Musings On One Of The Reasons I Love Supernatural

One evening at about five thirty my boss walked into my office. He seemed a little hesitant to begin the conversation. I have had these moments myself. They come when you know that you don’t really talk to this person aside from work, and you have some supervisory position, so you want to seem friendly and ask him/her some innocuous aspect of his/her personal life. He told me that he had wanted to ask me about what I was reading, but that I always am reading some classic book of great societal or political import which would make him feel he wasn’t reading enough intellectual material. It is true that I often read classics, and they are generally in the Gothic Fiction genre. He decided that curiosity got the better of him and he was going to ask anyway…and in a way that looked pained, he asked me what book I was reading.

I told him that it was a novelization based on my favorite television show where two hot brothers travel around America in a classic car fighting monsters and demons, and fornicating with women. He breathed a big sigh of relief and smiled ear to ear. He told me that sounded like a great book.

Well, the book left much to be desired, but the show is great. I am of course talking about Supernatural on The CW, Fridays at 9pm est. And yes, this is generally the way I summarize Supernatural when I am quickly describing it for someone. Especially if the person I am trying to get to watch the show is not a big scifi/fantasy/horror fan. Of course it is only the surface, easy premise line of the story. The show itself means far more than that.

I could go into many details about the show, explaining away all the different elements and how they relate to just the day to day. There is the importance of family, difficulties with addiction for both the addict and those that love him/her, coming to terms with who you are, taking responsibility for past mistakes, and there's that whole free will versus destiny thing. Any one of those I could write an entire blog article on. I probably will, too. Today, though, I wanted to write about the show in more general terms, and an epiphany I had about it.

One of the more central themes is that of an ordinary life versus an extraordinary life. Sam and Dean don’t generally talk about their lives as hunters as being “extraordinary”, but it is more than the ordinary, and so yes, “extra” ordinary. At the very beginning, in the pilot episode, we know that Sam had left the life. He had “abandoned” Dean and Dad and gone to college. He was graduating and getting ready to go to law school. His plan was to marry his girlfriend, Jessica, and fully realize the ordinary, normal life, complete with the white picket fence, fighting over who had the greenest lawn, probably the 2.3 children, the works. Sam is pulled back into the family business when Dad goes missing and Dean comes by for help. After, when Jessica dies in a fire on the ceiling, the same way that Sam and Dean’s mom died, Sam is back in the life. At first he's back primarily for revenge, but it changes later on. Dean at first seems to think an ordinary life is out of the realm of possibility for him, but wants it for his brother. Now, six seasons in, Dean is the one who tried having a normal life, and is brought back into the fold by Sam.

All talk on Supernatural about Sam and/or Dean living an “ordinary, apple pie” kind of life is baffling to my very Aquarian personality. I will admit that the extraordinary fascinates me. Most people guess this by my love of the genre. In this case, though, it is more than that. I wrestle with how they could go back to an ordinary life after seeing what they’ve seen. Sam and Dean know that there is crazy evil out there. How could they just sit idly by and let horrible things happen? How could they not be the heroes they are? Furthermore, how can anyone decide against joining the fight once he/she knows the truth? Could anyone live a normal life—go work a basic 9-5 job, be a soccer mom, maybe drive his/her kid to hockey practice, or go to PTA meetings if he/she knew there was absolute evil out there trying to bring on the end of the world? I would think that knowing demons are out there possessing people, and evil monsters eating people would be enough to make someone decide that the “details” had to be put aside. We all need to save people, and hunt evil things! Who could worry about health insurance when people’s lives are on the line!

And then it hit me. The mini-epiphany I mentioned earlier? WE DO THIS EVERY DAY. We know there is evil out there. We have all seen it. We see it every day on television, in the paper, on the internet. Maybe not vampires, werewolves or demons, but we see evil. In our world, today, there are acts of genocide being perpetuated. There are people hungry and homeless. There are people murdered in their homes as they sleep. We know this stuff is out there, yet how many of us do anything about it?

We go through our lives living day to day, focusing on our own problems, our own achievements or failures. Often times, if something horrible touches our lives, it spurns us into action. Otherwise, we turn a blind eye to it. We leave the fight to people willing to take it on for one reason or another. We don’t make the fight our own.

This is why I have so much love for smart scifi/fantasy/horror. So much about human nature can be explored in these shows. I once tried to explain on a date to someone that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not a show about some chick fighting vampires, it was a show about a teenage girl facing her demons. He thought I was crazy. Well, maybe I do overanalyze, but I think the point with art is to make you think. Pablo Picasso once said “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” So now I ask, what are you taking with you from your shows? Because if you want to overanalyze with me, I suggest you check out the two brothers who are battling their demons, and fighting the good fight.