The visual imagery of ships, moving water, and stars by which to guide them have popped up throughout season 10 so far. They seem to be coming to a head in the 10th episode, The Hunter Games. Visual imagery associated with journeys is everywhere.
We have stars:
And the means to track them:
Maps to follow:
We have planes:
and ships:
and a massive boat of a car:
We have metaphors:
And, now, a destination:
An end to the road:
In Darkness and In Light:
Both brothers in yellow, red, and grey/black shirts.
I present to you the only two times Warrant’s “Sweet Cherry Pie” plays in all of Supernatural, both times over shots of Dean at strip clubs either real or dreamed. (eta: Grrrr first .gif isn’t working. I’m workin’ on sorting it out.)
The first time we hear it is in 5×13, “The Song Remains the Same.” Dean is dreaming at the time. He is initially fantasizing about the demon woman alone, but at one point closes his eyes for a moment and opens them to find, to his surprise and delight, that an angel has joined her.
The second time is in 10×02, “Reichenbach,” as Dean sits in the Angelz strip club (and behaves really disgustingly). He watches a stripper dressed in an American flag bikini top (n.b., I have no idea what the American flag imagery is there for!), and fights with the bouncer when she refuses to let him touch her; “Sweet Cherry Pie” continues to play as he beats the bouncer. He then heads outside the club, where Crowley confronts him.
My tentative theory about this is sort of twofold. First, I think that the use of “Sweet Cherry Pie” in “Reichenbach” is meant to show just how driven by violence Dean is at this point. Violence and killing has earned a place alongside sex (and pie, for that matter) among things Dean gets a strong hankering for. This is demonstrated by the way the song keeps playing as Dean whales on the bouncer; violence is Dean’s “cherry pie” these days.
But I also think they may have intended to reference the show’s first use of the song and bring to mind what was going on in that scene—Dean fantasizing about a demon and an angel. They could have picked any other song, but they chose this one. As dorkilysoulless and I have already discussed, it seems that Dean and Crowley were having some form of a sexual no-strings-attached fling at the beginning of Season 10, so that takes care of the demon half of Dean’s fantasy.
When Dean walks out of the club, Crowley confronts him. Dean stands between Crowley (demon) and a sign that says “Angelz” (angel).
So if the demon from 5×13 is personified in Crowley, where the hell is the personification of the angel in the whole “Dean caught between and fantasizing about an angel and a demon” thing? Well, they cut away from this shot directly to a shot of Castiel washing his hands… I guess he’s the angel they’re referencing. (“No!” gasps the Destiel-shipping meta blogger. “You don’t say!”)
Bonus bi pride colors in the “mirror” above the pole in the club and in the neon lights to one side:
(If anyone knows more about how the American flag and mirrors fit into this, I’m all ears!)
Mirrors are often used in SPN to hint at the truth beneath the surface, revealing the monster or monstrous within.
We’ve seen overhead mirrors a few times. The times they reflect things upside down are rare.
Here’s one from Season 3: Sin City – which was all about the tenuous line between demon and human.
And then another Season 4: Lazarus Rising- again in which Dean is struggling to come to terms with the monster within that was revealed in his time in Hell.
A similar parallel can be seen in Dean’s deliberate examination of himself in the mirror, here in Season 4 Lazarus Rising and Season 9 Meta Fiction.
Together the visual motifs evoke: red/white/blue/flag = free will, mirrors on the ceiling = everything turned upside down, and mirror reflection = reveals the monster hidden within (Dean’s “monstrous” behavior with the stripper).
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And then I ran into this, which is the hotel Sam and Dean stayed in in Lazarus Rising. Verrrrrry innnnnnnteresting. 🙂
Here we have the scene in First Born in which Dean and Crowley convince Tara to show them how to locate Cain and the First Blade.
First off: It’s a pawn shop. No symbolism there, right?
And then take a look at the items that are displayed. It’s a pawn shop which sells:
1) drums, guitars, banjos, stereo equipment, tape decks, speakers, headphones, horns, and golden records
2) watches, rings, necklaces, and shirts/jackets
So here we have on one scene: a place in which people sell things that are precious to them in a time of desperation, in exchange for things to wear, and in which there is everything you need to play music.
How many layers he’s wearing and whether he’s under or over the covers often visually reinforces the story of Dean’s emotional state.
In Season 1, the biggest mission at that point was to Find Dad. There we saw Dean stripped down, half-clothed, under the covers, and vulnerable.
There are notable exceptions of times of urgency, where ease is set aside in favor of the greater plan to Get The Demon Who Killed Your Mother.
Here are Sam and Dean after the reveal of John’s plans about The Colt. John is awake off screen and monitoring for activity related to the vampires who stole it from Jenkins.
Dean’s ease with his sleep continues even in to Season 3:
This changes with the start of Season 4. After his return from Hell, Dean’s sleep is disturbed with flashes of his experience there, and we see him full clothed and laid out atop the sheets of his bed.
Until after 4×11 Family Remains, in which Dean confesses the shame of breaking in Hell and taking up the knife to torture other souls. It’s after he unburdens himself that we see Dean again without the armor of his layers of clothes and seeming to have deliberately laid down to rest, instead of sleeping wherever and whenever he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.
At this point, we return to the contrast between times of greater safety and those consumed by the need to remain vigilant.
Here, Dean sleeps and dreams of fishing at the beginning of the episode. In contrast, once Jimmy is in their care and requires their guardianship, we see Dean again clothed during sleep.
In Season 5 and 7, Sam and Dean are on the run, hunted by demons, angels and leviathans. Dean sleeps as if only giving into his body’s demands reluctantly, requiring “at least four hours” before getting back in the game.
Being among family may not always be the time to let your guard down. See Dean bunking down with Soulless Sam and a grandfather he has little reason to trust.
Contrast this with his post-apocalyptic period with Lisa and Ben and the relative safety of the bunker in Season 8.
Perhaps, or perhaps not. I think you got to the meat of the matter in your meta without it, that you need to look deeper and that there are multiple layers hidden here beneath the flower imagery. And I like what you say about errors the authors make as informed by their flawed and limited interpretation of the narrative and that many things, including subtext, may also be true. I’m afraid I’m not familiar enough with Adaptation and The Orchid Thief to comment with anything specific about what you’ve said beyond that. 🙂
I’ve seen Supernatural do that before, use both flowers in general but a certain flower type in specific to evoke certain themes. Once was back in Season 4 with the Siren in Sex and Violence. The flower they used then was hyacinths, which were strategically placed to 1) throw you off the scent and on the surface imply that the doctor was the Siren but 2) below that to both imply that something was secret and yet to be revealed and 3) evoke the myth of Hyacinth.
Hyacinth was a youth who was loved and killed out of jealousy by the greek gods. Which fits with the Siren’s goal to force people to kill that which they love the most. I think he was jealous of their love and attention in the sense that he wanted it ALL for his own, for it to be proven to him.
What I also thought was interesting was that the writers’ entwined that theme with all the Disney character names as the aliases assumed by the Siren. Jasmine, Belle, Aurora, Ariel – all children’s fantasies of the grown up world. The Siren promised relationships in which only the lovers’ needs mattered, in which they liked the same music, cars, way time is spent together, etc. The Siren promised the first blush of love that Dr. Cara referred to, that is a fantasy of the relationship, rather than a mature and fully adult relationship.
Hearseeno 