#jody stuff

[shallowseeker]

Jody knows grief. It's not theoretical.

And she understand human weakness.

Her own weakness.

12x06

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She goes on to say of life:

She's afraid of how she's deified them in her mind, how her what-ifs might not even work out if she got a second chance.

[shallowseeker]

Oh, nooo.... Jody leaving the body of her husband...

5x15 Dead Mean Don't Wear Plaid

Oh, boss.... we got another one.

It is nooooo wonder that Dean was a little more comfortable w/Jodes in 13x03 Patience (via @spnscripthunt)

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[shallowseeker]

i am cracking open the door again to vague rage against the supernatural podcast I need to cut out of my life 🙄

BUT i'm taking your advice to at least channel my frustration into productive creation/analysis! and I think this is a topic/question that will surely strike a chord with you, as well! 😊

so, the theme of "purity" is pretty consistent throughout (though the beginnings probably don't rear their head until season 2?), and it seems a very sam-centric issue - and that's been about talked to death - but I know all our mains have interesting storylines tied to purity (I know it makes me think about jack and nephilims and Chuck won and 😵‍💫), but do you think The Show has something to say about purity overall? is anyone/anything held up as truly pure? in what sense? Christian? or just in a hippie pure love sense lol? and is it a consistent message?

because without starting the research train going, I feel like supernatural has a long history of talking about purity in a Christian sense and the message consistently being "mannnnn, don't worry about it! pure "good" isn't good! we don't have the luxury of purity and life fucks us all. there's no keeping your hands completely clean and you shouldn't think of yourself in terms of being tainted because your actions define you, and you can do better tomorrow, and you're loved, and you probably made the best choice you could have at the time!"

and especially on the subject of sexuality, you can call out bury your gays where it applies, but I don't think you can argue a show that made god bisexual has ever depicted queer characters as impure (at least, no writer was trying to validate any homophobic beliefs, even if there were instances of homophobia). and women are allowed to have casual sex! and be single mothers! and virgins are kind of laughed at for making their virginity a bigger deal than it is! like, I feel like purity is depicted as largely overrated and even ignorant sometimes!

am I wrong? and specifically 9.08, don't we think "purity/virginity" is being appropriately treated as a tool for manipulation? that it's a sex-positive episode? even anti-christian? 😎

Haha, rage away. I’ll answer at night, so we can feel wrapped in the shroud of mysterious darkness and no one shall judge us.

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Ah, rage-listening.

I mean. No judgment here. Fandom, and how you play in it is very very very much about fun, right? And sometimes raging is fun.

Sometimes, I do this too, but mostly I find that I do it when my brain is trying to puzzle out why something is bothering me. It becomes like this tiny, irritating riddle I want to solve for myself. And sometimes that STUPID riddle even turns out to be UNRELATED to the thing I’m hate-consuming.

But other times, I’ll hit a diatribe I disagree with and it’s so dull to ME for reasons I cannot explain that I immediately forget about it. There’s no predicting which reaction I’ll have.

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So let's talk Purity then, and see if this unlocks anything in your tormented little brain. :-)

(((Full disclosure, I didn't REALLY pay much attention to this episode, and I'm feeling too lazy to reread anything, so, take this with a spoonful of whatever.)))

I fall pretty firmly on the “shadow read” side of Purity in SPN. To me, it almost always functions like a “Poughkeepsie” word, something you are meant to read as loaded and suspicious, and even when the show frames it in a supposedly positive way (clarity, meaning, truth, etc.), I personally think it’s being a little cheeky.

And yeah, I agree w/you that it keeps popping up because it intersects with so many human hierarchies and religious structures, and it’s especially baked into American culture.

SIDE NOTE: I feel like SPN could have gone super hard on a proper Rowena episode about disease, and not just poverty, because even though disease sits in the background for us in modern society in a lot of ways, it completely shaped how humans came to view purity, religion, being alive and healthy. The force of disease and dying, especially times like the Bubonic Plaque. We can’t even really properly imagine the scope of stuff like that.

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What stood out to me the most in this episode, even more than any kind of active manipulation or not, was Jody’s contrast-ey version of churchgoing faith.

For her, church functions as a kind of Family Extension system. Her husband and son were murdered, and when she talks to Sam about faith, she underlines how Sam still has LIVING family, and she herself doesn’t.

I think... that’s a nice commentary on the role of church when it comes to historic suffering and grief. As a war force, it has meted suffering out... and sometimes, it has soothed it.

Of course, the episode also gives us a much more prescriptive, Pharisee-like model of “Church” and righteousness, one built around rigid rules and regulations, especially control around sex.

So in that sense, yeah… I do think “Purity” here is presented in the negative, but more so because it is tied to rigid, arbitrary rule-following. These rules end up disconnecting people from each other and shaming natural, consensual relationships.

It does make for an interesting contrast to the sex-positive hookup in the episode, but it also puts Jody in clearer focus. Jody’s version of church, which is about shared time, fellowship, and offering a welcoming family system to lonely/grieving people, shows that this episode is not necessarily anti-Christian.

I think her point is a a really nice microcosm of human suffering. People in pain have always turned to religion, and there can be something really beautiful in the social support that it offers on its best days.