Doomsday

One of my guiltiest pleasures is Supernatural, a TV show featuring two brothers who fight demons and other supernatural monsters in the name of good every week. I can’t even say it’s better than it sounds, but it’s fast-paced, the actors are eye candy, and the good guys usually win. Most of the plot of Supernatural is taken directly from traditional apocalyptic canon – i.e., the Book of Revelations. Last season featured seals breaking, a war between the angels, and the Devil-figure escaping from a bottomless pit to wreak havoc on the Earth (Revelations 5:1, 9:11, and 12:7-12:9).

Supernatural also plays in to the “apocalyptic gender panic” described in Chapter 6 of Millennial Seduction. The show’s two strongest female characters were “calculating and murderous [women] whose defeat” literally carried “apocalyptic urgency” within the context of the show (Quinby 105). Both of these modern reincarnations of Jezebel were highly sexualized, used as outlets for the boys’ lust, but never pure enough to be legitimate love interests. Both women refused to submit to the brothers’ authority, were self-serving, and ultimately violently killed off in ways that suggested they got what they deserved.

The millennium may have passed, but textbook apocalypticism is still alive and well in pop culture today. Last season, the Supernatural premiere drew 3.96 million viewers. Supernatural is on The CW, a TV network whose target demographic is women 18-34 years old. Why are all of these young women buying in to such a graphic depiction of “the fulfillment of masculinist desire” (Quinby 112)? Guilty as charged, as a representative of this demographic, I can offer no real defense. I can only say that while I wish Buffy and Xena were still around to serve as role-models, on Thursday nights at 9PM, my better judgment loses out to my desire to feed my “insatiable…apocalyptic appetite” (Quinby 9).

As I start to recognize the pervasive apocalyptic Jezebel stereotypes in this show and others like it, and the accompanying negative consequences for women and their self-image, I also begin to see the link between millennialism as a cultural fascination and millennialism that “interfere[s] with the goals of democratic societies” (Quinby 5).