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Supernatural - Bad Day at Black Rock

Some maudering on the Black Rocks and Bad days


"Don't Touch my Jesus."

I can't tell you how often I think that. Well, that, and I'll miss my knees when they're gone, but that's a different essay/assay, and I digress.

So too perspective. The eyes follow you wherever you turn it.

And here I'll digress. Should I even announce it like it's something. Like it isn't the norm. Like this isn't even the digression that I was about to go into. And so I digress from the digression by talking about digression.

"How would Jesus drive"

As a Christian from a (very x 500k) liberal sorta sect, those bumper stickers crack me up. Perhaps its because my personal opinion is that Jesus would drive like any of us. If someone cut him off, on a good day he wouldn't care, on a bad day when he's been booting moneylenders from the temple, he might tailgate (just a little). Well who of us hasn't tailgated someone (shot anyone, cast that first stone. The one that shatters that first one window. The one that says glass is fragile and flesh is weak and its alright.). Although, he'd also turn his lights on rather than hiding it under a bushel. He might keep a cell phone in his glove box, just in case he got a call.

Speaking of which, I recently read an extremely funny story using the metaphor of God&Jesus&Judas, the 3 Billy Goats Gruff and SPN as a mélange of funny melt my brain
http://eloise-bright.livejournal.com/108590.html

Much like this episode.

It's always the funny ones. And the unfunny ones. And... I digress.

You'd think there'd be no secrets in a space the size of a car, but so the glove box shows that there are still secrets to be told. That Dean keeps his father's cell phone alive, just in case. Like the phone that just in case brought them to Ellen. Like the just in case that brings them to that rambling inner dust of space.

Where Sam's trophy was kept, which as Dean declares was the only time Sam was a boy. Except... not, as this episode shows. Because I cannot imagine, as others have pointed out, any circumstance that better shows how their relationship must have been at 12 and 8, & 12 and 16. Dean's expressions of long suffering to Sam's lake of woe be gone when he lost his shoe down a grate. That sure and steady grip on Sam's arm, as Dean sits him in a chair. Such a long suffering taking care of a little brother apt to wander off. Who had such growing to do that there must have been years and years of growing into and out of clumsy.

That Sam and Dean didn't even know that space existed. Such a wealth of how many things didn't their father share or tell them. I long to have an episode to rummage in those boxes. Not the Pandora’s cursed ones, but the simple cardboard ones. What photos and secrets might they hide.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." Softer then a rabbit's foot. Soft and dangled for keys (locked hidden rooms) and luck. Rabbits are tricksters. Rascally wabbit, trix are for kids and the children that Sam and Dean never (sometimes) were, and for their Father's landmine tripwire memories of them.

Dusty. Devil's Traps to keep the demons out and hexes to keep good luck/bad luck in.

Food for a year, which in Dean's case is a lifetime. Ice cream to freeze the brain and onions that are deep fried whole. Funny things, onions. They bring a tear to the eye and a raddle/riddle of layers and layers down to the heart. They turn translucent when fried, unless breaded, in which case they are brown and crunchy.

Bela Lugosi is dead. Enter Dracula's daughter, British Bela and her clever cat. As I'm sure others have already commented, Dean claims Batman (with a brother's eye roll to deny - because really of the two it's hard to say who rides the vengeance/justice train), which then leaves Bela Catwoman on the selfish (redemptive?) road to hell.

And yet, she'd not wrong. Hunters as revenge driven psychos. A world going to hell... beautiful Bela and (beautiful) Dean agree. They both sliding headed, but the difference is in the route.

And I consider, if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. What's in a name? What's in this one?

Bad Day at Black Rock.

A movie about a man and a town in the dust blow away desert. One John McCreedy, the other sort of one armed man, not pursued by relentless justice, doing wrong (that tale told and done. Mary and John to their heaven and bullet borne balance served by the elder son), but pursuing of justice and right. Weary, torn and missing some integral part of himself in the WWII battlefields of Italy, McCreedy has given up. Compressing in himself, he pauses on his journey to the edge of the world in order to loose himself off the edge. The Bad Day in that movie hinges on the villainy of "good" people. Following Pearl Harbor, these curdled men, these fighters, out of random beerish hate killed Komoko, an old Japanese man. His only crime being race and the ability to find water in the desert. While in turn, the only reason McCreedy is in Black Rock, dying dust town where the train has stopped only once in four years, is to give Komoko his son's posthumous medal. The son died serving his country, saving McCreedy's life.

A movie where a one armed man is revived to himself not just by a pursuit of justice, but by the outright apathy of the town's people. Of all that they knew and did nothing about.

Hero. Villain. Perception. The eyes follow as the object is moved.

What then to a name?

What then, Bela's knowledge. What then Gordon's? Sam's? Mary's. John's? Ruby's? Lies and who can you trust and what do you know and how do you use that knowledge? To do or not to do, that is the question. Doing something to save the world.

And even then how do you know what is an illusion of the way the statue's carved and what's a "true" perception. The way things really are. Is there even such a thing as Sam transforms from ginormatron into little boy before our eyes. When good luck is a curse.

Two times Dean reads people. Once correctly. Once not. Perception. How we see people. How they are inside and the eyes that follow every move.

A story where sons know and don't know their father.

And what then did he know of them. A homemade shotgun and a soccer trophy. Perceiving objects that they valued, holy relics in the mausoleum of memory.

Perceptions. Even after all this time, learning their father's secrets. The secret of their mother and demon blood that Sam has yet to breath. Gordon and his perception that Sam ripped open the door to hell and goodly (godly) Hunter for Jesus thinking all those coincidences are a sign from (Houses of the Holy) God. That he's on a Blue's Brother mission. Praise the lord and pass the ammo. Bela perceiving the world is going to hell, so she may as well enjoy.

Pairs. I'm intrigued by the pairing of the two thieves. Two hunters. One Gordon. One Bela (selena kyle) Lugosi. The brothers in the middle.

Careful how you drive. What you touch. Put down the rabbit's foot (he wants it back). Put down the Jesus. Scratch good luck, bad luck and drive away into the dark of Black Rock, a town where as McCreedy says, the train has stopped twice in four years. Once to bring Justice in. Once to let it out again. (Okay, so actually, he merely yells, "Twice." but you get the point.)



And because I feel like it, a link. http://www.fandom-rocks.com/donate/

 
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