Monday, January 15, 2007

Great Item on Supernatural

Henry Jenkins, Professor of Humanities and Co-Director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, has been totally sucked in by Supernatural. And he's admitting it freely on his blog.

This post from yesterday gives a detailed analysis of the show that had me nodding along going Uh, huh, you say it, amen and hallelujah. It's well worth a read, so drop by and check it out.

Some favorite quotes:

"It's hard to imagine how or why a series this good is suffering from such total neglect from the network, from the critics, though clearly not from its most hardcore fans."

"On one level, it is made up of classic masculine elements -- horror, the hero's quest, sibling rivalry, unresolved oedipal dramas -- but on another level, it seems ideally suited to the themes and concerns which have long interested the female fan community. Heck, this series is one long hurt/comfort story."

"A real strength of the series is the construction of female secondary characters, all the more unusual in a series which is so centrally about its core male leads. ... The men do not so much desire them as romantic or sex objects as they use them as mirrors to see into their own and each other's souls. Each woman teaches them something they need to learn before they can become emotionally whole again and in the process, each teaches the viewer something about the men that we would not know otherwise. The show never patronizes the women, never denies them their core humanity, and indeed, often, it is clear that the men admire the women's courage, intelligence, integrity, and passion. The result are some of the most compelling male/female relationships I've seen on prime time network television."