I’ve been following some of the discussion about ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
counteragent’s recent fanwork about fourth walls, SPN, and marital relations, and I have a lot of thoughts. Initially, I should say that I loved it as a fanwork; I thought it effectively communicated its story and allowed me to invest in the characters.
What intrigues me most about various reactions is the idea that there has to be a single “villain” of the story. Do I have to pick?
Let me unpack that a little. As to Kripke (here, “Kripke” will stand for “the forces that get SPN to TV in the form it has”): No, I don’t think he has an obligation not to speak about/back to fandom. It's not Fight Club and it's not his Fight Club anyway. Yes, I do think he executed his portrayal of fangirls very badly, in line with SPN’s general problems with women, sexuality, and women’s sexuality. And we can totally call him on it! I’ve seen lots of fans debate issues of power, appropriation, othering, and so on in our own works; just because SPN’s creative forces are unlikely to listen to criticism in this vein is no reason to exempt SPN.
And one of the things SPN’s specific portrayal of “Supernatural” fandom did was contribute to the popular denigration of women’s icky sexualized overinvestment in fiction (fanboys took their hits too, but not in the same way). Becky can definitely be an awesome character, but it takes work to make her so, and the show didn’t see her that way (see: her transfer of affection from Sam to Chuck and how that was played). Specifically, the episodecounteragent’s story is about foregrounded the extent to which female fans’ investment is about sexual desire for the male leads and portrayed that as laughable.
Unsurprisingly, this is messy! Because one thing that might happen when a man sees a portrayal of female fans’ sexual desire, and connects that to his wife’s fandom, is that he will conclude that her sexual desire is focused elsewhere: she doesn’t want him, she wants them. And, bonus, her wanting is ridiculous! His wife would rather have this ridiculous fantasy than the real him! The problem I have with the portrayal is different than the problem he has, and his problem may well be bound up with patriarchal assumptions, but it also strikes me as well within normal human range for people in apparently/default monogamous relationships.
So she feels outed.
On to the husband as villain: What fascinates me about this work is how people feed their own experiences into it (I think this is something that visual works are even more subject to than textual ones, so we were having reactions to the images that were hard to articulate in conventional meta terms); I’ve even seen people who commented that they imagined the existence of panels that weren’t present when they looked back.
Is the husband an abusive/worthless/controlling whatever? Well, he might be. The fact that they had nice interactions before the fight, in which he gave in to her desire to watch SPN, tells us nothing about whether he’s abusive etc. except that he’s not a monster 100% of the time. Likewise, his freakout over what being a fangirl means—all that time she spends on the internet, desiring other men—suggests to me that he is capable of freaking out. If you judged me by the worst thing I said in the heat of passion, especially if I was in a fight about some underlying issue like how much emotional energy my partner was supposed to be devoting to me, well, I hate to think how that would end.
So she freaks out too. In my own version of the story, they both calm down later. Multiple readings!
There’s a lot I haven’t even touched on—it’s a rich and possibly contradictory work. I haven’t talked about the baby, the expectations that mothers will devote libidinal energy first to children and then to men and never to themselves, the emotional effects of exhaustion in the first months of childrearing, the extent to which you do need to attend to others’ needs as well as your own, and the outlet that fandom provides just not to think about all that stuff. (I also haven’t talked about the reaction that essentially casts the woman as the villain of the piece for not dumping the guy/getting herself knocked up by a man who’d get angry over her investment in fandom/etc., because I am not prepared to react calmly to that. SPN blames enough women already for their choices and circumstances for my taste, thanks.)
Now I really need to finish grading.
counteragent’s recent fanwork about fourth walls, SPN, and marital relations, and I have a lot of thoughts. Initially, I should say that I loved it as a fanwork; I thought it effectively communicated its story and allowed me to invest in the characters.What intrigues me most about various reactions is the idea that there has to be a single “villain” of the story. Do I have to pick?
Let me unpack that a little. As to Kripke (here, “Kripke” will stand for “the forces that get SPN to TV in the form it has”): No, I don’t think he has an obligation not to speak about/back to fandom. It's not Fight Club and it's not his Fight Club anyway. Yes, I do think he executed his portrayal of fangirls very badly, in line with SPN’s general problems with women, sexuality, and women’s sexuality. And we can totally call him on it! I’ve seen lots of fans debate issues of power, appropriation, othering, and so on in our own works; just because SPN’s creative forces are unlikely to listen to criticism in this vein is no reason to exempt SPN.
And one of the things SPN’s specific portrayal of “Supernatural” fandom did was contribute to the popular denigration of women’s icky sexualized overinvestment in fiction (fanboys took their hits too, but not in the same way). Becky can definitely be an awesome character, but it takes work to make her so, and the show didn’t see her that way (see: her transfer of affection from Sam to Chuck and how that was played). Specifically, the episode
counteragent’s story is about foregrounded the extent to which female fans’ investment is about sexual desire for the male leads and portrayed that as laughable.Unsurprisingly, this is messy! Because one thing that might happen when a man sees a portrayal of female fans’ sexual desire, and connects that to his wife’s fandom, is that he will conclude that her sexual desire is focused elsewhere: she doesn’t want him, she wants them. And, bonus, her wanting is ridiculous! His wife would rather have this ridiculous fantasy than the real him! The problem I have with the portrayal is different than the problem he has, and his problem may well be bound up with patriarchal assumptions, but it also strikes me as well within normal human range for people in apparently/default monogamous relationships.
So she feels outed.
On to the husband as villain: What fascinates me about this work is how people feed their own experiences into it (I think this is something that visual works are even more subject to than textual ones, so we were having reactions to the images that were hard to articulate in conventional meta terms); I’ve even seen people who commented that they imagined the existence of panels that weren’t present when they looked back.
Is the husband an abusive/worthless/controlling whatever? Well, he might be. The fact that they had nice interactions before the fight, in which he gave in to her desire to watch SPN, tells us nothing about whether he’s abusive etc. except that he’s not a monster 100% of the time. Likewise, his freakout over what being a fangirl means—all that time she spends on the internet, desiring other men—suggests to me that he is capable of freaking out. If you judged me by the worst thing I said in the heat of passion, especially if I was in a fight about some underlying issue like how much emotional energy my partner was supposed to be devoting to me, well, I hate to think how that would end.
So she freaks out too. In my own version of the story, they both calm down later. Multiple readings!
There’s a lot I haven’t even touched on—it’s a rich and possibly contradictory work. I haven’t talked about the baby, the expectations that mothers will devote libidinal energy first to children and then to men and never to themselves, the emotional effects of exhaustion in the first months of childrearing, the extent to which you do need to attend to others’ needs as well as your own, and the outlet that fandom provides just not to think about all that stuff. (I also haven’t talked about the reaction that essentially casts the woman as the villain of the piece for not dumping the guy/getting herself knocked up by a man who’d get angry over her investment in fandom/etc., because I am not prepared to react calmly to that. SPN blames enough women already for their choices and circumstances for my taste, thanks.)
Now I really need to finish grading.
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From:
re the 'villiain' of the piece, becky.
As to the depiction of Becky. I think it could have been better, but it also could have been worse. She's articulate, can organize, is fun, and crucially - she's enjoying her life. If she gets killed, I'm going to be very angry, but I dare hope she won't be. And I too enjoyed how much she discomfited the male characters. Kudos to the actress on that.
From:
Re: re the 'villiain' of the piece, becky.
As has been said before, I blame the patriarchy! But I'd tell the show to fix itself long before I'd tell the woman to kick the man out--though I do hope they calm down and have a conversation about the many, many things she loves in life and how they'll both balance those things.
Specific to your point, her mind and her critical faculties may not be as significant as her baby and her economic circumstances. And again, it really depends on what else is going on in the relationship: I didn't read her as having "gotten herself" into a situation in which it was obvious that the father of her child was an abuser--and even if I did, then the question would be how to provide the resources to leave, which are far from only mental.
Becky: agreed, but "could have been worse" is not sufficient for my purposes. She was definitely available for fan recuperation because of that joy you mention, but she was not even a proto-hero like Demian and Barnes; she didn't get her justificatory speech. I thought Sam & Dean's discomfort was supposed to be the "appropriate" reaction to her from the show's point of view, consistent with the continuing--this week!--portrayal of active female sexuality as crazy/embarrassing/laughable.
From: (Anonymous)
Re: re the 'villiain' of the piece, becky.
Sure, I agree. But the degree of his reaction upset me. I've only had one serious long term partner, and certainly there were things I didn't share with him - but because he was a kind, thoughtful, open-minded person (or I wouldn't have been intimate with him) there wasn't anything I thought would cause him to storm out on me or react with horror/aggression. As you say, it would depend on the rest of their relationship, but given that the text is the window we are given into it, that's what I'm reading from.
" "could have been worse" is not sufficient for my purpose "
Yes, I suppose ultimately its not sufficient for mine either. But I consider fan recuperation at least as important, possibly more important than source-text (I'm biased. It's one of my objects of research). Then again, the ultimate goal of fan recuperation is to change source-text/society...I think. Not entirely sure. There's a debate about this on metafandom. But my initial reaction to Becky was celebratory - she's a *wonderful* object for recuperation.
I did roll my eyes this week at the incident(s) you're talking about - but I also grinned at the exchange between Dean and the female psychiatrist: 'So...you're my doctor'. 'So...you're my paranoid schizophrenic with a narcisstic personality disorder [whatever she said].' Score!
From:
Re: re the 'villiain' of the piece, becky.