What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

Anonymous asked: Hi, I hope you don't mind me asking, how do you feel about the actors for Sam and Dean being, well, not so nice ppl? I used to watch and love supernatural but when I heard this I could just not dissociate the characters from the actors (except for Misha he's a sweety) and stopped watching it. Just, for a show with such a huge fandom, it's kind of startling how...well, hostile they are. I just feel discouraged, I guess. It's kind of alienating.

I don’t think the actors are unpleasant or hostile. To my mind, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are both kind, interesting people who do an enormous amount of good, both in dealing with their fans and in other contexts; as, indeed, does Misha Collins. Though they’ve each said things that I don’t necessarily agree with, and while I sometimes think they’ve handled an issue or a situation badly, I think that’s par for the course for anyone, and the fact that I might disagree with them at times, or eyeroll at particular comments, doesn’t make them bad people: it makes them human. These guys get put on a pedestal, and given how vociferous the fanbase can be when they do screw up, or are perceived to screw up, that’s an impossible standard to meet. They’re allowed to have failings; they’re allowed not to be perfect, and while we all feel at times like we really know them from interviews and cons and public appearances, ultimately, the versions of them we construct for ourselves are built at a distance rather than being founded on intimate knowledge, and it’s important to remember that they aren’t defined by our assumptions.

And honestly? Even though they’re not Hollywood stars, given the number of convention appearances they do, these guys live in a fishbowl. Literally everything they say in public gets recorded, giffed, disseminated, dissected, screenshotted, and even years after the fact, people will still be dragging up something they said off the cuff on day two of a four day event and asking them to explain it. I have a theory that certain modern celebrities get treated like saints, in a very literal sense, and the Supernatural cast definitely falls into that category: people make pilgrimages to see them, pay money for artefacts that they’ve touched or signed, use them as moral and emotional touchstones, treat them as confessionals, tell them stories about themselves, ask for advice or absolution, and that? That is an overwhelming responsibility, and one that’s completely separate from their abilities as actors. Misha, Jared and Jensen have all been demonstrably affected, even reduced to tears at times by the personal stories of fans who invest so strongly in their characters - and in them - that they travel hundred of miles to tell them their secrets, their struggles, and the fact that these guys manage to keep their composure and deal with it gracefully, compassionately, time after time, is extraordinary.

In my capacity as an author and blogger within the SFF community, I have a very small, very specific degree of notoriety. I’ve appeared at a few conventions and participated in some professional events, and being recogised by someone who only knows me only by my name and output is equal parts flattering and nervewracking, because clearly, this person has an preexisting idea of what I’m like, and I don’t know what it is. It’s a bit like being thrust on stage to perform without knowing what the audience expects to see: you have to simply gauge their reactions and improvise, and while some people will treat you normally, others, whether consciously or unconsciously - and often with the best will in the world - will be expecting a performance, which means they look to you to carry the interaction: they want you to talk, but are shy about talking themselves, which makes it much harder to know what to do.

I’ve only had it happen a few times, and each instance has stuck with me; but having the phenomenon magnified by hundreds, by thousands of people, over and over again, for days on end, and in a context where you’re also dealing with people who might be overly familiar, creepy or inappropriate as well as those who are shy, friendly or starstruck? I can only imagine what that must be like: how exhausting it is, even for an extrovert, and why you’d likely adopt a public persona to help deal with it, despite knowing that some people will invariably conflate that persona with who you are in private.

It also bears mentioning that these guys get sexually harassed on a regular basis - though because they’re grown men with a majority young, female fanbase, our sexist culture tends to overlook that fact, or claim that the label doesn’t really apply. But fans do grope them, do make inappropriate comments or ask skeezy questions, do send them sexually explicit messages over Twitter and Facebook and scream out objectifying requests at cons, and however much we try to pretend that it’s all in good fun - oh, they’re guys, they can handle that stuff - really, no. A thousand times no. It’s not okay, it’s not cute, it’s not acceptable, and there is a really big difference between telling a celebrity you love them or think they’re handsome in a way that’s humanising and respectful, and tweeting them with sex requests.

The point being, these guys deal with a lot in a professional capacity that actually has nothing to do with their work on screen, and time and again, they’re judged for it. There are plenty of actors who are rude to their fans, who treat them disrespectfully or say horrifically sexist, racist, offensive things on the regular, but the Supernatural actors aren’t among them. Yeah, they sometimes screw up, but so does everyone, and from what I’ve seen, they usually try to make amends. In making themselves so accessible to their fans, and by engaging with them so freely, they make themselves vulnerable both to risk and error, because their responses and reactions aren’t always polished, proofed and mediated, but can be immediate, personal. And as much as fans love the intimacy of that engagement, they can also find the flipside upsetting, when someone they’ve put on a pedestal does something mundane or petty or simply not what they expected. We want to see them up close and personal, but by definition, that also means seeing more of their flaws - and on the basis of the evidence, I still think they do a pretty good job.