What would be so wrong with accepting and respecting Dean’s stated sexuality?
The only thing “wrong” about Dean being bi is that he’s actually straight. I’m not much in favor of erasing someone’s stated sexuality for one that other people might find more appealing or convenient. Turns out I’m pro-LGBTQ+ like that. If someone says they’re not into men or not into women (depending upon his/her orientation) I take them at their word rather than trying to prove that they are “lying” for one reason or another.
‘Straight Dean stans" ?
You mean “People who accept canon”.
All of these pointless posts can be summed up as follows: Canon is canon. Fanon is not.
Writing an encyclopedia on the subtle secret bi!Dean clues on the show doesn’t change the canon fact that Dean Winchester is straight.
“People who accept canon”.
This.
For y’all’s reading pleasure, a thorough analysis of:
Also, as a sociological FACT, men (particularly working-class, white men who hail from middle America), are prone to try to retain a label of heterosexuality, even when they are sexually active with other men.
Also, if it’s canon that Dean is straight because he said it, then it must also be canon that he’s a certified Teddy Bear doctor, because he said it. >_>
Please stop this nonsense and get a better argument.
Your arguments are arguing with each other.
Half of them are based on the premise of ‘Dean is a fictional character, therefore real person rules don’t apply’, and the other half are ‘let me show you these real person rules that suddenly apply for reasons’.
Seriously, you are way over-invested in your need for bi!Dean, you have actually written essays on it, seek help.
Yeah, tell that to all the professional literature scholars who literally make careers out of doing that sort of thing. *coughEveSedgwickcough*
(Seriously, I spent a whole semester in grad school reading academic essays on different queer interpretations of Chaucer’s Pardoner from The Canterbury Tales. Queer interpretation of fiction is an ACTUAL PROFESSION. People literally make careers out of it)
Also real and realistic are two different things. Treating a fictional character as if they are real is nonsense. Asking whether fictional content is realistic (or is being evaluated by audiences according to realistic standards) makes good sense.
So nice try, but I’m afraid I’ve managed to escape your logic trap this time. Better luck on your next go around, perhaps.
But this is not literature, this is filmed media, so literature analysis rules don’t exactly apply. A literary work generally has one author, a TV series essentially has hundreds that all collectively influence the final product:
showrunners,
a rotating team of writers, a rotating group of directors, guest directors, producers, prop designers, set designers, set dressers, editors, the actors, etc.
Then, you also have to take into account that sometimes what you see on screen may have been adlibbed or have nothing to do with the character.
For example, Jensen just recently revealed that all those moments of ‘intense eye contact’ between Dean and Castiel had nothing to do with character choices and was instead entirely about trying to make Misha break character.
Another example, in 12.04 when Dean climbed/fell over the gate while Sam walked around it, even though Dean has been quite athletic in the past. That was adlibbed by Jensen and Jared because they thought it would be funny.
Logic is not a “trap“, it’s just reasoning based on principles of validity, but whatever helps you sleep at night. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I was being rhetorical and facetious with the whole logic trap thing.
And just FYI, scholars also study TV and Film via the same basic analytic modes as literature. Plenty of scholars who’ve done queer analysis on literature have also written on TV and Film. (Judith/Jack Halberstam, Teresa de Lauretis, Michael Warner, I could go on…) Media analysis is media analysis, and the same basic styles and modes of textual engagement cross mediums. It’s not different because of the authorship issue, at least not from a professional analytic stand point.
Indeed, the only difference that makes is that it simply further inters the Death of the Author mode of approaching the text, which just adds MORE credence to the bisexual interpretation of Dean, given that there is no One True Author to which we could possibly relate our interrogations of his True Sexual Nature, even if we wanted to.
In sum, I don’t understand why you think your retort undermines the validity of bi interpretations of Dean in any way.
Ah yes, the
Roland Barthes argument (author of “The Death of the Author”). The focus of his work was the question:
how can we know the author’s intent? However, Barthes was speaking mainly about actual dead authors (hence the title), authors that can’t be interrogated about their work because they’re, you know, dead. He theorized that, in the case of a dead author, the only interpretation that is left is that of the reader; in the case of a living author, you ask the author; and, in either case, that the author’s personal life should never be used to interpret their work.
Such as, an author being gay, or an actor being bi, does not in any way inform the orientation of the characters they write/play.
But Barthes was a literary theorist and not the only one. His idea about literary analysis is not the only one, nor is it the guiding principle or standard. It’s merely one among many, many of which are quite different.
Death of the author does not lend itself well to a TV series like SPN, which is an ongoing/unfinished/living work, and where the authors are still very much alive. And there are many strong and separate influences and many pieces that are neither plot-driven nor character-driven, such as the aforementioned example of the real reason behind the ‘intense eye contact’.
It doesn’t add “more credence”, it just allows the interpreter to ignore what doesn’t fit their predetermined narrative (Jensen messing with Misha) and cherry pick what to interpret (the eye contact itself) and how to interpret it (eye sex).
It also allows interpreters to conveniently ignore the fact that Eric Kripke, Jensen Ackles, and many other ‘authors’ of the show have stated that Dean is straight.
All of that aside, whether you employ the ‘death of the author’ methodology or not, you still have to consider all of the pertinent parts to do proper analysis, which includes tone of voice, body language, societal context, situational context, and so on.
For example, when Dean says “blow me Cas”. To do valid analysis, you have to look at his tone, his expression, the situation in which he says it, and why an American man of Dean’s generation would say that to another man in that way and at that time. Guess what? It’s not a sexual come on, it’s the figurative equivalent of ‘fuck off’.
Because cherry picking is not valid analysis, taking things out of context is not valid analysis, ignoring whatever doesn’t fit your narrative
is not valid analysis.
I am sorry, but you are just flat out, 100% wrong that Death of the Author was supposed to be primarily about authors who are actually dead. That is factually incorrect. Barthes literally never says a THING about the author’s actual life or death status. It’s never mentioned, not once.
He does say, however
Once the Author is gone, the claim to “decipher” a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing. This conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is discovered, the text is “explained:’ the critic has conquered; hence it is scarcely surprising not only that, historically, the reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic, but that criticism (even “new criticism”) should be overthrown along with the Author.
When he says “once the Author is gone,” what he means is, once the Author is gone from our framework of analysis. And what he is rejecting in this passage is precisely the inclination you seem hell bent on maintaining: being the Critic who ‘explains’ the work by referring to the Author so that you can claim ultimate authority over its meaning. His entire essay is a scathing indictment of that inclination. He is literally calling people like you out and saying what you are trying to do – impose a single correct analysis on a text, based on the ostensible intent of its author(s) – is bullshit.
(Seriously, I’d strongly advise you to give up on the whole trying to undermine Roland Barthes/Death of the Author tactic. You are going to fail there, I promise. Let it go. No professional academic uses authorial intent as away to argue for the validity of a textual interpretation anymore. They’d get laughed out of their own offices if they tried)
As for this critique:
“you still have to consider all of the pertinent parts to do proper analysis, which includes tone of voice, body language, societal context, situational context/ cherry picking is not valid analysis, taking things out of context is not valid analysis, ignoring whatever doesn’t fit your narrative is not valid analysis”
The problem with that is that you are assuming YOUR perception of the characters body language is the “right” one. And YOUR perception of the character’s tone of voice is the “right” one. You still have to INTERPRET all those things individually, before you put them together into a larger holistic reading/analysis. It still requires agentic interpretive work on the part of the viewer, which is always subjective and subject to ‘bias’ in the broadest sense of the term. Acting like that resolves the issue implies that we all agree on what a particular tone of voice means, or facial expression means, or body language means in any given instance. And we don’t.
Also, textual analysis is not and cannot be a science. You can account for all the component parts, and still have multiple legitimate ways to piece them together into something that makes sense. Also, to a certain degree, you HAVE to cherry pick in order to make sense of a text like Supernatural, which is chock full of blatant inconsistencies and contradictions. Example: In “Croatoan” Dean talks about never going to the grand canon, but in “The Great Escapist” there’s this whole scene about Dean and Sam going to the grand canon with their father when they were young. You HAVE to cherry pick in order to make sense of that. You don’t have a choice. The entire angel mythology is basically a nonsense mish-mash at this point. Everyone has to cherry pick and disregard things and favor certain textual content over other content simply to allow the thing to have any semblance of coherence. That’s inherent to being a viewer of a piece of media that is so massive, and has been “written” by so many different people, and whose component parts are not always in sync with one another.
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Finally, I would never in a million years argue that the “blow me Cas” line, by itself, was a good reason to interpret Dean as queer. But the thing is, I am not going to bend over backwards and twist myself into interpretive knots to maintain a character’s nominal heterosexuality when multiple things in the text contain an obvious queer reading. I won’t do it.
I will not look at a film sequence that goes like this
and say yep, this implies he likes her and is totally attracted to her.
And then turn around and say, this virtual carbon copy of a scene
is totes hetero and platonic, and they’re just bros man, and why do you have to read everything as gay, you weirdo fetishist. Because context !!!1!!!!1 (Seriously, I have no idea how the context of this scene heteros this, but whatever…) My point is:
I WILL NOT BEND OVER BACKWARDS TO MAINTAIN A HETEROSEXUAL INTERPRETATION IF IT REQUIRES ME TO EMPLOY A BLATANT DOUBLE-STANDARD OF ANALYSIS AND TEXTUAL READING.
I refuse. I will not do it. Heteronormativity for the sake of heteronormativity is dumb. If that bar scene between Aaron and Dean in “Everybody Hates Hitler” had been between Dean and a woman, no one would have suggested Dean’s reaction was platonic, or did not imply sexual interest. No one. If that scene between Dean and Dr. Sexy had been between Dean and a woman, no one would have suggested Dean’s reaction was purely platonic, and that it did not imply sexual interest. No one.
Utilizing a double-standard of textual analysis based solely on the gender of the characters involved is just blatant heterosexism. You can try to dress it up as something else, but at the end of the day, all it is is a bunch of bullcrap.
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