Ramblings!

[xaara]

aka the Carmen has read too much religious poetry in English class over the past few weeks and is still filtering her world in funny ways post.

Extremely vague spoilers up until 2x08 "Crossroad Blues."

She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition.

-Gilbert Parker, Pierre and his People

For the sake of putting this in terms that aren’t going to confuse me, I’m going to call pure good, pro-human guy “God.” For the sake of continuity, I’m going to call pure evil, kill the humans guy “Satan.” And then to add another layer that will definitely confuse me, I’m going to call the legions doing good and evil, well, Good and Evil. However you want to think about it is fine. I’m just...a westerner. And so Judeo-Christian ways of describing the hierarchy of the cosmos are the most comfortable for me.

Here’s my problem, so far, with a lot of what I’ve been reading: I haven’t seen anything in the show that indicates to me that the ceiling demon/man with the yellow eyes/Mr. I’ve-got-plans is in fact The Evil. He’s definitely not Satan. He’s not nearly on a level with the First Evil¹ in terms of his ability to influence events on a cosmic level.

I think we’re rather quick to assume that The Fate of the Winchesters = The Fate of the Universe, just because all we’ve seen of this particular universe is the Winchesters. We’re looking through their eyes. We don’t realize, for example, that vampires can choose not to kill humans until Bloodlust--until Sam learns that same information. Most of the time, we don’t know who the bad guy is in any given episode until they’ve figured it out themselves, and so we’re forced, to an extent, to view the Winchester boys as equivalent to the universe. They are Us. We are Them.

And we’re human. So of course we’re the center of the universe.

But they’re not Buffy². They haven’t been capital Chosen or even just chosen. They aren’t the one in their generation. There’s a whole network of hunters, a group that’s being slowly developed but seems large if loosely connected. Sam’s not even the only weird mind control vision boy. They’ve met a few others already, and although I’m not spoiled past the infamous “soon³,” I’m going to go way out on a limb here and assume that they’re going to meet more.

All of which is leading to a point. And that point is, the existence of evil, yes, means that there probably should exist good. The existence of Hell generally means that somewhere out there is a Heaven. (Again, very Judeo-Christian, because it could be much more Greek, with the idea of an Underworld that is neither heaven nor hell but just there, but the terminology of “demon” and “hell” and the use of Christian symbols at practically every turn leads me to read this way.) What I haven’t seen yet is the existence of Good and Evil, Satan and God.

[Side note: I read earlier today in someone’s meta about Dean that one of the main differences between him and Sam was in Dean’s inability to see inherent good versus Sam’s utter faith in inherent good. Unfortunately, I no longer have that tab open and am lazy unable to find it again, but it rang true. ETA: Found it! Dean sees himself as a weapon against evil in the name of the free choice of the neutrals while Sam sees their fight in simultaneously more epic (you and all the children like you) and more personal (revenge for Jess and Mary, love for Dean, what Dad would’ve wanted) terms. Dean saves people and hunts things⁴. Sam saves people and hunts things because Dean saves people and hunts things. But this is an essay for another night.]

Point! There you are!

• There is both Good and Evil in the Supernatural universe.


• It is not as personified (yet) as God and Satan.


• Neither Good nor Evil is organized on a huge scale. (Again, yet.) We have the ceiling demon and his band of merry spawn, but there’s no indication that he represents Evil per se. We have the hunters and their classic cars, but there’s no indication that they got together to do this thing out of a deep desire to serve Good.


• The motives behind the choice to do good or evil matter just as much as actually doing the good or evil. (For example, the vampires killing the cows in Bloodlust are impressive because they’re going against their natures in choosing Good. If humans were killing the cows, it wouldn’t be Evil, but it would mean much less on the morality-o-meter.)


• Those supposedly fighting for the good guys (for example, Gordon) can make bad choices, because when it comes down to it, everyone has free will. No one is compelled to do good or evil, though they might be predisposed to one or the other.

Comments? Stuff I missed? I still feel like this is amazingly incoherent, even after I went through and edited a few of the paragraphs, so I’ll probably have to come back through and flail around and be all “no no no! that is so not what I meant even though I totally said it that way! *facepalm*”

Endnotes:

1. A character on the final season of Buffy who is, in effect, Satan. It has no true form other than, y’know, evil and is opposed by the one who has been Chosen, presumably by some higher power.
2. Although one of them is a red-headed woman. *cough*
3. Which was a bastard thing to do, Kripke. No cookie.
4. This may or may not be the family business as well. I’m still a little unclear on that after being told it in every previously on Supernatural clip since the beginning of forever.

Comments

[bm1893.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the rest of your argument, haven't really thought it through but your comments on choice struck me.

I always read BtVS and Angel as functions of free will. Firefly as well, actually. Pretty much the whole of Jossverse, to me, is about free will and blurring boundaries and the reiteration of the need for people to keep choosing to do the right/good thing. Buffy, for example, has to choose to be the slayer, be responsible, live up to her calling. The whole idea of the soul, for Angel, is this abstract thing that allows him to choose to be good. After all, one good fuck, and he can ditch the pesky thing but Angel chooses to remain thus, instead of reverting back to Angelus. I won't even get into the crew of Serenity because Mal elaborates the point rather well in his hero-speech.

What I'm about to say has bothered me considerably on a very meta level; so much so in fact that were it not for the fact that I watch SPN more for carnal reasons than for intellectual ones, it would have turned me off the show completely. It seems to me that SPN barely addresses issues of free will and choice beyond a superficial and cursory acknowledgement. I am aware that the primary emotional conflict of the text is born from Sam's choice to walk away from the hunt. Which kind of makes my former statement sound a bit ridiculous but I feel like that even that choice masks something else. Some sort of instinctive move on the part of the character rather than a thoughtout, morally induced decision.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the text is very weak when it comes to setting up its ideology. There's these two brothers and they hunt things. The why's and wherefore's are often only mentioned in a cursory manner. I find it aggravating because I want to know what drives Dean, what he believes in, what his 'ideology' is. My consolation, along with watching the pretty, is that the second season is spending more time fleshing out these things. Even though I don't necessarily agree with your reading of the episode, Bloodlust definitely was a good example. It asked some pertinent questions, introduced conflict into the whole hunting evil scheme and started giving the characters layers that went beyond their relationship with each other.

I'll go ahead and credit Ben Edlund with that.