Supernatural and the b-word
May. 25th, 2008 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opera142Admittedly, I'm not much bothered by casual use of the word "bitch". But, I understand other people are, and I guess, more than anything I tag it as a politeness thing. It's usually not nice to call people bitches, and it's unnecessary. So lately, I've been much more a tourist in the land of Supernatural fan discussion than someone there for work.
I was surprized, though, by how horribly classist both sides of the debate sounded, and that feeling was compounded by my belief that the Winchesters are not working class.
Their pre-event house provides disproves that notion. Dean wasn't present in the nursery, which suggests a home with at least 3 bedrooms. The nursery was decorated with nursery-specific items, meaning even if they were Dean's leftovers, the was adequate money available at Dean's birth to buy nursery items, and there was adequate money to buy new age-appropiate furnishings as he grew. This isn't always the case in working class homes.
Pops Winchester, pre-events, had the education and social skills to hold a job that provided income enough for that at-least 3-bedroom home, and to feed and clothe and etc., a family of four. Sure, mom likely contributed, and if that's not the case (as explained by episodes I haven't seen yet), I'm eat my serving of crow--grilled, please. ETA: see comments below. Even post-event, the Winchesters prove they are able to gain (eta: or keep) items of value (a classic car, a college education as two examples)and maintain them. They are *choosing* a depressed income in order to chase higher goals. This is a much, much different existence than the paycheck to paycheck living of working or lower classes.
Obviously, through choice or not, the Winchesters' class standing has fallen. But I really hope no one is seriously taking a message of 'as the money goes, so does the class/core values/basic manners' out of that. And, I won't even go into the theory that rudeness and misogyny are rampant across all income classes.
To me, this is an issue of permissiveness. Dean gets away with calling females nasty names. There is no female characters to stop or chastise him. And to overdose on meta, not only does Dean live in culture that allows him to say and get away having said "bitch", Supernatural's writers/producer's/network live in a culture that lets them get away with using words like "bitch". And while I haven't yet seen the season in which Dean steady drops the b-word, so I can't comment on whether or not it's acceptable use, I can comment on the CW network.
Recently, CW dropped its #1-rated show, Smackdown, because it wanted to focus on the young, female demographic. Dean calls women rude names, but in theory he doesn't gain anything from it-- well, fiscally anyway. CW allows the use of rude names, then expects viewship and earnings to follow. I'd rather deal-- in my life-- with a jerk I can confront or ignore, than false courting by a corporation.
I was surprized, though, by how horribly classist both sides of the debate sounded, and that feeling was compounded by my belief that the Winchesters are not working class.
Their pre-event house provides disproves that notion. Dean wasn't present in the nursery, which suggests a home with at least 3 bedrooms. The nursery was decorated with nursery-specific items, meaning even if they were Dean's leftovers, the was adequate money available at Dean's birth to buy nursery items, and there was adequate money to buy new age-appropiate furnishings as he grew. This isn't always the case in working class homes.
Pops Winchester, pre-events, had the education and social skills to hold a job that provided income enough for that at-least 3-bedroom home, and to feed and clothe and etc., a family of four. Sure, mom likely contributed, and if that's not the case (as explained by episodes I haven't seen yet), I'm eat my serving of crow--grilled, please. ETA: see comments below. Even post-event, the Winchesters prove they are able to gain (eta: or keep) items of value (a classic car, a college education as two examples)and maintain them. They are *choosing* a depressed income in order to chase higher goals. This is a much, much different existence than the paycheck to paycheck living of working or lower classes.
Obviously, through choice or not, the Winchesters' class standing has fallen. But I really hope no one is seriously taking a message of 'as the money goes, so does the class/core values/basic manners' out of that. And, I won't even go into the theory that rudeness and misogyny are rampant across all income classes.
To me, this is an issue of permissiveness. Dean gets away with calling females nasty names. There is no female characters to stop or chastise him. And to overdose on meta, not only does Dean live in culture that allows him to say and get away having said "bitch", Supernatural's writers/producer's/network live in a culture that lets them get away with using words like "bitch". And while I haven't yet seen the season in which Dean steady drops the b-word, so I can't comment on whether or not it's acceptable use, I can comment on the CW network.
Recently, CW dropped its #1-rated show, Smackdown, because it wanted to focus on the young, female demographic. Dean calls women rude names, but in theory he doesn't gain anything from it-- well, fiscally anyway. CW allows the use of rude names, then expects viewship and earnings to follow. I'd rather deal-- in my life-- with a jerk I can confront or ignore, than false courting by a corporation.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 10:08 pm (UTC)Hey Opera! Hope you are having a nice Memorial Day weekend. I got in my car yesterday and drove 800 miles west and am back in my old stomping ground. (A person I worked with here is retiring.) So I am sitting in a cafe here enjoying the nice weather after taking a sentimental tour.
About the Winchesters' class, I can agree with you up to a point. John Winchester was middle-class. In the pilot, we see that he owns a nice home. In a later episode we discover he was the co-owner of a garage. It was John (not Dean or Sam) who bought the Impala, and he bought it in the good old middle-class days before his home burned down on Nov. 2, 1983. We know this because in the pilot we see John sitting on the hood of the Impala watching his house burn down. We have no idea if Mary worked outside the home; we only meet her the night she is killed.
Sam and Dean weren't raised middle-class. Their dad abandoned his middle-class life when Dean was 4 and Sam was 6 months old. Sam and Dean were raised all over the country in motel rooms and the back seat of the car. It's canon that they had a grim, impoverished childhood. In two eps we see the boys fending for themselves in squalid motel rooms with hardly anything to eat. Sam and Dean weren't raised middle-class or working class. They were among the very poor.
They couldn't afford a college education for Sam; it is said several times in canon that Sam won a full scholarship.
John was a middle-class man who chose to be poor in pursuit of higher ideals. The boys were just plain poor. Sam and Dean had the ability to work their way back into the middle class that John abandoned, but now they have sacrificed that possibility in pursuit of higher ideals.
Anyway, my two cents. I am off now. Have a great rest of the weekend.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 10:30 pm (UTC)Much has been explained, and I'll have to re-adjust *some* of my stance, though I still stand by my original theory that if they wouldn't necessarily have working class mentality just because their income bracket changed.
Now, the idea that they suffered neglect and probably had a higher dosage than normal of interaction with "fringe"-types probably goes further toward explaning behavior than money or misogyny issues.
Enjoy your vacation!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 05:17 am (UTC)I don't totally disagree with you. It could be said that John imparted his middle-class values to the boys. But I don't personally think so; it seems to me that really he imparted Marine Corps values to the boys. The boys seem to hold classic military values.
I don't see how they could have a working class mentality, because they weren't raised among the working class. They were drifters and they didn't see their dad hold a long-term job. They might have picked up certain norms and values from the public schools they attended. Strangely enough it's never been suggested that John home-schooled them (or pretended to the authorities that he home-schooled them).
I'll be really curious to hear more of your thoughts. I assume you are slowly working through the DVDs....
no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 07:33 am (UTC)Yes. Yes yes yes. "Fuck", "shit", "asshole", etc, are ALL words that would be in Dean's vocabulary. Unfortunately, "bitch" is the only one he can actually use. Is that acceptable? No. But it's an overall issue with language, with censors, with culture. Saying Dean is sexist for overusing the word "bitch" is kinda missing the forest for the tree.
To veer back to your original point, which is classism. It has been a serious trend to view the Winchesters as far lower class than they really are. There's been borderline wank over this. Those who see the Winchesters as near subsistence level versus those who are like "uh how about a big fat NO". Classism remains a giant blind spot in fandom, something very rarely mentioned and the privilege of which hardly anybody will call somebody else on, especially when compared to similar discussions on race.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 01:14 pm (UTC)I guess I was just struck on how equally common it seems to be in Supernatural when compared to wrestling. With wrestling, we have so little to work with, that Supernatural seemed to me to be overflowing with clues and outright declarations of what I'm going to refer to generically as background.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-27 04:57 pm (UTC)This probably amuses me far more than it should given that I'm a survivor the Rose-fen v Martha-fen wars where one side claim racism is the reason the other fen hate their favourite character and the other side claim classism.