https://twitter.com/mishacollins/status/1331800202252931073
Hi All,
Pressing record for posterity.
Reminding folks to take a moment for a self welfare-check. If you’re feeling overwhelmed; eat, drink, rest, turn off social media for a bit. Take care of yourselves. This too shall pass (into queer television history).
Read on for more on PR and Schrodinger’s Destiel.
Cock-up or conspiracy, ”rogue translator” or censorship, we can’t know, for certain. I highly doubt one person alone was responsible, either for inclusion or excision, in the chain which leads to approval for broadcast.
The sequence of events that resulted in Universe 1 N. America and Universe 2 Latin America may be obscure, but it’s still amazing that we have them.
It’s amazing because Supernatural has always included metanarrative elements (elements which comment on the narrative structure itself). And this development is like The French Mistake writ large.
Warner Channel broadcasts across Latin America; that version of the 15x18 narrative is out there. It was seen, it was witnessed. It cannot be spun as a “fan conspiracy”.
It’s, sadly, likely, of course, that Dean’s, “Yo, a ti, Cas,” in the Latin American Warner Channel broadcast version will now be “fixed” in the DVD versions, to align with this narrative of a “rogue translator”. Who knows, it may appear as an extra “cut scene” - i.e. as SPN para-text (text adjacent, but excised from official canon) in those markets.
What is happening now, is crisis management PR. Those four words, and their presence/ absence, are significantly impacting CW corporate image, as well as SPN public narrative reception, in a way which is causing backlash for the commerical property. So the Empty is sucking the Latin American version into black goo, in order to frame the North American version as The Truth.
“Dean was always too stunned in the moment to reply,” is, as a narrative beat, comprehensible, but as a narrative conclusion, queer-phobic. Whatever “The Truth” is, of how the Latin American dub version came to be, Dean’s “And I you, Cas,” makes sense in the story, which is why it’s there. Withholding it, maintains a desperate shred of ambiguity; heteronormativity clutched like a torn shirt against the storm water of previous narrative crescendo.
We’ve mused that Chuck can be read as a stand-in for Corporate in S15. We should muse that The Empty can also be read that way. It was angry because things “got loud”, remember? In other words, because the queer subtext “got loud”.
It’s deeply unfair that Misha gets pushed to the front to defend this, when he has been the most vocal LGBTQ+ ally amongst the cast. But, that’s why he’s being asked (obligated) to do it. The poor guy has over two thousand replies to his last tweet in this chain, as I write (Nov 26 2020).
His offer to listen is, I believe, both genuine, from him, AND corporate using him as a PR human shield. Same as, I’ve no doubt, Berens fought to write 15x18, but the fact that he’s an out, gay, writer, also functions as a PR human shield, in terms of mitigating criticisms of the treatment of queer narrative elements at SPN’s end.
A satisfactory response isn’t going to be forthcoming on this, from TPTB.
Because this is a tale about a queer subtext, and a requited queer love story, between Dean and Cas, which almost, almost, broke cover, spooked the corporate horses, and got shoved back in its box.
Except it can’t be.
It is not, at the end of the day, up to Warner, the CW, or the creatives who work on a story, to define the meaning of their work, from outside the text. And it never has been (which why I, very rarely, post about cast interpretations).
It’s up to us. That’s why Becky was the hero to Chuck’s villain.
A text only fully comes into being because it has meaning for its audience(s).
And, gods love Misha (and the PR folks breathing down his neck) but whether his Empty-suckage hits as “Bury Your Gays” or not, isn’t up to him to determine either, it’s up to queer audiences. Who, of course, don’t all speak with one voice, or experience.
I know it’s painful for LGBTQ+ audiences to know we are (still) treated differently.
I know it’s painful for LGBTQ+ audiences to receive, another (on-screen) tragic ending.
I know it’s infuriating to be soothed with, “But there is a happy ending, really. It’s just off screen, for you to imagine.”
The CW’s “Dare to Defy” is a marketing slogan. It sounds radical, because it’s designed to sound radical, for a youthful audience which believes in LGBTQ+ rights and diversity (for the most part). But, if there’s one thing television, as a medium, very, very, rarely is, it’s actually radical (particularly advertising-funded television).
Allowing the Dean/ Cas love story to fully emerge (blinking into the light) from the subtext of a show steeped in On-the-Road, American, rebel-hero masculine mythology, free of Chuck, free of the Empty, undeniably queer to the GA (general audience) would have been actually radical.
Which is why I never expected it.
15x20 is an attempt at hetero-normative foreclosure, with a side helping of tragic hero.
Perhaps the most useful reading of Castiel’s Empty-suckage, given that S15 has been all about who controls the narrative, is a metanarrative one.
Yes, it fits the, “Bury Your Gays” trope, but it’s also a metanarrative comment on the “Bury Your Gays”, trope.
Those on the creative team who fought for it, like Berens, who wrote the 15x18 speech at the start of the season, knew that the cost of Castiel speaking his queer truth would, likely, be Empty-suckage. They knew the speech would be both moving and meaningful for many in SPN’s queer and ally audience, and that its subsequent erasure (note it was NOT promoted as a “coming out” speech in CW PR) would be equally hurtful.
But in the fall-out, miraculously intensified by the existence of Universe 1 and Universe 2; a universe in which Dean is not allowed to reciprocate openly, and one in which he does, SPN’s queer subtext has achieved escape velocity into public discourse, inviting a broader audience to view the text “queerly”.
If you can stomach it, behold the PR fuckery, be kind to cast and crew online, tell your truth, and hold onto what you love about the story.
Because, there is something radical inside Supernatural, roiling and coiling beneath, emerging from within a much more conventional narrative, finished off with a tasteless corporate bow; Castiel, queer angel of the Lord, who rebelled to remake Heaven and earth, inspired by the power of M/ M romantic love. And Dean Winchester, rebel, road-trip, suffering masculine romantic hero, who loved that celestial dork, truly, madly, deeply.
This imperfect, often misogynist, gothic, masculinist road-trip melodrama, dared to dream of becoming an Epic of Gilgamesh for our times.
PR BS be damned.
