#performing dean

I think of Dean chewing his food messily with his mouth open, often "acting out" for Mary and Sam's benefit. I can't think of the exact episode, but I know in season 12, he eats in an exaggerated way in front of Mary and Sam, smiling cheekily like it's some private joke.

Here's an example from 15x06 when he shuffles in and pours cereal into his mouth, amping up the "oafish, childish brother" routine:

15x06 via @spnscripthunt

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Dean and Jack both tend to "act out," doing childish things...often for show, for the benefit of others, or to cover up some serious personal hurts.

I think about how Jack was shown blowing a big bubblegum bubble and amping up his charm to cover up how uncomfortable he feels being back in his childhood home and lying about Billie's plan:

15x12 via @spnscripthunt

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15x13 via @spnscripthunt

Like how Cal @soullessjack pointed out, some of Jack's fun-loving stuff (toys-and-social media and matching ties) is an at least partial performance in Gimme Shelter. There’s a good chance it’s a front in Galaxy Brain too (above)

Blowing bubbles and acting lighthearted is a cover for his own morose mood and suicidal plan with Billie.

Jack can be a silly character, but it's worth remembering that he's often potentially engaging in motivated "lightheartedness."

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Mary has a silly side, definitely, but she feels more wry / sarcastic on the whole. She's more confident, more aloof.

She's so mean on the outside sometimes, lol, and I love her so much.

I think Mary would definitely be a practical joker, but she's not as out-and-out silly or childish, and she seems distinctly less particular than Dean:

Dean canonically CAN sing well, but for some reason, he’s spent the last 14 years... not singing well...

Just like Dean canonically hated chick flick movies, until he canonically admitted the truth, that he loved them.

Just like Dean canonically doesn’t wear shorts, until he canonically did wear shorts... 

Lee 100% expected Dean to join him on stage and sing. As if they’d done this before together, and Lee knew Dean would a) know the lyrics to the song, and 2) pull off the duet. 

I...find this reductive.

It also completely discards a ton of context. It discards how Dean was raised. It discards the role toxic masculinity plays and how men are taught that’s how they have to be.

Dean’s badassery and his softness co-exist and both are authentic. The strength, the hunting ability, the determination, the bravery, the courage. That is what I mean by “badass.” 

Dean’s macho posturing is not badass. His macho posturing is a facade. His moments of reaching for toxic masculinity as a shield is not the real full picture and what people applaud is how Dean reaches for the macho posturing who reverts to toxic masculinity and then discards it. It’s been an arc since 1x01. Maybe I’m misreading these posts but it looks to me like some really want “this is too girly for me” Dean to be acceptable and it’s not going to be. First of all, because that facade is always going to break. Dean himself doesn’t accept it, he tried to put it in place to keep up this persona he’s built for himself, but it never sticks and the Dean beneath emerges every single time. Second of all because it’s just not going to happen that everyone is going to go “oh look toxic masculinity and absurd macho posturing again hooray!!!” 

Stop treating it like this is an insult to Dean. You say you want people to accept the whole Dean flaws and all? Then accept that the macho posturing is toxic masculinity. Accept Dean’s flaws. Stop trying to idealize it and make it out like this is healthy and good for him. It’s not.

There has been a lot of character growth for Dean. Applauding his lessening use of certain facades and macho posturing isn’t Dean hate, it isn’t demeaning, it isn’t throwing out any layers of Dean. It’s celebrating all the layers. The fascinating dichotomy of the facade vs the whole Dean.

Stop mixing this up with “his badassery” please or acting like it’s an attack on his badassery to point out macho posturing for what it is.

Also there’s two kinds of facades. There’s the “this is too girly for me” toxic masculinity, self-cultivated persona of coolness, and there’s the walls of defenses where Dean isolates himself emotionally. Those are two different kinds of walls.

Also here’s the twist about Dean: he thinks he needs to work the facade of cool and doesn’t see how cool he is just standing there. Dean’s actual greatest moments of cool were not the ones where he was trying to be cool.

Dean is also a geek and maybe this wasn’t planned from the get-go, but we’ve seen a very evident arc over time of Dean who used to mock all things geeky get increasingly uninhibited about owning that he’s into stuff, that he likes it, that he will geek out, that he’s watched the tv shows, and he’s a fan of stuff, that he likes cosplay and genre tv and genre movies and Star Trek.  He used to mock geeks. Mocking geeks is a classic toxic masculinity move. Calling people “nerds.” The paradox of geekiness societally is that while men try to gatekeep women out, in turn, non-geeky society, societally, perceives being geeky, nerdy, being a genre fan to be weak (i.e. “feminine”). Being a sports fan is considered manly. Being into science fiction or other genre fiction is considered weak/nerdy. Dean’s character development on embracing his own geekiness is an actual brilliant microcosm of social commentary. 

It does truly floor me that talking about Dean’s facades as facades is now considered anti-Dean. I’ve been doing spn meta since 2005 and in early SPN fandom, Dean fans loved facade discussion. A lot of effort had to be made in early SPN to point out to fandom that Dean’s posturing and Dean’s facade was not the whole Dean and it’s kind of sad we still have to point out that Dean’s walls are a facade, that the hard shell he puts up is that, just a shell, to cover the hurt and love and pain and vulnerability. Still, in S14, this has to be pointed out. But even if every single person in the fandom understood these are facades, and stopped panicking and knee jerking and judging him whenever those familiar walls go up, Dean’s facades would still be an endlessly fascinating topic to me.