not to unironically talk about spn in the godforsaken year of 2020 but honestly i feel this
the other thing tho, the flip side, the reason my bitterness and hatred for this show rose gradually like bile in my throat, the sickly aftertaste of day-old coffee–Supernatural is about America, in its most raw white hateful glory. And it shows.
I mean, yeah, as we know, there isn’t a marginalizing trope they don’t hit. You have “magical negros” (at least 3 i can think of off the top of my head–wait, I forgot about the fetish cat-witch, make that 4), and fridged lesbians and ambiguously “Asian” typecast-neurotic nerds and sexy Strong Female Characters and queer-baiting that flips into bury-your-gays and no matter what happens next, fifteen years of mocking fans for wanting what the narrative promised will not be undone.
The lesbian dies, and the Asian prophet dies, and the maternal Black psychic dies, and the blonde girlfriend dies, and the blind psychic dies, and the Deaf hunter dies (fucking offscreen), and every one of the Strong Female Characters die, and they all die so the armed white men can justify enacting further violence.
But that isn’t the point. That’s just a side-effect of the point.
You have wendigos and skinwalkers and Indian curses, Kali and Ganesh and Zao Shen and Baron Samedi. Sacred beliefs that are stolen and framed as monsters that stalk innocent women and children.
Other people’s religions are pillaged for monsters, gods rebuilt into depraved beasts that, without fail, hunger for white flesh. Christian beliefs and Christian values are grappled with for seasons, rebelled against with gravitas. Even when God is a deadbeat novelist named Chuck with an evil twin, the rosaries and rituals and holy water and prayers are still wielded as weapons to kill the wicked “pagan gods,” the foul, foreign, savage spirits and beasts.
You have shapeshifters, creatures that are somehow always evil: perhaps they’re assaulting innocents for their perverted pleasure, or they’re angry at being locked away and rejected because of their nature. Their nature, which is in itself no threat at all. Hunters, sure as American men always are with their guns and their black-and-white codes, call them “unnatural,” and we’re told they’re deserving of death. Their anger at being outcasts condemns them. Embracing the label of monster condemns them too.
You have families (always white families) trying to live their lives and being attacked by inhuman, awful things, over and over again. The family business, things that need to be eradicated with guns and fire and bloody stakes.
Supernatural is an American fantasy.
Supernatural takes place in a nation that doesn’t exist, backwoods Canada calling itself Las Vegas, a nation beset with inhuman threats that creep like rot from within. White, gun-toting alcoholics drive around in their car from the 60s and heroically, valiantly carry on the fight against the foul things that infiltrate their American dream. They kill walking, talking, feeling monsters with human faces, some of which have done no evil at all, and they are heroes.
Shapeshifters, witches, skinwalkers, foreign gods, these are things that do not deserve a trial. By their nature, they are evil. Our heroes roll through town in a muscle car and worn jeans, and shoot the monsters dead.
Saving people, hunting things.
(The white men with guns decide which is which.)
This is why I love Supernatural: it was fun to watch, still is really, if only for nostalgia’s sake; and I thought for a time there might be room in its story for me.
This is why I hate it: because it hates me. Because it hates everyone who is not a straight, cis, American, abled, culturally-Christian white man.
The family business, indeed.
