Jowett, Lorna. “Purgatory with Color TV: Motel Rooms as Liminal Zones in Supernatural.” TV Goes to Hell: The Unofficial Road Map of Supernatural. Eds. Stacey Abbott and David Lavery. ECW Press, 2011.
In the movies, the motel is usually a temporary stop en route to somewhere else. The motel (or hotel) offers a transitional space where the protagonist experiences a crisis of identity – when the crisis is resolved, the protagonist moves on. A television show, though, might be predicated on an endless journey, following protagonists who travel across the country, rarely stopping for long, never establishing a home. In such shows, life on the road defines characters as well as structuring narrative. Route 66 (1960–1964), an early example, is cited by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke as an influence (“Pilot” commentary). The Incredible Hulk (1978–1982) combined the road format with a superhero story and The X-Files (1993–2002) featured FBI agents based in Washington who traveled across the U.S. to investigate paranormal events. Supernatural draws on these earlier shows, combining horror, the fantastic, and the road genre to present ever-moving protagonists in the Winchester brothers, Dean and Sam, and their mission of “saving people, hunting things.”
Dean and Sam not only cross physical space to investigate the supernatural, they also pass between different dimensions (literally when Dean goes to Hell and then returns), and (via hauntings from the past) between times, so liminal zones feature frequently. Motels are non-places, between places, “purgatory with color TV,” as Katherine Lawrie Van de Ven suggests (235) and the motel rooms the Winchesters stay in replicate other sites where borders between the supernatural and the mundane blur. Motel rooms in Supernatural have an aesthetic function: signifying Anytown, USA, they are generic but distinctively American, providing visual flourishes in the generally dark, washed-out landscape of the show. When the Trickster traps Dean and Sam in a TV land fantasy (“Changing Channels,” 5.8), this grittiness is exaggerated by the brightness of the “sitcom” motel room compared with the “real” motel room – it is the same room with the same décor but one pops with color, the other is dull and slightly worn. Furthermore, as spaces for both exposition and emotion, motel rooms also serve a plot function, enhancing their thematic significance: the Impala may be the Winchesters’ “home,” as the season 5 finale suggests, but life in motel rooms has shaped who they are. Van de Ven notes, “trading in the purgatorial gray areas of identity, hotel/motel films provocatively employ marginal, transitory spaces to speak to experiences of complexity or uncertainty” (236–237). Supernatural’s motel rooms are key sites of uncertainty, even contradiction, that relate as much to the brothers’ identity as to supernatural phenomena.
Read on Google Books*: 33-34, 35-36, 37-38, 39-40, 41-42, 43-44, 45-46.
*Last accessed February 13, 2016.
Liminal spaces in myth are places of power. Saints and heroes are born in doorways. Evil creatures fear to cross riverbanks. They are places of thresholds, the transition from one state to another. When you cross the threshold, you are neither in the state you were before nor in the state that is yet to come. In that very moment you are free to be whatever you choose.
Supernatural, particularly in the early seasons, is full of images of motel rooms that are temporary stopping places along an asphalt river. Gas stations and convenience stores that are places of refueling but not really habit and routine. Their “home” is a vessel along the journey. They are neither in one state or the other. On the road and at home. They stand in the doorway between human and monster, at times with one foot more firmly on one side of the frame than the other.
These past several seasons have been filled with images of boats, the road, rivers, stars, and maps. And now, in this current season, we’re seeing stop signs, road blockages, and “end of the road” signs. At the same time, we’re seeing the Winchesters’ enjoyment of the pleasures of homemade meals, stopping at nursing homes, and getting constant reminders that the Winchesters are getting older. They’ve been traveling through liminal spaces for a long time. Makes me wonder what it’ll take for them to commit to one side of that doorway or the other.
Hearseeno 