SPN 5x19

[giandujakiss]

Bleagh.



So, the point of this episode was to "prove" that Christianity is the true religion, I guess? And Kali started as an awesome character until she had to be ... protected by the Winchesters? I suppose I should be grateful that she, you know, survived.

Comments

[stewardess]

WAit, what!? They actually used a non-Christian deity? I stopped watching spn two years ago.

[giandujakiss]

Several. A bunch of deities from other religions gathered to plan how to stop the destruction of the world. Then Lucifer arrived and easily killed all of them because he is just that much more powerful.

[nicole_anell]

There was also some stuff with them cannibalizing people, right? That rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't watch that much of it though.

[giandujakiss]

Oh, yes, they were serving people for dinner.

[stewardess]

Ugh. :(

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

You are fucking kidding me.

(I realize you're not. Sadly.)

[tripoli]

So, the point of this episode was to "prove" that Christianity is the true religion, I guess?

You got that vibe? I think it failed to achieve escape-velocity from a culturally Christian origin, and I didn't like how they represented some of the gods (and I would be fascinated to hear what the writers consider the Judeo- part of this Judeo-Christian apocalypse), but I didn't get the impression that was intended as the actual point of the episode. I mean, mileage, yours, mine, yadda. Was it because Lucifer killed them so easily, or because it still ended up being all about the angels, or because Kali's speech about how Lucifer's daddy isn't the only god never really went anywhere, or am I totally missing your point?

I realized as I was watching it how much less I would have minded the exit for Kali if Gabriel had just said "the three of you get out of here" instead of "get her out of here." They get SO CLOSE sometimes. I still enjoyed watching her, and that actor is great.

[giandujakiss]

Because Lucifer killed them so easily. It was like, there was a speech about how there were other gods and they were here before the "Judeo" (exactly) Christian one, which I liked, and then ... Lucifer comes in and there's no contest, not even someone who can strike a blow until Gabriel shows. And now all the other gods are dead - except Kali, who I do kind of hope we see again.

Which meant that the speeches about other religions were just pointless, the message is still that Christianity is more "real" or "powerful" or something.

[tripoli]

Huh. The way I took it was more like, a country with nuclear weapons can do a hell of a lot of damage to all the countries without nuclear weapons and (geopolitics is going to fail this example now) they might not be able to do much about it, but that doesn't make it right, and you're still fundamentally talking about a bunch of countries.

So then, of course, the question is why does one country have nukes, and not the other? The answer to that in SPN's case could be that Lucifer has the power because he's second in line to the force that, by implication, shaped the universe and all the other gods, but I don't think that's the only reading the show leaves open, especially with Lucifer's line about how nobody gives them the right, they just take it (an interesting contrast to his and Gabriel's exchange about whether anyone can make angels do anything they don't want to do).

(The cannibalism, though, that's just bloody mystifying.)

Okay, I have our big grad school final presentations tomorrow so I really have to go to bed, if I don't respond to a comment before Saturday I'm totally not ignoring you.

[giandujakiss]

But the show for wahtever reason just made Lucifer more powerful with no explanation. Kali makes a speech about how there are these other gods that are being ignored and have power, and what ho! They have no power at all. Meanwhile, dead religions - Norse myths - are placed on par with religions that have many followers (Hinduism), the other gods are called primitive - and also, an angel of Christianity - not even God Himself - is placed on par with gods from other religions.

Thought experiment: Can you imagine this episode being done with Jesus instead of Lucifer? It's laughable. It would be considered blasphemous. There would be protests of the network.

[tripoli]

No, I mean, no question, they boned that, and I think they were much too fast to go to monotheistic/polytheistic than living religion with millions of followers/religions featured in Xena, and the implication was certainly that the other gods just couldn't compete. Now, for some of the gods there last night, that's actually pretty reasonable, since gods as forces of unstoppable cosmic power wasn't necessarily a central feature of the religions they came from, or they were never intended as fighters. I'm blanking on most of who was there, but at least Kali or Odin should've at least put up more of a fight. I think they probably didn't want to devote time to protracted fight scenes with a foregone conclusion involving a bunch of characters we only sort of care about (independent of one's feelings about the actual god they represent), but then they might have reconsidered doing an episode with this plot in the first place.

Actually, I think I can see exactly why they thought this was a great idea and exactly how they turned it into a minor fiasco. I'm still not persuaded they set out to write an episode about how Christianity is just the greatest most powerful thing ever, though the implication certainly wound up in the final product.

[tripoli]

Which, (sorry, still thinking about this, more appealing than grad school) regardless of intent, comes to one and the same (while I was watching it, the y'all-come cannibalism and Dean calling the other gods primitives and chimps felt more like a slap in the eye with a dead fish than Lucifer killing them all, so much so that I first I thought he was going to pretend to be Michael).

I'm also still trying to figure out if the takeaway was really supposed to be that might makes right, or the nine millionth reminder that we should be scared of Lucifer because he's more powerful than anyone but big-G God because, well, he just is (even though I will give them credit that him standing all deadeye in a motel hall over dead gods was pretty creepy, but only if I can somehow make the case that those gods were actually as powerful as Kali said, which takes some fanwanking).

It's an interesting corner they wrote themselves into--if you're going to tell a horror story with mythological villains, it's better (in my mind) to use a culturally dominant mythology. It's not exactly transgressive to make Lucifer a bad person, but I don't think I could sit through two seasons of a bunch of American writers villainizing and commodifying Kali or Baron Samedi as the Big Bad. It's bad enough when something like Highlander does it with the Zoroastrians, or the kinda-Greek, kinda-proto-Christian episodes of Hercules and Xena that still make me super uncomfortable; this was just a head-to-head beatdown. By a villain, sure, but like you said, it's the power differential.

And once you're telling that kind of story, you're probably not going to make your Big Bad command anything less than overwhelming force (or ridiculously overpowered, depending on whether you ask me or Dabb and whatshisname), definitely not once you're in a pop-Christian paradigm. You could, but these writers won't. Even then, there are ways out of this that still convey that there are other gods with other agendas out there. But if you're trying to tell the story about the two guys (who were at one point at least nominally ordinary people) getting the human race out of this mess, something is going to get sacrificed, and in this case it was an opportunity to portray other gods as being able to at least compete power-wise with the Christian god's former second-in-command. And I don't think they've really thought this through, worldbuilding-wise, but that, ah, would not shock me at this late date.

...I'm also thinking maybe that an atheist who's read Sandman and American Gods cover to cover is maybe not the best one to be commenting on all this. Not to speak for her, but from my read of her reaction, this episode struck yourlibrarian with vaguely geopolitical tones too, only because she's yourlibrarian she can articulate her points coherently, rather than flail helplessly at them like I do.

[giandujakiss]

regardless of intent, comes to one and the same

Sorry, yes, that's what I meant. I mean, I didn't think the writers actually sat down and thought "We shall now have an episode about the triumph of Christianity!" It's just that it seemed like great storytelling to show that Lucifer is powerful - and by extension, God, who is even more powerful - by showing how Lucifer can kill the gods of other religions. And that's the same thing.

And no, I don't think they gave it any thought at all - just the way they probably didn't give any thought to the fact that it wasn't Jesus they showed, or the actual Christian God - it was angels, who are a lot less "sacred" religiously. In other words, they kept things that are important to Christianity out of the fray without doing the same for Hinduism or other religions - and I doubt that even occurred to them. Because it's so natural, from a Christian point of view, not to have Jesus in this kind of storytelling, and not to even envision God because God doesn't take a form at all.

[elliemurasaki]

My best guess is that we're working with American Gods theology: gods with lots of worshippers are powerful, gods with not so many worshippers aren't. It's a sucky guess, because there's a fuckton of Hindus in the world, but there's also a fuckton of Christians and Muslims and I suspect the Muslim concepts of God and the archangels have been conflated with the Christian concepts, and there's considerably more of Christians and Muslims together than there are of Hindus, certainly considerably more than there are worshippers of any other religion represented at that conference.

Do we have guesses to the identity of the blonde woman, the white guy, and the tenth attendee at whom I didn't get a good look but who I think is another white guy?

[giandujakiss]

Sure, we can invent something about it being number of followers - but nothing in the episode said as much. What we saw on the screen was a basic message about Christianity being more real, more powerful, and ultimately the only one left.

I mean, since there wasn't much going on the episode anyway, it looked like mainly an excuse to show off the "power" of Christianity, or something.

Dunno if we learned who the other characters were - I admit I wasn't paying that close attention.

[elliemurasaki]

By my count we have two Hindus (Kali and Ganesh), one from China (saw him on IMDB a while ago and looked him up and apparently he's the god of kitchens, but damned if I remember his name), one from vodou (Baron Samedi), two Norse (Odin and Baldur, and they forgot Baldur's only supposed to be killable with mistletoe), one Roman (Mercury, and I was spoiled that one of the gods would betray the rest and I was so afraid it'd be Kali and I am so glad I was wrong), and the unidentified blonde woman, white guy, and other white guy. I'm not entirely sure I saw corpses of those three, come to think.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

That idea was no less poisonous when Gaiman used it. To say gods with lots of worshippers are more powerful than those with fewer imposes the idea of majority-rules on a cosmic level; It's basically a screw-you to minority faiths.

[elliemurasaki]

I didn't say it was a good idea, just that it's what makes sense in context, especially given how often Kripke's referenced Gaiman before. I'm also fairly certain (though I don't have a cite, or any idea where to look for a cite, sorry) that the idea predates Gaiman by a few thousand years.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I always thought that Gaiman explicitly said, in Sandman at least I can't recall exactly from American Gods, that this was part of the life cycle of all gods - this epoch's big kahuna will be the next's has-been. Also his point with the gods' power dependent upon their worshippers seemed to be to underscore that gods are created by humanity not vice versa.

[katsaris]

Saying that the strength of gods depends on the number of their followers is a "screw you" to all faiths -- as it means that having faith is for the benefit of the god (essentially the god's feeding system), not for the benefit of the faithful.

[elliemurasaki]

Which statement itself assumes the relationship between deity and believers is parasitic rather than symbiotic. (Of course, in Supernatural, it might be...)

[katsaris]

At the very least the relationship between deity and believers, even if not outright parasitic, would be dishonest on the part of the deity. Unless the deity so revealed to their followers this power they have over it.

As most real-life religions believe their gods mostly unaffected by worship or lack thereof, I think the idea of the gods so empowered by faith would be blasphemous to all of them.

[ratcreature]

I haven't seen the episode yet (I have resorted to prepare myself with spoilers for SPN at this point, even though I usually like to be unpoiled for things) but this kind of cage death match of gods rather screws over the religions without gods in this power struggle, no? Unless things that are not gods as such count too. Then in the end Lucifer would get snuffed by Confucius' spirit or something.

[elliemurasaki]

In American Gods theology, there are gods of heroin and television, so.

Okay now that is a crackfic I want to see.

[nostariel]

Pretty much this, yeah.

I especially liked how helpless and scared Kali looked as the boys ushered her out (HELPLESS FEMALES ARE HOT! DID WE MENTION THAT GABE GOT TO BONE HER ONE TIME? CHECK OUT THE PORNO AT THE END OF THIS EP, IT'S HOT TOO!!).

And when Dean called the pagan gods “chimps” and the camera panned over the only Black people in the room? Classy.

Ugh, this show.

[giandujakiss]

So pissed about the boys "protecting" Kali, complete with Dean's bossy condescenion. Ugh.

And yes, Dean's comments were particularly offensive.

[darkemeralds]

Yeah, it was pretty bad. I was stunned that Kali survived, and I liked her fiery arms and her indifference to Dean, but the "theology" of the episode was just shockingly offensive. Personally, I'm all for all the gods killing each other off, eastern, western, whatever, and having an outcome of TFW FTW. But "Lucifer can kill them all and can't be killed" (while all other angels can be killed, wtf?) and Lucifer can dispose of other time-honored and powerful gods with a flick of the wrist?

IDEK.

[giandujakiss]

But "Lucifer can kill them all and can't be killed" (while all other angels can be killed, wtf?) and Lucifer can dispose of other time-honored and powerful gods with a flick of the wrist?

Zactly. I saw someone say that the only way to redeem this episode would be if in the final ep of the season, the Christian God appears and Dean and Sam stake and kill him.

[darkemeralds]

LOL! I would so stand up and cheer!

[stewardess]

I think I might grit my teeth and watch all of season five for that moment. Unfortunately, I'm sure it won't happen.

SPN has shown low-rent pagan gods as cannibals before: the episode in season one, with the scarecrow god, and the Xmas episode (S4?) with the Druid or something gods. Lumping Kali in with two-bit fertility gods is NOT ON.