been true to nature. In "war," an arguably male endeavor, opponents become reified. "Not-my-agenda" becomes the definition of evil, and viewpoints become polarized and aggressive. I'd like to see a little more self-reflection, because that is just my way. The Trickster episode was an interesting addition into the mix, highlighting how pain incites blind, cold, hard rage that is dehumanizing.

This is why I try not to analyze or speculate. It becomes contingent upon isolated puzzle pieces that may change color when taken within the larger context of a full "season three." It will be interesting to see how they interpret the Lilith mythology, so I'll do my best to bite my tongue and comfort the gut-level protests I got going on. It is, afterall, just fiction, right?

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

You're awesome. Please don't bite your tongue!

Me, I'm a religious person, which is one reason I like Show so much. I LIKE to be challenged about why a person would have faith or not have it, or whether gods will get involved or not... I definitely don't appreciate Goddess bashing either... I guess I see the show taking potshots at faith in goodness across the board -- but it does come across worse when the potshots are at a religion that has been wrongly persecuted by the Men in Power for so long. I do love how the Trickster came in, and I wish we would see more of some American Gods or Goddesses who might help the Winchesters out..... that just doesn't seem like Kripke's style tho -- he always wants them between a rock and another much harder rock.

[tabaqui]

Huh, very interesting. Really! I have a hard time commenting on meta since if i agree with it, that's pretty much all i feel like i need to say. And i do! Agree, i mean. Considering the compression of time that a tv show *must* endure, it's impossible to get to know most of the characters on the show in any depth. It took a number of episodes to really 'get' Bobby, and Ellen, and Jo, and so i think it's kind of disingenuous to complain that 'victim x' from 'show 12' didn't get a life story and 300 lines. It just isn't *possible*.

And while it's true that a lot of women are victims on the show, so are a lot of men, starting with the pilot and the survivors of the Winchester show. Sam and Dean lost their home, their mother, the lives they could have conceivably had - John pretty much lost everything but his crusade. It's not the same, obviously, as Mary literally losing her life, but the damage is overwhelming and life-long - a sort of lingering death for John, at least.

I hate that people feel the need to count the female victims and hold it up as some sort of 'proof' - would they rather all the victims were men? Thus eliminating any women at all? How, exactly, do you have peril and danger without *someone* being a victim?

Blah. I get frustrated.

Reading the comments, i also just wanted to say....i guess i don't much care about the 'bashing' of religions on the show. They went, monster-wise, with myths, folktales, legends and 'urban' legends. Hookman and the 'monster in the closet' and 'bad Santa'... The 'witches' in MM were the kind of witches that were described in folk tales of them. They sold their souls to the devil in order to get the powers they have. If you ask most people about a 'witch', this is still the kind of character that springs to mind - Snow White's evil stepmother, or the witch in Sleeping Beauty. Is it accurate to what *we*, modern people, think of as witches? No.

But it's accurate to the *historical* idea of a witch, the 'talked about in whispers' idea, and that's what the show is going for. I find other witches on television - Willow, for example, from Buffy, and the witches in 'Practical Magic' to be more annoying and irritating than the ones in SPN. Yes, if you're a pagan or a Wiccan, you too can float pencils and shoot lighting and entrap men with love spells!
Blech.

Hrmmm. That all up there might not be terribly coherent or anything, so sorry. And i know, too, that this is old and you might not even care anymore, and that's cool. :)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

thanks for reading and commenting! tho this post is kind of prompted by something from one of your other responses, anyway thanks for prompting my thinky!

I have new thoughts on malleus maleficarum since we just rewatched it-- tho not, as you say, in terms of witchcraft as a valid religion (which it is) as opposed to the folkloric witches they face here -- but more in terms of the language. Here is where Dean calls Ruby a skank and a bitch, and Ruby saves his life twice and tells him to stop calling her a bitch. She kind of comes out on top with that one.

The other word that gets tossed around a lot is whore: the witches are whores because they entered into the service of a demon. It does seem to me that a whore is a specifically feminized position. For example the demon doesn't call the witches her slaves, a gender neutral term, even though she owns them. At the same time, whoring implies a certain amount of agency on the part of the whore -- the women chose to enslave themselves, and through the word whore, the demon's evil pleasure in their servitude is made apparent.

I think it's important to notice when words like whore are thrown around, but to me in this story the equation of female with whore is not really being made. What I see is another critique of middle Americans with the wool pulled over their eyes, the shallowness of their desires and the contrast with what the Winchester boys know is really going on. And then this idea of the witches as whores deepens the horror of their story and sets up the sexual overtones in how Ruby attempts to seduce her way back into the demon's good grace, in order to try and stab; her; then, in the end, it adds another facet to Dean's story -- he thought he was making an heroic sacrifice when he dealt with the crossroads demon -- he didn't realize he was setting himself up to become a whore, owned by demons, at the whim of their pleasure, and eventually to have his very nature sullied.

So yeah, show was throwing around words like skank and whore, but on the one hand, Ruby made Dean look bad for his crap talk by saving his life twice; and on the other hand, the word whore actually deepens the overtones and horrors of the story, as least in my opinion.

You'll see in another post my reactions to the book, Reading Lolita in Tehran. In a culture like the Iran that Nafisi describes, every woman is considered to be a potential whore, watched closely in case she is wearing makeup, laughing too loud, displaying her hair, making eye contact with men, etc. So I definitely see the danger in equating every woman with a whore. In the episode, the wife who dies at the beginning is not a whore -- actually, it's her lame lame husband who gets her killed by having an affair with a woman he then throws over, who turns out to be a witch. So actually not every woman is a whore. Even Ruby, who maybe once put herself in that position, has taken back her agency -- she's a demon now, but it seems like her agenda is set by herself alone.

Yay! I've been wanting to think through this and your post pushed me along -- my teal deer and I thank you!

[tabaqui]

Ah, very thought-provoking...

I guess i didn't take exception to the whole 'whore' thing because - unless my memory fails me, which it often does - the first person to call anyone a whore was Tammy!Demon. She said something like 'all witches are whores', i think - wish i could remember! But she made it clear to me - or rather, what she said after that - was she meant it almost literally, that Ruby-as-human had offered herself up to be used in any way in exchange for power. So it didn't bother me because Tammy!Demon wasn't saying 'all women are whores, argh!!' but that the women who'd made bargains with her were, in the literal but also figurative sense.

And i never had a problem with Dean calling Ruby a name - although skank didn't seem particularly applicable, as she never came on to them in any way - because wearing a woman's body or not, Ruby is a *demon*. She's evil - she's one of the evil creatures that Dean has hunted all his life, and he *hates* them, as he said in...Fresh Blood. *I think FB, after they leave Gordon tied up?* Anyway - he hates the evil things he hunts and kills, he hates Ruby for, as he sees it, twisting up the truth, lying to him and his brother, trying to make his brother make bad choices and possibly damn himself. Even if she *did* help them - save them - he still doesn't trust her, doesn't want her around, doesn't *like* her, and therefore calls her names because that's what he *does*. That's what most people do when they don't like someone - they call them a name, either something mild like 'jerk' or something hardcore, like 'motherfucker'. TV censorship being what it is, we get 'skank' and 'bitch'.

Hell, *i* call people names, and it doesn't mean i hate women or men, it means i find that person annoying or ignorant or downright offensive.

What's happening in Iran and other Muslim countries who have gone uber-fundamental scares me, sickens me, makes me rage. I hate that seemingly all patriarchal, organized religions seem to *hate* and fear woman, and happily crush them at every turn. It's sickening, and ultimately it will ruin that culture and that country, in my mind, if it's not changed.

I know my brain doesn't always work well, but i don't think there have been a ton of women who were brainless 'damsels' in SPN. Even the 'victims', when give the chance, like Charlie in 'Bloody Mary', do their best to fight.

I really like these kinds of discussion, but am never sure if i'm really getting my point across in a coherent manner.
:)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I think you and I are in agreement!

I like trying to work this stuff out and it's always fun to have someone else to bounce ideas off of.

Cheers!