You are in for a bit of a treat today, because this post is a bit of everything. I am going to be doing a review of the latest season of a popular T.V. show, but I am also going to incorporate some political, philosophical, and ethical musings as well. For those of you who don’t like my political or theological reviews, please come back a bit later this month for my review of the latest Marvel superhero film, Dr. Strange (And boy, do I have a lot to say about that one). For the rest of you, read on, bearing in mind that there will be spoilers for the T.V. show Supernatural.
For those of you who have had your head under a proverbial rock for the last twelve years, who have never been on social media (particularly Tumblr), and who have no idea what Supernatural is, I congratulate you. It is very very hard to get that far off the grid. Supernatural follows two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, whose father raised them to hunt and kill monsters. Every week, the boys encounter some sort of supernatural threat; ghosts, vampires, demons, angels, or any of a hundred other monsters. They proceed to investigate the threat, identifying the creature and its weaknesses, and the episode generally ends when they kill the monster or save the innocent civilians about to be killed by said monster. Of course, the whole format is complicated with seasonal or multi-seasonal story arcs, reoccurring villains, and the family dynamic between Sam and Dean and various other characters on the show. Ultimately, Supernatural was summed up by a line in the second episode, “Saving people, hunting things, the family business.”
Over the seasons, the show has dealt with epic themes like the war between heaven and hell, the necessity and ethical questionability of killing, abuse, abandonment, and a plethora of complex moral conundrums by maintaining a solid moral center, but allowing for the shades of gray that consistently define human existence. This latest season is no different.
Season 12 opens by introducing the main antagonists for the season, the British Men of Letters (hereafter referred to as the BMoL). The BMoL are a secret society that specializes in learning about the supernatural and defending Britain from these monstrous threats. They are, essentially, the European counterparts to the American hunters. As such, they should be allies to the Winchester brothers. However, the strident differences between the British style of “hunting” and the American hunters have led the BMoL to regard the Winchesters as adversaries to their interests. Thus, this season kicks off with a bang as Sam is shot and captured by the BMoL and tortured in an attempt to get him to reveal the location of other American hunters.
Right off the bat, the difference between the American and British hunters is highlighted. In Britain, every port, every entrance, every street corner has been warded to inform hunters if a monster should enter the country. As soon as a monster is identified, a team is dispatched immediately to kill it, eliminating the potential threat as soon as it becomes known. In the States, hunters locate monsters by sifting through news stories and looking for unusual incidents or deaths. Generally the hunters only show up after there has been a fatality. The BMoL see the haphazard way in which hunting is accomplished in the US as potentially lethal, and have come to impose order and civility upon the wild west of American hunting.
Immediately there are a lot of practical, political, and philosophical questions brought up in this dichotomy. But before I get to that, I want to address a criticism/concern that I have seen brought up multiple times in relation to the BMoL. A number of blogs and reviews that I have read have questioned the likelihood of the sheer arrogance of the BMoL. They think it unrealistic that educated, informed, reasonable people would believe so unequivocally that they could and should impose their own system in the US. Personally, I not only find this aspect of the BMoL to be possible, but to be probable. Over the last five years, I have lived in Britain, Ireland, and the US, and, in my experience, this attitude toward American politics is almost universal in non-Americans. The statement, “If only Americans would do it like (insert European country of your choice),” has been applied to issues as wide ranging as racism, gun control, health care, immigration, and education. This “one size fits all” approach to the political issues of the United States is wide ranging but hopelessly naive. Looking at the BMoL approach to hunting in a US context provides a microcosm for these other issues.
From a practical perspective, the British Men of Letters are indulging in wishful thinking if they believe that the techniques that they use in Britain will be successfully implemented in the US. Consider some statistical comparisons. The population of Great Britain is roughly 64 million people. The population of the USA is about 320 million. There are about 5 times as many people living is the US than in Britain. Over the course of 12 seasons of Supernatural we have been introduced to 35 hunters, more than half of whom are deceased. That makes the average number of hunters in the US, as far as we know, 17, maybe 20. In contrast, in three episodes of the end of season 11 and beginning of season 12, we have met at least five members of the BMoL, with the implication being that they have a number of other hunters working for the organization. Strictly in terms of population, there are not enough American hunters to create a system similar to what they have in Britain. Looking at the idea of coastline and ports of entry. Great Britain is an island nation, which means that ports of entry are limited to safe harbors and airports. As such, it is entirely feasible to put warding and sigils at all points on entrance into the nation. Even given this fact, the coastline for Great Britain is approximately 7,700 miles long. In contrast, the coastline for the US is roughly 95,400 miles long. There is nearly 12 times the amount of coastline to secure in the US as there is in Britain. Again, given our numbers of British versus American hunters, there would need to be at least 60 American hunters available to control the coastal borders of the US. This does not even bring into consideration unsecured land borders. While Britain is an island nation and does not share a land border with any other nations, the US has 7,500 miles of land borders with Mexico and Canada. Much of this area, especially on the border with Canada is wilderness where the border cannot be secured. While it is a feasible possibility of securing all the entrances into an island nation that shares no land borders with another nation, it is not possible given the vast border of the US to do the same.
Similarly, consider the size of the US with that of Great Britain. The US is 3,797,000 square miles. Of that, nearly 500,000 square miles are considered preservation or wilderness areas. This is five times the size of the totality of Britain (94,000 square miles). This is not just uninhabited land, this is land populated by a huge variety of natural predators. Many of the monster attacks in Supernatural are justified as animal attacks by uninformed local authorities. This is not a possibility in Britain, where the largest living predators are the badger, the red fox, and the highly endangers Scottish wildcat. In contrast, the continental United States boasts three different types of bears, crocodiles and alligators, cougars, wolves, as well as an assortment of slightly smaller, but still dangerous hunting cats, coyotes, ROUSs ( look it up;) ), and various poisonous snakes, insects, and arachnids. Discerning which attacks are legitimately animal attacks, and which are the result of the predations of a supernatural monster is a large part of the job of the American hunters, an aspect that the BMoL never have to deal with. Many of these monsters are born out of, or have been living in these wilderness areas for decades or centuries, preying on humans sporadically or according to the specific chronology of their lifecycle. It is simply not feasible given the wide ranging nature of the American supernatural monsters to implement a system like that found in Britain.
Having covered in some detail the practical reasons why it is not feasible to implement the same system in America as is found in Britain, I want to shift gears a bit and look at the ethical issues with the BMoL plan. At first glance, it seems like the BMoL have the moral high ground; there has not been a monster related death in Britain since 1965. Fifty years of successful hunting, fifty years of lives saved seems like a strong place to take a stand. But what has been the cost of those fifty years of apparent peace? As soon as a monster enters the country, the BMoL know about it. Within 20 minutes, the monster has been captured, and within 40 minutes that monster is dead. But in Supernatural the morality is not so black and white as “monster…bad…kill.” Over 12 seasons we have seen vampires that refuse to hunt humans, werewolves fighting against their predatory nature in order to remain human, deals with demons that have saved lives, and ghosts that were trying to protect innocents from their vengeful counterparts. We have also seen individuals that fall in the dubious boundaries between human and monster; psychics, angels, zanna, small gods, reapers, or hunters who dabble in magic. How can the wards and sigils which identify “monsters” entering the country judge the entire complexity of individual experience? Have the BMoL unwittingly murdered innocent individuals strictly because they are a different species? This is racial profiling at its darkest extreme; choosing to assume that because a person is different that they will inevitably act in a certain way. This is why the Winchesters have a very specific criteria in hunting a monster; any creature that is “dropping bodies” has lost its right to life, but creatures that are making a conscious effort to live peacefully with human beings is given the benefit of the doubt. Instead of assuming that a monster is guilty by virtue of its “not being human,” the Winchesters assume that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, this means that over the years there are people who get killed by monsters. But it also means that there are “monsters” that are living their own, peaceful lives. Given 12 seasons of monsters, including episodes that are filmed from the perspective of these individuals, it is not a philosophically viable position to privilege human lives over the lives of the supernatural creatures.
From a broader perspective, does it save more lives to kill even morally questionable monsters immediately? Consider the “villains” of Supernatural. Often, the Winchesters are forced into uneasy alliances with characters who have previously been enemies. Consider a fan favorite, the Trickster, the angel Gabriel. Even by the relaxed Winchester “dropping bodies” criteria, Gabriel deserves to be hunted and killed. He has, however, also been a useful character, providing the boys with information about the wider plot conflicts, and serving as a catalyst for the brothers to engage with their personal and emotional baggage. In the context of the show, the Winchesters decide not to execute Gabriel even though he deserves it, a decision allows him to save their lives later on in the season. In a similar vein, the demon Crowley is certainly deserving of being killed. He is a conniving, manipulative bastard, who acts out of pure self interest. Fortunately for humanity, however, sometimes that self interest aligns itself with the interests of the world in general. Crowley was an irreplaceable figure in the battle to defeat the Leviathans, Abaddon, and the Darkness. Given his role in stopping multiple apocalypses, one wonders whether the strategy the BMoL employ in killing ever single monster that enters into their realm actually saves lives in the long run, or if it endangers them by creating situations in which humanity has no supernatural allies upon whom to call when situations inevitably escalate beyond human control?
I guess the take away from all of this is: the world is complicated. The BMoL look at the Supernatural universe and see everything is pure black and white; for or against, monster or human, kill or be killed. But they fail to take into account the vast complexity of the created world. What works in one place does not always work in another because people have different experiences, different values different goals or incentives, or different threats or dangers. It is dangerous to reduce the world to your own perspective and to assume that everyone else is either wrong or evil. There is value in a diversity of thought because no one is perfect, and no single individual holds the standard on right and wrong. Viewers of Supernatural can agree that there is value to the way the BMoL have done things in Britain; no monster related deaths in over fifty years?!? That is amazing and cool. But to assume that they have the authority and moral obligation to impose their will on a different nation and culture is the height of arrogance; an arrogance that, sadly, seems to be based in reality not merely in the convenience of plot.
Well, back to reality!
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