165087397 lol hyperrealism in supernatural

8/14/2019 165087397 Lol Hyperrealism in Supernatural

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TRAPPED IN TVLAND:ENCOUNTERING THE HYPERREAL IN SUPERNATURAL

MICHAEL FUCHS,UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ

The other day, my father whom I wouldnt refer to as white trash, since thatis too American of a concept for describing a Central-European working classman, but lets call him Homer Simpsonesque asked me what Im currentlyworking on, a question that he usually avoids at all cost. There I was, staring athis face, wondering what to say or how to approach the issue. Have you evereven considered explaining hyperreality or the fourth order of thesimulacrum to someone who has never heard of postmodern theory (eventhough there is no singular postmodern theory)? So, I started talking abouthow reality has dissolved into hyperreality, the precession of simulacra, andthat postmodernity is characterized by a radical implosion erasing formerly validdifferences and boundaries, such as social class and gender. But that chair Im

sitting on is still a chair, and Im a man, was the expected reply. Trying toavoid the issue of gender performativity, I responded: Yes, but the idea of thatvery chair is influenced by representations of chairs in commercials, catalogues,etc. The chair youre sitting on, anchored in physical reality, and its simulacraare intricately connected. Instead of ignoring the subject and moving on toother things, my dad got loud until I eventually found myself following a ratherweird local proverb der Gescheitere gibt nach (the clever one gives in) and responding yeah, sure, you have a point.

The rather inconclusive narrative sketched above, which, for all you know,could be as real as the Ecclesiastes quote opening La Prcession dessimulacres, doesnt (explicitly) say a lot about popular culture and(hyper)reality yet. It just so happened that a couple of days later, we weresitting in front of the TV watching an episode of Supernatural that had a title

whose intertextuality even my father could not miss The Song Remains theSame. In the episode, the two main characters, Sam and Dean Winchester, havetraveled back in time in order to save their present lives. When contemplatinghow to approach their parents, who in the present past are younger than Sam andDean, the following dialogue takes place:

Dean: What exactly are we gonna march up there and tell em?Sam: Uhm. The truth?Dean: What? That their sons are back from the future to save them from an

angel gone Terminator? Oh, come on, those movies havent evencome out yet.1

Triumphantly I turned to my dad and said: See, this is what Im currentlyworking on. Whatever they tell their parents will shape their parents idea of

who Sam and Dean really are, thus signs, i.e. the words used to describethemselves, precede reality as perceived by their parents. Plus, Sam and Deanare seeing their lives as replicas of movie images. Of course, this is a misuse ofBaudrillards concepts, but good enough an appropriation of his notion that themap precedes the territory in the postmodern age:


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Today, abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the

concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, asubstance. It is the generation of a real without origin or reality by models: ahyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survive it. Now, it isthe map that precedes the territory precession of simulacra, it is the mapthat creates the territory [].2

Unimpressed, yet at the same time seemingly shocked by my statement, myfather responded: Thats TV. Thats not reality! But is it?

SUPERNATURAL SEMBLANCES,SIMULATIONS,DISSIMULATIONS,OR ?

As Roland Barthes argues, a fictional work is never expected to present reality,but only to signify reality.3This signification of reality is what Barthes refers toas ressemblance (usually translated as aesthetic semblance) and is not to beconfounded with simulation, which not only according to Barthes is neverthe goal of any fictional work. Aesthetic semblance becomes particularlyinteresting when the unrepresentable is signified, as will be briefly discussed

below with reference to trauma. Even if the images found in a TV series such asSupernaturalcannot present reality, they may serve as a medium to access theReal. Already some twenty-five years ago, Umberto Eco noted that by our verynature, we human beings are storytelling animals.4As such, (wo)men indirectlyaccess the Real through narratives we make sense of the world by constructingimages of ourselves and the world.

The story that Supernaturalnarrates currently includes 104 episodes (andcounting), which is why outlining the plot seems like an impossible task. Forreaders that dont know the television show, this minimal sketch of the seriesmay be given: the central characters of the show are Sam and Dean Winchester,

educated by their father to become hunters, but not your usual hunters; they huntvampires, demons, ghosts, and all kinds of supernatural entities. The fiveseasons that have aired to date all feature a season-long story arch5woven intoand alternating with monster of the week episodes. The pre-title sequence ofthe pilot episode is indicative of the shows structure: the camera shows a nightsky with no traces of civilization. A title card indicates the setting: Lawrence,Kansas; 22 years ago. After some tilting and panning, the camera finally findsevidence of human life a lonely house. Inside, we see a perfect family: babySam, Dean, and their parents, Mary and John Winchester. After a couple ofmoments, however, the mood abruptly changes; Mary is seen pinned to theceiling of Sams nursery, and suddenly she goes up in flames. In the diegetic (aswell as real world) present, Sams girlfriend Jessica dies just like his motherlater on in the episode. Like the opening scene of the pilot, a number of

Supernatural episodes are set in some small village that seems to benostalgically out of sync with contemporary technoculture; and when theWinchesters are closer to civilization, the supernatural appearance of angelsand demons makes sure that lights go out or that cell phones have no signals (acontemporary version of one of the defining features of horror isolation).


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Even though small doses of the hyperreal find their way into the US-American hinterlands6(e.g., there is hardly an episode in which Sam is not seen

surfing the internet), the constructedness of reality doesnt become one of thecentral tropes of the show until season four, when the show takes a self-referential and meta-textual twist.7This first occurs in a rather comic episode, inwhich the Winchesters find themselves re-enacting scenes of Universals 1930shorror movies in Monster Movie (in black and white, no less). However,Monster at the End of This Book takes the question of reality to a totally new,

postmodernist level. The episode opens with some seemingly drunk man havingvisions about Sam and Dean. After some flickering that supposedly indicates aswitch from the visualization of the vision to the representation of diegeticreality, Sam and Dean are seen entering a comic book store. They show theirfake FBI IDs and start questioning the owner. After some questions, the ownerexclaims: I knew it! You guys are LARPing, arent you?

Dean: Excuse me?Owner: Youre fans!Sam: Fans of what?Dean: What is LARPing?Owner: As if you dont know. [confused looks by Sam and Dean] Live

action role playing. And pretty hardcore, too.Dean: Sorry, I dont know what youre talking about.Owner: Youre asking questions like the buildings haunted, like those guys

from the books what are they called Supernatural. Two guysuse fake IDs with rock aliases, hunt down demons, ghosts, vampires.What are their names? Steve and Dirk? Sal and Dan?

Sam: Sam and Dean?Owner: Thats it!8

Sam and Dean learn that their lives have been chronicled in a series of pulpnovels, of course entitled Supernatural. The brothers decide to talk to ChuckShurley a.k.a. Carver Edlund, the author of the books, and what follows wouldlikely make John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, and company proud.I will return to the episode a little later on, but for the moment, let me brieflyfocus on LARPing. It is well-known that the humanist notion of the subject as aunified self constructed around a stable and fixed identity has been replaced bythe postmodern understanding of the subject as fragmented, mutable, anddecentered, continually negotiating between several subject positions. Whilesome critics may regard this development as the death of the subject, that is,the end of the bourgeois monad or ego or individual,9the postmodern subjecthas rather simply become more elusive. Indeed, according to Judith Butler,identity is performatively constituted10 the subject only emerges through a

performative act. Can there be a more postmodern expression of subjectivity

than LARPing? LARPers create a hyperreality in which the participantsphysically act out their characters actions, schizophrenically transforming intosomeone else in the process. It is only appropriate for existence in hyperrealitythat the shop owner in Supernatural thinks of Sam and Dean as LARPers and


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does not even consider the possibility that the real Sam and Dean Winchesterare standing in front of him.

DEATH IN ITS PLENITUDE

Unsurprisingly for a show that revolves around the hunting of ghosts, zombies,etc., death takes center stage in Supernatural; but how real is death inSupernatural, in which ontological boundaries are obviously defined in differentways than in the real world? As paradoxical as it may sound, Supernaturalknows three kinds of death: real death, simulated death, and what, followingEva Kingsepp, may be referred to as carnivalesque death. The latter is the onlykind of death that unquestionably ends a persons or some entitys existence s/he or it is simply no more. What is also characteristic of carnivalesque deathis the attempt to capture a notion of death where accentuation of thecorporeality of the event, highlighting the bloody, the gory, and the grotesque, is

crucial.11

In Supernatural, this kind of death is largely reserved for villains.Whenever the death of one of the good guys (and girls) is turned into a visualspectacle, s/he is bound to not return to the show.

The central carnivalesque death of the series is Mary Winchesters, whichis especially important, for it shows how trauma works in hyperreality. Asstorytelling animals, humans also mediate trauma through narratives.Increasingly, we experience traumatic events which occur in physical reality through mediated representations of these traumatic events. In an attempt to getto the core of the trauma, the Real, we try to separate reality from what Slavojiek calls the fantasy-frame of reality.12 However, the result of theseattempts is that the passion for the Real ends up in the pure semblance of thespectacular effect of the Real, then, in an exact inversion, the postmodern

passion for the semblance ends up in a violent return to the passion for the

Real.

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In extreme cases, this violent return to the passion for the Real leads topeople inflicting bodily harm on themselves, as iek exemplifies by cutters. InSupernatural, the three male Winchesters dont inflict bodily harm onthemselves to gain access to the real trauma of Marys death, but rather willinglyexpose themselves to all kinds of bodily pain.

Paradoxically, real and simulated deaths are not that different in certainrespects. Both real and simulated deaths dont lead to the eternal end ofsomeones (or somethings) existence. People that really die in the diegeticworld of Supernatural continue to live in various forms they may be inheaven, they may be in hell, or they may remain on Earth in a number of shapesand forms (vampires, ghosts, zombies, etc.). However, no matter what post-mortem form really dead people may take, their human existence is over.

Unlike their mother, for the Winchester boys, death is not an end. They maydie, but time and again, they are resurrected. Christian symbolism aside, theimmortality of the Winchesters is not only indicative of the fact that the longingfor eternal life has turned into a cultural obsession in postmodernity, as isevidenced by cosmetic surgeries, cloning, cryonics, etc., but, more importantly,that even death which could be regarded as the ultimate link to the Real has


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lost its link to reality. Indeed, the season five finale even inverts parts ofBaudrillards argument written in response to 9/11: Sam sacrifices himself,

wanting to move the struggle into the symbolic sphere, thus creating theabsolute and irrevocable event14; however, after jumping into a fiery abyssleading into the infernal depths of hell in order to free the world from Lucifer,Sammy is again walking on Planet Earth at the end of the episode. Death haslost its meaning; it is just a simulation of death.

WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL

After having gone to bartending school and made his tavern more hip andmodern, Moe tries to explain postmodernist aesthetics to Homer, Barney, Lenny,and Carl in the Simpsons episode Homer the Moe. Weird for the sake ofweird15 is the best he can come up with. Without a doubt, this is a limited

perspective on the varied functions of postmodernist arts, and the Baudrillardean

mantra of make believe that the rest is real16

cannot be the sole explanation forthe use of meta-elements in Supernatural. Indeed, the meta-elements inSupernaturalserve numerous functions, ranging from defining its place in thehistory of television to smartening17 the amateur narratologists18 sitting infront of millions of TVs throughout the world. But within the context of realityconstructions, it is especially interesting to note that in the diegetic world, thedistinctions between reality and the supernatural are relatively easilydiscernible (e.g. when Sam and Dean suddenly find themselves in a TV showthat they only watched some minutes earlier in Changing Channels19);however, this does not mean that diegetic reality and physical reality can bedifferentiated according to the same rules.

In Monster at the End of This Book, Sam and Dean confront the author ofthe Supernaturalbooks, which are their lives. When Chuck, the writer, finally

accepts that Sam and Dean are neither fans, nor in on a trick played on him, norhallucinations, he concludes that he must be a god:

I write things and then they come to life. Im definitely a god; a cruel, cruel,capricious god. The things I put you through the physical beatings alone. Ikilled your father, I burned your mother alive, [looking at Sam] and then youhad to go through the whole horrific ordeal again. And for what? All for thesake of literary symmetry! I toyed with your lives your emotions forentertainment.20

As is revealed in the course of the episode, Chuck is, in fact, not a god but onlya prophet that chronicles what is to become the Winchester gospel in the nearfuture. In this role, he is, however, only a tool in the hands of the quintessentialauthor-god, the Judeo-Christian god, announced dead by Friedrich Nietzsche in

1882 and by Roland Barthes in 1968.21

Interestingly enough, the resurrection ofthe assumedly long-dead author has been noted by scholars with reference toother popular culture texts, too. For example, Terrance R. Lindvall and J.Matthew Melton have commented on the ending of Duck Amuck in thefollowing way: in the world of the simulacra one finds not a referent, but an


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author.22The same may be claimed about the movieNew Nightmare, at the endof which the main characters return to reality is commented on by the films

creator, Wes Craven, in a voiceover.23 The crucial difference between theauthorial powers in Duck Amuck, New Nightmare, and Supernatural is, ofcourse, that while a religious interpretation is possible in the former two, itcannot be avoided in the latter. The deconstructed structure has rediscovered itscenter: there is God, there is Truth, and there is a stable and fixed Self perhaps,to borrow a rhetorical gesture from Derrida. After all, even if God may be therein the world of Supernatural, he doesnt care about the events on Planet Earth;even if there is the seeming Truth at the core of which God and his constructionof reality feature prominently, contrary to the divine plan, Michael and Luciferdo not face off to decide the fate of the planet at the end of season five; and evenif the selves of the central characters of the show seem to be relatively fixed,Sam and Dean in particular know how to play their roles and switch identities asthey feel necessary FBI agent, high school teacher, Lt. Horatio Caine, etc.,

LARPing in the real world, if you will in short, postmodern subjects parexcellence. If one adds their constant field trips on the internet as well as theirawareness of how their actions are derivative of past figures from theentertainment industry (and the series self-consciousness as regards its role inthe history of TV, its status as cultural product, and its [cyber] fan communities),Supernaturalis a TV series that wallows in hyperreality; a hyperreality that is,however, not such a nihilistic space as Baudrillard in his master-narrative of

postmodern hyperreality towards which we postmodern subjects feel a certainincredulity would want us to believe. Indeed, in Supernatural, there ismeaning hidden beneath the layers of hyperreal pseudo-meaning. As Damien,one of the LARPers at the Supernaturalconvention in The Real Ghostbusters

puts it: Our lives suck. But to be Sam and Dean to wake up every morningand save the world, to have a brother who would die for you well, who

wouldnt want that?

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In other words, hyperreal images create authenticemotional responses or, as Umberto Eco may remind us, feelings that weknow someone else (should have) felt when s/he was in the same situation.Hyperreality can create illusions, and these illusions keep us from murderingreality: As soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself.25Perhaps.

NOTES:

1 Sera Gamble and Nancy Weiner, The Song Remains the Same, Supernatural,season 5, episode 13, directed by Steve Boyum, aired Feb. 4, 2010 (Burbank, CA:Warner Home Video, 2010), Blu-Ray.2 Jean Baudrillard, La Prcession des simulacres, in Simulacres et simulation (Paris:Galile, 1981), 10; all translations mine.

3 Roland Barthes, Le Mythe, aujourdhui, in Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957), 238240.4 Umberto Eco, Postille a Il nome della rosa(Milano: Bompiani, 1984), 13.5 In season one, Sam and Dean are looking for their father, who is searching for themurderer of his wife; in season two, the brothers are going after the killer of their motheras they are becoming aware of the fact that they are part of a bigger plan, and Sam


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discovers supernatural abilities; in season three, Sam and Dean are trying to find a way tofree Dean from a Faustian pact; in season four, they are trying to keep demons from

freeing Lucifer; and season five (which was initially planned to be the final season, as canbe clearly seen from the season finale, but The CW Network decided to renew the seriesfor a sixth season) focuses on their war with Lucifer.6 Interestingly, the entire series is filmed in Vancouver, BC, and its surroundings, whichthus turns into the simulacrum of the United States.7 It may be added that the reality of the diegetic events is more explicitly questioned asearly as season two in episodes such as Tall Tales, in which parts of what the viewersvisually witness is laid bare as constructed by the Winchester boys as they arereconstructing the recent past as narrator figures.8 Julie Siege, The Monster at the End of This Book, Supernatural, season 4,episode 18, directed by Mike Rohl, aired Apr. 2, 2009 (Burbank, CA: Warner HomeVideo, 2010), Blu-Ray.9 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism; or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism(Durham,

NC: Duke UP, 1991), 15.10 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble(New York, NY: Routledge, 1990), 33.

11 Eva Kingsepp, Fighting Hyperreality With Hyperreality: History and Death in WorldWar II Digital Games, Games and Culture2 (2007): 373.12 Slavoj iek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993), 89.13 Slavoj iek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!(London: Verso, 2002), 910.14 Jean Baudrillard, Lesprit du terrorisme, published in Le Monde, 3 Nov. 2001,accessed 12 Jul. 2010, http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=677599&clef=ARC-TRK-NC_01.15 Dana Gould, Homer the Moe, The Simpsons, season 13, episode 3, directed by JenKamerman, aired Nov. 18, 2001 (Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox HomeEntertainment, 2010), Blu-Ray.16 Baudrillard, La Prcession des simulacres, 26.17 See Steven B. Johnsons polemicalEverything Bad Is Good for You(2005), in whichhe suggests that in the course of the past thirty years, the growing complexity of popularculture has positively influenced US Americans cognitive development.18 Jason Mittell, Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television, TheVelvet Light Trap58 (2006): 38.19 Disregarding the extra-compositional implications that are presented in the following,within the diegesis, these constructions are what Baudrillard refers to as dissimulation,i.e. representations in which the differentiation between reality and representations ofreality may be masked, but there is still a relatively clear difference between reality andfiction (cf. La Prcession des simulacres, 12). When criticizing the makers of The

Matrixfor misunderstanding his ideas, Baudrillard points out that either the charactersare in the Matrix [] or they are radically outside it []. But what would be interestingis to show what happens at the juncture of these two worlds. Yet the most embarrassing

part of the film is that the new problem posed by simulation is confused with the classicalone of illusion, which one could already find in Plato. [] There are no more externalOmega points from which to analyze the world, no more antagonistic means (Lancelin).20 Julie Siege, The Monster at the End of This Book.

21 See Friedrich Nietzsche, Die frhliche Wissenschaft, in Friedrich Nietzsche: Werkein drei Bnden, Vol. 2, ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich: Hanser, 1959), 166167; see RolandBarthes, La Mort de lauteur, inLe Bruissement de la langue(Paris: Seuil, 1984).22 Terrance R. Lindvall and J. Matthew Melton, Towards a Post-Modern AnimatedDiscourse: Bakhtin, Intertextuality and the Cartoon Revival, in A Reader in AnimationStudies, ed. Jayne Pilling (London: John Libbey, 1997), 213.


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23 See Michael Fuchs, A Horrific Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Simulacra,Simulations, and Postmodern Horror, in Landscapes of Postmodernity: Concepts and

Paradigms of Critical Theory, ed. Petra Eckhard, Michael Fuchs, and Walter W.Hlbling (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2010), 8285.24 Eric Kripke, The Real Ghostbusters, Supernatural, season 5, episode 9, directed byJames L. Conway, aired Nov. 12, 2009 (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2010), Blu-Ray.25 iek, Tarrying with the Negative, 88.

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. Le Mythe, aujourdhui. InMythologies. 213267. Paris: Seuil, 1957.Baudrillard, Jean. Lesprit du terrorisme. Le Monde, November 3, 2001,

accessed July 7, 2010, http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/

acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=677599&clef=ARC-TRK-NC_01.

. La Prcession des simulacres. In Simulacres et Simulations. 968.Paris: Galile, 1981.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990.Carver, Jeremy. Changing Channels. Supernatural, season 5, episode 8,

directed by Charles Beeson, aired November 5, 2009. Burbank, CA: WarnerHome Video, 2009. Blu-Ray.

Eco, Umberto. Postille a Il nome della rosa. Milano: Bompiani, 1984.Edlund, Ben. Monster Movie. Supernatural, season 4, episode 5, directed by

Robert Singer, aired October 18, 2008. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video,2010. Blu-Ray.

Fuchs, Michael. A Horrific Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Simulacra,

Simulations, and Postmodern Horror. In Landscapes of Postmodernity:Concepts and Paradigms of Critical Theory. Edited by Petra Eckhard,Michael Fuchs, and Walter W. Hlbling, 71 90.Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2010.

Gamble, Sera, and Nancy Weiner. The Song Remains the Same.Supernatural, season 5, episode 13, directed by Steve Boyum, airedFebruary 4, 2010. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2010. Blu-Ray.

Gould, Dana. Homer the Moe. The Simpsons, season 13, episode 3, directedby Jen Kamerman, aired November 18, 2001. Los Angeles, CA: TwentiethCentury Fox Home Entertainment, 2010. Blu-Ray.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism; or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991.

Johnson, Steven B. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Todays PopularCulture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York, NY: Riverhead, 2005.

Kingsepp, Eva. Fighting Hyperreality With Hyperreality: History and Death inWorld War II Digital Games. Games and Culture2 (2007): 366375.

Kripke, Eric. Pilot. Supernatural, season 1, episode 1, directed by DavidNutter, aired September 13, 2005. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video,2010. Blu-Ray.


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. The Real Ghostbusters. Supernatural, season 5, episode 9, directedby James L. Conway, aired November 12, 2009. Burbank, CA: Warner

Home Video, 2010. Blu-Ray.Lancelin, Aude. Baudrillard dcode Matrix .Le Nouvel Observateur, June

19, 2003, accessed July 7, 2010, http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/sommaire/dossier/051868/baudrillard-decode-matrix.html.

Lindvall, Terrance R., and J. Matthew Melton. Towards a Post-ModernAnimated Discourse: Bakhtin, Intertextuality and the Cartoon Revival. InA Reader in Animation Studies. Edited by Jayne Pilling, 203220. London:John Libbey, 1997.

Mittell, Jason. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.The Velvet Light Trap58 (2006): 2940.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die frhliche Wissenschaft. In Friedrich Nietzsche:Werke in drei Bnden. Vol. 2. Edited by Karl Schlechta, 7274. Munich:Hanser, 1959.

Shiban, John. Tall Tales. Supernatural, season 2, episode 15, directed byBradford May, aired February 15, 2007. Burbank, CA: Warner HomeVideo, 2007. DVD.

Siege, Julie. The Monster at the End of This Book. Supernatural, season 4,episode 18, directed by Mike Rohl, aired April 2, 2009. Burbank, CA:Warner Home Video, 2010. Blu-Ray.

iek, Slavoj. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique ofIdeology. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993.

. Welcome to the Desert of the Real!London: Verso, 2002.

165087397 lol hyperrealism in supernatural

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