#american cultural references

[noxious-fennec]

Trying out some new designs (aka playing dress up)

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

today's thoughts before passing out: the demon blood plot reading as a metaphoric fear of miscegenation, a result of classic Western tropes told through a Horror framework.

demon blood is a boundary crossing substance, invasive and transformative. Sam violated in the crib functions on one level as a rape metaphor, but its done so through demonic blood coming in to dilute his human blood. the violation then, comes in as a literal theft of identity. his body becomes the literal battleground between two forces - the domestic world of his family vs. the invading, monstrous outsider. Azazel snatches and preys on civilised children from the crib as a means of recruiting them to his tribe army, literally corrupting them on a bodily level, claiming them from their blood families as his own. and the more demon blood Sam drinks, the less 'human' he becomes (the less of his family's blood in him). Dean's anger over Ruby also ties into Sam's sexual relationship with her, of which the blood drinking is a component. the blood drinking is especially transgressive because it echoes deep-rooted settler colonial anxieties, expressed through the language of pop culture - fears over losing one's blood, family, and identity to a savage Other.

(4.04)

(4.21)

what got me started on this line of thinking was a recent rewatch of John Ford's The Searchers (1956), a movie so ingrained in the modern American cultural mythos that nearly every first year cinema studies course makes it required viewing lmao. it's a subversive Western, concerned with exploring the porous boundary dividing white settler communities from Native American communities, the defining line between the 'civilised'/'uncivilised', the colonial subject and the savage. it was released during an era when America was grappling with undoing laws around racial segregation, and reflects those anxieties through classic American mythology.

so. Sam is a modern interpretation of Martin and Debbie from that movie, and Dean is a modern variant on its leading anti-hero, Ethan Edwards (rather John is our initial Ethan figure, but we spend most of the show with Dean, who takes on his mantle). just to emphasise the connection between the show and this movie - Star Wars heavily references it, and Kripke's always been explicit about this show's two leads as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. well, i'd argue this show definitely owes more to The Searchers than Star Wars does!

Martin is Ethan's adoptive nephew of partial Cherokee descent, made an outsider to his family, by his uncle, at the film's outset due to his blood. he joins his uncle on his revenge mission after a Comanche tribe destroys their home and steals his adoptive sister - Debbie. this mission becomes his coming-of-age journey into rugged frontier manhood, as much as it is his path towards integration into white, 'civilised' society.

the protagonist of the film is Ethan, a soldier who gets consumed by his seven year long, bloody, vengeance-fuelled quest to recover his niece. when he finds Debbie, however, to his dismay he discovers she's no longer the 'pure' innocent he remembers. upon finding out that she's married to the tribe's chief - he literally disowns her as his blood kin, and at one point, even tries to kill her. Martin becomes the one to save her from his uncle's shot and the one to convince her to return home. he later convinces Ethan to recommit to rescuing her, and he ends up doing so.

(15.17 - Sam over s4 functions as a Debbie figure, but Jack also takes up her role. Dean disowns him as Ethan disowns his niece)

over the movie, we see Ethan descend into ever increasing violence and 'wildness', grown closer to his enemy after years spent on the frontier, hunting them down. Martin gets to go home, his civilising mission completed as he marries into a white family. Ethan though, stands at the threshold in the iconic concluding shot below. he's been transformed by frontier violence to the point he no longer belongs to the domestic, civilised world. he wanders back out into the desert, alone.

(1.14)

anyways. Supernatural owes so much of its dna to the classic Western, and to this movie in particular. what The Searchers was to collective white American anxieties over desegregation in the late 50s, this show was to collective white American anxieties over multiculturalism at the new millenium, in the wake of 9/11. Sam's demon blood is a critical defining line between him and his brother, as Martin's mixed race status is the defining line between him and his uncle. 'monstrosity' on this show metaphorically stands in for savagery; one brother gets thrown out onto the frontier, a journey towards 'taming' his own nature. and another brother drifts further and further away from civilised society the longer he spends fighting at the frontier, protecting civilisation from its monsters. 'blood don't end with family' comes to a screeching halt when it addresses the prospect of monstrosity. what is demon blood standing in for on this show? what does a monster represent, truly? who gets to step over the threshold into civilised society, and what is the price of that acceptance?

[foolishlyzephyrus]

the thing no one tells you about hyperfixating on british media is that you will subsequently become fascinated by british culture

[aiteanngaelach]

THERE IS NO IRISH PRIME MINISTER SHUT THE FUCK UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP that's the TAOISEACH and there is no Irish Parliament either that's the DÁIL it is SOO easy to get right. please try. i believe in you

[murdermost-foul]

not that anyone is familiar with psych or cares but season four had some Real banger episodes for such a silly show that I remember watching as a very young teenager & being Obsessed with like shawn gets a shot in the dark and mr yin presents... which in turn had me watch all of hitchcock's films to catch all the references

[pjharvey]

yeah seconding luna in that this kind of “martyr” language being used by non-palestinian leftists is really really uncomfortable lol… i think coming from westerners it inevitably has the implication that palestinians who die choose to die on some level. or at least that their deaths serve some higher cause of idk. fighting western hegemony or imperialism or the us military industrial complex or something. the idf is killing babies who are a couple of days old i don’t think they have any idea why they’re being killed. and there are absolutely people on here for whom the idea of palestinians as martyrs for the Cause of anti-imperialism is like. why they care. rather than the fact that human beings aren’t meant to exist in these conditions and like what if it was your parents or your siblings or your cousins.

[hollenka99]

I love how Lovejoy songs tend to have one of three themes:

A) Hey girl, you know you deserve better so how about you leave that prick for someone better (like me)

B) We’re not compatible but fuck if we’re not going to be toxic about it as we stay together anyway

C) Fuck the way politics has turned out in the 21st century

[sinha-ri]

To anyone wondering why the next black butler arc uses the word "Fag" is because it's based on old British school culture, meaning Yana did not make this up or choose the word herself (as in the concept of using the word, not changing it is a choice (?))

Like you can straight up just Google it and wiki is willing to tell it all

Less of trying to excuse the use, but trying to explain why it's used

[maladaptivemisanthrope]

American Emo Miku!!!!

[naturallawofweirdnessmagnitism]

Here are some of my Nomad headcanons!!

I based some of his clothes on traditional gaucho fashion, mainly the belt, leather, and Poncho patterns

They always seem to be unarmed in the series, so instead of a facón, I just gave him a pouch and spare cloth

The tassels and bells make all the shaking and jingling sound effects in the show

Sometimes, their critters bring him little flowers or shiny trinkets. He loves this and has some of them pinned on his poncho

The antler stubs are there to push my similarities-to-the-otgw-beast agenda

[nunlolita]

Kinda don't like how the term "Puritanical" started being used as shorthand for "anyone who disagrees with me is a conservative" instead of you know. What that word actually means. And that people don't want to examine how cultural Christianity actually works and affects mainstream western culture, especially American culture, and instead opt to use it as a bludgeoning tool to shut down anyone who doesn't agree with them.

[un-pearable]

yknow, fascinating culture we’ve got that you have to clarify “anatomical” for it to be clear that you’re talking about how hearts actually are shaped, in our actual bodies, and not this random ass shape we’ve decided is equivalent

❤️ <- you are the result of frankly staggering amounts of cultural telephone and i love it

[alighted-willow]

Whilst I avoid both going to bed and my academics, I thought it a good time to say that when an American says they're “restoring a language” or “of X ethnicity”, they don’t mean they're from X. They know their nationality, they know where they were born, that's not the point.

When someone says they're Irish and are from America, it's just shorthand for “Irish American”. We put everything in a shortened form here because we all know what we mean and collectively remove redundancy.

When we say we're learning Z language because we're X, we don't mean it in terms of exoticism. The only people who do that are ignorant kids and folks who are going through a cultural/identity crisis. The rest of us are trying to learn these languages because our predecessors lost them or had them trained out. It is a dead language to us because these parts of us have been killed off, that's why it's a revival.

While I do research, I often hear people say something around the lines that “You are where you're from, not where your predecessors are from” which is true, to a certain extent. I am an American, a U.S. citizen. If U.S. culture was a bit more similar to how most other places in the world did it, I would say that I was from X state, an Xian. Here, though, we are more defined by our subcultures; little pockets of pooling culture brought in from where we originally hale.

This probably wouldn’t be the case if most of us had come here out of a desire to be here rather than having been forced out of our homelands. My family came here around 1930 and our records say it was because of food insecurity caused by a failed crop (and a surprise frost). The folks who settled the U.S.? Genocidal assholes, fuck 'em.

But back to the point. When someone says they're trying to get in touch with their culture— we're not trying to be you. We're trying to get back what was forced out of the people before us in order to survive over here. Our families came here with what they had and our culture has changed throughout the years. St. Patrick's day is odd (especially since Patrick was colonizing Ireland) and is over the top; that is the point. Not a single one of us thinks that to be Irish is to be bathed in clovers, downing alcohol, and belting about rainbows. It's a noxious, loud, proud declaration that we're still here. It is, at least by its origins, a public protest.

[bombusbombus]

Some pretty silly takes coming out of Batman fandom as to what it's like to be raised by a British person. Bruce wouldn't be unable to speak with an American accent—he's been surrounded by American accents his whole life, and he'd probably avoid drawing unwanted attention.

Much more likely he'd tell his friend at school that he had "rocket salad" for lunch and 20 years later it's the only thing that person remembers about him so they STILL tell that not-actually-funny 'story' to everyone at high society parties. At every party. Until Bruce regularly fantasises about hitting them with an actual rocket.

[themagicalghost]

Is this potential reference name what I think it might be

[autisticdoomslayer]

the world would be a better place if it was universally required to take one (1) cultural anthropology class