Meta on 3.2 "The Kids are All Right"
Jun. 3rd, 2008 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fannishlissI finally have a response to the recent disturbances about misogyny in Supernatural. (Yet, this essay does not address gendered slurs .....still to come, maybe!)
I started a long discussion that devolved into why I like Led Zeppelin and the blues, and why Dean seems to bottom to girls that he likes, so I clearly realized I still didn’t know what I wanted to say, and I didn’t post it.
Then I rewatched 3.2 “The Kids are Alright” and I realized I did have a point to make.
I actually do think there are some differences between chauvinism, sexism, and misogyny. I define misogyny as a systematic hatred of women inherent in social systems; for example, beating a woman if she opens her mouth, or beating her even if she doesn’t open her mouth, is misogyny, because the beater feels justified by the prevalent idea that “women should keep their mouths shut” and “it’s no worse to beat a woman than to beat a child or an animal” (thus animal abuse is often a good indicator of domestic violence). Sexism is a related problematic set of beliefs, usually without the fear and hatred of misogyny, but lumping all women together into a homogeneous group based on their sex alone – women are different from men, can’t do things as well as men, like certain things and don’t like other things, should make certain life choices or be kept out of certain occupations because they are women. For example, it is sexist to deny a fast-running girl a position as a running back on a football team because “she might get hurt,” or “she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the training,” or because “everybody would feel uncomfortable” –actually the last position veers over into the hating/fearing land of misogyny since it argues that men and women can’t feel comfortable together. Similarly to keep women out of the armed forces was sexist, but to feel that they would damage the overall morale is misogynist. Chauvinism, in my view, is a more personal take on sexism/misogyny as evidenced in the behavior of certain men, for example, it’s difficult to converse with a male chauvinist who assumes he is so much more experienced or intelligent than you, or that he has a right to make sexual advances towards you, or use sexualized language towards you because you are a woman, babe. It’s hard to know if he’s more sexist or more misogynist, but it’s still clear that he’s a jerk.
With these terms that’s how I see it, though language is always alive and usage will always vary from person to person.
I love the example of “The Kids are Alright” to talk about Supernatural and misogyny because I personally really like the episode yet I can see why people would find it disturbing or even misogynist. I’m going to try to be super-methodical in my discussion. (Please let me know if you’d like to hear more about Led Zeppelin or Starla.)
Ok, first of all, the episode was written by Sera Gamble. Women can, of course, internalize misogyny, or there’s no way the men could have kept us down (or in these god-damned heels) for these millennia. But I do want to give Sera a certain amount of credit, as an intelligent, self-determining, and highly educated woman – I bet she’s read a book or two on feminism, would probably call herself a feminist, and probably would not call Hillary a bitch (tho I peg Sera as an Obama voter).
So, given that Sera probably did not set out to write a woman-hating episode – what is going on?
My contention is that the episode is about mothers – an easy contention to support, as all the female characters we meet (except the little girl, tho see more on that below) are mothers. This in itself could be construed as sexist—the idea that a woman’s life trajectory inevitably should lead to motherhood. But furthermore, I contend that the episode when read as a whole, actually critiques repressive ideas about women’s lives, offering a satirical portrait that undercuts those ideas. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and posit that as a story editor for the show, Sera’s satirical take on American life is part of the overarching vision of the show and that many of the episodes should be read through this lens. This essay, tho, is just about “The Kids are All Right.”
First let’s examine who Lisa Braeden is and what she says and does. Lisa was a Dean kind of girl – wild – till she became a mom. As a wild girl, Lisa enjoys equality with Dean – she lived the exact same lifestyle as he did, 8 or 9 years ago. But now she is a mom. This has changed her. I see this as less of a sexist assumption and more of a fact – motherhood will change a person. She’s protective of her home (Dean kind of presses his way in) and of her son (she yells at Dean for teaching her son violence) and tells him to stay away. She also seems to be doing very well financially as a single mom, with a big house in a gated community. Dean again comes with the fake credit card and tries to get her to go away (to escape the changelings) appearing to be a true stalker. Anyone would tell him to get the hell out. Then at the end, she realizes that he has rescued her and Ben, and she is grateful and gives him the unscripted kiss.
Lisa seems to be a pretty together person, living in a nice house, able to rent a moon bounce for her kid’s party, with a great relationship with her son, and confident enough to tell a relative stranger (Dean) how she expects him to behave (leave them alone). This is not a misogynistic portrait of a woman. Additionally, Lisa has become a mom on her own terms, and seems to define the role according to her own expectations – she offers to let Dean stay for a while – that is, she is in control of her own life and could make a place for Dean in it. Lisa genuinely likes Dean, once she understands what he is about—a mark in his favor.
The second mother we meet is the one with the changeling daughter, whose husband is killed by the circular saw in the first scene. Faced with the death of her husband and the uncanny knowledge that her daughter is no longer her daughter, she talks to Lisa about it, but Lisa doesn’t believe her, and in fact Lisa shuts her up. Lisa tries to be understanding and helpful, but the woman’s experience is outside Lisa’s experience. The mother becomes more and more desperate, as her daughter relentlessly makes demands on her and in a horrible parody of the nursing child, is literally sucking her dry. She tries to drown the monster child (like the woman in white of the pilot episode), but fails.
This mom is also not portrayed in a misogynistic manner. In fact, as viewers we are led to sympathize with her predicament. Her situation actually reveals some of the problems faced by women in her situation—an overly insular existence (symbolized by the gated community) where acquaintances never become trusted friends, and a life completely defined by her role as mommy (unlike Lisa, who according to Dean, was a yoga instructor).
Ok then, what about the changeling mother and the creepy kids? Here is an interesting snarl of ideas for you to ponder.
I’d like to argue, that although we instantly read the changeling mother as a villain, a monster, evil – there is some indication that she is more complicated than that. Isn’t it arguable that we actually understand more of her motivations than we realize at first? Unlike demons, who rejoice in pure evil, the changeling mother simply wants to reproduce and rear her young – unfortunately she and her young prey on humans. The changeling mother is like the ravening wolf of the old Grimm’s fairy tale. We know now that wolves are intelligent, noble animals with a complicated family structure – but we used to just shoot them because we were afraid they would eat us. Sam and Dean hunt and destroy the monster mother because she and her kids are in fact eating the people in the community, and therefore fair game. So the monster mother is a bit sympathetic. On the other hand, the mother is the realtor! -- actively recruiting people to move in, and counting on the fact they won’t compare notes. She’s like the embodied evil of a gated community – isolating women and sucking them dry.
You could say that the whole episode is a satire of the suburban middle-class lifestyle and what it can do to women – lull them with a big house instead of community, and make their children into monsters that do little more than suck them dry. The way the episode works symbolically, by casting the monster woman as the realtor, and locating her nest in yet another new house under construction, this reading is hinted at fairly strongly.
Dean is attracted to Lisa but at the same time he is unnerved by the gated community. As an outsider, he is able to read the story the folks living there don’t catch on to; and he and Sam notice the looks in the eyes of the creepy kids.
Dean and Sam move on, but Lisa and the other moms are reunited with their kids. Supernatural creates the gated community in Cicero, Indiana, as a kind of women’s paradise compared to the lives of the Winchesters. At the same time it reveals a deadly serpent lurking there, one which would convince the women to allow their big pretty houses to divide them, or to let their roles as mothers define them to the exclusion of the other joys and challenges life has to offer. Lisa, though she didn’t fully understand her friend’s plea for help, in is control of her life and has avoided that serpent of division and isolation ---she invited Dean Winchester to stay awhile.
***
OK I’m gonna post this quick before I start picking it to pieces!
I started a long discussion that devolved into why I like Led Zeppelin and the blues, and why Dean seems to bottom to girls that he likes, so I clearly realized I still didn’t know what I wanted to say, and I didn’t post it.
Then I rewatched 3.2 “The Kids are Alright” and I realized I did have a point to make.
I actually do think there are some differences between chauvinism, sexism, and misogyny. I define misogyny as a systematic hatred of women inherent in social systems; for example, beating a woman if she opens her mouth, or beating her even if she doesn’t open her mouth, is misogyny, because the beater feels justified by the prevalent idea that “women should keep their mouths shut” and “it’s no worse to beat a woman than to beat a child or an animal” (thus animal abuse is often a good indicator of domestic violence). Sexism is a related problematic set of beliefs, usually without the fear and hatred of misogyny, but lumping all women together into a homogeneous group based on their sex alone – women are different from men, can’t do things as well as men, like certain things and don’t like other things, should make certain life choices or be kept out of certain occupations because they are women. For example, it is sexist to deny a fast-running girl a position as a running back on a football team because “she might get hurt,” or “she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the training,” or because “everybody would feel uncomfortable” –actually the last position veers over into the hating/fearing land of misogyny since it argues that men and women can’t feel comfortable together. Similarly to keep women out of the armed forces was sexist, but to feel that they would damage the overall morale is misogynist. Chauvinism, in my view, is a more personal take on sexism/misogyny as evidenced in the behavior of certain men, for example, it’s difficult to converse with a male chauvinist who assumes he is so much more experienced or intelligent than you, or that he has a right to make sexual advances towards you, or use sexualized language towards you because you are a woman, babe. It’s hard to know if he’s more sexist or more misogynist, but it’s still clear that he’s a jerk.
With these terms that’s how I see it, though language is always alive and usage will always vary from person to person.
I love the example of “The Kids are Alright” to talk about Supernatural and misogyny because I personally really like the episode yet I can see why people would find it disturbing or even misogynist. I’m going to try to be super-methodical in my discussion. (Please let me know if you’d like to hear more about Led Zeppelin or Starla.)
Ok, first of all, the episode was written by Sera Gamble. Women can, of course, internalize misogyny, or there’s no way the men could have kept us down (or in these god-damned heels) for these millennia. But I do want to give Sera a certain amount of credit, as an intelligent, self-determining, and highly educated woman – I bet she’s read a book or two on feminism, would probably call herself a feminist, and probably would not call Hillary a bitch (tho I peg Sera as an Obama voter).
So, given that Sera probably did not set out to write a woman-hating episode – what is going on?
My contention is that the episode is about mothers – an easy contention to support, as all the female characters we meet (except the little girl, tho see more on that below) are mothers. This in itself could be construed as sexist—the idea that a woman’s life trajectory inevitably should lead to motherhood. But furthermore, I contend that the episode when read as a whole, actually critiques repressive ideas about women’s lives, offering a satirical portrait that undercuts those ideas. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and posit that as a story editor for the show, Sera’s satirical take on American life is part of the overarching vision of the show and that many of the episodes should be read through this lens. This essay, tho, is just about “The Kids are All Right.”
First let’s examine who Lisa Braeden is and what she says and does. Lisa was a Dean kind of girl – wild – till she became a mom. As a wild girl, Lisa enjoys equality with Dean – she lived the exact same lifestyle as he did, 8 or 9 years ago. But now she is a mom. This has changed her. I see this as less of a sexist assumption and more of a fact – motherhood will change a person. She’s protective of her home (Dean kind of presses his way in) and of her son (she yells at Dean for teaching her son violence) and tells him to stay away. She also seems to be doing very well financially as a single mom, with a big house in a gated community. Dean again comes with the fake credit card and tries to get her to go away (to escape the changelings) appearing to be a true stalker. Anyone would tell him to get the hell out. Then at the end, she realizes that he has rescued her and Ben, and she is grateful and gives him the unscripted kiss.
Lisa seems to be a pretty together person, living in a nice house, able to rent a moon bounce for her kid’s party, with a great relationship with her son, and confident enough to tell a relative stranger (Dean) how she expects him to behave (leave them alone). This is not a misogynistic portrait of a woman. Additionally, Lisa has become a mom on her own terms, and seems to define the role according to her own expectations – she offers to let Dean stay for a while – that is, she is in control of her own life and could make a place for Dean in it. Lisa genuinely likes Dean, once she understands what he is about—a mark in his favor.
The second mother we meet is the one with the changeling daughter, whose husband is killed by the circular saw in the first scene. Faced with the death of her husband and the uncanny knowledge that her daughter is no longer her daughter, she talks to Lisa about it, but Lisa doesn’t believe her, and in fact Lisa shuts her up. Lisa tries to be understanding and helpful, but the woman’s experience is outside Lisa’s experience. The mother becomes more and more desperate, as her daughter relentlessly makes demands on her and in a horrible parody of the nursing child, is literally sucking her dry. She tries to drown the monster child (like the woman in white of the pilot episode), but fails.
This mom is also not portrayed in a misogynistic manner. In fact, as viewers we are led to sympathize with her predicament. Her situation actually reveals some of the problems faced by women in her situation—an overly insular existence (symbolized by the gated community) where acquaintances never become trusted friends, and a life completely defined by her role as mommy (unlike Lisa, who according to Dean, was a yoga instructor).
Ok then, what about the changeling mother and the creepy kids? Here is an interesting snarl of ideas for you to ponder.
I’d like to argue, that although we instantly read the changeling mother as a villain, a monster, evil – there is some indication that she is more complicated than that. Isn’t it arguable that we actually understand more of her motivations than we realize at first? Unlike demons, who rejoice in pure evil, the changeling mother simply wants to reproduce and rear her young – unfortunately she and her young prey on humans. The changeling mother is like the ravening wolf of the old Grimm’s fairy tale. We know now that wolves are intelligent, noble animals with a complicated family structure – but we used to just shoot them because we were afraid they would eat us. Sam and Dean hunt and destroy the monster mother because she and her kids are in fact eating the people in the community, and therefore fair game. So the monster mother is a bit sympathetic. On the other hand, the mother is the realtor! -- actively recruiting people to move in, and counting on the fact they won’t compare notes. She’s like the embodied evil of a gated community – isolating women and sucking them dry.
You could say that the whole episode is a satire of the suburban middle-class lifestyle and what it can do to women – lull them with a big house instead of community, and make their children into monsters that do little more than suck them dry. The way the episode works symbolically, by casting the monster woman as the realtor, and locating her nest in yet another new house under construction, this reading is hinted at fairly strongly.
Dean is attracted to Lisa but at the same time he is unnerved by the gated community. As an outsider, he is able to read the story the folks living there don’t catch on to; and he and Sam notice the looks in the eyes of the creepy kids.
Dean and Sam move on, but Lisa and the other moms are reunited with their kids. Supernatural creates the gated community in Cicero, Indiana, as a kind of women’s paradise compared to the lives of the Winchesters. At the same time it reveals a deadly serpent lurking there, one which would convince the women to allow their big pretty houses to divide them, or to let their roles as mothers define them to the exclusion of the other joys and challenges life has to offer. Lisa, though she didn’t fully understand her friend’s plea for help, in is control of her life and has avoided that serpent of division and isolation ---she invited Dean Winchester to stay awhile.
***
OK I’m gonna post this quick before I start picking it to pieces!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-03 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 09:04 am (UTC)Our other glimpse inside the head of Dean was in WIAWSNB, where he pointedly did not end up as some kind of swinger in Vegas or whatever, but in his fondest dreams he was back home in Lawrence with his mom, with a cool, strong girlfriend (who does have a good job), and Sam getting married to Jess. Yup, Dean pretty much REALLY REALLY WANTS to settle down but his drive to do the job (also protect Sammy) is just too great.
Ugh chains!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:17 pm (UTC)I like this meta on the show - very interesting. I'm deeply, deeply puzzled by the people who scream that the show, the characters, the writers are 'misogynistic' - i think your definition of the word is pretty much the 'real' one, and i just fail to see that on the show.
I also try hard not to pick my few favorite shows to pieces, since i like 'em 'cause i like 'em, and anything made for TV by a committee is gonna have its flaws.
Cool stuff! I think you're pretty much spot on, here, about all of it.
:)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 08:26 pm (UTC)