Sexualized Saturdays: On Shipping Questions and Questionable Ships

How many of you here are in the Supernatural fandom? Yes, all of you? Then you probably know about NJWank2013: one of Supernatural‘s many chances to gank us all with angry feelings before the season finale. Let’s recap the events: At a Supernatural convention in New Jersey (“Salute to Supernatural 2013”), there was a panel with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, otherwise known as Sam and Dean. The first questioner at this panel was a young lady who started her question with “I’ve loved seeing Dean’s character become more comfortable with himself this season. I’m bisexual and I’ve noticed some possible subtext…” She was immediately drowned out by a chorus of booo’s. While a bodyguard confronted her, Jensen said that he couldn’t hear the question, and that he planned to move on. “I meant no disrespect,” said the girl, and that was the end of that story.

Psych.

Tumblr posts about the con spawned like demons from the mouth of hell. One post even erroneously claimed that all shipping questions had been banned from all future cons. Finally the lady in question got on Tumblr, shared what she had planned to ask Jensen, and told everyone to calm their shit.

“I’ve loved seeing Dean’s character become more comfortable with himself this season. As a bisexual, I’ve noticed some possible subtext, as seen in Everybody Hates Hitler, that Dean might be coming to accept himself as something other than straight too? I know you’ve said you know Dean better than anyone, so, in your professional opinion, as the preeminent scholar on Dean Winchester, if you see that as a valid interpretation of what’s going on with the character this season.”
—For the record, this was the question.

This would be the end of the story, if the whole incident hadn’t raised some serious issues. As fans, we go to conventions in the hopes of asking the actors and the writers questions about their interpretations of the characters. We compare those interpretations to our own interpretations, and hope we gain some new knowledge from it. And what’s more, we ask questions because we care. Because we think about the show. And some of us, it’s true, think more about relationships (“ships”) rather than plots or settings or writing conventions (which makes us “shippers”). This lady started her question with the words “bisexual” and “subtext”, which led many to assume that she was about to ask a shipping question about either the pairing of Dean/Cas or Sam/Dean, both of which are popular in Supernatural fandom. Would that really have been such a bad thing?

Doctor/Rose, why can’t I quit you?

Let’s consider some other cases. Rose and the Doctor (of Doctor Who fame) is a popular ship, and the actor for the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, has gotten a fair number of questions about it. At an interview with journalists from the BBC, when asked about the ship, Eccleston said, “As far as I’m concerned, they love each other”. He’s also talked about the ship in other interviews (see this one, where, when the interviewer asks “Surely [Rose] isn’t a love interest?” he responds, “I would hope so. He’s got two hearts, Doctor Who, they can both be broken”), and, as the guest star on the British quiz show Junior Mastermind, responded to a young lad’s question of “Does the Doctor fancy Rose Tyler?” with the eager and enthusiastic answer of “Absolutely”.

Christopher Eccleston: #1 Doctor/Rose shipper.

But Luce, you say, that pairing is heterosexual and also approved in the show, which makes it canon! First, why are you talking to your computer? Second, okay, fair point. But is it the heterosexuality or the canonicity that renders this ship into acceptable discussion fare?

To delve a little further into this issue, let’s talk about Harry and Hermione (from the Harry Potter series, of course) instead. Back in Harry Potter’s heyday (and still now, who am I kidding) there were quite a number of Harry/Hermione shippers, and this large contingent of fans often got into fights with the Harry/Ginny, Hermione/Ron, and Harry/Draco shippers. Generally, though, the views of Harry/Hermione shippers were as accepted as the views of any other non-canonical ships. It wasn’t until J.K. Rowling did an interview with fansites Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron that there started to be real trouble.

Forever separated by the great Word of God.

Emerson Spartz, of Mugglenet, called Harry/Hermione shippers “delusional”, and Rowling laughed at his comment, which many fans took to mean that she agreed with him—although Rowling later walked back that laugh by saying that Harry/Hermione shippers were, of course, a valued part of her readership. But this, like the New Jersey Supernatural con, got blown out of proportion. It escaped the realms of fandom, as it were, and vaulted into the real world, a result which meant that people of all ages got a chance to laugh at crazy book obsessives. No one was laughing at the Harry/Hermione shippers’ right to row their heterosexual ship, just at the fact that they were making a big deal out of something that would never be canon.

Quick, don’t think about how this ship got shipwrecked. Are you thinking about it? Man, I’m sorry.

On the flip side, there have been precious few canon homosexual couples—Jack and Ianto from Torchwood is almost the only example I can think of, and the only one which fits in our geek wheelbarrow. Captain Jack, as a character, had already had his sexuality defined in Doctor Who, and Jack and Ianto’s relationship in Torchwood was handled well and was, for the most part, accepted by the show’s audience. Because Jack/Ianto was a canon ship, the questions asked of actors John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd were all about the progression of the relationship and about the effect it had on both characters. When Ianto died, the fans were so upset they took to Twitter to attack one of the writers. (In a hugely ironic statement, creator Russell T. Davies told all his disappointed viewers to go watch “the beautiful boys” over at Supernatural instead.)

So let’s bring this back to Supernatural and Dean/Castiel (or “Destiel”), a non-canon, homosexual ship. At Supernatural conventions, common questions at any panel are “Destiel or Wincest” (from a con in 2011), “What do you want the relationship between Dean and Cas to become” (from a con in 2012), “What are your personal feelings on Destiel” (from a different con in 2013), and others along those lines. These sorts of shipping questions are a common event in other fandoms, as seen by our previous examples. The reaction to Dean/Cas shipping questions, however, is different from the reactions to the other shipping questions asked.

One of the main problems here is that there’s no other fandom quite like Supernatural, and I don’t entirely mean that in a positive way. The show has been going on for so long and has such a history of interaction with its fans that there is almost no fourth wall between creators and consumers anymore. I can’t think of any other show where the cast and crew livetweet the episodes as they air and the writers answer questions online after the episode finishes. No other show, cult classic or not, has not just one but several conventions every year where all the main actors and several of the minor ones appear.

These two.

Teen Wolf, a popular supernatural-themed show on MTV, can merit a possible comparison because of its own popular non-canon homosexual ship (Stiles/Derek, or “Sterek”) but the show has only been on for two years and can boast nowhere near the convoluted codependent relationship that exists between a Supernatural shipper and a Supernatural producer. Questions about Dean/Cas and Sam/Dean have been asked at almost all the past cons, and because fans get to interact with the writers and producers of Supernatural so often on social media and at cons, it’s led to an air of familiarity which has in turn led to some really uncomfortable questions being posed to the actors.

One such question happened at the same New Jersey convention with which I began this article—the last question in the panel for Misha Collins, Castiel’s actor, was from a fan who asked if she could touch his butt. That sort of question goes beyond harmless character motivations and straight into sexual harassment. If the genders had been reversed, if the fan had been a guy and Misha Collins a girl, I’m sure the fan would have been kicked out of the con.

So the Supernatural fandom needs to come with its very own caveat to watch it, is what I’m saying. This may explain why the crowd at large seems to react poorly to Dean/Cas questions—fans have noticed this behavior and are trying to police other fans. But to say that this is the sole reason why the situation at the New Jersey con happened would be disingenuous at best. Questions about Dean/Cas may not be welcomed not only because of the actors’ discomfort with them but also because of the attitudes of some of the fans—some certainly don’t want there to be anything gay about the fact that Cas watches Dean sleep as a hobby. And it may be furthered by a societal discomfort with queerness—the comments in this Facebook thread by Clif, the bodyguard who asked the lady to step away from the microphone, are a good illustration of the attitude that oh, everyone’s fine with bisexuality, but it doesn’t need to be discussed in any type of social forum and Supernatural doesn’t need to turn into a left-wing political agenda. Because everyone knows it’s politics, not people, that representation is really about.

This is a real, unaltered screencap from the show. I include it here because judging by Sam’s face, I don’t think Dean/Cas is strictly subtext any more.

So far, we’ve seen that if a ship is canon, regardless of sexual orientation, it’s okay. If it’s heterosexual and not canon, it’s okay, if possibly a target of derision. But if a ship is not canon and not heterosexual, hold the fucking phone. When a question is asked about a homosexual ship, it seems to carry an undertone of “this is wrong, this is forbidden”, and can provoke childish titters and jeers from the crowd. The New Jersey convention is not an isolated incident in Supernatural history, and Teen Wolf and other burgeoning fandoms may well have to deal with this sort of attitude in the future.

Fans at a convention are not exactly interviewers or reporters in a professional capacity, as were the people who talked to Christopher Eccleston, J.K. Rowling, John Barrowman, and Gareth David-Lloyd, but that’s no reason to be anything less than professional with them. If anything, actors and producers should be more professional—these fans are paying for the privilege of having the conversation, after all. And even if actors don’t agree with that, there’s something to be said for responding well to a question with which you yourself may be uncomfortable.

When an actor or an institution can respond to heterosexual ship questions respectfully but not do the same thing with homosexual ship questions, there’s an underlying message that it’s okay to talk about the former ships because they’re “normal”, and it’s not okay to talk about the latter ships because they’re not. People who ship Dean/Cas or Sam/Dean are seen as horny girls who get off on watching two men go at it, or just as perverts. These shippers are never going to get the validation that they too are a valued part of Supernatural‘s viewership, as Harry/Hermione shippers did. They are never going to see their ship come to life as Doctor/Rose and Jack/Ianto shippers did. And the people who ship Dean/Cas or Sam/Dean because they want to see themselves and their sexuality represented in their favorite show might as well just forget about it. Is this really the attitude which Supernatural wants to be seen as supporting? Is this really the attitude with which they want to speak to their fans?

My answer is no. What’s yours?