Hanging Out in the Subtext, Where It's Cool and Shady

When not demon hunting, Sam and Dean moonlight at 
Abercrombie & Fitch

I love Supernatural. You see it's almost time for the season finale and I’m a little giddy with anticipation. And anxiety, because every now and then instead of a pocketful of wonderful you get a scrap of used hankie. But I love love love paranormal stuff that is kinda scary but not enough to make me sleep with the light on. Supernatural has great characters. The hunky monster hunting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester. Bobby, the ornery mentor/father figure/buddy fellow hunter (he says things like “idgit” - how can you not like that?) Castiel, the angel who rebelled and threw in his lot with humankind. Wraiths, demons, vampires, angels, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Lucifer - what a guest list!. At its best the writing is snappy, with dialogue that makes you laugh with delight. Spiritual matters, needless to say, are frequently touched upon: Where is God and is he on our side? How do you combat evil? How do you handle the evil in yourself? Themes such as the value of family and friendship, trust and betrayal, courage and sacrifice figure prominently. Usually the show doesn't take itself too seriously.  It’s just a big kettle of wonderful.

But really, the best part? It’s so gay. It’s a big gay party every week. Unlike Glee or Modern Family there are no actual gay characters, but it's still really gay in a sly wink and nudge kind of way.

Fanfiction is a heartening proletariat genre - people take possession of the stories they love and rework them, elaborating on what interests them. Slash fiction, which pairs popular same-sex characters, is a big ol' online playground. There are forums and places to post rather embarrassing stories, and places to park even more embarrassing art. There are a lot of people out there making up gay story lines for the characters of Supernatural, ready to pounce on any look, gesture or dialogue that seems suspect.

You might think that a major mainstream TV show would be a bit freaked out and pretty much ignore all these fans teasing out the strands of gay in their creation. But naw, they're down with it. I mean, the writers aren’t going to let the characters hook up in the story, this being the subtext and not the actual plot, but the writers and cast seem to get a kick out of their fan’s obsessive enthusiasm and deliberately invoke it. In Supernatural, for instance, Dean and Sam are also characters in a comic book series (written by a prophet, no less; yeah this show frequently goes meta). In one episode Sam and Dean end up at a fan convention devoted to their fictional characters where they are surprised and a bit flustered to hear a panel announced on “The Homoerotic Subtext of Supernatural.” And all the fangirls go “Squeee!”

Castiel and Dean share a moment

Besides the fans who pair the brothers themselves in a subgenre called "Wincest" (um, yeah, not reeeally in tune with that), there are those who favor Dean and the angel Castiel (damn right, too). I don’t know what the writers originally intended, but they’ve obviously decided to go with the flow of sentiment, helpfully including double-entendres and pointed banter between the two of them, and somehow Dean and Castiel exchange the longest gazes in history, and Dean always, always looks at Castiel’s lips. It’s a little weird, actually, and I always wonder if the actor playing Dean is completely aware of it. In any case, there's enough chemistry between the actors to be super swoony.

Here's a fine example of a slash video by a Dean/Castiel (Destiel) fan.This person has combed the cannon for those suggestive moments, massaged the story with some rather clever editing, and given an appropriate soundtrack ("Halo" was another song favored by Destiel enthusiasts). Note the little part at the end where the actor playing Dean (Jensen Ackles) explicitly (or maybe I should say "suggestively") gives a nod to the mad Destiel fantasists. I just had to show this even though it gives you a glimpse of how much time I waste on nonsense.

The demon Crowley claims a soul.

Oh, and there’s a demon named Crowley who removes souls via lip-lock. So if you want to make a deal with the devil, you get to exchange spit. I’m a wee bit surprised that Supernatural showed this in action, but I guess it was ok’d because no hot men were involved. In fact, there’s a bit of an eww factor. 

Of course Dean and Castiel are never, ever going to get together on screen. Dean did romance a female angel at one point, so we know angels can get their freak on. But Dean is a real guy's guy, who would never in a million years consider the possibility of being gay. He's all about the ladies. And that's the point, of course, that's the fun. The writers of Supernatural didn't start out writing about an angel and human in love, but somehow with the dialogue and the chemistry between the actors, that story bleeds through the existing one, and then the fans hijacked the story, and because of the Internet, they have a rather surprising amount of influence.

Angels are completely baffled by ties.

I read somewhere (yeah, I'm not going to win any awards for source references) that women write the majority of slash fanfiction. Probably somewhere there’s a treatise on why this is the case. I think women get a kick out of breaking the heteronormative narrative through the story lines of the men, the ones put in charge of the plot. In Supernatural the women tend to be demon superbitches. It's a hunter's world. Well, you think you’re in control? Hah! you don’t even know you have the hots for each other.

Found here, somewhere: http://onetouchspark.livejournal.com/

So you go, girls (and everyone else writing this stuff). Subvert the dominant paradigm.

God has Left the Building

“And I love the idea that the viewer goes through a similar process; because there's something so sexy about treasure, something so alluring and elusive about this fantasy of finding gold. And to some degree, you have to engage in what part of us lives in this fantasy, and what part of us is willing to see the other thing that's occurring; because we all want the fantasy. But there's always something more.” Quote from Darius Marder, directory of the documentary Loot.

The second sentence of this statement really struck me. This documentary is, I gather, about two men who, following war, buried treasures in different parts of the world, and in their old age they meet up with someone who leads them on a journey to recover it. I haven’t seen it yet, and I’m not sure I will like it, but from what I’ve read, the treasure hunt uncovers all sorts of things besides treasure.

What is a fantasy trying to tell us? The things I find alluring are not just about the object themselves. Obviously. I touched on that in my last post, how my fascination with this angel character reflects my own struggles with faith. Dear Husband might say I am rationalizing the fact that I think the actor is super attractive. But why do we latch onto celebrities in the first place? We all know it is more to do with our own desires than the actual person. The actor is beautiful, beautiful in a heart in the throat sort of way. But I’ve seen him all season without giving him a second thought. It wasn’t until Castiel became important that I found him alluring.

I develop short-run obsessions with characters, and in turn with the actors who play them. I obsess because they embody some issue or quality or need. Lie to Me and House: Dr. Lightman and Dr. House see through lies to the truth. They know when you're bullshitting. How desirable and painful at the same time. I wish someone would cut through my lies, and I tell myself plenty, and I tell others plenty. I would never in a million years have thought Tim Roth was attractive if he didn’t play this particular character. It’s all mirrors and glamour, in the old sense of the word glamour.

I’ve had these passionate interludes with fictional characters (and books themselves, too) for as long as I can remember. I’m sure others do, too. At times the experience of reading a really good book, the kind that stays with you through life, is a lot like infatuation. I have read books that made me breathless and tremble with excitement, oblivious to everyone at first, and then mad to tell everyone all about my beloved.

I think first of Brideshead Revisited, which may be indelibly ingrained in my psyche. I was in love with that book. With Sebastian and Oxford and the almost too rich, elegiac prose. There’s a line in the book about being in love with love, which is pretty much what I experienced. But then there is the theme of God drawing us in with an unseen hook and an unseen thread. There was a miniseries, and the actor who played Sebastian embodied the character so perfectly, that I was smitten with him as well.

Other fictional loves:

Sherlock Holmes: The allure of the unavailable.

Nabokov’s Real Life of Sebastian Knight: How much of the pursuit of someone else is a study of ourselves? What kinds of games can you play with reality and with words?

Raskolnikov: What do you do if you do the unforgivable? What is repentance?

Louis in the Ann Rice books: How do you live if you loath your very essence? What do you pin your hopes on?

Sydney Carton: Redemption.

Sometimes I am the character, sometimes the one who loves the character, and sometimes I just roam around among all the words.

So, recently, I’ve wanted to cut away the lies and pretense and admit that I am not ever going to fit where I seem to find myself. And then there is the questioning, the doubt, the sense that God is remote, the CEO of a corporation that churns along with its own rules that have so little to do with His true nature. Or at least I think or hope that is the case. I have never met Him, and I don’t think Castiel has either. In Supernatural, evil is real and present, but God is a cipher. Lucifer shows up, but God does not. Like Castiel, I’ve decided that I am not a good little soldier. If there is a side, I am definitely on the side of the messed up and burned out, the heretics and blasphemers, and the sovereign God, that construct of Calvinists, is in fact no god at all but a bunch of bureaucrats with their own agendas. As the angel Zacherias says in Supernatural, God has left the building.

Because what's life without an obsession

Since I'm channeling a thirteen-year-old, I thought I would just go ahead and run with it. I think as long as I don't put posters on the wall, Dear Husband will humor me.

Of course it isn't just the actor, but the character he plays, that is so appealing. Castiel is an angel who has begun to have doubts and to question the hierarchy that seems to be running the world.

For those who don't know the show, Supernatural is about two brothers, Dean and Sam, who are demon hunters. It's a good ol' good vs. evil show. Castiel only appeared at the beginning of this season, to rescue Dean from hell (too long to go into). In Supernatural, heaven is a sort of corporation with an absentee CEO, and Castiel has been more than happy to be one of heaven's warriors, trusting that his missions were guided by a loving God. But in fact the orders come from mysterious higher levels, without any seeming reason or logic, and sometimes with a complete disregard for human life. It's pretty much heaven as imagined by Franz Kafka.

But in the course of interacting with Dean, Castiel starts to change, veering between towing the party line to outright disobedience. The good guys, the angels, aren't always good, and the demons aren't always bad, and in the heavenly spheres it's hard to know exactly who is calling the shots and where their loyalties lie.

I love this clip. I think Dean's speech about peace versus pain and life is wonderful. And then Castiel breaks ranks entirely, casting his lot with the humans. Also, I think the line "It's better than being a Stepford bitch in heaven" is an excellent line, and I would like the opportunity to use it in conversation.

And I thought slash was something you did with a knife...

I used to think I was pretty astute about popular culture. I don’t like being out of the loop. If there’s something going on I want to know about it.

This started out with a simple question. I wanted to know the name of the actor who plays the angel Castiel on Supernatural, who dragged the character Dean out of hell, and who shows up regularly to keep him on the right course. He’s a rather pretty angel. Anyway, I found out it is Misha Collins, but that in turn somehow – I don’t remember how now – led me all over the Internet.

I had never heard of slash fandom. I knew people hung out on fan sites going over every blessed detail of their idol’s life and swooning over this, that and the other. It reminds me of being a teenager and huddling with your best friends giggling and sighing over the latest cute celebrity.

I didn’t know that people were writing and posting speculative fiction about romances between male characters in TV shows. And they’re creating videos and still images as well. Castiel and Dean have inspired multitudes to spin romances about them.

I was truly annoyed that this had not occurred to me first.

I mean, I’ve been well-trained at spotting a homoerotic subtext. That began in high school reading Moby Dick, which, despite being homoerotic (Or homosocial, I think the teacher said, but whatev. A book that describes a whale’s penis in great detail has something going on), was extremely boring. I was fascinated with gay culture in any case. Brideshead Revisited, Another Country, A Month in the Country, Prick Up Your Ears, Maurice, If, Bronski Beat, the Smiths. I think I horrified one of my high school friends when I told her I wished I were a gay man. I meant it, too, even though the AIDS epidemic was at its height. Looking back, I imagine I thought that if I had to have sex with a man, it would be better if I came at it from a position of equality. Men seemed to have all the fun, and they didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant. They had to worry about dying, but I was dealing in fantasy, after all. I was less than eager to lose my virginity, so this must have been a form of sublimation. The possibility of sex with a woman wasn’t even on my radar, then.

Anygay, I’ve wasted a good few hours wandering around in the slash world, a world that would have been limited by locale if it existed at all when I was a kid. And now anyone can circulate their writing and create videos with international access, all about a topic that was just beginning to be broached in my teen years. Heaven knows there’s still a lot of prejudice, but sometimes I’m just floored that there are gay characters on TV. That was unheard of when I was young. And actors had to be very skittish. You didn’t want to play a gay character (and you most certainly didn’t want to have to do anything physical), and you wouldn’t want someone to think you were queer in real life. You would not, for example, have seen a straight actor do the following, and be cheered on for playing a merry prank:

Misha signing Jarod's T-shirt at a Supernatural convention charity auction

(If you feel the need to see a clearer, more polished version - and who could blame you - click here.)

Everyone loved it, and the actor was very obviously playing to the audience. Of course, it sounds as if they are a lot of women, as no doubt there would be. For some reason women also write most of the slash fiction. Why, I don’t know. Perhaps I was not alone in my fascination with gay men.

Not discounting ongoing prejudice, if we have come so far in my lifetime, what next, I wonder?

In any case, I won’t be able to watch Supernatural the same way again.