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frozen_delight
A few metaish thoughts I posted on Tumblr last week which I wanted to share here, too.
This is a reply to @thejabberwock‘s post on the same topic here, which contains a lot of insightful observations by both @thejabberwock and @powerbottomdean. I’m posting this separately because this got a little long and Tumblr’s reblog and reply structure is just way too messy for my taste.
First off, let me just say that I love love LOVE the storyline of Dean’s return from Hell. It’s so subtle and layered and simply the best thing the show has ever done. (Which becomes even more obvious when you compare it to how Sam’s return from the Cage was handled in S6 and S7. Obviously, Sam and Dean’s experiences in Hell are vastly different, but the way the show dealt with Sam’s storyline is like replacing Crowley with Asmodeus, #Gucci vs. Walmart as someone so aptly tagged it.)
Dean sleeping is an important aspect of it. We never see Dean sleep as often as during S4: 9 times by my count. (Once in 4x01, 4x03, 4x08, 4x14, 4x19; twice in both 4x02 and 4x20.) Which is all the more remarkable considering that S4 is also the first season to show us Dean suffering from insomnia. As @powerbottomdean pointed out, Dean’s increasing alcoholism* is closely linked to his insomnia: “I gotta sleep sometime.”
In Dean’s world, sleep is a rare commodity, just like food or good water pressure, so generally he takes it wherever and whenever he can. Accordingly, we see Dean sleep in the oddest places over the years, including chairs and camping tables:
Obviously, Dean doesn’t undress when he takes one of those (undoubtedly super uncomfortable!) naps, ready to spring back into action at a moment’s notice. But when he gets the chance to sleep in a real bed for an entire night, Dean does peel of several of most of the countless layers he usually wears throughout the day. (Though sometimes the “creepy motel stains” Dean complains about in Yellow Fever might keep him from doing that. I can easily imagine Dean thinking, “Ugh, I won’t allow that blanket to touch even an inch of my skin.”)
The naked torso in Asylum seems to have been a one-time thing, but we do repeatedly catch glimpses of Dean sleeping in single layers pre-Hell:
This changes drastically after Dean returns from Hell. In Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester we see Sam sleeping in a tee and there’s no reason why Dean shouldn’t do the same, but he doesn’t:
It becomes very much of a theme from then on, Sex and Violence being the notable exception**, with Dean wearing only a tee and actually sleeping under the covers:
@powerbottomdean gives a very good reason for this: Dean is trying to convince Sam that he’s fine because Sam simply can’t deal with Dean’s hell trauma. After Dean confesses to Sam that what he saw in Hell was so terrible that there aren’t words for it at the end of Wishful Thinking, pretty much the first thing he does is mock Dean about it when he’s pissed off in I Know What You Did Last Summer; after Dean breaks down and tells him about the souls he tortured during the final moments of Heaven and Hell, Sam runs right back into Ruby’s arms, purposefully going behind Dean’s back even though Dean had been perfectly willing to work together with her once he learnt that she saved Dean’s life.
Additionally, I believe that the director of the episode, Charles Beeson, wanted to strengthen the parallel between Sam and Dean’s relationship and the couple in the teaser. From the outside, they look like the perfect married couple - nice house, nice car, hard-working husband, loving wife, but within seconds, the episode uncovers the violence sizzling underneath the pleasant
façade. By making Dean sleep like a regular person, Beeson invites us to peer beneath the façade of the Sam/Dean relationship, even before the script makes this explicit. (And boy, does the script make this explicit! Throughout S4, Sam and Dean’s dynamic is presented as that of a cheating, abusive husband and his traumatised wife, but Sex and Violence essentially transforms the previous subtext into text.)
Another key aspect of Dean sleeping during S4 is that his sleep is never undisturbed, and not just by nightmares. Cas repeatedly visits his dreams, ghost!Henriksen spies on him from afar at the gas’n’sip in
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester, Sam keeps sneaking around while Dean’s sleeping, and both Sam and Cas are regularly shown watch him sleep (with Cas’s invisible presence virtually bringing the ceiling down on Dean the first time it happens):
I know I’ve already written about the inherent objectification and rapeyness of this behaviour in my cinematography meta.
What I’d like to add in this place is that all we ever see of Dean’s nightmares are flashes of his eyes:
Taken together with Sam or Cas’s external presence, this gives us the impression that eyes are everywhere. It’s terrifying and claustrophobic, makes us think that Dean is forever caught in a hostile environment, trying to run away, finding nowhere to hide, rape, violence and deceit lurking everywhere he turns.
At the same time, the eyes serve as a symbolic reminder of watchfulness for Dean, keeping him from finding deep relaxing sleep. Because he knows that whenever he closes his eyes, bad things happen. Sam secretly meets up with Ruby, feeds on demon blood; Mary makes a demon deal (the entire events in In The Beginning take place during Dean’s sleep); angels and demons make sinister plans and break seals; and inside his head Dean is losing his humanity, remembering the monster Alastair tortured him into.
In this context, it also seems significant to me that Dean uses the leather jacket as a blanket in In the Beginning, rather than it just being a plot device like @thejabberwock argued. I’ve never liked that jacket, but it’s a key part of Dean’s identity during the early seasons. Now, the smell of leather is very strong. It’s something that Dean’s subconscious would pick up on during his sleep. To Dean, it probably smells like home and reminds him that he’s not stuck in Hell any longer, no matter what his nightmares might want him to believe. Similarly, it serves as a reminder of Dean’s identity - not a torture victim/torturer, but a hunter, “daddy’s good little soldier”. It isn’t until On the Head of the Pin that Dean explicitely states how disappointed John would have been in him if he knew Dean broke under Alastair’s torture, but I don’t think Dean needed Alastair to hold John up as a paragon of strong will and incorruptibility to come to that conclusion. Since John is no longer around to voice his disapproval when Dean returns from Hell, Dean lets the leather jacket he inherited from him do the job for him.
All of this taken together constitutes powerful storytelling - so, like @powerbottomdean already said, I don’t think it should be dismissed as something random or insignificant. It’s anything but.
* It’s interesting to me that in the first three seasons, both Sam and Dean are regular drinkers, but Sam’s the one who seems more in danger of becoming an alcoholic (see for example Playthings or Dream a Little Dream of Me). In quite a few fics written during the early seasons I’ve come across Dean worrying about Sam turning into an alcoholic like John. Dean’s time in Hell really was a game-changer in that regard, too.
** In the deleted scene from The Rapture Dean is only wearing a tee and boxers. Since it was deleted, I’m not considering it as canon, but the explanation of Dean wanting to give Sam the semblance of normality works just as well here.
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Date: 02/04/2018 07:48 pm (UTC)So why do you think Dean doesn't completely undress for sleep after he has returned from Hell? Is it because he doesn't want to be vulnerable?
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Date: 04/04/2018 07:54 am (UTC)And yes - I do think it's about not being vulnerable, not letting down his guard.
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Date: 02/04/2018 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 04/04/2018 07:55 am (UTC)Oh, and happy birthday! Hope you have a lovely day! *hugs*
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