Bitchwatch, part three
May. 19th, 2008 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosOkay, here's season three.
I don't know, I feel like I should add somewhere in here that most of the reason I'm doing this is because I'm putting my own curiosity to rest. It's one thing to hear both sides of an argument, it's another thing to look at the facts and judge accordingly, I guess. Most of the time that this wank's been going on, I keep sitting here thinking, "Well, maybe I'm just looking back at things through rose- colored glasses," and, "Maybe Dean's just always been a dick."
Here's the thing. After looking at season three, even if Dean's always been a dick, he's gotten WAY worse this season.
SEASON THREE
Bitch
Magnificent Seven ("Evil sons of bitches," 1) *
The Kids Are Alright **
Sin City (Casey, 1; Ruby, from Sam, 1 ***) ****
Fresh Blood (Bela, 1)
A Very Supernatural Christmas (Madge Carrigan, 1)
Malleus Maleficarum ("Craggy Old Blair Bitch," 1; Ruby, 2) Ruby does respond to one of these times by telling Dean to stop calling her "bitch." You might notice from the fact that the list doesn't end here that he doesn't.
Dream A Little Dream Of Me (Bela, 1)
Jus In Bello (Bela, 1; "You kinky son of a bitch," 1)
Long-Distance Call (Ruby, 1) *****
Time Is On My Side ("This immortality thing's a bitch", 1; "The bitch of the bunch", 1) ******
No Rest For The Wicked (Bela, 1; Ruby, from Sam, 1; Lilith, 1) *******
Slut
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
Skank
Sin City (Casey, 1)
Malleus Maleficarum (Ruby, 1)
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
Whore
Fresh Blood ********
Malleus Maleficarum *********
Broad
Red Sky At Morning (Gert, 1)
Time Is On My Side **********
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
* Tamara calls Isaac (or more aptly the thing IN Isaac) a "son of a bitch."
** Ben says, "Only bitches send a grown-up." Dean responds that he's not wrong, to which Ben says, "And I'm not a bitch."
*** Ruby responds to Sam calling her a cold bitch by saying, "And this cold bitch saved your life."
**** When Dean says to Casey, "What are you laughing at, bitch? You're still trapped," Casey responds with, "So are you, bitch."
***** The father of the dead girl who attacks Dean calls him a "son of a bitch."
****** Bela calls Lilith a bitch.
******* Bobby tells Dean, "You're almost Hell's bitch, so you can see Hell's other bitches." Also, Ruby calls Dean a "son of a bitch."
******** When a vampire refers to his daughters, Gordon corrects him with "fang whores."
********* Ruby calls witches "whores." Also, just to save myself from a longer list of footnotes, "Tammy" tells Ruby that it was a "bitch of a fight." Oh, and she calls Ruby a "lying whore."
********** The spa workers in the first scene refer to one of their clients as a "crabby old broad."
IN SUMMATION
*sigh* Okay, let's start simple.
Dean calls a grand total of six women by misogynistic pejoratives. And no, I don't discount the phrase because the character in question is a demon, or as it seems to be implying, "because she deserved it."
Demon and human, good and bad -- he covers his bases this season. Keep in mind, that's twice as many women as he insulted in the previous two seasons COMBINED. And he didn't even offset it by calling any men bitches, not even Sam. The only time he comes close is during the discussion with Ben in "The Kids Are Alright," and Ben's the only one who actually says the word.
"Slut" makes its first and so far only appearance in "No Rest For The Wicked," when Dean calls Ruby -- a character who has been, and continues to be until her bodily expulsion by Lilith, practically sexless -- a "slutty little Yoda."
"Skank" is another word used only once before on the show, not by Dean and not in regards to a female character but in regards to a "skank-filled" jar containing some really gross stuff. This season, Dean calls Casey a skank once and Ruby a skank twice. Ruby's special like that, as you can see from the episode tallies.
I include "broad" this season because -- and this might be wrong, so if I am feel free to correct me, I wasn't paying as much attention for this as I was for the others in the previous seasons but I don't recall any -- this season it suddenly pops up a couple of times. Dean calls Ruby "one ugly broad" and refers to Gert -- a good woman, and a human -- as a broad when talking to Sam.
Here's a good question -- where did "son of a bitch" go? In season one, there are eighteen instances of the phrase. In season two, there are a whopping twenty-six instances. In season three, there are only five. When Dean did use it in reference to another character it was almost exclusively male, and almost exclusively their MOTW antagonist. If you consider their antagonist as a creature or person who is intentionally causing others harm (I didn't count Madison, for example, and nameless demons were also not counted), the numbers of major male and female antagonists during each of the three seasons is about the same. There are about fifteen male antagonists a season and about six female antagonists. Season three only weighs slightly heavier than normal on the female side, but not by much.
The difference is pretty easy to tell from the tallies above -- the Big Bads this season are female.
Okay, so maybe not Big BADS, per se. Lilith is obviously the Big Bad, but she only gets one instance where she is referred to as "Queen Bitch." Bela, as sort of a secondary Big Bad, gets called a bitch four times, and none of those are to her face. The final instance is even after she's dead.
Ruby gets the brunt of it at NINE separate occasions. You know, their ally.
I know, I know. She's a demon, and as she says at the end of "Malleus Maleficarum," the Winchesters are a wee bit bigoted towards demons. But after a season of saving their lives, giving them information, and backing them up -- selfish reasons or not -- they continually falling back on calling her a bitch, a slut, a skank. Even Sam starts up. Two of those instances are from Sam, a character who up until this season has only called one female a bitch -- a character on a soap opera.
On the good side, in many of the cases where a female character is called a bitch, she turns right around and gives as good as she gets. Ruby in particular does this a few times, which seems fair because by the end of the season Dean almost has forgotten her name and just resorted to whatever pejorative pops into his head. Look at the finale -- Dean calls her a bitch and a slut, she calls him a dick and beats the crap out of him. There's also the case of "Sin City," where both of the Winchester brothers call a female character a bitch only to have her throw it back at them with a snap in the next line of dialogue. So, there's that.
But basically here's what it looks like:
Season one -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season two -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season three -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative eighteen times in sixteen episodes.
Maybe they were making up for the shortened season?
**
Okay, done. Now where the hell is that happy squishy porn I was writing? AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY BOOZE?
I don't know, I feel like I should add somewhere in here that most of the reason I'm doing this is because I'm putting my own curiosity to rest. It's one thing to hear both sides of an argument, it's another thing to look at the facts and judge accordingly, I guess. Most of the time that this wank's been going on, I keep sitting here thinking, "Well, maybe I'm just looking back at things through rose- colored glasses," and, "Maybe Dean's just always been a dick."
Here's the thing. After looking at season three, even if Dean's always been a dick, he's gotten WAY worse this season.
Bitch
Magnificent Seven ("Evil sons of bitches," 1) *
The Kids Are Alright **
Sin City (Casey, 1; Ruby, from Sam, 1 ***) ****
Fresh Blood (Bela, 1)
A Very Supernatural Christmas (Madge Carrigan, 1)
Malleus Maleficarum ("Craggy Old Blair Bitch," 1; Ruby, 2) Ruby does respond to one of these times by telling Dean to stop calling her "bitch." You might notice from the fact that the list doesn't end here that he doesn't.
Dream A Little Dream Of Me (Bela, 1)
Jus In Bello (Bela, 1; "You kinky son of a bitch," 1)
Long-Distance Call (Ruby, 1) *****
Time Is On My Side ("This immortality thing's a bitch", 1; "The bitch of the bunch", 1) ******
No Rest For The Wicked (Bela, 1; Ruby, from Sam, 1; Lilith, 1) *******
Slut
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
Skank
Sin City (Casey, 1)
Malleus Maleficarum (Ruby, 1)
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
Whore
Fresh Blood ********
Malleus Maleficarum *********
Broad
Red Sky At Morning (Gert, 1)
Time Is On My Side **********
No Rest For The Wicked (Ruby, 1)
* Tamara calls Isaac (or more aptly the thing IN Isaac) a "son of a bitch."
** Ben says, "Only bitches send a grown-up." Dean responds that he's not wrong, to which Ben says, "And I'm not a bitch."
*** Ruby responds to Sam calling her a cold bitch by saying, "And this cold bitch saved your life."
**** When Dean says to Casey, "What are you laughing at, bitch? You're still trapped," Casey responds with, "So are you, bitch."
***** The father of the dead girl who attacks Dean calls him a "son of a bitch."
****** Bela calls Lilith a bitch.
******* Bobby tells Dean, "You're almost Hell's bitch, so you can see Hell's other bitches." Also, Ruby calls Dean a "son of a bitch."
******** When a vampire refers to his daughters, Gordon corrects him with "fang whores."
********* Ruby calls witches "whores." Also, just to save myself from a longer list of footnotes, "Tammy" tells Ruby that it was a "bitch of a fight." Oh, and she calls Ruby a "lying whore."
********** The spa workers in the first scene refer to one of their clients as a "crabby old broad."
*sigh* Okay, let's start simple.
Dean calls a grand total of six women by misogynistic pejoratives. And no, I don't discount the phrase because the character in question is a demon, or as it seems to be implying, "because she deserved it."
Demon and human, good and bad -- he covers his bases this season. Keep in mind, that's twice as many women as he insulted in the previous two seasons COMBINED. And he didn't even offset it by calling any men bitches, not even Sam. The only time he comes close is during the discussion with Ben in "The Kids Are Alright," and Ben's the only one who actually says the word.
"Slut" makes its first and so far only appearance in "No Rest For The Wicked," when Dean calls Ruby -- a character who has been, and continues to be until her bodily expulsion by Lilith, practically sexless -- a "slutty little Yoda."
"Skank" is another word used only once before on the show, not by Dean and not in regards to a female character but in regards to a "skank-filled" jar containing some really gross stuff. This season, Dean calls Casey a skank once and Ruby a skank twice. Ruby's special like that, as you can see from the episode tallies.
I include "broad" this season because -- and this might be wrong, so if I am feel free to correct me, I wasn't paying as much attention for this as I was for the others in the previous seasons but I don't recall any -- this season it suddenly pops up a couple of times. Dean calls Ruby "one ugly broad" and refers to Gert -- a good woman, and a human -- as a broad when talking to Sam.
Here's a good question -- where did "son of a bitch" go? In season one, there are eighteen instances of the phrase. In season two, there are a whopping twenty-six instances. In season three, there are only five. When Dean did use it in reference to another character it was almost exclusively male, and almost exclusively their MOTW antagonist. If you consider their antagonist as a creature or person who is intentionally causing others harm (I didn't count Madison, for example, and nameless demons were also not counted), the numbers of major male and female antagonists during each of the three seasons is about the same. There are about fifteen male antagonists a season and about six female antagonists. Season three only weighs slightly heavier than normal on the female side, but not by much.
The difference is pretty easy to tell from the tallies above -- the Big Bads this season are female.
Okay, so maybe not Big BADS, per se. Lilith is obviously the Big Bad, but she only gets one instance where she is referred to as "Queen Bitch." Bela, as sort of a secondary Big Bad, gets called a bitch four times, and none of those are to her face. The final instance is even after she's dead.
Ruby gets the brunt of it at NINE separate occasions. You know, their ally.
I know, I know. She's a demon, and as she says at the end of "Malleus Maleficarum," the Winchesters are a wee bit bigoted towards demons. But after a season of saving their lives, giving them information, and backing them up -- selfish reasons or not -- they continually falling back on calling her a bitch, a slut, a skank. Even Sam starts up. Two of those instances are from Sam, a character who up until this season has only called one female a bitch -- a character on a soap opera.
On the good side, in many of the cases where a female character is called a bitch, she turns right around and gives as good as she gets. Ruby in particular does this a few times, which seems fair because by the end of the season Dean almost has forgotten her name and just resorted to whatever pejorative pops into his head. Look at the finale -- Dean calls her a bitch and a slut, she calls him a dick and beats the crap out of him. There's also the case of "Sin City," where both of the Winchester brothers call a female character a bitch only to have her throw it back at them with a snap in the next line of dialogue. So, there's that.
But basically here's what it looks like:
Season one -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season two -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season three -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative eighteen times in sixteen episodes.
Maybe they were making up for the shortened season?
**
Okay, done. Now where the hell is that happy squishy porn I was writing? AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY BOOZE?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:33 pm (UTC)*sends you booze*
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:34 pm (UTC)*gets wasted*
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:41 pm (UTC)I hope that I'm wrong, but seeing it all laid out makes it seem like it's possible.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 03:52 pm (UTC)Oh, that whore and her dirty pillows and those tight jeans that
everybody and their skinny sister wearsonly SHE'S slutty enough to dare to wear.Shame! SHAAAAAAAME.
... I'm sorry, what was I saying?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 04:03 pm (UTC)*retch*
I love Sam and Dean, but I also adore Ellen like crazy and I liked Jo while she was there and the thought that some "Oh, a new regular cast member? Great! ... wait, it's a girl?!!? Oh man, I bet she's a skank! Eeek, no, keep her away from our booooys!" fans might actually be influencing the writers to not bring in female regulars drives me bonkers, y'know?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 05:48 pm (UTC)Thanks for the tallies,
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 05:53 pm (UTC)See, I disagree with you there. The producers and the network have a huge say in what gets written and (if I'm not mistaken) they have to sign off on scripts.
Which means that if the producers/network execs/etc are feeling pressure from the fan base (who provide the ratings to keep their show in business and them employed), then they could be influencing the writers.
It's not like the writers have the final say in anything.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 06:01 pm (UTC)If the networks are putting pressure on the production group to make it obvious that the main characters dislike the female characters because of negative fan reaction, it puts the writers/production folks in a bind.
I do agree with you that they didn't necessarily have to go the route they chose, but I wouldn't be surprised if fan reaction was part of the reason for the change.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 09:54 pm (UTC)It was still the creators' decision to do that, and the production company, the writers, and the network all bear that responsibility. That a certain (highly-vocal) percentage of the fan community didn't like Jo doesn't transfer the responsibility for actually removing her to the fan community.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 10:28 pm (UTC)