#where's my fellow 'dean as the Eucharist' spn theologians out there. show yourselves

[astermacguffin]

We already know that Supernatural is a bodice ripper for men, but when combined with the fact that metanarratively, Dean is god, it makes for a more interesting reading about the violence constantly inflicted on the three leads (more specifically, Dean, in this instance).

Why do we often see Dean on his knees, bloody and broken? Because he is the Eucharist. The Bread must first be broken before it is shared and ultimately, consumed.

While both Sam and Dean function as Christ parallels, they highlight different things about the Christ narrative. Sam is Christ because he must be sacrificed, and Dean is Christ because he must be consumed.

Sam's story focuses more on the breaking of The Bread, the spilling of the blood, the killing of The Lamb, the sacrificial aspect of the Christ narrative and the purification that it entails. Sam is important for the fact that he bleeds. (See: Sam's Hell trauma, the Heaven Trials)

Dean's story focuses more on the eating of The Bread, because he IS The Bread. We joke all the time about the fact that Dean is so consumable, both in the media sense (by virtue of SPN being a media product to be consumed, plus the fact that Dean is malleable: he is "THEE most character," he allows so many readings because he is made for The Gaze), and in the bodily sense (because Jensen Ackles is one of the most objectified celebrities in fandom history). Dean is important for the fact that he is consumable.

The show wants to constantly remind us of the fact that Dean is both A Body (hence, the eroticized violence and objectification) and THE Body (e.g. being the Michael Sword, the bearer of the Mark of Cain, and other ways of framing his body as Special).

Cas, surprisingly enough, functions as the proxy for The Gaze, may it be our Gaze, the Male Gaze, the Gaze of the authorfathergod, or others. (See: All the links in the "made for The Gaze" line above. Or just go to @autisticandroids for the main texts; this post is just a supplementary reading for the desticule meta syllabus.) The Abstracted Gaze functions here as the Gaze that both inflicts the bleeding and devours the body. The Gaze is violent and hungry, because gazing IS consumption ("to look at something and eat it are the same act").

The Winchester brothers, therefore, function as parallels to the Body and Blood of Christ in the most fucked up, erotically violent ways possible, while Cas allows us to enter their world as an Abstracted Voyeur to witness the breaking and eating of the Eucharist. (Which shouldn't be surprising, given the incredibly carnal nature of Christian theology and the fact that Supernatural is a show about the erotics of violence.)

#spn #supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #spn meta #where's my fellow 'dean as the Eucharist' spn theologians out there. show yourselves #i wrote this instead of doing any class work. wtf #aster writes