Sunday, September 18, 2011

An alarmingly large chunk of the average day

Okay, so, like I said -- Imma try and do Supernatural recaps when the new season starts up. We'll see. There's like eighty billion things I could say about Supernatural but I think it's vital to the success of this endeavor that I not say as much as I'd ideally want to. Nick Hornby has this great moment in Fever Pitch -- he's says, when you're really obsessed with something (in his case soccer, or "football"), often when you're asked, "What are you thinking?" you have to lie:

At this point I lie. I wasn't thinking about Martin Amis or Gerard Depardieu or the Labour party at all. But then, obsessives have no choice; they have to lie on occasions...If we told the truth every time, then we would be unable to maintain relationships with anyone from the real word. We would be left to rot with our Aresenal programmes or our collection of original blue-label Stax records or King Charles spaniels, and our two-minute daydreams would become longer and longer and longer until we lost our jobs and stopped bathing and shaving and eating, and would lie on the floor in our own filth rewinding the video again and again in an attempt to memorize by heart the whole of the commentary including David Pleat's expert analysis, for the night of 26th of May 1989 (You think I had to look that date up? Ha!) The truth is this: for alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.
Substitute "Season 2 DVD commentary" in there and you get the picture.

For instance: complaining. I could do a lot of that; for instance, about Season Six. But there's already plenty of complaining out there, some of which I agree with and some of which makes me feel like this.

So, I'm going to limit myself. For instance, in this blog entry I'm only going to complain about promotional materials! No biggie. Everybody thinks about that stuff, right?





Here is the promotional shot that the CW decided to use for Season 6:


 The symbolism! WHAT COULD IT MEAN?? I don't get it. 

My personal theory: Sam is clearly preparing for a tribute  to Britney Spear's iconic 2001 VMA performance.



And hey, look, I'm not complaining about how the snake might be phallic symbolism in the picture. I all for phallic symbolism. Here is one of my favorite Supernatural  promo shots:

 
But the snake thing....I just can't. 

And, okay, so obviously...snake = Lucifer/Devil (there's this little legend about a snake and the Garden of Eden...I don't know. Look it up). Halo of light = Angel/Heaven. Okay...you're confused. I get it. Unpacking that kind of symbolic architecture is difficult. Oh! Also RED = HELL. I JUST THOUGHT OF THAT ONE!

Except...the whole Sam = Devil/Dean = Angel plot wasn't season 6 -- it was Season 5. So...that's a little out of date. But okay! No big deal...it happens. I get that CW probably gives the promo people like $5 and tells them to do what they can and they're like "Photoshop, I guess? It's all we can afford?"

But here's the obsessive-fan element that really bugs me about the whole thing...Not only is the whole thing a season off, but Supernatural actually made a fairly big deal in Season 5 when they actually introduced Lucifer as a character not to do the whole Snake/Red/MWWWHAAAAA EVIL! thing when it came to Lucifer and Sam-as-Lucifer (Samifer!).

For instance, here's Samifer in Season 5 (don't worry, this was in a flash-forward alterna-universe thing, so it sort of didn't really happen? It's complicated).


Now, this is not necessarily the most subtle thing that ever subtled a subtle, but I bet of all the ways you expected Lucifer to look, Jared Padelicki dressed as a Colonel Sanders going all "Rose for Emily" wasn't the tippy-top of your list. Plus, he makes this expression:

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj3iyvGIHc1qbz46qo1_500.gif


Awesome.

They actually also made a deal about how Lucifer burns cold and not hot:



And they made a big deal about how Lucifer always tells the truth. Here's how Lucifer is introduced on the show.

Again, of all the ways you expected Lucifer to look, YOUR DEAD WIFE PROMISING YOU REVENGE ON GOD maybe isn't #1.WHILE WEARING WHITE I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT.

Again, not that this was all the most subtlest thing EVAH but way better than this:


Would lead you to believe.

But okay. So someone made this godawful image and decided that it would be the cover of the damn DVD. But it's not a big deal. Just one year! One lame(er) DVD cover. No big.

But I went to iTunes to get ALL SET UP for buying and recapping Season 7...and this is their season 7 promotional photo:


 "Um, so the CW gave us $3 instead of $5 this year, guys? So I'm thinking, flip the photo from last year and do some fucked up shit with their eyes? We good?"

So that's it. I'm officially offering my services to the CW promotional department. I even made a promo shot for Season 8!                                                                                                           


 It's got it all! Fucked up stuff to the eyes! Obvious symbolism for the devil! And I just went ahead and noted which brother was in danger of going evil, just in case anyone missed that.

To be fair, here's a television ad for Season 7. I think it's kind of awesome. So don't say all I do is complain. Note that Sam's eyes are not red.





2 comments:

Jason Kallelis said...

Okay, I may have giggled just a little bit at your "promo" for Season 8.

Easy O said...

Yay!