late seasons ghostfacers effect episode where jack gets into the idea of making home movies (or vlogs or tiktoks or something), and we get to see what the story looks like without chuck's edits.
only jack is powerful enough to override chuck's control of the camera, so what we get to see "uncensored" is limited by what he's interested in focusing on. sam and dean never get the chance to hold the camera. cas does, but whenever he's filming the video file ends up corrupted (this ends up being important to the plot).
if this was an actual ghostfacers episode we'd get a shot of dean and cas emerging from a storage closet suspiciously rumpled and out of breath. but it's jack pov, and he's not interested in his dads' sex life, so we get married parents energy instead. dean calls cas "honey" at least twice while asking him to pick up groceries or talking about some domestic task. they kiss once while dean is handing cas his morning coffee, but it's out of focus in the background and blocked by sam's head, because jack is focused on asking sam questions about the case.
oh also sam has reading glasses even though he doesn't quite need them yet (he thinks they make him look more intellectual).
if the ghostfacers effect can be found in all shows, how do you think it shows up in heated rivalry?
first off i think rachel is their chuck. jacob is something else entirely and the changes he made to the show already do a lot to bridge the gap between the story and reality. so to speak. since this show (unlike supernatural at times) was made with a lot of love and respect for not only the source material and the characters but. crucially. the existing fans of the books. the ghosfacers effect doesn't feel actively malicious at any point it just comes from the constraints of the medium/genre conventions. and the fact that they made the show with 3 canadian dollars per episode.
like. you can't find two actors who perfectly fit the descriptions in the books, who can act well, are willing to do this level of intimacy on camera, learn to speak russian at least convincingly enough AND be good at skating/pretending to play hockey. so just like dean's fucks are censored in supernatural the hockey is off screen on the hockey show. fade to black on the hockey but not on the sex. ready for The Game? they walk out of the locker room. walk back into the locker room. The Game was great guys i loved The Game. there is a lot of tell not show happening. it's a compromise but at least all the other boxes are ticked wrt the casting. we don't get to see them get into serious fights on the ice even though it is alluded to again and again that rozanov is an incredibly physical player. we never get to see the injuries that come from literally doing gladiator fights on ice every day professionally. with the exception of shane getting the one concussion as a big story beat of course. they should be bruised ALWAYS ilya should be missing SEVERAL teeth. which comes down to the lack of special effects makeup money and also the fact that general audience who are here to see the two hot guys fall in love don't want to see ilya pressing on bruises like my beautiful tumblr mutuals. next up. their world is so small. they play at the same rink in montreal and boston and tampa and sochi and new york. they get drafted, recieve mvp and rookie of the year awards, watch scott hunter's acceptance speech in what looks like the same building. they go on stage and the audience cheers but you never see them. why would you? they are not important. this is the shane and ilya show. there's a press event happening with zero journalists. you see them tap their feet against each other. this is the shane and ilya show. would a crowd of extras really add to it? and of course at the end of the day we have to mention the homophobia. which we don't exactly see on screen because this is a romance novel turned tv show that jacob adapted on purpose in this way where the threat of it looms over them at every turn but we never actually see it on screen. what passes as normal locker room banter? what do players say about shane behind his back? what about scott hunter being the thing he heard he shouldn't be all his life? what would happen to ilya in russia? he doesn't want to find out. this is not that show.
The issues with supernatural meta is that it makes me sooooo, like I want to tell everyone about it. I want to tell random people about it. My friends don't care about the ghostfacers effect but I want to explain it to them in minute detail
one of the interesting things about the cinematography in s13 is that the camera angles and lighting on Jack are always subtly menacing and villainous, which makes him appear more threatening than he is, he's not evil he's just drawn that way, the Ghostfacers Effect doesn't just frame the swearing, it also frames how we're encouraged to see Chuck's biggest rival in the later seasons
Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 3x13 Ghostfacers, Part 1
Part one of this analysis is short due to me rarely finding much to say about gimmicky episodes. However, part two is much more substantial, as I had a *lot* to say on the subject of Corbett.
This is the first episode of Supernatural I ever watched, and along with 3x08 A Very Supernatural Christmas one of the episodes I have watched the most. I first watched it on my Media Studies course at sixth form college (years 12 and 13 for North Americans) when studying the horror genre. This was a good choice for the horror genre module because it is both a traditional haunted house story but also a metatextual satire of both reality television and ghost-hunting shows. It is also a show within a show, with Ghostfacers being presented within the framing device of an episode of Supernatural. The episode of Ghostfacers is a rather egregious example of the kind of exploitation inherent to reality television (and perhaps by extension, television in general), but framing it at the end as an episode of Supernatural allows the viewer to see and interpret events differently. Ghostfacers is the version of events Harry and Ed want us to see, but Sam calls them out for exploiting Corbett’s death at the end.
This is important, but unfortunately the episode is perhaps not as clear as it could be in differentiating the the two shows. Not enough time is spent reframing the events of Ghostfacers in the context of Supernatural. Sam gives the Ghostfacers a verbal bitch slap and Dean wipes out their hard drives, but it took me years of wondering why GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) gave it an award in 2008 when it is a prime example of not just Bury Your Gays, but homosexuality being a source of humour in a way heterosexuality never would be. The reason is that Ghostfacers is immature, homophobic, and exploitative because Ed and Harry and immature and pathetic. The episode itself takes swipes at exploitative reality television and all these harmful, negative tropes by depicting them, then having Sam and Dean (here an avatar for the writer) call them out for it.
When seen like this, the exasperation and weariness of yet another dead gay vanishes. Edlund was one of the writers most in favour of bi!Dean and explicitly canon DeanCas so it is safe to conclude making fun of the gays was not his intention. However, how much of the target audience of rural conservatives in America or Russia would get that? How many would take ‘Go be gay for that poor dead intern’ at face value, and how many people would actually get that Harry and Ed were the joke in that situation?
Once all this is taken into account, the GLAAD nomination is easier to understand. Corbett is the only likeable member of the Ghostfacers, yet in spite of the others giving him weird side-eyes, he is the only person able to save them in the end.
The plot of the episode is that the Ghostfacers led by Harry and Ed from 1x17 Hell House decide to investigate a haunting at the Morton House which is supposedly haunted every leap year on 29 February. The Ghostfacers’ investigation is interrupted by Dean and Sam who try to get them to leave for their own safety, but end up locked in the house with them. After a death echo appears, Corbett tries to investigate by himself but is taken by the ghost of Freeman Daggett, the house’s previous owner. While the others are busy trying to find Corbett, Daggett spirits Sam away to his bomb shelter. Eventually, the Ghostfacers and Dean find the bomb shelter, but too late to save Corbett. In the following fight, Corbett’s death echo appears, and after hearing Ed (the object of his affections) tell him he loves him, Corbett is snapped out of his death loop and defeats Daggett, saving everybody in the process. Precisely what Corbett did to Daggett is never properly explained, but it is perhaps similar to Mary and the unnamed ghost in 1x09 Home who cancelled each other out with their energy.
This is the only episode in which the Ghostfacers appear. Ed and Harry do make a few further appearances in the show, with their final one as late as 14x16 Don’t Go into the Woods, and the others are present in the webseries set during series five, but that is all. It would have added a lot to the show if they had stuck around more, just like Jody, Donna, Rowena, et al do years later, but such is not the case. It is true that Corbett is the only likeable member of the Ghostfacers, but the others are not supposed to be likeable. They are immature and deluded, but the show never tries to present them as anything else or apologise for their behaviour. As a result, it is fun to watch them in spite of them being unlikeable.
The fact that they are as they are is also likely a dig at reality shows and their contestants. People on shows like Big Brother, Love Island and such shows are boring, average people with nothing to say worth listening to, but because they are put in a very visible, public position, seem to feel forced to try to be interesting. The Ghostfacers all seem comfortably middle class, middle-of-the-road, and uninteresting, and as a result try to make themselves seem edgy or cool. Ed and Harry’s ‘lone wolves need...other wolves’ or ‘rats are the rats of the world’ are an amusing take on superficial people trying to sound deep, and Spruce with his ‘What up, playaaaz?’ at the beginning was hilariously cringeworthy, a perfect parody of the kind of middle class (probably white-skinned) guy trying to compensate for how milquetoast and mainstream he is by imitating gangster rappers. The Ghostfacers are all absolute nobodies trying to be somebodies.
Ed and Harry’s introduction in 1x17 Hell House was used to introduce metatextuality to the show, i.e. to make comments on the show and the nature of storytelling. The tulpa only existed because people believed it did, leading the audience to question how much of the supernatural in Supernatural is only there because people believe it exists. It reminds the audience they are watching a show, but it does so in a conscious manner, rather than through poor writing or terrible acting. This time, metatextuality is introduced immediately as Ed and Harry talk directly to the camera, reference network executives and producers, tell the audience they are watching a programme, and even reference the 2008 Writers’ Guild of America strike (this episode was the first written and broadcast after the strike).
Moreover, Ghostfacers is presented much like reality programmes viewers will be familiar with, including the characters introducing themselves to the viewer and breaking the fourth wall. They also use cameras all the time, and a short montage is even devoted to showing the characters setting them up around the Morton house. Dean even calls Maggie out on whether looking through the whole thing through her camera makes her feel better. This breaks with the tradition of genre television which Supernatural belongs to, but like Buffy it bends and blends genres, though this does it much more than Buffy ever did.
My own personal views of reality television is that it has overstayed its welcome by about twenty years. The rise of reality television preceded social media where everybody turned their cameras around and started documenting themselves and their entire lives for the whole world to see, but the two have definitely fed into each other. Not only has reality television allowed some people to make entire livelihoods off denying their family any kind of privacy and exploiting (and abusing) their own children for profit, but it has also allowed viewers to call real people being humiliated, debased, and dehumanised ‘entertainment’. A sheet of glass between the spectators and the ‘performers’ in a reality television show somehow makes it acceptable to enjoy other people’s misery and discomfort. ‘Does looking at this nightmare through a camera make you feel better?’ Dean asked Maggie, to which her answer was in the affirmative, and such seems to apply to the majority of the human race. If I were a misanthrope, I would be tempted to call it ‘the inhuman race’, but somehow I am not in the mood for being edgy at the moment.
So here’s Shadow the Hedgehog...
Worse still, there is rarely any kind of actual stimulation of any kind in reality television, nor any talent involved in any stage of the process, yet people will sit and watch it. Consequently, there is no motivation for television studios to produce as much quality television as before because they can churn out cheap dreck and still rake in the profits. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my scripted television, thank you very much.
As tends to be the case with gimmicky episodes such as this one, I do not have a huge amount to say about this one. Neither do Paula nor Demian, for that matter. This is especially true of this episode due to Dean and Sam being supporting characters, and there being no good link to previous or upcoming episodes. I do have a lot to say on the subject of Corbett, but that will be left for part two.
This episode amused me greatly, and I think it succeeded the most out of all Supernatural’s gimmicky, genre-bending episodes. Unlike Demian at Television without Pity, I see and appreciate the intelligence behind the episode, even though I think a lot of it might have been lost on a significant proportion of the target audience.
I wrote earlier that 1x17 Hell House introduced metatextuality to the series, but this episode goes further. The Ghostfacers Effect or variations thereupon is a term used among the fan base to refer to the fact that the usual Supernatural show the audience gets is an edited version of how Dean and Sam are in ‘real life’. The Ghostfacers episode shows us Dean especially swearing frequently, something which is absent in the regular episodes. We know that a person like Dean would swear like a sailor in real life, and Ghostfacers confirms this. As a result, we have to view the rest of Supernatural as the version of the characters the writers want us to see, with who knows how much omitted or – dare I say – redacted?
A few final non-sequiturs before I finish part one:
– Spruce saying ‘wow, you’re strong’ when Dean moved the bookshelf away from the shelter door was pretty much me.
– Why exactly was Ed so possessive of his sister and so offended that she and his friend were getting groiny? If I remember correctly, something similar happened in Harry Potter when Ginny started dating and Ron got possessive. I do not understand why at all.
– At the moment Daggett took Sam, my Media Studies teacher paused the episode and asked us ‘Why did he take Sam and not Dean?’ I have wondered why every time I have watched this episode, and I still do not know. Is it because Sam has female hair? Is it because Dean would move Heaven and Earth to find his brother when Sam would not? I have no idea.
– Daggett’s reveal in the night-vision camera behind Corbett is a relatively common thing in horror films. The one which came to mind is the first reveal of the mutants in The Descent, right before they rip the first woman’s head off and start eating her.
Thus concludeth part one of this analysis. Part two on Corbett will follow very soon!
You can read more of my analyses here:
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
Sundry
You can read Paula's review here and Demian's here.
I might have forgotten to mention in my analysis of 1x17 Hell House that Jensen and Travis Wester (who played Harry) were in the short-lived show Mr Rhodes in 1996-1997.
