Phantomas Studio

Thoughts and episode review, behind the cut.

( spoilers for ep. 21 Salvation of Supernatural )

As always, I'm supposed to be doing something completely different, but...this has been buzzing in my head for a while, so, here it goes.

Supernatural Potential,
or why it Rocks so much and why it could really become big if the production/writers/CW don't mess it up

The Mythology
Buffy's writers had to come up with 'original' ideas, ie. clever reworkings of the classic Good vs. Evil fight (and ended up making it apocalyptic. A few times). SPN's writers have enough Urban Legends in the US to last for a handful of season, without mentioning all the legends available in the rest of the world. The mythology doesn't need to be made up, because it's already here, connecting the audience to the show less by way of teen angst then by the fear of the creepy things out there, or better, the creepy things that have been coming out of people's imagination since ever.

The Arch Storyline
John Winchester - reversing a cycle that has been going since the late 70's in US films and TV, that of the absent father (E.T. anyone?) - is made into a mythical figure himself. An apparently legendary hunter whose choices have shaped the boys in what they are, for good and bad, with his flaws and virtues: by choosing to hunt down and kill the Demon that murdered his wife Mary, John serves as the moving force behind the whole narrative. The story will end once the Demon is killed, I have no doubt about it, and that will happen hopefully as later as possible (I vote for five series!)
The arch narrative is threaded all throughout the first season, picked up in some episodes and just mentioned in others, but it's what gives the series a fundamental unity and reason d'eitre.

The Family Issues
Last US TV series (that I remember) that had two brothers united in a mission that would make them forget their differences was The Quest. John, Sam and Dean are a dysfunctional family, and so intriguing with it that all the exchanges they have about their family issues have us fan(girls, mostly, I think) squee in delight. They all have a definite character, differences and similarities quite cleverly written and filmed (the way Dean and John move, the way in which John and Sam say the same words, etc). The feelings implied in looking out for each other not only as fellow hunters but as a family make the tension in the fighting/dangerous scenes raise up a notch. We want to see Sam telling it all to his father, we want to see what Dean would do, who would he side with, we want to see John worried about his boys. In short, we want to see MEN EMOTE for each other, and the family ties allow for a narrative that can play with this insted of justifying it.

The Leads
THE ACTORS: easy to see, they are good looking. Youngish, but not teens, with enough acting experience under their belt to be up to carry the show on their shoulders, and luckily for us, for them, for the series, they do have a certain chemistry that works well on screen. Which brings the fans minds deep in the gutter of fanfiction hell in so many ways, but hey, it's just fiction.

THE CHARACTERS: the more we get into the series, the more we come to know the different layers to each character. They are apparently opposite, but enough well matched so to cather to a wide audience. We have the more serious one, and the more laid back one. The tough one that doesn't open up much and the intellectual one that mulls over issues, and so on. The writers have already established, in Shadow, that the brothers DO want something completely different...which leaves us with a big question mark at the end, to see how this will be resolved.

The Music
Ahhhh, the music. I'd like to point everyone to this ENTRY on the music by ashmael for a clever and intriguing analysys on the songs chosen for each episode and the way in which they actually do fit the episodes themes. Apart from that...it's not POP music! Which I have nothing against, personally, but to hear rock tracks, and classic tracks at that...it makes a big difference. It impacts on the audience in a different way, and it enriches the characters and the scenes, it gives the whole a rhythm and a edge definitely lacking in (most of) contemporary pop music. Great choice and kudos to Mr. Kripke

The Gadgets and Cars
Well, like any crime/thrilling TV series that wants to be remembered, they have a distinctive car: the Impala. Who isn't in love with the Impala, raise their hand! (think of the Striped Tomato for S&H, the Capris for The Professionals, Bond's car, etc etc. Sometimes it's not a car, ie. Kojac's lollipop...but thanks the skies they didn't give Jensen Ackles a lollipop to suck on, or there would be dead fangirls left and right, methinks). And not only the Impala, which is more than just a car but signficant in Dean's relationship with the world, but we also had a glimpse of Papa Winchester's truck (disanddat named it Truckzilla and I'm sticking to that, because I love it).
Plus, we have the EMF, beeping and crackling its way around haunted houses, a box choc-full of fake IDs, the Impala's trunk filled with weapons of all kinds, blades and ammo and guns and what have you, and last but not least, the boys 'dressing up' as rangers, feds, security servces and who knows what else :)

The Iconography and the Libraries
Strictly connected with the mythology, knowledge is really important in this show (as already purported in Buffy), and brought to a whole new level, where geekitude and libraries' frequentation is not just funny, but where obsessive research and the knowledge of useless trivia can save the day...what fan isn't obsessive in that way? The iconography of the sygils, spells, symbols, monsters (and I include here the old newspapers clips, the drawings on the walls, the ugly paintings, the mirrors, etc etc) enriches the visuals and aesthetics of the knowledge the characters and the audience get to know, making it more complete.
ETA: and I SO hope they'll do something more with the hotel rooms as they have done in Provenance!

The Net and Cell phones
Cell phones made legendary by the eternal 'Scully?' 'Mulder?' 'Where are you' are back with a vengeance, complete with email and incredible powerful satellites, since they almost always pick up...plus they double up as paranormal activity revealers, which is always useful. Along with the use of a laptop, these two elements alone turn part of the show into something we can all experience, therfore making a bigger connection with the audience, with them just being daily objects for most of us, and by the clever use of interactive narrative, ie, the Hellhounds website, mentioned in the series and being an actual website that we can browse, thus allowing the audience to identify with Sam and Dean and their research.

The Ghostbusters
Will they reappear? I think so. A self-aware wink at Buffy, at fans, at that televisual (and not only) popular culture that surrounds us - like the mention of the Da Vinci Code (book and film) in Provenance, which again tries to strenghten the illusion of reality the show looks for, just like the use of real Urban Legends.

Sex and Love and Action
Ah, well...we get a little or a lot of both. Again, since the characters ages are past their 20s, we are spared the constant teenangst, but it doesn't mean we don't get to see our heroes deal with its slightly more adult equivalent: Dean calls it fun, and then we discover he fell for Cassie, Sam lost Jessica and opened up his heart to Sara, John...John still wears Mary's wedding ring, and I just can't imagine what love means to him anymore, apart from the love he has for his boys. So, we get lots of action, killer trucks racing the Impala, fighting against monsters and ghosts in various ways, B&E, Sam in a cage, Dean tied up, bars with to-be-picked-up girls, love stories - although pay attention to the classic 'a woman around makes the man grow up and stop playing, so they can't stop with anyone, really, and all women in their life will have to stand apart or die' for the sake of the narrative. We get glimspes of Dean making love too, which is gooood. But, the heroes stay available for the audience's fantasies.
At the same time, there's enough fighting and goryness and running around that the male part of the audience should be satisfied (I'm hereby reporting what are the usual cliches/beliefs re: audience most common in Hollywood. I have no doubts that girls like action as much as boys, myself).

The Mythology II
Not only the show has a mythology in the monsters, but we've been given glimpses into the Winchesters mythology, too. John Winchester has friends who are aware of what he does and why, so there is a network of hunters, even if not yet explicity identified as that (but several fan writers have already done that leap). Dean and Sam are too leaving behind them people that 'know' what really goes on in the dark, and that means a wealth of characters and informations and safe houses, resources in the making. It means a wider background story for the family; some of it we've been seeing in the flashbacks, which is something rarely done in TV series, not at this level of importance, ie. Something Wicked. There are important events that have shaped our heroes, and the show is giving us those as well.

The Mystery
Well, that's kind of obvious, but....why the Demon killed Mary? And Jess? In that way? It was because of Sam? What are Sam's powers about? We all want to know these answers, and that it's one of the reasons we keep watching :) I think that they have a nice balance between the MoW and the overall mythology, there isn't a single episode (no, not even Bugs!) that doesn't give us some little information more, either about the family dynamic, or the relationship between the brothers, what they feel about themselves, about John, about this life and the future, or about the main storyline.

The Merchandise
I for one am hoping that we will get little models of the Impala, action figures of the Winchesters, a Monster Mythology Book Companion, DVDs bloopers and extras and commentaries and all the usual horrible!Horrible! consumistic and commercial merchandise. Oh, Hell, why not? I'll never be too old to play *G*

ETA: *smacks head* I forgot one other important element, terribly 'mythological' in itself and culturally significant for the States.
Travelling Narrative
In the best tradition, literary and film-wise, our heroes travel all across the States, and the travelling itself becomes a metaphore/can be read as a metaphore, of the search for justice, for balance, for identity (who will tehy be once this is all over?).


I'm sure I'm forgetting something, and I may come back to this to expand a few points...but that's all for now.

I've read and followed the various entries and discussions about 'slash being/not being gay' and I feel like giving my opinion, having thought about it for a long while now. *

I support the notion that slash is not gay, but I'd like to clarify that slash can be gay, and gay can be slash. They are not simply synonims of each other - I believe that the two terms still do and should retain their specific identity.

I think that the problem lies in the crossing of the fluidity of language and the historical and social contest both within and outside fandom. When slash was truly an underground movement and not as openly 'out' there (and we could trace here a parallel between the coming out of 'gay' and the coming out of 'slash', which however doesn't make them the same, but similar), it was in a social/historical context of gay-awareness; there is no pointing at a specific year, but a more general decade (end of 60s, beginning of 70s).

However, how many slash fans, writers, readers were actively, politically involved in gay movements? Some certainly were. Some were not. A few stories in different fandoms (though I personally can only mention Nina Boal's and Mfae Glasgow' s somewhat later stories in Pros) certainly dealt with the slash between the characters in a politically involved way, mentioning AIDS and politically active movements and associations of the times.

As far as I can see/have read, earlier slash stories dealt with gay issues mostly in the WANGWJLEO way (we are not gay we just love each other). Homophobia - probably just as much as mysogeny if we want to expand there - was/is very much entwined with these fictions, wheter as from within the author's pov or within the characters' pov.

So, there's social/historical context on one side.

On the other side, there's the CANON context. For shows like Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals it makes sense that being gay could be a problem/issue that the protagonists might want to consider and deal with. With shows like the Star Trek franchise, how much is it feasible that being gay, bi or anything in between and around that should be an issue in the series? Yes, homosexuals in need (and rightly so) of representation have lamented the practically total absence of gay characters in the series, but their lamentation comes from the necessity of being represented in their contemporary historical/social setting. It makes sense for the ST series, being set in a far away future, that the issue of homosexuality should be not an issue anymore, and it's the short-sight of producers in our contemporary setting that the situation has not been addressed.

And that's the historical/social context of the series CANON on the other side.

Now, I've read in several entries that fans agree that if there's m/m - f/f sex, hell that's GAY. Uhm. Yes. And NO. Meaning...those are the terms, the labels that we are used to deploy in order to identify this or that type of sex acts. Terminology and labels based on heteronormativity that permeates fully the language we have, both in academia and fandom and society in general.

I personally rather identify GAY with a political agenda that means to undermine and deconstruct the heteronormativity we're surrounded and inbued with, and use the term QUEER to identify Slash with, instead of gay. I see slash as fluid, a relational situation between characters explored in fanfiction, motivated by physical attraction just as much temperamental opposition, against social mores that dictate, or try to, whom we should be attracted to and how to deploy our own sexual desires and fantasies as women.

*For a recap of the discussion, see metafandom : here and here. I think this is the post most of the entries in metafandom referred to/took issues with.

ETA: to specify: I'm using 'QUEER' as in queer studies, ie. academikese

Supernatura (ep. 14) l
"As long as I'm around, nothin' bad is gonna happen to you."

Ahhhhh. I love a good soldier. All weapons laid out, ready to be methodically clean.
I also like a good liar, and o' boy if Dean lied through his teeth to his brother.
Also, like a good soldier, he worries on his own, joking away the dangers and the fears.

SN is shaping up nicely, in the ever-working dynamic of a (buddy) couple (friendship/brothership/malebonding and for us pervs, the ultimate kinky wrongness of the 'cest) -- two archetypes, both heroes, one pragmatic and grounded, the other more sensitive and with special powers...there was a long discussion, a long time ago, in The Professionals fandom, about literary archetypes vs. Jung's archetypes vs. mythological archetypes, etc etc. I bet our Winchester bros. fall into one of those nicely and snug.

SN has a terrific photography, btw.
I love their choices on light (not much of it, as the horror subject requires) and the blue-ish color-dominant in the filter coloring.

Icon: SN, Dean

Yes, I'm partial :) Feel free to take if you like.




Link: Bloggers Archetypes

A research paper choc-full of links leading to more papers about the Nature of Blogging. In others words, Mundanes are equally keen in self-defining themselves as we fans are. The paper is here.

Passed on by a friend - she rightly points out that whether the article's author knows it or not, she's explaining (at least one of reasons of) the appeal of slash.

Attention - spoilers for scenes in the film

I can't wait to see this film...because I read and loved the book (in Italian and English), and because Jake Gyllenhall in big screen size...yummi :D (he's my choice for a modern Professionals remake, btw, as Bodie, of course)