#i'm not sure if this makes sense. for now. but i kinda love tortuous relationships

[ananke-xiii]

(the following is an unchecked stream of consciousness and I can’t guarantee any logic or sense but hear me out anyway)

A few weeks ago I saw this post about Raphael that made me go “oh, how very Macbeth!”. Since then my brain couldn’t stop looking for Shakespearean traces in the writing of SPN and the most obvious thing to think about was S11 and “Henry V”. I was simultaneously thinking about the mark of Cain and its meaning in relation to the themes of exile and imprisonment when I thought: what if S10 is a bit like "The Tempest"? Ngl, I kinda dig my own personal parallel because it confirmed an old theory of mine (Rowena shares some similarities with the “Evil Mother” par excellence, Medea) and it accidentally made me think of Rowena in completely new terms: Rowena is an exile, she’s stateless, always a foreigner and an outcast.

I had never put 2 and 2 together but Medea is also an exile and a foreigner and it’s exactly the threat to be exiled from Corinth that led her to the extreme act of killing her sons. That and a copious dose of revenge against her husband, Jason. You see, now we have two themes pertaining to parenthood, revenge and exile, that interest me a lot. Truth be told, I’m lately thinking about parenthood and its hardships/failings in relation to another show but I think that there is, perhaps, something that I can explore in SPN too.

If you think about it, who else in the show is a parent and a metaphorical exile in quest of revenge? Yeah, exactly him: the one and only John Winchester.

Is, maybe, John Winchester like Medea via Rowena? I think he can be in a figurative sense. While Medea flees her country with Jason, her partner, John self-exiles himself (and his sons) because his partner has been killed. While Medea kills her sons out of revenge because Jason has re-married and wants them gone, John figuratively sacrifices his own sons in his crazy pursuit of Mary’s killer.

It’s a tenuous parallel but I think there are one or two things here something worth exploring: first of all, single, exile-like parents and their relationship with their children; secondly, the bond between partners/spouses is so strong to the point that, if one of them “fails” the other, the consequences can be tragic.

I like this angle because it gives me room to expand the “family is hell” vs “found family” theme of the series. As far as I’ve personally seen, the theme is always talked about taking into account the perspective of the children and their relationship with their parental figures. However, it very much applies to partners/spouses too, aka to the families one marries into.

If I think about some of the main characters in SPN who also have a parental role (apart from John, Mary and Rowena, of course) I think of Bobby (single putative father after the death of his wife), Jody (single putative mother after the death of her husband and child), Linda (single mother), Amelia (single mother after the “death” of her husband) and, obviously, Kelly.

Unfortunately, without her knowing, Kelly “marries” the “family is Hell” thesis in quite the literal terms, since, you know, she’s pregnant with Lucifer’s son. However, her son Jack half-chooses, half-finds himself in a “found family” in quite the literal terms, since, you know, Sam and Dean do, indeed, find him in “Lost and Found”. Jack’s chosen father Castiel, in turn, eventually finds himself comfortable in this weird family of theirs and, this time, there are no single parents: Jack has quite a lot of parental/mentor/supportive figures around him. And this is still not fucking enough because Cas is so afraid of losing his family that he still feels the need to take all responsibilities upon himself.

In this light, a subterranean family-related theme in the series is partners/spouses failing at being precisely that: partners/spouses. It’s not just about fathers who are absent and mother who are dead. It’s also not about the failings of a nuclear-type of family with two parents because even the “it takes a village”-type of family has its own failings. Lots of problems find their roots not so much in the parent-children axis but in the partners/spouses one. Which means that adult people fail/are unable to communicate with their chosen family, aka their partner, because they’re scared… of losing them.

Partners/spouses in SPN either have lost their consorts (the people with whom they share their fate) or they’re scared to death of losing them.  A family-related theme that comes out is that of the partner who marries into the spouse’s family and who’s then left… alone. A figurative and sometimes literal exile.

Ah! the macbethian aspect of Supernatural is actually quite cool, too bad we don't have actual screentimes of deranged couples being deranged together!