***Spoiler Alert!*** I'm writing about the television show
Supernatural. It's a great show. I don't want to spoil any of the plot elements
for people who aren't caught up on the show.
With the exception of a few take home assignments, exams are over
for me. That means, it's time to binge watch Netflix. I know it's not healthy,
but hey, the brain needs a break sometimes. So, as I've been watching
Supernatural, I've been thinking about how well it fits in with post-modernist
theory. The show works well to exemplify all three major tenets of
post-modernism, so I thought it would make a nice blog entry to explain each
tenet as seen in Supernatural.
Tenet 1: There is no unbiased knowledge
This is the part of post-modernism I really started thinking about
when I was thinking of Supernatural. In particular, I was thinking of episode
6.15, in which Sam and Dean are sent to an alternate universe in which they are
actors, stars of the show "Supernatural". In this universe, there is
no magic, there are no demons or angels or witches. Sam is married to the
actress who played the demon named Ruby. It becomes clear that they are, in
fact, in our universe. I found this particularly interesting because the
writers are playing games with the viewer. They acknowledge that in our world,
none of the bad things are true. And yet, perhaps in another place they are. In
Sam and Dean’s world, most people don’t know about the monsters, but a few do.
The “knowledge” that we have generally says that there are no such things as
monsters. We have never seen them, and so we don’t believe they exist. But this
knowledge is biased, based on our experiences and what we have been told. If
you grew up with a father hunting monsters, like Sam and Dean, you would
believe too. In that way, it seems much like religious faith.
Tenet 2: Power is implicated in knowledge
This tenet is also clearly, if shallowly, demonstrated in
Supernatural. When the post-modernists talk about this, they are talking about
how one dominant culture has done extensive research by means of their
dominance, allowing them to maintain power through their knowledge. The idea is
not nearly so nuanced in this television show, but the point is made quite
clearly. One of the literary techniques favored by the writers in dramatic
irony, in which the viewer knows something the characters do not. One character
will have information that another does not, and they will use it to get the
edge in a fight. In the same episode mentioned above, the angel Balthazar sends
Sam and Dean to an alternate universe with a key that he tells them much be
protected at all costs. Sam and Dean do everything they can to protect the key,
but they lose it. However, they later find out that Balthazar had given them a
fake, and that Sam and Dean were simply decoys. The angels sent after the boys,
and Sam and Dean themselves, clearly have much less power over the situation
that Balthazar. In this way, Balthazar’s knowledge gives him power.
Tenet 2: Culture is a text or a performance
The idea that we perform culture becomes exceedingly clear in a
show where demons and angels are frequently possessing humans, or monsters are
trying to pass as humans. For a period of the show, Crowley (a demon) holds
Kevin (a prophet) captive, trying to get information out of him. Crowley sends
two demons in to talk to Kevin, having them pose as Sam and Dean to try to get
information. The two demons are attempting to act like humans, and more
specifically trying to pass as Sam and Dean. But Kevin catches them because the
demons were “too polite”. Culture, or behavior, is a very tricky thing to
replicate unless you have been living it. Culture is something we unconsciously
act out. We only become aware that it is something to be acted when we find an
example of someone for whom the acting doesn’t come naturally. In the case of
Supernatural, these are the demons. In anthropology, the ethnographer may find
he has trouble acting the culture of the people he is living with.
Very nice; sounds like quite a show.
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