InsaneJournal

SPN and Spirituality pt 5


Jimmy Novak is the name of the human vessel the angel Castiel has taken over. In the S4 episode "The Rapture" we finally get to meet the man Castiel describes as "a devout man who prayed for this". Jimmy is a husband and father who sells ad space on AM radio and lives in a nice middle class Craftsman style house in the suburbs of Pontiac, Illinois- a character designed to be as boring and inoffensive as possible.

Somehow, I don't know why, this translates into "Fundamentalist Bible Thumping Jerk." It's not because the fans of the show have any problem with deeply religious characters- no one says stuff like that about Pastor Jim, or Anna, just Jimmy for some reason, and probably not even him if the TwoP recapper hadn't started it (and no one ever called him on this either, which drives me NUTS).

The recapper, Demian, kept calling Jimmy a “bible thumper” and other rather rude names for deeply conservative evangelical Christians. Now, it’s not like I’ve never called someone a fungelical or anything but the thing is, we had absolutely no evidence that Jimmy Novak was a conservative evangelical, let alone a fundamentalist.

Absolutely none. If you’d like to argue with me, by all means, present your proof. But I saw that episode and you have none.

We are told Jimmy is a devout Christian. We see him praying to be used by God. But we are never told what church he goes to or what denomination he happens to be a member of. Technically, we are not even actually told he’s a Christian except that he’s obviously a member of some Abrahamic faith and equally obviously no Muslim. I think, according to the Laws of Television Cliches, if he was any kind of observant Jew they would’ve made that a little clearer too. But they give no clues as to what kind of Christian this character is. So it’s unbelievably, offensively unfair to assume the worst just because he’s portrayed as very religious.

But it’s not about being religious, because Demian himself has repeatedly self identified as a Catholic (in the forums, during a discussion of the End of Days, he goes off on people about how Catholics shouldn’t have to go along with the evangelical Protestant version of Revelation because “there are more of us than there are of any one else”). It’s all about the immediate assumption that anyone who goes around actually talking about how they actually believe in that stuff and is so far gone as to actually pray out loud with their family must be some kind of scary evangelical Protestant. Demian really, really goes to town on Jimmy based on this assumption- including accusing him of actions and attitudes we never once saw on screen and had no reason to think were there. Like assumptions about how Jimmy treats his wife based on a gobsmacking lack of any kind of textual evidence. He started by assuming that Jimmy is a fundamentalist evangelical Protestant based on almost no evidence, and from there, using what, as a Catholic, he *thinks* he knows about these people, determines that they have attitudes and habits that they're shown no signs of actually having.

Yes, Jimmy appears to have fallen asleep in front of what some people claim looks like it might be The 700 Club, but that’s not proof that he’s a regular watcher or a big fan. It just means it was on tv when he fell asleep. I used to regularly fall asleep with the tv on when I had one in my bedroom when I lived here before. And since I watched SNL, sometimes it’d be on NBC and NBC shows Joel Osteen every Sunday morning. So I often woke up to Joel Osteen whether I wanted to or not (it was usually a sign that I needed to get up and moving). Saying that Jimmy is a scary fundamentalist because he fell asleep watching what you think looks like it might have been The 700 Club is like accusing someone of wholeheartedly subscribing to the views of the hosts of a show they may or may not have been actively watching because it is on when they happen to fall asleep. I guess that means all those people who wake up blearily at three a.m to realize they've been watching the Girls Gone Wild commerical are sicko pervs who hate women?

Rabid fungelical Protestants are not actually the only people who watch that show. How the heck do you think everyone else knows what they talk about on it? Other people watch out of curousity, or boredom, or a desire to know what "the other side" is thinking.

If Jimmy was supposed to be a conservative evangelical, someone didn't do their research because I didn't hear the word "just" come out of his mouth once while he was praying. It looks to me like the show tried to keep Jimmy's beliefs as vaguely generically Christian as possible, probably in order to avoid this exact conversation.

Unfortunately, that just left people room to assume the worst.

Oh, and in the original shooting script? Jimmy’s a Catholic. Dude, look it up.