My View on Bob Singer’s Destiel Mention
ibelieveinthelittletreetopper:
Okay, so, I have been meaning to write this up ever since the Misha & Bob panel happened at JiB, but haven’t had the time yet. As I just got tagged in this post by pirrofarfalla, I kinda figured this is the moment to do just that. I wanted just to expand a little bit about what I heard Bob Singer say and what context I think needs to be added to his Destiel comment. Because I have seen his comment about Destiel not having been talked about in the writers’ room around Tumblr, but I feel that without the rest of the panel comments next to it, it is incomplete and paints a much bleaker picture than the one I walked out of the room with. Because as a DeanCas shipper, I have never felt more positive about Singer’s showrunner view on Dean and Cas.
What I also want to add is that even having sat in the panel room as he spoke, there is a good chance that the smallish group of people that was also there, or those who have maybe seen vids of it (if you have a link to one, please let me know), will have walked away with a very different pov than I did. One that is just as legit. All I can say is that my view of Bob Singer changed drastically this weekend, but if yours didn’t or your interpretation of his words is different, I totally respect that. It happened multiple times that dustydreamsanddirtyscars purplesummer91 sayurishiro lack-of-preference itstimetobattlemydemons and I walked out of the panel rooms talking about what had been said only to realise we each heard different things. Undoubtedly, this will have happened here, too. All I can say is that this is my personal takeaway.
So, over the course of the panel, Singer talked about 3 things I wanna focus on here in relation to his DeanCas/representation comments.
Firstly, he said that basically they write themselves into a corner with every season finale. They let the seasonal story finish and then start painting the new one with broad strokes. While he didn’t specify, I take this to be the broad seasonal themes. (He specifically mentioned they are talking light/dark and how to portray God for next season) First, this is just Singer and Carver; a few days later the writers get added and the season evolves from there. It seemed like quite the back-and-forth-and-exchanges process. (God what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall there.)
While you could argue this being proof of lack of vision, I actually feel very happy that this is the approach, because it means they truly, as Singer also said, let the story develop naturally. Which means that at the start of each season’s creation, nothing is either on or off the table. There’s no forced How I Met Your Mother endings they wanna stick to, just because that was the plan all along. They truly let the story as they see it develop naturally. Will that story (sometimes) be different than the one we envision, of course. But for me, it was very heartening to hear that there is such flexibility.
And that is the second point I wanna make. Yes, I understand the sadness about there not being a firm yes on DeanCas going canon, on the characters not having been discussed in such terms in the writers room, but truly it isn’t off the table either. And, again a personal opinion, I certainly do not feel like he is against it per se. He just hasn’t seen canon work in the story up to now, but I do feel like if he were to feel it would be where the story should go, he would not oppose it. And yes, there are so many comments to make about this and so much to say about that, legitemately so, but I choose to view it positively. Above all, I want a story I trust and believe in and this seems to me like the most honest way to create that, despite the mistakes that get made in the process.
Thirdly, Singer also said that there is undoubtedly a lot of love between these men (Dean, Cas, and Sam). He did specify he meant that in a non-sexual way, but if there is any doubt about the way the showrunners view Cas in the Winchester dynamic, doubt no more. He is loved and he loves and that Singer confirmed whole-heartedly.
To make a long story short, I came out of JiB thinking I had done a 180 on how I feel about Bob Singer. Agree or disagree with the story he is telling and how he is telling it, that is your right. Neither he nor any of TPTB are perfect. But his love for the characters, the story, the universe radiated off him and I for one feel very grateful he said yes just over 10 years ago to help this young guy Eric Kripke out with this little monster show and has continued to do that for 2 other showrunners since. Because combined with Jensen’s comment that, whenever Bob comes up to direct, it feels like dad’s coming home, I am certain we would not be flailing over a season 10 finale right now were he not involved in the show as.
I’ve been thinking a lot about thiss the past few days.
First off here’s the portion of the video where he talks about Destiel. It starts around 15:30 regarding a a question about killing Charlie. (After Misha hits the mic into his face.)
Here’s what he said word for word.
Question:…How did you consider that killing off your only queer female character, and how that translates to the fans who are often in the LGBT community. And she meant a lot to a lot of people and how that affected…((applause/can’t make out the rest)).
Singer: Well I’ll give you two answers. We felt that me were really presenting an LGBT character in a very positive light when we created Charlie…that she could be a role model for people. And we’re very aware of that in the room. In terms of Charlie’s death we go kind of where the story takes us and her death had nothing to do with her being gay. Um, I know there’s a lot of stuff that goes around out there about how we treat gay people and the who Destiel thing, I can tell you - I know the actors get this question al the time - I can tell you in the writer’s room this never ever comes up. We love all these characters, we try to treat them with a lot of respect. And - I don’t say this in a sexual way - there’s a lot of love between these characters. People can interpret that any way they want. We’re not here to dictate how the people feel about the characters on the show. I mean we have Castiel people. we have Dean people. After one year I got a letter: “I;m never gonna watch this show again because you din’t do enough with Dean this year, it was all Sam” and the same day I got a letter saying “I can’t watch this show because it was al Dean and not Sam.” So people get involved in a character and want more of that character. w try to write every character to the best of our ability and at the end of the day, we go where the story takes us. We want to be provocative and the fact that - and we love Charlie - and the fact that so many people are upset that Charlie died we think is a good thing in the sense that “wow, we had you invested in this character so we really did out job.” And some characters are going to die ‘cause that’s where the story takes us. But please, don’t think that had anything to do with Charlie’s sexuality. It’s just where the story took us.
Having just transcribed that, I think what Singer is saying is that “we did not kill Charlie for being gay. We haven’t failed to make destiel cannon because we don’t want to depict gay romance. The sexuality/politics of it does not come up, we just go with the story.”
And I agree with sleepsintheimpala that this can be nothing but positive for Destiel in that, they just follow the story and characters. And I don’t think he meant to say that Destiel never comes up in the writers room. I think what he meant to reassure us is that “we don’t sit in the writers room plotting to kill gay characters or queerbait.”
So. Yeah.
OK, no. This doesn’t fly at all.
When Singer says that they didn’t kill Charlie because she was gay, he’s fundamentally - and, I’d argue, wilfully - misunderstanding the problem. The assertion was never that Charlie died because she was gay, in the sense that the writers killed her for her orientation; it was that killing your only queer character is a really shitty thing to do, regardless of your reasons, and especially when your show has a long history of both killing women and queerbaiting. Saying you didn’t do those things on purpose doesn’t change the fact that you still did them; it doesn’t magically make them okay. And if you’re still doing the exact same thing after ten seasons, even when - as demonstrated by your own rhetoric - you’re aware of the problem? Then it doesn’t matter that you’re not targeting women for death because they’re women, or denying queer narratives out of vocal homophobia: you’re also not taking intelligent, active steps to redress the issue or give those characters greater representation, either. Because you’re not discussing it. Because you don’t think it matters. Because you think there’s a sort of narrative neutrality in failing to mention this stuff, instead of an ingrained bias so deep-seated and normative, you only assume it’s fair.
The assertion isn’t that Bob Singer killed off a queer female character because he hates women or lesbians: it’s that his motives are irrelevant to the outcome, because the woman in question is still dead, and he didn’t care about keeping her alive.
And saying the the issue of the characters’ sexuality never comes up in the writer’s room like it exonerates his choices? Holy fuck, that is not a good thing, and it’s sure as hell not a defence. What it means is that, despite their apparent intention to create a positive portrayal of an LGBT character with Charlie, the writers didn’t discuss how killing her would undermine that effort, or talk about how particular tropes are especially harmful when applied to queer characters. If they had discussed Charlie’s sexuality as a factor that was deeply relevant to her portrayal, then they might have realised that, historically speaking, queer characters don’t get happy endings, and that killing her the way they did - offscreen, in defiance of her capabilities, to motivate the male leads, at the hands of someone who was damn near a Nazi - was about the grossest possible thing they could’ve done, short of subjecting her to sexual violence or torture. If they were absolutely, irrevocably wedded to killing Charlie, they could still have done it in a way that respected her agency and her competence, but they didn’t do that; they didn’t even try. They gave her a cheap slasher-thriller death, and then Singer has the fucking gall to pat himself on the back for it, because clearly, people being upset by it means they made the right call.
Listen: let me tell you a secret. People cared so much about Charlie, not just because she was an awesome character who powerfully represented the Supernatural fanbase, but because the writers assured us she wouldn’t die. Bob Singer and Jim Michaels both said Charlie was safe, and that meant the audience was able to invest in her. Why is this so important? Because compassion fatigue is a real thing, and it absolutely applies to the way an audience receives a narrative. Supernatural, like Game of Thrones, is a show that kills a lot of characters, and while that can up your emotional investment early on, after a while, you withdraw from the story. You stop caring about new characters, because you hurt when they die, and if their death or destruction is inevitable, then why even get invested in the first place? Why risk being hurt? But after so many seasons of death on Supernatural, people felt safe to invest in Charlie - a character who not only embodied the audience, but who was exactly the type of character we’d traditionally expect the show to kill off - because we were told she was safe. Breaking that contract was an act of bad faith, and it’s a card you can only play once. Every scrap of loyalty and emotional capital the show has built up since Charlie’s introduction, Bob Singer just spent in a single, shittily-constructed episode - and he thinks that’s a good thing, because he doesn’t understand that that’s what he did.
“It’s just where the story took us,” says Singer. Here’s what I say: bullshit. Stories aren’t sentient, they aren’t static: people make them up, and people can change them. There is no precious, inviolable muse that dictates what happens next, and when you have creative control, as Singer does, you’re not being forced to answer to someone else. So when he says “we go where the story takes us” to excuse killing their only queer character, that’s a fucking cop-out of the highest order, because “the story” is not a sentient fucking entity with a say in how it’s told. Charlie died because Bob Singer, Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Lemming wanted her dead; because they decided to kill her, and that’s a fucking end of it.
But here’s the thing: when Singer sits there, straight-faced, and says the question of Charlie’s sexuality never came up in the writer’s room - when he acts like the story couldn’t have gone another way? He’s a fucking liar. Because Robbie Thompson, who created Charlie, arranged multiple meetings to try and save her, presented multiple other story options, to try and convince Singer that her death was a bad idea, and you can damn well bet he pointed out that killing their only queer character was a shitty trope to deploy. Multiple actors and writers spoke up against her death, both during filming and subsequently, with a number of cast members coming out to decry the decision at cons and on social media. Hell, when Jensen Ackles got the script for Dark Dynasty, he went to Singer and argued against killing her, too. The story didn’t have to go down that way, and it doesn’t fucking matter why Singer killed her; he still didn’t think she was worth more to the story alive than dead, and in a show with zero other queer characters and an appalling track record re the treatment of women, then I’m going to go out on a fucking limb and say that yeah, maybe Charlie didn’t die because she was a lesbian, but that was damn well reason enough to let her live.
(via beanmom)
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Ok it’s rare for me, but I’ll weigh in. I really liked Charlie. However, IMO, I agree with Singer. That character worked...
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