Personal Demons (spoilers for 4.16)
Mar. 20th, 2009 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_stringThis isn't an episode reaction as much as some thoughts and questions about one of the issues brought up by the episode.
When I first got hooked on SPN, about a year ago, I kind of assumed that if the Winchester family tragedy had an allegorical dimension, it had to do with the way the YED's predation figured for the trauma of a broken home. You know: it wasn't divorce that turned us into a struggling, single-parent family, it was a yellow-eyed demon, though the results were the same.
But now that I've been poking around in canon and fanon for all these months, I think that the "natural" demon that the "supernatural" demon is most often read as standing in for is not divorce, but rather substance abuse.
I think this is interesting, and don't quite know what to make of it.
Substance abuse--particularly alcohol--has a long-standing presence in canon SPN, and discussion thereof: Sam's famous line in "Nightmare," that with a bit more tequila and a little less demon-hunting, he and Dean would have ended up like Max, has spawned copious speculation about just how much of an alcoholic John really was (and if you want a reminder of just how much the brothers' relationship has changed since S1, take a look at the end of that episode!). And if the question didn't really come up much in S2-3, it has returned with a vengeance in S4, where excessive use of alcohol has come up several times already: Dean's heavy drinking to deal with his post-Hell PTSD in YF, WT, and HaH; Sam's heavy drinking in the months after losing Dean in IKWYDLS.
So, while I agree that the whole angel-demon war has taken SPN to a very different place than where it started in S1, there is a strange continuity on this issue at least....
And alcoholic Johns, Sams and Deans show up with surprising frequency in fanfiction (along with the occasional, memorable, heroin addict!Dean). Mostly in AU fiction, of course, as if in the absence of "real" demons, other, more personal demons arise in their place. (I list a few such stories at the end; I'm sure there are more). The jury seems to be hung as to which of the boys has a more "addictive personality"--though the tendency runs deep in the Winchester line, according to fan writers and readers. I'm not sure I've ever read a piece of fanfic about divorce, however, though I'm sure one exists, since everything exists. (I know I'm treating fanon as continuous with canon here, a practice you may not agree with. But it seems to me that one of the ways fanfiction functions work as an interpretation of what's really happening on the show, even, or perhaps especially, AUs).
And now it seems as if addiction is poised to enter the story arc in a central and fairly mind-blowing way. There was nothing subtle about the way Sam sucking Ruby's blooded was coded as an addict getting a fix from a dealer.
So, my question is just: Why so interested in addiction, SPN? At first glance, as I said, I didn't think of SPN as a narrative of addiction, except maybe in that Brokeback Mountain, "I just can't quit you," kind of way. And I still don't. But something is clearly going on here.
Is it just that substance abuse is a more significant threat to 21st-century personal and familial ties than divorce ever way?
Or is that the show has always been interested in the addictive properties of emotions: revenge, love (particularly the kind of love outside the bounds of "normal" heterosexual romance). Are these more physical addictions simply a new way of exploring that dynamic?
SPN has, of course, also always been interested in problems of agency, control, denial--also central to the dynamic of addiction.
But I feel there's something I'm not getting here, so let me know if you have any insights. I'm more interested in the show's overall interest in addiction than in any given character's addictive personality--though that is pretty fascinating, and is already lighting up the boards. (as indeed it already was last week, for example in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bardicvoice 's meta about last week's episode, here). Sam's emergence as a power!demon-blood!addict seems perfectly in keeping with the way his character has developed; but I'm interested in why the problem of addiction has a larger presence on the show than just Sam's personality flaw.
Some addiction stories (this is an unscientific selection of mostly well-known fics--I'm sure there are many more).
kimonkey7 's A Good Man is Hard to Find. (heroin-addicted!Dean)
vee_fic 's Drive!Verse (S1 AU, alcohol-abusing!Sam, nicotine-addicted!Dean--who's also addicted to painkillers, but only because he's permanently disabled).
candle_beck 's Look the Other Way (AU, no supernatural, implied alcoholic!John, alcoholic!Sam)
kroki_refur 's But for the Grace (alcoholic!Sam in an alternate reality)
innocentculprit 's Please Exit Hell Quietly Through the Rear Doors (S4 alcoholic!Dean)
red_handed 's Can't Feel a Thing (heroin-addict!Dean, 4.10 tag)
When I first got hooked on SPN, about a year ago, I kind of assumed that if the Winchester family tragedy had an allegorical dimension, it had to do with the way the YED's predation figured for the trauma of a broken home. You know: it wasn't divorce that turned us into a struggling, single-parent family, it was a yellow-eyed demon, though the results were the same.
But now that I've been poking around in canon and fanon for all these months, I think that the "natural" demon that the "supernatural" demon is most often read as standing in for is not divorce, but rather substance abuse.
I think this is interesting, and don't quite know what to make of it.
Substance abuse--particularly alcohol--has a long-standing presence in canon SPN, and discussion thereof: Sam's famous line in "Nightmare," that with a bit more tequila and a little less demon-hunting, he and Dean would have ended up like Max, has spawned copious speculation about just how much of an alcoholic John really was (and if you want a reminder of just how much the brothers' relationship has changed since S1, take a look at the end of that episode!). And if the question didn't really come up much in S2-3, it has returned with a vengeance in S4, where excessive use of alcohol has come up several times already: Dean's heavy drinking to deal with his post-Hell PTSD in YF, WT, and HaH; Sam's heavy drinking in the months after losing Dean in IKWYDLS.
So, while I agree that the whole angel-demon war has taken SPN to a very different place than where it started in S1, there is a strange continuity on this issue at least....
And alcoholic Johns, Sams and Deans show up with surprising frequency in fanfiction (along with the occasional, memorable, heroin addict!Dean). Mostly in AU fiction, of course, as if in the absence of "real" demons, other, more personal demons arise in their place. (I list a few such stories at the end; I'm sure there are more). The jury seems to be hung as to which of the boys has a more "addictive personality"--though the tendency runs deep in the Winchester line, according to fan writers and readers. I'm not sure I've ever read a piece of fanfic about divorce, however, though I'm sure one exists, since everything exists. (I know I'm treating fanon as continuous with canon here, a practice you may not agree with. But it seems to me that one of the ways fanfiction functions work as an interpretation of what's really happening on the show, even, or perhaps especially, AUs).
And now it seems as if addiction is poised to enter the story arc in a central and fairly mind-blowing way. There was nothing subtle about the way Sam sucking Ruby's blooded was coded as an addict getting a fix from a dealer.
So, my question is just: Why so interested in addiction, SPN? At first glance, as I said, I didn't think of SPN as a narrative of addiction, except maybe in that Brokeback Mountain, "I just can't quit you," kind of way. And I still don't. But something is clearly going on here.
Is it just that substance abuse is a more significant threat to 21st-century personal and familial ties than divorce ever way?
Or is that the show has always been interested in the addictive properties of emotions: revenge, love (particularly the kind of love outside the bounds of "normal" heterosexual romance). Are these more physical addictions simply a new way of exploring that dynamic?
SPN has, of course, also always been interested in problems of agency, control, denial--also central to the dynamic of addiction.
But I feel there's something I'm not getting here, so let me know if you have any insights. I'm more interested in the show's overall interest in addiction than in any given character's addictive personality--though that is pretty fascinating, and is already lighting up the boards. (as indeed it already was last week, for example in
bardicvoice 's meta about last week's episode, here). Sam's emergence as a power!demon-blood!addict seems perfectly in keeping with the way his character has developed; but I'm interested in why the problem of addiction has a larger presence on the show than just Sam's personality flaw.Some addiction stories (this is an unscientific selection of mostly well-known fics--I'm sure there are many more).
kimonkey7 's A Good Man is Hard to Find. (heroin-addicted!Dean)vee_fic 's Drive!Verse (S1 AU, alcohol-abusing!Sam, nicotine-addicted!Dean--who's also addicted to painkillers, but only because he's permanently disabled).candle_beck 's Look the Other Way (AU, no supernatural, implied alcoholic!John, alcoholic!Sam)kroki_refur 's But for the Grace (alcoholic!Sam in an alternate reality)innocentculprit 's Please Exit Hell Quietly Through the Rear Doors (S4 alcoholic!Dean)red_handed 's Can't Feel a Thing (heroin-addict!Dean, 4.10 tag)
