John wears his macho like his skin, it's just there and something he can't take off, whereas Dean wears his macho like a cloaking device. Um. A cloaking device with bling?
You almost made my coffee go all over my keyboard with that last sentence.
To my eyes, Sam doesn't get people. He puts up one hell of a well-socialized front, because he wants to fit in; he thinks he wants what Normal People want. But on some level, he doesn't quite understand Normal People, and works really, really hard to get them to accept him.
Hmm. While he came at his normal desires from a roundabout way (wanting safety and stability), I think he understands them fairly well, or at least as well as anyone can. He doesn't, certainly, have the depth of disconnect that Dean does, and he picks up on social cues and norms quite adeptly.
Where I see Sam, at the start of the series, and what's he's been moving away from ever since, is as someone defining what he thinks he wants by what he knows he doesn't want: a rootless, dangerous, constantly shifting lifestyle.
There's this thing I'm too tired to articulate, but here goes, where I think Sam's struggle has been to define who he is as a part of the family, where Dean's has/will be to figure out who and what, if anything, he is outside of it.
where I think Sam's struggle has been to define who he is as a part of the family, where Dean's has/will be to figure out who and what, if anything, he is outside of it.
Oh, I agree with this.
The differences are reflections of how they were raised, even though they were raised in a rather closed family of three, they were raised differently and that causes conflict and changes how they react/interact with the world.
A cloaking device with bling?
Heh.
I'd posit, Juliana, that rather than a complex analysis of their experiences, you can go with the general reason why John and Dean perform their masculinities so differently: one of these two grew up in the 50s, with all the attendant repression-and-mayonnaise that era involves, and the other one didn't.
Ow! Help, I sprained something, imagining Dean watching MTV circa 1986.
I just want to see Dean's glam phase. (Please?)
I'd posit, Juliana, that rather than a complex analysis of their experiences, you can go with the general reason why John and Dean perform their masculinities so differently: one of these two grew up in the 50s, with all the attendant repression-and-mayonnaise that era involves, and the other one didn't.
If the show's to be believed, John grew up mostly in the 60s, being from the crop of '54. So somewhere in between Leave It to Beaver and The Wonder Years.
Ow! Help, I sprained something, imagining Dean watching MTV circa 1986.
What year did Headbanger's Ball start, anyhow?
Headbanger's Ball ran from April 11, 1987 - January 1995, according to wikipedia.
Ow! Help, I sprained something, imagining Dean watching MTV circa 1986.
What year did Headbanger's Ball start, anyhow?
My brain just went to Dean sneaking off so he could go see the Iron Maiden tour when Guns 'n Roses opened for them (which would have been '88 or '89).
Supernatural 2: Breeding Your Plot Bunnies Since 2007
If the show's to be believed, John grew up mostly in the 60s, being from the crop of '54.
I think that the speed at which culture travels means that being born in 1954 in Indiana is equivalent to being born in 1946 in California. Or possibly 1846, except for all that newfangled technology.
