#spn induced mental illness | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

destielshippingnews · 2 years

Text

Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x10 Asylum

After a month’s unexpected hiatus, it is time to pull apart SPN 1x10 Asylum, and I will be discussing Sam’s surrendering of agency, Dean’s affinity with the mistreated mentally ill, and why I stopped watching American Horror Story.

Supernatural’s tenth offering is a mixed bag: it has some astounding character moments, but they exist in an episode which fails to grab me. Mental asylums are a fixture of the horror genre, but I cannot see abandoned asylums as being any more creepy than any other kind of building. Perhaps a part of this is knowing more than one person who has had to spend time in a mental hospital, and having suffered with mental health problems for very nearly half my life, but they just make me sad. That being the case, they do not give me the willies, and seeing mentally ill people used as tools to scare the normies does not really entertain me. The episode also shows the writers’ characteristic lack of knowledge and research capabilities, or at the very least their hesitance to truly explore the horrors humans commit against each other.

American Horror Story is – in spite of its popularity – a show I do not care for. The first series was acceptable, although the gay man being killed with a poker up his anus induced much eye-rolling, as did the gay prostitute being killed in series 4, as well as the midget-killing gay man who was evil because he was gay, and the strong man who was a dick because he was gay, not to mention the gay-coded man being raped to death on screen in series 5, nor the gay man being killed on screen by Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer’s characters because he wanted to have sex with a man on Grindr…

Lots of gay men died in that show in ways which were related to sex and sexuality, but that really is a topic for another discussion. The reason I mentioned AHS is series 2 – Asylum. This aired just over seven years after Spn 1x10 aired, beginning in October 2012 and concluding in January 2013. Mental asylums truly were a horror show up until the 1960s, and this series did a brilliant job of depicting it. The patients were stripped of all humanity, autonomy, and rights, and were left to the mercy of those in authority. Over AHS – Asylum’s run, the viewer got to know a fair number of inmates, some developmentally challenged and others who would be considered completely normal if they were not pathologised by a highly conservative and ignorant culture. The result of this was that characters who seemed ‛insane’ in the first episode were human, relatable, and sympathetic by the end of the series. While AHS has failed (in my opinion) to recapture the strength of its second series and devolved into shock tactics and spectacle, Asylum at least got narrative and horror right. In addition to that.

Supernatural, on the other hand, does not really explore the people who were condemned to the asylum in any meaningful way, using them instead simply to be spooky an creepy. That said, the viewer is invited to sympathise with them when we find out how they were treated by Dr Ellicott et al, but they have no voice of their own, which is to the episode’s detriment.

To 1x10’s credit, the asylum in 1x10 Asylum is an apt metaphor for exploring the dark recesses of one’s own mind and having to face the monsters lurking down there, whether or not it was intentional.

As I do not especially care much at all for this episode overall, I will refrain from discussing its generalities in much details because, quite frankly, I would MUCH rather get on to 1x11 Scarecrow and 1x12 Faith because Dean in a hoodie is my main reason for living. Yes, I really am that shallow.

To the first main point of discussion after that girthsome preamble, therapy, mental health, and mental illness were prominent themes in this episode, as well as anger, with Sam being the locus of the anger themes and Dean the mental health and illness. The choice of an asylum as the backdrop for events makes this apparent right from the beginning, but it does not truly become personal to the brothers until Sam ends up at Dr Ellicott junior’s office and is encouraged to – and do let us not pretend otherwise – bitch about how Dean is to blame for all Sam’s problems.

To back up a second, the asylum is a metaphor for the human mind, or rather the parts of the mind which are kept hidden and occult, perhaps even from ourselves. The asylum is run down, dirty, dark, and dilapidated, and there are doors locked and chained to prevent entrance. Those unfortunate enough to gain access to what should be off limits are driven into a rage which causes them to kill.

The source of this rage in the show is abuse of power. Dr Ellicott senior abused his power by experimenting on patients who were almost definitely in the hospital against their will, much like the characters in American Horror Story – Asylum. The patients were mentally ill misfits whom Ellicott traumatised with electroshock therapy which eventually drove them into a murderous rage resulting in several deaths and whatever gruesome tortures they almost certainly inflicted on Ellicott.

Interestingly enough – and I must credit Paula R Stiles with this insight – Ellicott’s surgery room was in the bowels of the hospital, deep down there in the dark far from the light, a metaphor for where we hide our deepest urges and darkest secrets. This is where the Dr took his patients to try to fix them with his therapy, but unleashed their hidden anger. This metaphor is far too competent for me to credit the writers with it, so it must be purely accidental.

Interesting, then, that this is where final conflict of the story takes place, and where we find out indirectly exactly what it was Sam spoke about in Ellicott’s office.

But Ah! Some might protest. Electro!Sam is not really Sam, he’s under the influence of a ghost, so nothing he says matters. Or even if Sam did think those things, he would never say them, and surely he does not really think them anyway. If that is your viewpoint, Dear Reader, I would like to refer you to my discussion on Shifter!Dean in 1x06 Skin: we can interpret Shifter!Dean as not Dean at all, but rather a monster of the week running his pretty little mouth off to get under Sam’s skin, but that is thin, weak, boring storytelling. Far more interesting is to interpret Shifter!Dean as Dean without the mask or the hesitation, or Dean’s shadow self, and to understand the things he says about being a freak to be Dean’s own thoughts and words coming from his doppelgänger’s mouth. Likewise is Electro!Sam much more interesting if interpreted as Sam without the filter.

This is of course NOT how electroshock therapy words, and it would have been very much to the episode’s credit if it could have explored the inhumane horrors of electroshock therapy and shock treatment in general. For anybody wanting an account of its inception and its heyday as experimentation in treating mental illness to its employment in torturing prisoners during the fascist revolutions in 1970s South America, George Bush and Tony Blair’s Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, please do consider reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. Briefly described, the belief was that a person’s personality could be completely erased with shock treatment and electroshock treatment in particular, enabling doctors to then install a better personality on the blank slate left over. This began in mental hospitals, but soon got coöpted into torture of prisoners of war and civilians in newly fascist countries. It never worked, because it is impossible to erase a person’s personality and install a new one. It was also impossible to repair the damage done to a person’s psyche.

What it did not do was release hidden anger, but rather turned people into vomiting, crying, defecating messes with memory problems and trauma disorders. One wonders whether this episode was partially inspired by the film Serenity and the experimentation done on humans on the planet Miranda. Serenity was released on 30th September 2005, and 1x10 Asylum on 22ndNovember 2005. The schedule is very tight, and writing would have had to be at breakneck speed, but it is possible, especially if it were a simple edit to certain scenes, particularly the conflict between Dean and Sam.

Whilst on the subject of Dean and Sam’s fight, it is time to revisit the idea of Electro!Sam. Electro!Sam was an exaggerated version of Sam, in a similar way that Shifter!Dean in 1x06Skin was Dean’s shadow self. Everything the shapeshifter did is stuff Dean could do, and everything Electro!Sam did is stuff Sam has the potential to do. At least a part of Sam believes Dean is pathetic and follows John’s orders mindlessly, and there is a part of Sam that really would pull the trigger. This is an interesting revelation, and it is a facet of Sam that remains consistent throughout the entire show; Dean would do anything for Sam, but Sam would not do the same for Dean. Sam makes this abundantly clear when he abandoned Dean for a year to live with some sweet Texan strange, and when he said unambiguously that he would not sacrifice himself for Dean in 9x13 The Purge.

I am aware at this point that I am running the risk of sounding like a broken record, but this is one of the flaws in Sam’s character which make him impossible for me to identify with or like. Perhaps I should be clearer; when I say a flaw in his character, I mean both a flaw in his personality, and a flaw in how the writers created his character. He is the protagonist, but his motivations are centred on himself and his own desires. He cares about others, but his wants come first. This is all very well in a character, but he is supposed to be the hero of this story and the one whose perspective the viewer sees the show through. The problem is that – and yes, I have bemoaned this before, indulge me – this does not make him likeable or relatable. Worse, he is only able to see the world through how it relates to Sam and Sam’s problems, and this does not stop throughout the entire run of the show.

In my current rewatch, I am on series 13. Sam’s conversation with – or rather sanctimonious haranguing of – Dean in roughly 13x03 about whether or not Jack is evil and whether or not Jack can be saved if he IS evil was a conversation about Sam by proxy. Jack IS dangerous, and series 12 was spent trying to stop both angels and demons getting their hands on him to use him for their own nefarious purposes. Dean knew this, and treated him accordingly, but Sam wanted to ignore that and make it all about himself. But more on that in ten to twelve years when I get to that point in the show.

Returning to 1x10 Asylum, Sam’s churlish complaints after he shoots Dean are understandable from a certain point of view. Any sympathy I might have had for Sam went out the window the moment he shot Dean the first time, and a distant memory when he pulled the trigger the second time (see above RE: Dean is the dog). Having said I have no sympathy for Sam at this point, I do understand his perspective. He’s bereaved (apparently) and, instead of being able to process his grief as a normal person might, he is dragged around the Lower 48 by a brother he does not like. I understand this, but it is a childish, immature perspective.

Nobody is making him travel around with Dean. Sam is an adult perfectly capable of getting his coat and leaving if he so chooses (yes, 1x11 Scarecrow is up next!) so if he does not like ‛being dragged around’ and following John’s orders, he does not have to. He has a choice about whether to stay with Dean or not. He might not have a good choice, but he has a choice, and not capitalising on his own agency is ultimately making a choice. He chooses not to leave, but instead puts all the responsibility onto Dean’s shoulders, and then resents him when Dean does not do what he wants. This is both surrendering his own agency and making himself an object, and it is misusing his relationship with his elder brother, making Dean responsible for Sam's unhappiness.

Moreover, this episode reveals the depth of his ignorance about his own childhood. The previous episode 1x09 Home told the viewer that Sam did not know Dean carried him out of their burning home, and 1x14 Nightmare will build on Sam’s complete unawareness of Dean’s upbringing as opposed to his own. I cannot sympathise with Sam in this episode because he is completely self-absorbed and oblivious to the experiences of others. ‘Sonder’ is clearly not a word in his vocabulary, and his perspective is so limited and self-centred he has no metaphorical spacial awareness. Allah might know why I am supposed to root for this guy, but I certainly have no idea.

Dean, on the other hand (yes, yes, ‛broken record’, I hear you say) I have no problem sympathising with and getting behind. He might indeed suffer from eldest sibling syndrome on occasion, coupled with him essentially being Sam’s third parent, but he is not ‛dragging Sam around’ in order to control him (though some Sam stans would disagree fervently with that, Allah bless their hearts) but rather he believes that following John’s orders is the best course of action they can take to either find John or find the demon. After all, Sam has provided nothing but a nasty, bitchy attitude and an increasingly poofy fringe, so what else are they supposed to do?

That aside, this is the first instance of Dean’s affinity for mental patients and mental illness being showcased, as well as his distrust for psychiatrists and mental health specialists. It is not as prominent as 5x11 Sam, Interrupted when Dean seemingly embraced insanity like an old friend, but he was the one to work out where the patients would have taken Ellicott, almost as if it is exactly what he would have done. It is also Dean – as Paula R. Stiles points out in her analysis of this episode – who is capable of resisting Ellicott’s electroshock therapy long enough to ghost-kill him, seemingly unaffected by the rage treatment. This suggests Dean’s anger is not as suppressed as others such as Sam’s is, or – and I prefer this interpretation – he is genuinely much more intelligent and self-aware than people like to give him credit for, and is very much cognisant of his darker urges. This fits with my reading of Dean that he also knows right from the beginning of the show that he is bisexual but has chosen to metaphorically amputate that part of himself: as with his same-sex attraction, Dean has stood face-to-face with his own anger and the darker side of himself, and acknowledged its existence. Contrariwise, Sam and the other victims – such as the respectable, middle-class policeman in the big house – appear to keep their anger etc hidden and repressed, even from themselves, rather than giving it space to prevent it festering and becoming dangerous.

Returning to the fight scene, Sam said a lot of hurtful, disrespectful, demeaning things to Dean. Some may defend him and say he did not mean it, or that he would never have said those things under normal circumstances, but the problem is that none of the things he said sounded like things he does not believe. Sam has treated Dean like a stupid embarrassment since the pilot episode, and will continue to do so right up until the end of the show. Electro!Sam is Sam cranked up to 11, but still Sam.

Dean trusted him, and believed (or hoped) his brotherly / fatherly bond with Sam would be strong enough to overcome Sam’s shock treatment, which is why he handed him the gun to shoot and kill him. His utter betrayal when that turned out to be wrong, and Sam shot him, was palpable.

Unfortunately, in spite of Dean being damaged by Sam’s actions, there is no real contrition from Sam. He offers a half-hearted, awkward apology which Dean pretends to accept, but Jensen’s acting choices clearly showed that Dean was once again lying and effacing himself to keep people he loved near him. Sam shot him – twice – and reaps no consequences. This reminds me of the scene in 1x08 Bugs where Sam bitches about his family to the kid in front of Dean, and then squares up to and threatens Dean for having a problem with it. Dean was too good to Sam as a child (in spite of Sam stans speculating he beat Sam as a kid), and gave him the closest to red-carpet treatment he was able. The result is a spoilt brat of a 22 year old who gets away with murder and barely even apologises.

A minor point before I wrap this one up: Dean’s reference to ‛don’t ask, don’t tell’ was an interesting choice. For those of you not familiar, ‛don’t ask, don’t tell’ was the policy in the US Armed Forces of not asking people whether they were gay, bi, or trans, and of gay, bi, and trans people being firmly discouraged from revealing it lest they be discharged. As I have said previously, no single one of these little Bi!Dean moments is enough to ‛prove’ his bisexuality (note: nobody ever requires proof of somebody’s heterosexuality), but there are just so frakking many of these little moments scattered all through the show that it is impossible to ignore them once you know they are there.

Okay, a month later than this one should have been published, and around the time I should be writing about 1x17 Hell House, and it is finally ready to go. This one took so long because I struggled to care (as well as my studies and my job) but I DO care about 1x11 Scarecrow. It was one of the standout episodes when I first watched the show around 13 years ago, and it still stands up in 2021, although I do not think the writers really knew what the Vanir are.

Anyway, the notes for that episode are already written, so look forward to that next week or the week after, where I will discuss Eric Kripke's obsession with Neil Gaiman, Dean growing a backbone, and -- you guessed it -- Sam's emo superiority complex.

#spn rewatch #spn 1x10 #1x10 asylum #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #bi!dean #electro!sam #edvard's supernatural guide

8 notes · View notes

desticuleconfessions · 3 years

Note

hey desticule. so i have a supernatural-themed girl best friends story that i’ve wanted to share for a long time, especially because none of my irl friends ever rly understood the gravity of this experience w/o the context of spn. there’s a lot of fun parallels to stuff on the show, and its given me like years of brain rot and therapy lmao. so i really deeply appreciate this page as an outlet, thank you so much to the mods for making it. anyways uh. here goes. sorry it’s so long.

[tw: queer trauma, religious trauma, mental illness]

okay so. in 3rd grade i met this girl. we'll call her kate. we became best friends, as in our names were never spoken separately, we did (and won) every science fair together, she came skiing with my family every winter, i stayed with her family at their beach house in the summers, our younger siblings were friends, etc.

our birthdays were exactly 6 months apart (jan 22/jul 22) so we literally believed that we were celestially intertwined.

we wrote a novel together in 8th grade. her family is baptist, we attended massachusetts catholic schools. i would go to church with her family when i slept over, i held hands and said grace with them at meals. they are all tall and blonde and beautiful. classically angelic. i am south asian. i remember introducing her to harry potter in the 4th grade, her mother hadn't let her read em because it was "blasphemous", but i snuck her my copies and she would read them during lunch n recess and keep them in my locker. sorry this seems like a lot of unnecessary detail but it will be important later.

anyways we both got into doctor who and subsequentally supernatural (s1-8?9 at the time). i specifically remember getting her into supernatural. i also remember her instinctive disdain for destiel when i talked about it, i was showing her a meta or fanfic i think, and i talked her through undoing some of her christian household’s internalized homophobia (fully assuming we were both straight at this point) (we were fucking 12). we'd do the whole "bitch" "jerk" thing, i (the older one) affectionately called her 'sammy', her phone password was dean, mine was cas (and they still are). on my 13th birthday, she gifted me a samulet, which i still wear to this day. (additionally, she gave me a vonnegut 'so it goes' necklace one year) (thats not vital but) (goes to show the extent of my dean coding) (im also an aquarius lmao). im highly protective of her. i carry extra rubber bands on my wrist for her. i keep our money and phones in my jacket when the school takes us skiing. i sit next to her in the halls during lunch and organize her binder. on an 8th grade field trip, a boy made a gross comment at her and i broke his nose.

so we start high school together at coed catholic school nearby, i join debate, make a friend also into spn, she's bi. she asks kate out over text. kate's mom sees this. things turn.

now the rest of these things happened over the course of a couple months and due to my trauma memory loss, i have no idea how accurate some of these memories are so uh. don't hold me to them.

- her highly religious mother is not happy with this obviously. at some point, she brings a priest home and tries to have kate exorcised.

- at this point, we learn that kate is schizophrenic; it never seemed to create noticeable issues before bc her home life and childhood was a perfect happy dream (not an assumption, her words).

- she's still coming to school, sporadically now, i bring home her work, spend hours helping her.

- when she comes to school, she has seizures: sometimes we're fortunate enough that they happen in a class we have together. she freezes up and the teacher empties the room. i refuse to leave. i hold her hand and softly sing her favorite song and sometimes she comes back to me. sometimes she doesn’t and the bell rings and the teacher forces me to leave and let the nurse handle it.

- another time they announce a medical lockdown (to keep ppl out of the hallway if someone is being escorted to an ambulance) while im in catholicism class, i immediately know it’s her; she fainted in the pool during swim team practice.

- i stay awake for 6 days straight bc i read online that sleep deprivation induces some of the same symptoms as schizophrenia and if i could understand what she was going through, i could help her

- she shows up at my house w both of her parents 15 minutes before the winter ball, begs me to go bc her parents will only let her if i go. so i do. her mom lurks by the gym doors with the chaperones. during a slow song, kate and debate girl start to slow dance, i grab our friend’s hand, drag him in front of them so her mom can’t see and make out with him.

- i wanted to tell her to stop but i was too afraid i would lose us, that it would seem like i was homophobic or i was jealous, but i knew her in my marrow and it didn’t seem like she was in love or into the relationship, it was willful self destruction

- we talked in the last few years, she confirmed this.

- at some point, she says she’s sorry she didn’t tell me about the voices before.

- when we talk, she’s not her anymore, she doesn’t remember our inside jokes, our codes, i can feel her being slowly ripped away and apart in real time

- i have a vivid memory of arguing with her and her telling me im not real, that her mind made me up, while occasionally speaking to something? someone? else in the room. i hold her hand and point to the matching thin scars on our thumbs and try to convince her im real.

- she eventually drops out entirely, taken to some mental facility that im not entirely sure wasnt conversion therapy (it was definitely a religious facility) (and conversion therapy was not outlawed in new hampshire until 2019) and im not allowed to see her.

- every now and then i get cryptic distressing emails or texts from her.

- one in particular has the subject, “youandiwalkafragilelineihaveknownitallthistimebutineverthoughtidlivetoseeitbreak” which is the first line of the song ‘haunted’ by taylor swift (our shared favorite)(the summer after this happened we collectively decided we needed a new swift Our Song and chose ‘breathe’). the body of the email read “what the hell have i done”

- i pray for the first time in my life, every single day for a few months, in different languages, at temple with my parents, in the chapel at school

- on a club trip, i get a call at 2am from her, crying, asking me why i didn’t help her, why i didn’t stop her, that it was my job to protect her

here’s something i wrote about her, three yrs after:

I wasn’t careful enough and she caught quickly. She burned so close and so bright that for long afterwards, I could not see. And like that, she was gone. I walked into the chapel. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

[that last line is from the latin version for a catholic prayer called the act of contrition, it translates to “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”]

in the fall, i hear she’s starting at a small baptist school almost an hour from her house. she is dating the principal’s son. the principal is also her pastor.

in my second year of college, i have a bad acid trip in a snowy park in december. i put my hands into the snow and when i look at them,i see blood. i see her body in the snow adorned like it’s a funeral

i still have dreams about her. sometimes i meet her in a grassy field, flying kites and i invite her to my wedding. in others, i catch a glimpse of her ponytail and catholic school skirt and chase her up eight flights of stairs and when i grab her hand, she turns to ash.

at some point in a separate argument w my parents in which they went through my texts and found out i wasn’t straight (amongst other things) my dad says:“i knew i should’ve listened to [kate’s dad] when he told me the things you would talk about. he knew what you are. and he took his daughter away from you.”

last christmas we met up and drove around together, she tells me that for years she thought i hated her for letting me down and for abandoning me, and i literally have the dean winchester in ‘sacrifice’ five stages of grief when sam says “you know what i confessed in there?” because i could not even begin to fathom that she ever blamed herself. it had always been my fault. i had failed to save her. i corrupted her and i failed to save her.

anyways she’s fine now, she’s okay, im okay, we’ve talked and unpacked and we’re alright. but uh. yeah. that happened. the parallels make me crazy. now they can make you crazy too.

‎

#tw: queer trauma #tw: religious trauma #tw: mental illness #wow #that is ... a lot #i'm glad both you and she are okay #mod cas #confessions #desticuleconfessions

9 notes · View notes