Supernatural:
Building Beyond a Trope Character
For
the average hour long television program, there is roughly 44 minutes in which
to tell a story. There is a great deal of information packed into that time
frame. The use of trope characters is not only appropriate, but necessary, in
such a short storytelling window. What the story does with a trope can range
from exasperatingly offensive to down-right lovable. Supernatural uses stock
characters and tropes in every episode but it’s how some of those characters
are fleshed out with well written back stories and clever dialogue that help
propel the heroes’ development and story arc.
The
use of tropes is shorthand for an audience to recognize a concept quickly based
on their prior knowledge and experiences so that the plot can be pushed ahead
without taking up valuable story time to educate the audience as to that
character’s purpose. These characters are usually flat, rather than complex
layered ones, simply because their objective is to magnify the major characters
and help propel the story forward. One such character is Charlie Bradbury. Charlie
could easily have been a one episode character. She was used effectively in her
first episode, “The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo.” She was the
computer hacker nerd girl that the Winchesters needed - that was her trope.
Charlie
is often referred to as a “Mary Sue” trope. While a clear definition of a “Mary
Sue” can vary, in general, most will agree, it is often a derogatory term for an
avatar character or an idealized version meant to represent the writer or
another specific person. Often this trope will have genius qualities, an
unusual or beautiful appearance, and an exotic name. When we’re introduced to Charlie
in “The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo”, she is an intelligent
computer hacker who dances to “Walking on Sunshine” and fist bumps a Hermione
figurine on her desk. She drinks from a Wonder Woman mug, is wearing a Princess
Leia Rebel t-shirt and makes humorous pop culture references, “I was drunk. It
was Comic-Con.” Had Charlie stayed that
flat trope, she would have become stale and annoying but in “Pac-Man Fever”,
Charlie grew into a complex dynamic character when we learned of her childhood
trauma and she makes some significant life changes with the help of the
Winchesters.
Charlie
may be a female avatar for the writer or just a general description of how a
large section of the Supernatural fan
base might describe themselves. Either way, it is a method of introducing an
identifiable character into the fictional world of the Winchesters that is
neither derogatory nor offensive. Trope characters allow the audience to attach
and align with major characters. If every character is a complex character, the
audience cannot focus, align, or attach to individual characters. “In a
long-form serial, attachment is a crucial variable, as our relative connection
to individuals can shift from episode to episode…” (Mittell). The average viewer
or reader cannot comprehend and retain information on multiple complex
characters. Our brains are simply not hard-wired that way. We seek out patterns
and use these to string together stories.
This
is also not the first time a writer has inserted an avatar of themselves into
the Supernatural storyline. Eric
Kripke, the writer and creator of Supernatural,
admitted the character of Chuck Shurley aka Carver Edlund, was an avatar for
himself. The name Carver Edlund is the pen name created by combining the names
of Jeremy Carver and Ben Edlund, also writers for Supernatural. At the end of
“The Girl with the Dungeon and Dragons Tattoo”, we discover that Charlie
Bradbury was not the character’s real name. We find out that Charlie created
the name herself as an alias. And in “Pac-Man Fever” we’re told her real name
is Celeste Middleton. One might even argue that Charlie Bradbury is a “Mary
Sue” for Celeste Middleton. Robbie Thompson, who created the character, confessed
the name was a combination of Charlene, the character from the Stephen King
novel Firestarter and Bradbury, for
science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.[1]
Charlie
is not the only trope character within the Supernatural
universe. Kevin Tran began as a cello playing, over-achieving academic Asian
teenager trope but was built upon over several episodes to become a more
complex minor character. This isn’t to say that the use of these clichéd
characters should become trite. There is a danger of over-usage of a trope to
the point it is noticeable enough to be ridiculed. The horror movie trope of a
woman, running through the woods at night, tripping and falling only to remain
helplessly screaming on the ground while the knife-wielding murderer slowly walks
towards her has become so absurd that it is parodied in such comedy movies as Scary Movie. The number of pop culture
references within the Supernatural Charlie
episodes, walks that thin line of over-usage.
In fact, there are so many pop culture references used to enhance the Charlie
persona that it could have backfired and become ridiculous but instead elevates
Charlie beyond a flat, boring character and solidifies her as a genuine geek.
Above
everything, the function of a minor character is to lend itself to either
contrast or magnify the complexity of major characters. In “Pac-Man Fever”,
Dean dreamscapes into Charlie’s djinn induced nightmare in order to save her.
Within her nightmare, Dean sees his own fear of Sam lying unconscious in a
hospital bed just like Charlie’s comatose mother, alluding to Dean’s fear that
the Trials Sam has undertaken is killing him. Dean helps Charlie overcome her
fear and escape from the spell the djinn put her under and at the end, Charlie
tells Dean she loves him and he responds with “I know” which Charlie herself
has used in her two previous episodes. It is also a reference to the line
between Princess Leia and Han Solo in The
Empire Strikes Back. This ties back to how Eric Kripke has referred to Dean
Winchester as a Han Solo character. [2]
In
season ten, Charlie returns to further the Mark of Cain/ Dark!Dean story arc.
In “There’s No Place Like Home”, Charlie is back from Oz but as two different
Charlie’s, Dark!Charlie and Good!Charlie, and she must find a way to reconcile
those two halves of herself to become balanced. This amplifies the struggle
that Dean is also having controlling the dark affects the Mark of Cain is
having on him. In “The Book of the Damned”, Charlie and Sam have a conversation
in which Sam makes a declaration that he has to save Dean and if he can’t, he
doesn’t want to continue without his brother. It is also the first time Sam
admits he loves hunting and that he has accepted that it is his life. It’s a
conversation that Sam couldn’t have with Dean for fear of revealing how scared
he is that he may lose him. Episode 21, “Dark Dynasty” marks the only Charlie episode
that Robbie Thompson did not write. It is also the episode where the character
is killed in order to push the Dark!Dean story arc forward. After Charlie
manages to crack the codex that will enable the Book of the Damned to be
deciphered which could potentially save Dean, she is murdered by one of the
Styne family. Charlie’s death pushes Dean to act on his dark tendencies that
the Mark of Cain brings out in him and he seeks his revenge for her death by
slaughtering the entire Styne clan and ends with him brutally beating his best
friend, Castiel.
The
use of a trope character in a narrative may elicit a groan from some viewers.
It may be argued that it is a form of stereotyping. But to use this as an
argument is itself a stereotype since stereotyping is an exaggerated
generalization based on prejudice that is then used to demean and diminish. The
website, TV Tropes, describes a trope as “They are not bad; they are not good,
they are simply tools that a creator of a work of art uses to express their
ideas to the audience.” Tropes are used in every story told. Nothing entirely
new has been written since early man drew the first cave painting. Using a
trope does not automatically make a story awful or unworthy. It’s how the trope
is used and how the world is built around it that defines the quality of the
work. Supernatural uses tropes but
builds upon them to give the show some of their most beloved complex minor
characters.
Works Cited
Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of
Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press,
2015. Print.
Supernatural Wiki. Supernatural Wiki
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com. unk. web
site. 27 January 2016.
TV Tropes. TV Tropes
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes. unk. web site. 27
January 2016.
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