Communication studies professor Erika Engstrom will present "TV, Religion, and the CW’s Supernatural" at the Feb. 3 University Forum lecture. The free public event will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Barrick Museum auditorium.
Their name is Winchester and they hunt monsters. And ghosts. Oh, and demons. Also, they have a friend who's an angel (as in, "of the Lord"). They're Sam and Dean, two brothers from Lawrence, Kansas, and they've got your back, in case there's a vengeful spirit haunting your house, or if werewolves, vampires, or shape-shifters are bothering you.
For 10 years now, the CW television show Supernatural has brought the adventures of this dynamic duo to the airwaves. Not only a show about the otherworldly, Supernatural provides myriad ways to study how television conveys messages reflective of a particular culture and society during a particular moment in time. The Winchesters live and "hunt" in the world of today, but deal with ancient and long-known scary things that have permeated the mythology of cultures around the world. At the same time, their ancestral calling to rid the world of evil reflects the notion of being exceptional--and the burden carried by those chosen to serve a special purpose and protect the innocent.
I had been familiar with Supernatural for a few years as a fan, enjoying the ghost stories and soap opera storylines that reveal the true nature of family loyalty and love. Being a university professor who studies mass media content, I found it intriguing that the show had a religious aspect to it, especially as it began to incorporate demons who possessed people and could be exorcised from them through the Winchesters' use of holy water and Latin incantations. The lore and mythology surrounding monsters and creatures encountered by the Winchester brothers in a sense taught viewers about the actual lore and religions associated with things like the Wendigo, the rakshasa, and the kitsune, based in Native American legend, Hinduism, and Japanese mythology.
Having done some research on the portrayal of religion on reality television, specifically, the religious rituals depicted in reality TV weddings, I convinced a fellow faculty member who had some expertise in researching religious communication, Joseph Valenzano (now at the University of Dayton), to do a study on Supernatural's portrayal and treatment of religion. Not only did we find that this entertaining television show offered viewers an array of different religions and myths, but the way the Winchesters dealt with the creatures arising from those origins presented an overarching message that they could defeat almost anything that came their way, usually by uncovering a weakness that could lead to a monster's demise.
However, regarding what could be termed as "big boss battles" to those familiar to video gamers, the most evil and hard-to-kill enemies of the Winchester brothers came from Biblical stories, including the feared Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As depicted in horror films, the use of Catholic-based "weapons," such as holy water and Latin, are used by the brothers to get rid of demons from hell (yes, that hell). The brothers have also found help and assistance from Catholic priests. This led us to conclude that Catholicism received a sympathetic treatment by the show's writers, while creatures from "other" religions and folklore, including Greek, Roman, and Norse gods that preceded Christianity, could be defeated by the mere mortal Winchesters.
That the Winchesters come from the American heartland did not escape our notice, either. The significance of Americans defeating a plethora of monsters originating in Old World mythology and pagan religions and even three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (no one can defeat Death, after all) presented another angle to study Supernatural. The parallel of the Winchesters taking on the evil of the world and the current War on Terror, in which the United States positions itself against threats to its tenets of freedom and role of protector of the innocent, serves as another way to view entertainment as a venue where a society's values and self-perception can be conveyed through mass media. Indeed, the very name Winchester evokes the famous gunmaker whose rifle became known as "The Gun That Won the West."
The Winchesters' family motto is "Saving people, hunting things." The people they save are everyday folks and the things they hunt are pretty scary. But rest assured, America, whether you're up against a common house haunting or the King of Hell (his name is Crowley, by the way), Sam and Dean will find a way to get you out of trouble. Just remember never to make a deal with a crossroads demon.
Erika Engstrom is co-author of Television, Religion, and Supernatural: Hunting Monsters, Finding Gods, published by Lexington Books.
