SPN-vid: Dean PoV - Jesus Christ
Artist/Song Title: Brand New - Jesus Christ
Subject: SPN, Dean PoV
Summary: ‘Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die, but I’m a little bit scared of what comes after.’ Dean made a deal with the wrong side, but it’s not like the other did him any good.
Format: 720x400 - 65 MB AVI or watch on BAM
One year and one week after my last Supernatural vid, it’s finally time for a new one. Dean again and this time around, we’ll dig a little bit into his beliefs or lack therefore. charmax ‘Deus Ibi Est’ can be read as a John counterpoint to ‘Jesus Christ’ and I swear we didn’t intend the father/son-analogy in the titles, but there it is. We even started our vids completely unaware that the other was up to something creepy comparable in the meantime. The discovery was spooky, let me tell you that.
Reasons to vid ‘Jesus Christ’? I think my first conscious thought of this vid while listening to the song on repeat writing AtS-fic was: “Oh, I think SPN fandom would agree with ‘Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face. The kind you'd find on someone that could save.’” I have to confess that was the mental hook in all its shallow glory; the starting point for a video that evolved back burning on my mind while the second season slowly came to an end. I tried to not make it about poor broken Dean, who couldn’t help himself and needed to trade his afterlife for his brother alive again, because there wasn’t another option available. It’s about a man who has some deep-seated faith issues. A few convictions and doesn’t believe in a master plan set in stone or that he deserves any kind of forgiveness for his past mistakes. His father lay his life down for him and his brother got killed right before his eyes - hell can’t get much worse and is probably the thing he deserves anyway. So the narration gets deliberate jumpy right from the start and I dearly hope that doesn’t pull anyone out of the vid going ‘WtF?’, because it all makes sense in my head.
Lyrical interpretation: First of all the song doesn’t sound like Dean, even when the narrator has the right mix between sarcasm, snark and sincere curiosity. While I could camouflage the offness of the acoustic sound in ‘To be Ghost’ with the shire rightness of the lyrics, it isn’t necessary true with ‘Jesus Christ’. Partly because while the lyrics come very close to what I would expect from Dean’s scattered take on belief, god and afterlife, it’s hard to translate why I think this song is so fucking right for him.
I didn’t make the perception easier with the questions posed in different directions - How they feel naturally in the flow of thoughts represented. This isn’t a dialog between Dean and Jesus. It’s about loss, religion, Sam, his dad, God, life and death in general. Dean isn’t a man of faith. He uses the tools that he has as a hunter - there is no difference between a silver bullet and an exorcism. Both are weapons and encountering the supernatural on daily basis the theodicy question doesn’t matter. The one, if they survive the fight on the other hand does. Dean doesn’t need to know why god would test humanity with suffering or tempt good people with evil, it’s just the way it is. Like he said in 2x13, ‘That's one of the perks of the job, Sam: we don't have to operate on faith. We can know for sure. Don't you want to know for sure?’
The certainty is superficial and when the gasp between reading obscure signs, following Sam’s visions and newspaper traces becomes too small, where does it lead Dean? What intrigued me was that with the survivor’s guilt Dean suffered and his willingness to throw himself into the pits of hell for no reason whatsoever - or did I miss the marching song to rescue his daddy? - His tight control slips and there are times when he just wishes to rest, to disappear, to fade and let someone else carry the responsibility. So in his depression there has to be at least a mocking voice on the back of his mind about all that religion bullshit and the comfort it obviously inspires in the general population.
Dean believes in free will, even when he has a hard time coming to terms with John’s choice. And he believes in the power of certain holy objects, rites and deals. - So in order to do his job, he has to accept a higher power and the occult, but these entities don’t rule his live. God has the same amount of authority like the Feds or the law enforcement - Next to nothing. But death has an impact, demons have - and I think not knowing when the end really occurs is stressing enough and puts Dean pleading with Sam to just let him go into perspective.
There is also the demon aspect strongly woven into this vid, represented with Meg and the crossroad one. Both showing personal interest in fucking his life over, still Dean manages to hold his ground with them. They are obviously interesting for different reasons in the context of faith. So while Meg’s host can be placed neatly in the reign of blonde women he couldn’t save, her coming back in Sam’s body hits closer home and shows Dean’s powerlessness entirely to deal with putting Sam down when going over the edge. I think we will have more fun with the things they hint at later in Season 3, which brings me to Sam blowing away the crossroad demon without any regards to her host.
Killing a human trapped - something they were big to emphasis in the first two seasons as almost immoral and that is now losing impact with all the freed demons running loose causing chaos. Sam killing this demon could be argued as pre-emptive strike for potential further victims and yet, it tastes of impatience and just losing his grip. So yeah, this ship is going down in sight of land and there’s nothing Dean can do about at the moment like in the past.
The vid starts of with Dean walking away from his little family portrait and the two toy soldiers facing each other, mirrored in shouting match when the big secret came out. And it wraps itself up with the bloody claw marks on two trees. Silently speaking of violence and still standing, so Dean looking down to the childlike and colourful picture of a home. Because everything comes down to family for Dean and there lies the only absolute trust he knows. The question occurs naturally, if it is enough with Sam becoming reckless in his attempts to save him this time around, because his brother and dad were always better at the single-minded obsession.
And with all my talking I hardly explained the video or Dean’s PoV at all - I guess you’re bound to find out for yourself.
The Journey? This vid gave me major headaches, tempted me in the last six months more than one time to just dump its ass and yet I kept coming back to it. Especially once charmax showed me her ‘Deus Ibi Est’ and it hit me hard that we both tried our hands on spookily similar themes - faith. Obviously her John PoV is utter perfection and nothing will come close to it, but I think watching these two videos side by side makes you automatically think about the ways John broke Dean’s trust, fucked him up and how his choices affected his son’s life.
So this video was very hard for me to grasp and there went some serious thinking into the clip choices and reconsidering. Dean’s not finished, he hasn’t had his last saying in what he believes in, so it was very refreshing to play with the images the words inspired and find out for myself what carried the most meaning for me. I have to say I worked on this video for so long the meanings have tripled and multiplied, insert the fun fact that I was thinking fucking long before I started vidding this particular song in the first place and you get that this was intended as very different vid.
Technical notes worth mentioning? First time I seriously tweaked around with the final export in Avisynth and ended up with two variations, that both made it hard to decide for me. The clearer and more colourful one got the green light, even when I really loved the gritty dirty one that got canned. I worked on some smoother transitions with adding a multiply layer. The one obvious effect with Dean and Sam fading into nothing is just a simple dissolve tweaked around. No camera movement is lovely for these.
Final note: I don’t want any religious nut jobs coming around, so this music video will be alternatively named ‘Wood and Nails’ on streaming sites, because people who type ‘Jesus Christ’ into a search engine creep me out and I like to fly under their particular radar. I would also love to hear your thoughts on this one. Feedback is awesome.