the very touch of you corrupts

[ever_neutral]

 i can't believe i am back engaging with fandom in the year of Satan 2020 because of Supernatural. 

so full disclaimer that I haven't actually watched the episode in question, or any episode of the show for many years lmao but i am highkey fascinated by the Politics behind television decisions and also, screaming that Representation Matters is literally what i do for a living. and it fascinates me that the powers that be behind Supernatural were trying to have their cake and eat it too by making the end of the series a Rorschach blob that seemingly satisfied no one. 

the facts are these:

1) after 12 years of baiting, they actually go all the way with having Castiel come out and declare that he's been in love with Dean all along (then immediately kill him off)

2) even though Dean appreciates that Castiel's sacrifice has allowed him (Dean) to keep on living and embrace life, the show very shortly afterwards kills Dean himself off. they don't give him the spouse and kid/s and picket fence they give Sam's character - which they very well could have done, and still have had the brothers in Heaven ending. rather than confirming any endgame love interest instead they leave Dean blatantly single before he kicks it and ends up in Heaven, and then... 

3) they make the (bare minimum) effort to establish that Castiel has been lifted out of hell (or whatever) and is back in Heaven as well

4) but they DON'T finish what they started with the coming-out, they do not show Dean and Cas meeting again onscreen. which, after previously confirming that this relationship was canonically built on romantic tension all along, would have been the #1 buzz no matter how ambiguous the interaction.

5) by leaving out this onscreen reunion AND not showing an endgame romantic partner for Dean, they manage to avoid saying the final word on Dean's sexuality, full stop. therefore avoiding heat from conservative homophobic general audience members and network censorship equally.  


the upshot is that this is apparently the closest thing to a Destiel endgame the show could have done, and i wonder if that was a real factor in the above writing choices. you might want to think that i'm reaching, but you also have to think that they DID NOT HAVE TO canonise Destiel at all. they could have written Cas out in a generic heroic sacrifice, like they apparently did many times before, rather than CONFIRMING that Dean was the love of his life and that the entire story up to that point was textually a love story! they DID NOT HAVE TO open that can of worms AT ALL! 

but they did open it. they made that choice (and the episode in which they did it was penned by an openly gay writer). but in making that choice, they also wrote themselves into a corner. if there had been an actualfax Cas/Dean reunion in the finale, no matter how ambiguously written or acted, it would have overshadowed EVERYTHING, it would have reconfigured Supernatural in its entirety as the grand and epic love story of a queer archangel and a demon hunter*. which would have caused an absolute shitstorm among the general audience/redditors who view Dean as a beacon of quintessential American masculinity.

so instead they play it mind-numbingly safe and never answer the question they set up, which is Dean’s Shrodinger’s bisexuality. my hot take here which I’ve taken a very long time to sum up – i think SPN actually wanted to do Destiel (and they may have for longer than we think), and they went as far as they felt they could. 

(of course, it’s not nearly good enough in the year 2020, and it would not have been good enough in 2004. i am not praising SPN for doing the bare minimum in queer representation. i’m saying we have to consider the constraints for a show that crossed all demographics, as gryfndor-goddess has also put it.)

anyway Misha is apparently doing a q&a thing this weekend, and i would not be surprised if what comes out of it are implications of cut scenes under network pressure. 

 

 

* the thing about Destiel that people who never went here don’t get is that it wasn’t just your standard wink wink nudge nudge BROMANCE; it was always constructed within a classic storytelling framework as a Romance. the sheer concept of a divine Angel of the Lord saving a mortal from Hell, growing Human feelings and Free Will, then betraying God himself and falling from Heaven out of loyalty to a single human – that is a Big Damn Love Story**. it was a big damn love story even when it wasn’t canonically explicit and it would be a Big Damn Love Story if Dean and Castiel were in the bodies of two jellyfish, because anyone with a single brain cell knows that the transformative power of love is the stuff that enduring romantic arcs are built on.

 

**not to say it was a healthy love story lmao, the Cas/Dean dynamic in the show is mostly insanely codependent and thrives on misunderstanding and mutual suffering. but frankly what epic love in literature doesn’t.

 

 

 

to conclude: can you believe that Supernatural created literally the biggest ship of the 21^st century (this is not an exaggeration - any writer would KILL to create a story that inspires the tumblr/ao3 stats that Destiel has!)… but in the end wouldn’t go all the way with it out of fear of its power. mess!

Comments

[scorpiod]

Hmm, I don't think you're wrong! About SPN being a different beast to add queer content to as opposed to say, Shadowhunters or Riverdale. But I am wondering what the audience for SPN is honestly; I always thought the audience was mainly women and left leaning women, and there wasn't much of a 'right' audience to cater too; if the show ever did lean that way, it was because of the people running it and their interests, not the fanbase (this is not including stuff like, the fanbase hates this female character so let's kill her off, though I blame the show for that too, not really the fanbase). The show never cared about being progressive in any way but honestly...most dudes I encountered IRL did not like Supernatural. My mom loves the show (long after I stopped watching it), my dad flat out refused to watch it. I always thought something in the dynamics between Sam&Dean and Dean&Castiel and the lack of a female love interest repulsed men for some reason?

But that's just an anecdote, really, so I could be way off base. In general, I guess I'm wondering if the network would really stop Dean/Cas from being more canon? In the finale episode? The way it ended, they completely closed the book on other stories or a future movie, so I don't see the harm in making Dean/Castiel canon in the actual last scene, it's not going to kill the audience for the future, and I don't think it'd damage their brand or their business, really....which isn't to say you're wrong that the network may have had some influence over the way things panned out! But it's just frustrating, because, they don't really have much to lose here?

Re: behind the scenes battles, I've heard rumors the current showrunner didn't really care about Castiel, so my tin-hat theory is that Beren wanted Dean/Cas (and maybe others like Misha) and the showrunner didn't so they went halfway and left it unsatisfying for everyone...it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Castiel never came back after confessing his gay love, tbh.

#I too have not watched regularly since the end of S5 and I didn't even see the finale, I should not have so many opinions on this.

LOL I SAW YOUR REPLY ON JIMMY. He's absolutely not relevant but I think SPN has weird ideas over what's considered relevant...I think Dean's heaven was going to be filled with characters we know like Ellen, Jo, Mary, John, and Jimmy (??? ok then), but they couldn't get the actors because covid. So I think Jimmy was just meant to be a smaller part of a bigger cast showing. I think Misha (and Jensen and Jared) probably know more though, they're just being very diplomatic about it. I heard Jensen hasn't said anything at all about the finale.

Do you think they'll break their NDA? I worry we'll have to wait years for someone to dish actual juicey behind the scenes stuff.

[ever_neutral]

I always thought something in the dynamics between Sam&Dean and Dean&Castiel and the lack of a female love interest repulsed men for some reason?

L O L I've literally never met another straight male SPN fan either, but supposedly they must exist?? Apparently the network did carry out market research about Cas/Dean and while they must have got a lot of people pushing for it, I'm sure they also got enough pushback from the gen audience that made them think twice.

But it's just frustrating, because, they don't really have much to lose here?

I think it might go back to SPN being considered a ~Legacy~ show? If they went full Destiel at the end that would reframe the overall narrative and change the perception of the work. I don't think it's so much that the CW will NOT TOLERATE GAYS, so much as that they weren't willing to push the envelope and make THIS a Gay Show in hindsight.

it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Castiel never came back after confessing his gay love, tbh.

Yeah, it's NAGL, although him simply not appearing onscreen is the lesser of two evils compared to being LEFT TO BURN IN SUPER HELL FOREVER.

The only thing Jensen has said is a VERY SHADY post about the rusty nail. The dude evidently hated the way things ended up for Dean and who can blame him.

I am chanting daily to MANIFEST Misha's NDA breaking, lol. But realistically, I think the full truth will emerge probably from people who aren't bound by NDAs. I WILL BE LAYING IN WAIT.