Sam and Dean hunt monsters, and monsters are pretty freaky. No doubt, some people are pretty freaky too, but monsters are unique in that they possess an element of shock and mystery that people do not. If Sam and Dean were vigilantes hunting down run-of-the-mill bad guys, would you bother watching the show? I’m willing to bet that there’s something about the way monsters freak you out that compels you to watch Sam and Dean hunt them.
When children use the word “monster,” they do so in the very normal dictionary sense, referring to creatures that are large, ugly, and frightening. To speak of a “cute monster,” “comforting monster,” or even “little monster” is oxymoronic, like “jumbo shrimp.” Children actually know this, which is why they don’t believe you if you try to explain that the monster in their closet is really kindhearted and adorable. In truth, we’re not using the word “monster” in the normal sense when we do this. Instead, we’re trying to change the word’s meaning to refer more generally to creatures that aren’t part of our normal, natural world. Being a monster implies being something unpleasant, repulsive, and very scary, which means you literally cannot like it. If you do, then it’s not really a monster to you.
If our current conception of monster is out of whack, then maybe it will help to understand where the word comes from. Before English speakers adopted the word from the French, monstre and mostre, the word “monster” began its life much like any other word from the Romance languages, as a Latin word, monstrum, which translates as an evil and often unnatural sign or omen. The Latin root of monstrum is somewhat disputed, but essentially the word derives from either monstro or moneo. The former simply means to show, as it does in the word “demonstrate.” The latter means to warn or advise, as it does in the Latin monere and later the English word “monitor.” So basically, we’ve found that from meek and modest parentage, albeit disputed, we eventually get the abomination that is the word “monster.” So maybe “monster” is really just misunderstood, and we should think of it as meaning something on display, hopefully to be learned from.
While this helps, it’s not like a monster is an artifact in a museum. We know monsters aren’t tamable in these ways, so they must be something more. And to understand what more that could be, Aristotle’s (384—322 BCE) metaphysics can help. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of reality. Here, we’ll focus on four areas Aristotle considered when determining what something really was, namely, essence, predicates, judgments, and potentials. Understanding and employing these concepts in our own concept of monster will help us avoid our currently tainted love of Supernatural.
Before getting into our own full-blown account of monsters, let’s apply Aristotle’s concepts to the monsters of Supernatural. After all, whatever our concept of monster turns out to be, it has to fit with the canon of our favorite show.
According to Aristotle, there are essential and accidental aspects of being. In the simplest terms, the essential aspects are the things that could not change about something, while the accidental aspects are things that could change. In the first season, Sam experienced significant heartache and death at the hands of a demon with yellow eyes, Azazel. After killing Sam’s mother, Mary, Azazel kills Sam’s girlfriend, Jessica. While both these events play important roles in making Sam the hunter he is today, Aristotle’s distinction should lead us to wonder whether Sam’s being a hunter is essential to his being or accidental. Is hunting an unchangeable part of Sam’s being? Would Sam still be Sam if he were never a hunter? These are questions regarding Sam’s essence. If it’s possible that Sam could have lived a very different and domestic life, then hunting is an accidental aspect of Sam’s being. Interestingly enough, Azazel reveals to Dean that it all started when their mother accidently got in the way, which seems to imply Sam’s life could have been very different. Then again, Azazel is a demon and so he’s naturally a liar, making it hard to know for sure.
Aristotle believed that a thing’s being could be described in terms of ten categories, including substance, quantity, quality, and seven more. These categories are all things that can be predicated of or said of the being in question. In noting that Sam is a hunter, we were categorizing the substance of his being. Similarly, in saying, “Sam is 6 ft. 4 in. tall,” we are categorizing his height according to quantity. As we did with his status as a hunter, we might ask if this height is essential or accidental to his being Sam. The answer is probably not. Sam could have been a little shorter or taller and still have been Sam.
In “Dead Man’s Blood,” John Winchester offers his Aristotelian expertise on some essentials to being a vampire:
Most vampire lore is crap. A cross won’t repel them. Sunlight won’t kill them, and neither will a stake in the heart. But the blood lust … that part’s true. They need fresh, human blood to survive. They were once people so you won’t know it’s a vampire until it’s too late. (Season 1, Episode 20)
Here, John is describing the substance of being a vampire. It’s an essential part of the substance of being a vampire that they look like humans, have eyes like humans, walk and talk like humans. In other ways, though, their essence is drastically different than humans. Most notably, they are ageless and they survive on blood.
Suppose we pointed at the Alpha-Vampire and asked, “What is this thing, this being?” and we were told, “That is thirteen.” This would be a really weird response because the question was asking about the Alpha-Vampire’s substance, but the response, “thirteen,” is a quantity. In other words, we often ask questions of beings with specific categories in mind and, as this example illustrates, we expect answers that fit the categories we asked about. In our case, here, we asked a question of substance, not one of quantity, and so we expect an answer in the category of substance. As we will come to discuss later, this recognition paves the way for understanding the essence of demons and angels, particularly as they possess meat-suits and vessels. Moreover, it will also serve us well when we ask questions about what it is to be a monster.
Aristotle’s third taxonomy of being is found in judgments of truth and falsity about a thing. These judgments can apply to questions of essence, accident, or any of the categories. They can also apply, as we’ll see, to judgments of potentiality. In their first meeting, Dean and Castiel sort through judgments of being, so that Dean can understand what Castiel is. At first, Dean asks, “Who are you?” and Castiel replies, “Castiel.” But this response doesn’t fit the category that Dean had intended to ask about, so Dean corrects himself, “Yeah I figured that much. What are you?” Castiel replies, “An angel of the Lord.”
In this bit of dialogue, truth and falsity play a central role. Once the categorical incongruence is cleared up, Dean wants to know the truth about Castiel’s substance. Castiel claims to be an angel, but looks like a human. In fact, he’s actually possessing a human vessel, so it’s reasonable for Dean to feel like he’s not getting the whole truth regarding Castiel’s substance. We later learn that Castiel’s true form is taller than the Chrysler Building. So, can a being’s substance change? This brings us to the last important distinction from Aristotle, between actual and potential.
According to Aristotle, a being can be actual or potential. For example, a bird can be an actual bird or a potential bird. An actual bird is an animal with wings and feathers, whereas a potential bird is a fertilized egg, still needing to be hatched. Further, the egg is a bird only in the sense that it is a potential bird. Regarding actuality, the egg is just an egg. For Aristotle, the actual comes before the potential, because there must be some actual substance that has potential for some other specific actuality. Regarding Sam and Dean, we could say that they are potential demonic and angelic weapons during the fifth season, respectively, but their actuality of being during that time is human. Similarly, Castiel’s actuality is angel, but we learn in the sixth season that he has the potential to be much more, maybe even God.
Having now armed ourselves with Aristotle’s terminology and distinctions, it’s time to return to our initial questions. Can we love monsters? If there’s a monster in our kid’s closet, could it be cute and nice? And ultimately, the most important question of all, can we love Supernatural because we love the monsters?
As we learned from our brief study of Latin at the beginning of this chapter, the word “monster” comes from a relatively innocuous lineage. To be sure, warnings and omens aren’t exactly things we look forward to, but that’s because we’re concerned about what follows these signs, not the signs themselves. Using our taxonomy from Aristotle, we might say that warnings, omens, and signs are not essentially bad. In fact, many of us appreciate being given a warning, so that we can avoid the bad things that may be heading our way. But can the same be said for monsters? Or is it really essential to monsters that they be repulsive and always avoided?
Any question about the essential nature of monsters requires an answer that applies to all monsters. There are, of course, lots and lots of different monsters, but since we don’t really care about anything else but our ability to freely love the monsters of Supernatural, we can exclude any others from our discussion. So the initial question for us to answer is how vampires, demons, wendigos, werewolves, and the various other monsters from Supernatural are all alike in their monstrousness?
As it turns out, Aristotle had a very robustly conceived taxonomy of substance that we could initially borrow from, but in the long run it would fail to tell us everything we want to know, since being a monster includes various genus/species categories. In other words, being a monster would be a very general category, like the category of things that move. In fact—because some monsters are what Aristotle called, “Ensouled Destructible Mobile Substances,” which is the category that includes all living things, while other monsters are clearly, “Unensoulded Destructible Mobile Substances,” which includes fire, earth, wind, water, and presumably, robots, golems, Sam without a soul, and even some demons who’ve sold their soul—the lowest we could really get on Aristotle’s substance taxonomy is “Destructible Mobile Substances.” This is a category so broad as to include anything that can be destroyed and that can also move itself about. So really, Aristotle’s taxonomy of substances in the categories isn’t all that helpful here.
There is a silver lining, though. We can now say that substance isn’t what makes something a monster. But really, we could save ourselves the effort of working through all ten of Aristotle’s categories of being, if we could just determine what monsters have in common that isn’t also present in non-monsters. As an example, we might suggest an obvious commonality is that all monsters are beings that Sam and Dean hunt. But, unfortunately, this commonality will only take us so far, since it’s not an essential commonality. If it were essential to being a monster that Sam and Dean hunt it, then there wouldn’t have been monsters before Sam and Dean were hunters. Obviously, a better suggestion might be that monsters are all things that hunters hunt, but this would leave us with a similar problem, since we know monsters, like those in purgatory, have been around far longer than hunters.
What about the suggestion that all monsters are gross and repulsive? Are either of these essential to being a monster? No, being attractive doesn’t automatically exclude something from the monster category. Obvious examples of this are all the monsters that use physical attraction to lure unsuspecting victims to their death. Vampires are notorious for this, as are arachnes, siren, succubae, incubi, and Amazons. Interestingly enough, the same really isn’t true of demons. We’re constantly reminded of the hideous true form of demons in Supernatural, which probably still haunts Sam long after his relationship with the demon Ruby.
Rather than start with a commonality among all types of monster, we might try looking at the differences between a human and a monster. More specifically, for those monsters that were originally human, we should find the important monster making-feature, gradually or abruptly appearing through that metamorphosis. For example, some humans become werewolves, and we’ve already agreed that werewolves are monsters. Thus, in Aristotle’s terms, this means that even though the actuality for those humans is human, they are also potentially werewolves. In these people, we should be able to observe the monstrousness appearing. Granted, being a monster will only be one of the changes, but this is at least a start. We’ll focus on the werewolf for now, but other possible examples of this transition occur with wendigo, Doc Benton, and rugarus.
In the episode “Heart,” Sam and Dean meet Madison, a girl who doesn’t know she’s a werewolf. In Aristotle’s terms, Madison spends most of her time as an actual human and potential monster. As a werewolf, she is an actual monster and potential human. One of the important changes that occur during this metamorphosis is that the person we’ve come to know as “Madison” seems to disappear. Her physical body changes dramatically, as does her personality and character. When the werewolf is present, Madison is gone. If we imagined this transformation with no physical changes, we’d have the body of Madison with the mind of a werewolf. Would this be a monster?
If this seems like a tricky question, simply ask yourself, “Given that this body is Madison’s but it’s being controlled by a werewolf, would I treat it like Madison or a werewolf?” This shows that being a monster has more to do with thoughts and actions than it does with appearance. Therefore, the essence of being a monster isn’t in physical appearance. Further support for this claim comes from the Bender family, in the aptly named episode “The Benders.” This family kidnaps people to hunt them for sport. Surely the thoughts and actions of these people are nothing short of monstrous. They may be human biologically, but they’re definitely monsters in some other really essential way. This means that the examples of Madison and the Bender family considerably narrow our search for what it means to be a monster, since we can now be sure that physical appearance doesn’t play an essential role in the concept.
Of course, having just concluded the negligible, if non-existent, role that appearance plays in being a monster, we might still wonder why so many monsters are gross? Is it just coincidence, or is there some other factor we’re not considering? At this point, I think it’s worth noting that this judgment is always rendered by a human. Judging the appearance of a monster is a human behavior, and these judgments say more about us than the monsters they’re intended to describe. In fact, it’s really only on rare occasions that monsters judge the appearance or behavior of other monsters, and they almost never refer to one another as “monsters.” So why do we do it?
The short answer is that most of us are “speciesist.” We are prejudiced in elevating the human species over other species in terms of rights and values. We keep animals as pets, and many of us readily eat, wear, and sit on the flesh of other species. In many cases, monsters just treat humans the way we treat other animals. We fail to see the symmetry, though, since we place ourselves above all other species. Obviously, monsters aren’t a species of being, but we are prejudiced and “speciesist” in placing humanity above animals and monsters. The ironically titled episode, “Jump the Shark,” has some poignant and scathing dialogue regarding this bigoted relationship between humans and monsters:
SAM: Silver. No wonder none of the tests worked. You’re not shapeshifters. You’re ghouls.
GHOUL-KATE: You know, I find that term racist …
SAM: I should have known. It was the fresh kills that threw me. Ghouls don’t usually go after the living. See, you’re just filthy scavengers, feeding off the dead—taking the form of the last corpse you choke down …
GHOUL-KATE: Well, we are what we eat.
SAM: You’re monsters.
GHOUL-ADAM: You know, you use that word a lot, Sam … But I don’t think you know what it means …
To Sam, the only relevant thing about ghouls is that they’re monsters. The fact that under normal conditions ghouls don’t kill people doesn’t seem to matter at all. The ghouls are judged as not deserving the same rights and privileges humans have. Of course, you might try to defend Sam by saying that ghouls are dangerous and could decide to start killing and eating people, as these two did. But you could say that about all sorts of animals, including humans. So that wouldn’t lead you to the conclusion that they should all be exterminated. Our ghoul friends also made this point with Sam:
GHOUL-ADAM: Our father was a monster? Why? Because of what he ate? He never hurt anyone, Sam. Living, anyway.
The simple truth in all of this is that we think so highly of humans that we’re extremely offended when even a human corpse is eaten by a ghoul. In “The Benders” episode, Sam can’t bring himself to kill Pa Bender, despite the fact that he’s a murdering, cannibalistic hillbilly. Something about Pa’s humanity prevented Sam from treating him like the monster that he was. Fortunately, Deputy Hudak saw through the façade and meted out justice accordingly.
It should be clear at this point that being a monster means having a particular relationship with humans. Monsters are monsters because they offend human sensibilities, and they do this by threatening to undermine the value we place on ourselves. Monsters don’t value human lives over their own lives, and oddly enough, this bothers us. Notice how quickly some of the angels in Supernatural appear to be monsters because of how they treat humans. Compare that with how quickly the archangel Gabriel resumes his angelic status by defending humanity from his brother, Lucifer. If you had to eat dinner with either Crowley or Alastair, which would you be more comfortable with? Surely it’s the one that transformed Hell from chains and torture to an endlessly long queue.
From the outset, we were concerned that monsters were the sorts of beings that we could not like, even if we tried. Our concern was that by liking them, they’d no longer be monsters, and then we’d be less interested in watching Supernatural. Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that we’ve discovered that the very definition of being a monster prevents us from really liking them. The good news is that because we’re prejudiced against monsters we love watching them hunted down and executed for daring to exist as our potential equals. As a result, we can all continue loving Supernatural and the monsters it contains, since it would clearly be hard to have one without the other.