Azzled and Padazzled

I know I recently wrote about character Dean Winchester from Supernatural but seriously the man (and his brother Sam) deserve a post all to themselves. Really they deserve a whole blog EACH – ten blogs each – nay, the whole internet­ – but I have neither time nor skills to implement this.

Jared and Jensen

The two fictional fighters of fantastical crime (otherwise known as Jensen “Robobabe” Ackles and Jared “Too Chiseled To Be True” Padalecki) are actually the sole selling point of the show. It’s almost embarrassing at times, with the occasional (and superfluous) topless shot, manly rescuing and action, and the mandatory 5-minute bromance scene at the end of each episode where the boys share some emotional issue with each other, pat each other on the back, crack open a beer and then drive away in their (gorgeous) Impala. Sometimes I get the impression that the producers tripped over some screenplay that was on the floor (because it had fallen out of the trash) but saw the cost-benefit ratio in hiring ridiculously good-looking actors to attract a large female audience, and saving money by not having to hire a writer.

And really, apart from the boys’ appearance, I’m not sure how the CW Network gets away with such a show - even though I also was totally sucked in (and DVDs are really cheaps in the UK, got a whole season for less that 10 quid! whoo!). The premise of the show is two brothers fight all sorts of evil, ostensibly to protect the world. But really, the evil-fighting bit is just a backdrop to a hopelessly male-centric narrative, about men in all sorts of personal crises resolving their issues with and through other men. This in itself is not a bad thing, by the way. But rather than focusing on solving mysteries or using their wit to get out of tricky situations (like MacGyver) Supernatural is about two pretty Hollywood boys pretending to be hardcore (they drive an old impala, listen to Metallica and Black Sabbath, and drink beer all the time) having some sort of brotherly argument about family, self-esteem or their future together as a family, and then resolving it at the end in aforementioned bromance moment (and these moments are totally endearing and mostly very well acted). They have male role-models only: at first, their father, who they spend the first season searching for, and later Bobby, another hunter of evil who helps them along the way. (And even later, Castiel, an angel). For 5 seasons that’s pretty much what you get.

Sam and Dean have a man-to-man in the graveyard

While this male-centricity is sometimes interesting and develops (sort of) over the seasons, the women are not portrayed so favorably. Female characters are pretty much absent – unless they are evil (like the demon Ruby) being rescued (like a girl in nearly every episode) or being kissed/slept with (like a girl in nearly every other episode). It’s quite difficult to articulate female roles in this show without positioning them as passive – ie girls were rescued; girls were killed; girls were kissed. It’s troubling that women have so little agency in this world. Even Ruby, the demon, is not really a girl – the demon just possesses girls’ bodies, so the female body becomes a shell to be inhabited and used by some evil external force. Seriously: didn’t we get over these kinds of narratives in like the 19^th century??!?

Despite all this – here’s the stumper: the viewers are mostly teen and adult females (though, to be fair, the stats show lots of guys watch it too). Of course, this is because the good-lookingness of Dean and Sam is so great it outweighs any desire to analyse the gendered power structure presented by the destabilised sons, absent fathers, substitute male role-models and passive women in the show. Furthermore, their brotherly love is so exclusive that it almost repudiates female voyeurs even as it draws them in, making girl viewers believe that if they were the one to meet Dean and Sam, they really could win the heart of a Winchester.

So in a way…Supernatural provides something quite special for women which isn’t seen very often. They to feel an attachment to the brothers (you really do feel you know them like sooooo intimately after all the bromance moments) they get to experience foreclosed desire – and the unattainability of the boys, due to their brotherly exclusiveness, makes the desire all the sweeter (or something like that). Plus the eye candy, I guess. Anyway, it’s a show for women, much like the trashy 18^th and 19^th century gothic novels which were primarily read by women and contained an abundance of male characters, sexy demons, evil woman, etc. And while I may disagree with the objectifying aspects (of men AND women) of the show, I can't devalue the fact that at least it works for women in a way some other shows don't.

This all kind of freaks me out a bit - not because of its gender representation in the show but because I like it in spite of its gender representation.  Furthermore, I liked a show that in some ways objectifies men; and as someone always ranting about how bad it is to objectify women, this troubles me of course! So much so that I'm having a little break in the middle of season 4 till I get over it all and the desire to find out what happens outweighs my moral obligation to the advocacy of gender equality. You know what I'm sayin'?? (So NO SPOILERS PLEASE I will watch it again someday! I hear the show becomes more self-reflexive and aware of it's hilarity in the later seasons...)

Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God"

Cormac McCarthy's Child of God (1973) turned out to less far less terrifying and far sadder than I expected. Having heard it was about murderous necrophiliac, I put off reading it for some time as I know how effective McCarthy's grasp of the literary horrific is (after reading The Road I was so traumatised I couldn't read or watch anything for about three weeks, a process repeated after I saw the film adaptation. And The Road isn't even bad in terms of horror. Ok the cannibalism is pretty revoltorama. Needless to say it's still the best book I've ever read). So I read Child of God and came out unscathed, as it seems more a comment on the state of the American Southern man than an excuse for a horror novel.

Set in 1920s-ish Tennessee, Child of God follows Lester Ballard, a young man with no family or land who wanders the town and mountains muttering to himself and carrying his most precious possession, his rifle, which he can fire more accurately than anyone else around. Ballard is also a road-side peeping-tom who hunts down couples in cars in the woods just to watch them, and soon becomes a road-side killer who hunts down couples in cars, shoots them, hides the bodies in a cave and keeps the female corpses for his own devices.

 It sounds repulsive, and it is. Yet McCarthy is not writing for shock-value and implies, rather than overtly describes, Lester's more hideous actions. What comes through initially is a complex picture of masculine loneliness and inability to connect. Lester's first corpse-bride is one he finds already dead and after dragging her home and buying her a red negligee, he is nervous and at a loss as to what to do, like a boy on a first date. He actually spends quite some time just watching her through the window. Though not sympathetic to the gruesome scenario, I did feel a pang for the wretchedness of this man, so unable to connect with the living that he can only do so sexually with a dead person. Any sympathy elicited was thoroughly quashed a page later when he hoisted the woman unceremoniously via a rope and pulley into his attic, her violated body flopping about and void of dignity, and I was reminded of exactly what happening. McCarthy is clever like this, unveiling the hopelessness of humanity and damning it at the same time.

Lester becomes madder and madder, talking to himself frequently and wearing the clothes of his female victims, including a "fright wig"(pg 163) which the audience is later told is a human scalp. At first, I read this as a parody of the original, pioneering American Southern man, lone ranger of the mountains with nothing but a gun and his skills therewith. By the end of the novel, however, I realised that Lester was no parody, but represented the true nature of the Southern man. McCarthy is critiquing the heroic tradition of the South/Western male: this man is alone, is a destroyer, cannot reproduce sexually for he is attracted only to the dead, with no desire to relate to the living except through violence. This man is also no “man” at all, but becomes a hodge-podge of gender stereotypes, a haphazardly destructive combination of cultural ideas of man and woman. This is summed up when Lester is described as "some demented hero or bedraggled parody of patriotic poster come aswamp and his mouth wide open for the howling of oaths until the log swept into a deeper pool and rolled and the waters closed over him" (pg 147). Lester is here sucked underwater by imagery of male and female anatomy, that is, the log and waters closing over him.

When Lester finally dies, it is in hospital. His body is donated to a med school and then "scraped from the table into a plastic bag" and interred (pg 184). While this abrupt and unpleasant end is perhaps deserved, it curiously sheds a similar dark light on the male medical students that has already been shed on Lester. Are they really that different from him, ripping open a dead body and discarding it once its used up? Though I hate reading rape as a metaphor, it's possible to interpret the text as suggesting that just because people aren’t killers or rapists doesn’t mean they aren’t representative of the same ideology. Scary. And the cost, I think, is the loss of individual lives – male or female, whatever the terms may mean – as seen through the deaths of Lester’s victims and his own human loneliness.

If you weren't desperate to read this book when you read the words "murderous necrophiliac" you should be after hearing about its depressing ending. Seriously, though, I do recommend it. It's such an interesting piece to read beside other texts from the region. But do it on a day you're up for thinking about things indoors with all your housemates home - not before you go on a mountain hike with you bf/gf.

A quick note on Jason Stackhouse

I’m only two thirds of the way through True Blood Season One and already it’s shaping up to be great blog-fodder. Talk about a masculinity explosion! And I don’t even mean Bill (or rather, “Bay-all”, if you speak Louisiana), the dark-haired sullen protector-like vampire guy, but Jason Stackhouse. So Jason is a buffed out sex maniac who’s always figured topless with chiselled muscles exposed. Initially I was disgusted by his behaviour and representation…particularly when he thought he killed Maudette and left her hanging from her ceiling while he saved his own bootie. Actually this is still pretty gross even though it turned out he didn’t kill her. And I am still repulsed by him for other reasons, such as hitting his sister after their grandma died. But I think he is also my favourite character, not only because he can be a sweetie at (occasional) times, but because his character is such an effective catalyst for ridiculing the ‘stud’ stereotype and breaking it down again and again. An example of this is when he gulps a whole vial of vampire blood (which, according to True Blood lore, has mega-drug effects for humans) that makes his man-bits so big they nearly explode, and he has to have it medically drained of blood by a surgeon. Effectively, Jason becomes his own vampire - ironic, considering how much he hates them. Even more humiliating is that the person who drags him to the hospital is Tara, his sister’s best friend who’s had a crush on him since childhood. J-Stax is here reducing to screaming and clutching Tara’s hand as the agonising procedure progresses. Strangely, I was sympathetic to him through all this…c’mon, he didn’t mean to overdose! He was just trying to avoid getting convicted for a murder he didn’t commit! In any case, I’m not saying True Blood is making any huge statements on the destructive nature of promiscuity. Rather, the cost of Jason’s own stupidity and sexual presumptuousness is highlighted as he is humiliated. This makes the point that Jason’s attempts to locate his identity in his sexual actions are fruitless, because these can be violently destroyed so easily (by his own actions besides). The “stud” label becomes nothing but a joke as its very definition has literally been drained of desired meaning and purpose.
Stay tuned for an online rant about Lafayette, my other favourite male character in the show. And of course the women in the show. And of course the relationship between True Blood and other Louisiana-based vampire narratives such Anne Rice’s novels.

PS. Does anyone else find it as cool as I do that my Benetint cosmetic blush looks exactly like a vial of V? Tubular.