Spontaneous Musings

[Catching up on my reviews. I'd promised to do one on Supernatural, but time got away from me.]

The last three episodes of Supernatural focused on what it is to be without a soul. A topic that I first saw dealt with by Fritz Leiber -in the novella Conjurer Wife. That novel has a refrain that continues to haunt me...the wife in the novel has her soul taken and she is constantly saying ..."I want my soul". Here's Lieber's description of the wife with her soul gone:

Tansy sat stiffly, wearing Norman's bathrobe and fleece-lined slippers, with a blanket over her knees and a bath towel wrapped around her head. They should have made her look childlike and perhaps even artlessly attractive. They did not. If you were to unwind the towel you would find the top of the skull sawed off and the brains removed, an empty bowl - that the illusion Norman experienced every time he made the mistake of looking into her eyes.

The lips parted. "I know nothing. I only speak. They have taken away my soul. But my voice is a function of my body."

You could not say the voice was patiently explanatory. It was too empty and colorless even for that. The words, clearly enunciated and evenly spaced, all sounded alike. They were like the noise of a machine.

"But Tansy, if you can talk about the present situation, you must be aware of it. You're here in this room with me!"

The toweled head shook once, like that of a mechanical doll. "Nothing is here with you but a body. 'I' is not here."

His mind automatically corrected "is" to "am" before he realized that there had been no grammatical error. He trembled. "You mean," he asked, "that you can see or hear nothing? That there is just blackness?"

Again that simple mechanical headshake, which carried more absolute conviction than the most heated protestations. "My body sees and hears perfectly. It has suffered no injury. It can function in all particulars. But there is nothing inside. There is not even a blackness. "


It's worth noting that Lieber was fascinated by Jungian psychology and highly influenced by HP Lovecraft as well as Campbell, much as many of the modern Hollywood tv horror writers appear to be.
Except in modern takes on souls...the writers seem to be struggling to determine what a soul actually is. Whedon didn't know. His examination of what a soul meant both literally and metaphorically in both Angel and Buffy...covered a vast amount of territory and rarely was consistent. A professed atheist - the whole concept of "soul" went counter to his own philosophical or religious views...yet, like many of us, he did not know and he wrote with partners who did believe. So what we see in Whedon's horror verse tends towards psychological, but is also to a degree metaphysical, albeit less so than Leiber's.

Kripke, Gamble and notably Ben Edlund's take on what a soul is in Supernatural ...is closer in some respect's to Whedon's yet also has quite a bit in common with Lieber. Like Lieber, Gamble and Kripke are clearly influenced by Lovecraft, but equally by the urban legends and American Christian mythos of the Midwest. Supernatural delves deep into the urban legends and folklore of the Modern American working class culture. At times red-neck and heavily male, it bares a great deal in common with another genre - the Western, and the B-Horror flicks, notably by the late great Roger Corman.



You'll have to forgive me, I don't know the titles of the episodes of Supernatural. Too much data in this brain, no room for more. At any rate, if you've been following Supernatural at all and you probably have - why else would you be reading this? Sam went to hell last season. Good boy Sam.
Sam - who had been leading the ordinary college life, who his brother Dean had to convince to go back to demon hunting, to find the father...Sam who only went along with it after his girlfriend was taken by the red-eyed demon...Sam who always emphasized with the victim, who never just slept with the girl, never was into the car or really material things...Sam who was "all" heart. While Dean seemed darker somehow, more irreverant, a womanizer, caring for naught but his brother and the cause...more hardened. Tougher. A killer. But as the series progresses, the brothers slowly over time switch places, Dean becomes more and more empathetic, less and less the killer, more and more guilt-ridden, and it becomes clear that Dean's weakness is Sam, is his father, is humanity.
While Sam becomes darker and darker, more and more calculating...less and less connected to anyone or anything, until finally that last connection is sliced away completely.

If a soul is our spiritual connection to everything that is alive, to be without it...is to be not alive, or so one would think.

Sam without a soul - isn't exactly without a conscience. Nor is it that he doesn't care or doesn't want to help. He does. Certainly enough to help track down the monsters. And he does protect his brother - by keeping Dean out of it as long as he can...yet, at the same time..he is ruthless. In the same way, almost, as his father, as Michael the archangel, or even Lucifier and finally Samuel...the ends justify the means. If Dean turning into a vampire can get them the Alpha vampire, then let's go for it. To give him credit - he realizes something is off. He doesn't really "care" about Dean, even if he thinks he should. He doesn't really care about anything but himself - his own enjoyment, his own safety, his own goals. As he tells Dean in one of the last three episodes..."Look, I know something's off...I don't care about anyone. Not even you. I don't care what happens to you, well except to the extent that I need you to get what I want." It's a description of a sociopath. Someone who can appear to care, who can put on the appearance of caring like an actor might wear a role. But he can't feel empathy, or even sympathy. If anything, Dean is more of an irritant, but a necessary one. For without empathy, without the ability to care, Sam lacks instinct. He's pure logic. Pure fact. Instinct. Intuition are gone.

This is where Gamble's take on souls veers towards Lieber's and away from Whedon's. If anything it is more metaphysical than psychological. Whedon's examination of the lack of a soul at times was somewhat confusing due to its inconsistencies, yet for that very reason - fascinating. Whedon seemed to admit he wasn't quite sure what it meant to have or not have a soul...and so in a way it felt far more realistic and far more open to interpretation. Part of the reason - Whedon appealed so heavily to the academic community was he posed questions and never answered them. You could interpret the text any way you chose and more or less be right. Spike - who was soulless loved Buffy, cared so much about Dawn and Buffy - that he sacrificed himself more than once, even though he knew neither cared about him. Yet, he was soulless. With Dru...he went nuts to get her well, and even nuttier when she left him. Or take Angelus, who cared so much about Buffy that he stalked her and tried to kill her friends and destroy her world. Neither are like Supernatural's Sam who
just does not care. He doesn't hate or resent Dean. Nor does he really have strong feelings about anyone. He cares about self-preservation and hunts because he is good at it and enjoys it. If he could kill Crowley who got him out of hell, he would. He's not even all that sure he wants the soul back.

When he asks what a soul means, because he truly doesn't know...Dean tells him it is suffering.
Guilt. And he asks .."A soul is suffering??? Why would I want to suffer?" Why would I want pain?

So it poses yet another question, which is equally posed by Whedon - what is guilt? Can we feel love and not guilt?

Spike in the episode Seeing Red, and earlier in the episode The Gift as well as Bargaining and Afterlife - clearly feels "guilt". He apologizes to Buffy. You don't apologize if you don't feel guilt. Sure you can argue - that he is playacting. But it doesn't appear to be that way at all.
Supernatural is clearer...Sam doesn't feel love. He doesn't feel much of anything. He's in some respects closer to Tansy...except he can think, he can enjoy things. He just doesn't suffer.

Watching Supernatural at times feels like a relief...the metaphors are so clear, the meaning fairly straight forward - it is the male mythology of the American West updated and modernized.
Buffy...often was head-ache inducing. Each time I thought I had it figured out, I'd find a wrinkle in my argument or rather a flaw...an inconsistency. I was never quite sure. Here, I'm sure.

But it's not really fair to compare to the two and I shouldn't. For their purposes are quite different as are their universes, not to mention genres. Supernatural is straight noir horror. It examines the Christian mythology - the horror tales our generation and those close behind us have told. The Angels at war in heaven, the demons roaming the earth...fairies who abduct the first-born son or aliens that do it. The heroes struggle to climb out of the abyss but fall into it repeatedly. They are doomed from the get-go, yet they and well us, live with the hope that they may yet succeed. The noir hero is doomed to become the very thing he hunts and fights and struggles against. His voyage is a tragic one, and soaked in blood and violence. A morality tale for a culture weaned on it.

I've often thought noir is an acquired taste, much like Westerns. I was weaned on them. My parents watched science-fiction, noir, westerns, action films, literary films...each Saturday was Western night, and I've lost count of the old 1930s and 40s private dick films that I watched or the novels I read on my father's bookshelves. And in college, I studied urban folk narratives, wrote papers on it. Even went to a lecture by an expert on the field. So..watching Supernatural in a way is a fun retrospective on a genre and mythos that was once the subject of late night papers with tall cups of mocca in the basement computer lab on cold winter evenings.

Where Supernatural is going with the Sam tale, I can only guess. If he does get it back again...it will undoubtably come with a price. But the whole sorry tale circles back to Dean's tragic choice to bring Sam back from the beyond. Auctioning his own soul to Crowley - then the cross-roads demon, now the king of hell...in return for Sam's life...only to lead to Dean going to hell himself, drug there. If he had let his brother die would things have been different? Would they have been better or worse?

Lisa states to Dean, that she knew she lost him again the moment Sam showed up. "You have a twisted co-dependent relationship with that brother of yours. I mean I love my sister, I do, but if she died, I wouldn't sell my soul to bring her back."

Sam is more to Dean than just a brother. We learn as the series progresses that Dean raised Sam, in a way they raised each other. The father was never there, always away, leaving Dean to care for his brother. Rarely in school. Rarely with anyone but each other. They are each others' family. There is no one else. Women come and go. Bobby is there - a sort of surrogate father, sometimes uncle...but he resides in the background. Friends come and go. But their touchstone, the only person who understands them is well their brother. And they are in a way mirrors of each other.

So when Sam tells Dean - that he doesn't care about Dean...it's crushing and evidence of what a soul not being there means. He cares to a degree...enough to avoid seeing Dean again as long as possible, until he becomes desperate and realizes his brother may be the only one to help.

The soul for what it is worth seems to mean conscience, instinct, and the ability to connect to others here. If so, one wonders if Angel's have souls in this verse. They appear to - since that's how you kill one by destroying it's soul.

This feels more like a meta than a review, I know. The last three episodes weren't bad. I rather enjoyed all them. Even the one with the fairies - which was amusing at times, but also did a good job of referencing deals gone bad - a metaphor that echoes across the seasons. Dean makes a deal with Crowley to save Sam's life, tries to get out of it, pays the price - and is pulled out of hell. Bobby makes a deal to walk and sells his soul to Crowley to make it happen. He figures out where Crowley's real bones are and auctions them off to Crowley to get his soul back, yet keep the ability to walk. Finally Sam - who Crowley frees from Lucifer's cage with the promise that he will return his soul, but only after he finds Purgatory for him. We find out about Sam's deal with Crowley in the first two episodes. In the third - a Leprechaun offers to give Sam his soul back in exchange for Dean and all the other firstborn sons of the town. Let us take our tithe, and you get your soul back. But Sam refuses. And Dean wonders why - if you don't care about me, why did you turn him down?

A theme - that threads throughout this is...you have to pay the piper sooner or later...make a deal with the devil and you owe the devil. The father does it first, bargaining his life and soul, to bring back Dean, then Dean does it to bring back Sam, and Sam tries to do it to bring back Dean...

In the first two episodes...there are deals broken and bargains made. Samuel (the grandfather) has a deal with Crowley in exchange for Crowley getting him out of hell. And Crowley makes it clear that Sam does as well. How do you get out of such a bargain? If Bobby's story is any clue - not easily.

Devil's bargains - a metaphor for the nasty consequences of the old ends justify the means approach. Sam and Dean continue to reap what they sew. Their oh-so-justified crusade against the monsters, has its price. I've always thought Supernatural was a rather interesting twist on Bill Paxton's 2002 horror flick, Fraility - which is a story about the strange relationship between two young boys and their father, who believes that he has been commanded by God to kill demons. The story much like Fraility focuses on the twisted relationship between the boys and their father...and here, it is echoed by the twisted relationship between the angels and demons with their fathers.

I'm rather enjoying this season so far. And am curious to see where they go with it. Also quite pleased we're past the whole Heaven vs. Hell thing.