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.
After much debate over whether or not I’m reading to much into things I’ve decided I don’t fucking care.
SO
Basically this entire episode I was just staring at Dean’s flannel. I couldn’t figure it out because you know what? Those are not the best colors. Dull, muted, kind of gross together. (At least in my opinion. Jensen could rock a plastic bag if he wanted)
BUT he’s become a twisted, demonic version of himself so that makes sense for him to wear colors that are darker and more muted. FINALLY I was just like, “Okay. What are actually the colors on his shirt right now? It looks like green, yellow and orange.”
Do you know what those colors are?
They are the exact opposite of pink, blue and purple. Which Dean wears in this episode.
So in the episode before this one, we have Dean wearing those colors. (Yes the bisexual ones) and now in the episode where he’s losing all control over himself, he’s wearing THOSE EXACT colors, only inverted.
MOTHER OF GOD.
VERY interesting. Great catch!
There’s also this:
Dean and Sam’s shirts in The Hunter’s Game are the same colors, but one in dark shades (in the shadows) and the other in lighter shades (in the light):
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.
I’ve seen several people mention the tattoo, but I haven’t seen much analysis on it.
The star part does bring to mind all the other starswe’ve seen this season. I’m thinking they mean more than one thing: shining stars as guiding lights, fallen stars as poorly chosen paths, hope, destiny, the renewal and rebuilding of Heaven and angels, even something to do with the Americana/patriotism/civil war stuff. As the season progresses, maybe they’ll coalesce into a tighter meaning, but for now I’m keeping all those ideas on the table. There’s also the very real possibility that they go along with all the sun and moon stuff happening in the last couple of seasons.
The rose part is an interesting addition. thevioletcaptain wrote a very nice meta about Cas and his connection with flowers (which I can’t find the link for at the moment).
Roses, in particular though, have shown up several times that I can recall off the top of my head, especially this season. Rowena had an orange rose near her when we first saw her.
The guy in the roadhouse in Paper Moon had a red rose on his jacket.
Colette the maid fell into a bowl of white roses when Olivia killed her.
A couple of times I can remember in past seasons are that Mary had red roses embroidered on her shirt when Dean went back to the past, and Cas used a red rose to cut his hand so he could make a sigil to get rid of Ephraim.
I honestly don’t know what to make of all these roses showing up all of the sudden in different colors and associated with very different people, victims, friends of victims, and villains. This is the first time I can recall that the stars and the roses have been presented together.
So….uh….I guess at the moment, I got nothing. I do think you’re right that they are very relevant to the story, though. If anyone has any ideas or interpretations they’d like to add, please feel free!!
White is often strongly associated with death in the Supernatural visual lexicon. Think Death and his white carriage and white stone in his ring, and all the way back to the Woman in White and Mary and Jess in their white nightgowns. And so white roses around the murdered Collete visually emphasize her death and the theme of death in the episode.
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Hmm, the guy in the roadhouse with the red rose. I have to admit I had to go back and watch his scene again because I didn’t remember him specifically. Turns out he’s an interesting one:
Guy: Yeah, Barker and I have been raising hell and chasing tail and riding for a long time.
Sound like a set of brothers that we know?
Guy: Part of him always knew when his clock ran out it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Yeah, that’s sounding a lot like Dean’s pronouncements of it ending “with a gun in [his] hand” or “bloody and sad.”
Guy: To go out like that? By some animal? Just ain’t right.
So if flowers hint at something hidden and yet to be revealed, and red is commonly associated with demons and danger, and a character who is wearing the flower is talking about a bloody and sad death for a character who parallels Dean… well, shit.
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Rowena is also interesting. An orange flower was associated with her.
Orange has been associated with temptation into evil and/or the monster hunter becoming monstrous in Supernatural. I first noticed it when orange flowers started showing up around Sam in Season 3 once Ruby started him off on his path. And the who pops up wearing orange (who has never worn orange before) but Bobby, on the very episode that Ruby shows up and teaches him how to rebuild The Colt.
Rowena has been manipulating and attempting to tempt people into alliances that would no doubt lead them on a slow slide down into something evil. I’ve read some speculation that she may target Sam in his vulnerability and desperation to save Dean. I also find it interesting that the narrative made a point of differentiating witches with “natural abilities” versus those who have sold their souls for power or those who can pick up a few things under guidance. It reminds me of the speculation way back before we knew about the angelic bloodlines that the YED targeted Sam because of some innate abilities that he had that the demon wanted to enhance.
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And then flowers and Claire: I did a bit of screencapping of that scene in Randy’s house and boy, once you lighten the images, they are EVERYwhere.
So, yes, here in the room with Claire, there are red/pink roses, but there are yellow roses as well.
That wallpaper in the background has red and yellow roses taking into account how orange the lighting is. I’m betting those lace curtains have flowers on them too, but I can’t tell from this pic.
And there are red and yellow flowers on that area rug under Salinger.
Someone noted (I wish I could remember who), that his blood seems to be black where the others’ was dark red.
I find it really interesting that, sure red flowers presage danger, but also demons?
Yellow flowers were initially associated with the psychic children, but have gone on to be associated with supernatural beings more in general.
Then we have the character name “Salinger,” whose most famous work is a story all about someone who loses it in the midst of an identity crisis.
And then we have the fact that this all came down because Randy made a deal, which has all kinds of history in Supernatural.
I wonder if this whole thing with Randy and Claire wasn’t a setup, that there isn’t some supernatural element to what happened there. Hmmmmm, I wonder what Crowley has been up to lately?
Flowers unfold. As buds, their inner parts are hidden, secret, until they come to their full bloom and reach their peak of potential. Supernatural uses many, many visual motifs to reinforce its narrative. Flowers are one of them.
They were first introduced subtly in Home. First on the wallpaper of Sari’s room, where it was later revealed that Mary had been residing in the closet.
In Home, we learned that Mary’s death was even more complicated than we had known before. But that just introduced more of a mystery. Why had she hung around after her death? Why did she tell Sam that she was sorry?
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Once we reached What Is and What Shall Never Be, roses were found everywhere in the Winchester family home. Mary is the only family member still living there.
Everywhere Mary went, pink and red flowers followed.
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Their last appearance associated with Mary was in In The Beginning.
All the pink and red flowers around Mary disappeared once it was revealed just how she came to be linked to the mytharc through the Yellow-Eyed Demon. ( After that, she started showing up in blue with white flowers or white with blue flowers. White=death, blue=sacrifice.)
When we first meet Ava here in Hunted, she seemed one thing, but then she disappeared without a trace. Where she had gone and why were a mystery. When we met her again, she was something else entirely.
Once the narrative started focusing on the mystery of Azazel’s children, yellow flowers showed up around Sam. Note the bedspread in The Kids Are All Right. It’s yellow damask. Damask is a fabric weave which is strongly associated with roses.
Note also that this is the episode in which Ruby truly entered Sam’s life and started Sam on the path that would ultimately end with him opening the Cage. At this point, orange and red flowers entered the mix. Red on Supernatural is usually associated with danger and demons. Orange in Supernatural is usually associated with temptation or something akin to what happens to you when you look to long into the abyss, going along with the theme that when you hunt monsters you run the danger of becoming monstrous yourself. But that’s a meta for another day.
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They appeared in front of Dean at his first visit to a crossroads in Crossroad Blues.
There they hinted that something was yet to be revealed regarding the fate that would bring Dean directly into the mytharc associated with Sam and the YED’s children.
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Red, blue, and yellow roses are associated with Mary, Ava, and Sam, respectively. The commonality between all of these three characters is that something was hidden, secret, yet to come to full bloom. Secrets surrounded Mary. How did she know the Yellow Eyed Demon? Just what was she? Much about her was hidden and not revealed until the 4th season. Ava had a hidden potential, too. Who knew that that sweet and quirky secretary from Peoria would develop into a manipulative, cold-blooded murderer. Sam, too, had his hidden aspect, that deep mystery that ran through the first five seasons of what had Azazel done to Sam and why.
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At first flowers followed along behind characters. Then they started appearing along the key points of the mysteries associated with the primary mytharc of the narrative.
For example, in the early scenes in Croatoan, where they appeared before the reveal of the virus and Sam’s immunity.
A red rosebush made an incongruous appearance in the window behind both Sam and Dean in Lazarus Rising, where both brothers had something they were hiding.
They appeared in Changing Channels. Once Dr. Sexy morphed into The Trickster and we learned his agenda related to the main mytharc, we didn’t see them again.
Flowers appeared in Jump the Shark prior to the reveal that Adam and his mother were long dead. Later, Adam too entered the mytharc by virtue of being John’s son.
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Once season 5 ended Kripke’s grand mytharc, flowers still make their appearance and signal that things aren’t quite what they seem, that something is yet to be revealed.
For example, they appear in the last scene when Dean and Sam part ways in Exile on Main Street, presaging that reveal that was Soulless Sam in season 6.
Blue and yellow (angelic) and orange (temptation to a long slow fall) flowers appear around Castiel once the story of Season 6 hints at just what’s been going on in heaven. At the very point in The Man Who Would Be King that Castiel expresses grave doubts, their presence hints at more happening than meets the eye.
Even Crowley gets in on the act. Here he is in First Born putting the first step of his hidden agenda into play, tempting Dean to follow him to Cain.
White (death) and red (demons, danger) flowers litter the mansion in Ask Jeeves, an episode all about fakers and liars and the things that they hide.
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Even now, flowers hint at more to come:
Here we have Claire in Things We Left Behind and her tattoo. The red (demons, danger) rose, on the same arm as Dean’s Mark, and first presented in an episode in which Claire is clearly placed in parallel to Dean lay down some pretty strong hints that there is much more to be revealed about the role that she will play.
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And here I shall leave you with the now infamous scene from Things We Left Behind in which Dean and Sam tell a tall tale in which the shadow of their father looms large.
I can only wonder what next is to be revealed about John Winchester and the effects of his parenting.
Hearseeno 