Teen Wolf and Consent, Part 3
Mar. 3rd, 2014 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickFucking hell. Again I am visiting Teen Wolf to see what else it has to say about consent. Turns out that fluffy werewolf drama has shitbuckets of things to say about consent. Good times, here. Good times.
I’ve bitched previously about Derek’s shitty coercive efforts at getting consent. (It’s here.) I’ve talked about how Derek could do a better job with consent. (here) I really want Derek to be better at consent. And then I got to thinking that perhaps this was all part of a greater whole, a larger conversation that Teen Wolf is trying to have about consent.
I have, to be fair, been thinking about consent a lot lately and I realize that people see what they are looking for rather a lot of the time. There’s that video of the gorilla suit among the basketball players for example. I’ll admit that I may well be looking for consent and so everything I see turns into things-for-talking-about-consent because I want them to be that way. :) Doesn’t matter either way – I’m still going to talk about consent, starting with Derek. (I just like looking at Derek. Sue me.)
We know that Derek is a regular alpha. All the alphas we see prior to midway through season 3 are regular alphas, but we are told that there exist bootstrapped “true alpha” alphas, critters of legend or whatever, who do not steal their alphahood from anyone else but instead deserve/become alpha through their own strength of character such that followers simply accrete around them. That right there is when Chekov sets his gun upon the mantle. (Sit/set is a shibboleth in my grammar and I’m probably always going to do it wrong or feel like I’m doing it wrong because I can’t tell what right is. When I need to have it be “right” in a sit/set situation (see what I did there?), I use “put”.)
We see this storyline develop with Isaac Lahey’s shifting allegiances and one of the characters (I need to rewatch, but I’m thinking Peter Hale or Deucalion) remarks upon it in case we as viewers aren’t noticing Isaac’s increasingly lukewarm support of Derek and his siding with Scott more and more over the course of the first half of season 3. (The rest of season 3 that has aired is still downloading at my house. I’ll get there. Be patient.) Isaac’s shift is in line with Scott’s ascendancy as a true alpha, which happens at midpoint of season 3 when he crosses the rubicon circle of powder (Because of fandom bleed-through, in my world this is goofer dust a la Supernatural. Goofer dust, because fandom bleed-through goes both directions, is therefore made at least partially of Mountain Ash.) and I respectfully posit that the singular difference between regular alphas and true alphas is… below the huge digression on the naming of characters and Abraham and God’s dysfunctional and abusive relationship.
********************
Time for a big digression! Everybody is on board with the fact that Isaac is the son of Abraham? Ya’ll do get that shit, right? You’re supposed to know these things.
Genesis 22 (If I have to read the Bible, it’s the KJV. More literary.)
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Mori'ah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
(Blah, blah. They go. They cut wood. They build an alter. They get all ready for the sacrifice whereupon Isaac is all “Hey, dad, where’s the lamb?” and that’s when Abraham ties his boy up and sticks Isaac up on the altar.)
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. (If this were a more modern version of the Bible, the angel of the LORD would have said “PSYCHE!”)
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son,from me.
God is a bit of a dick to Abraham, here. Seriously, telling people to slaughter their kids for sacrifice is totally a dick move. Abraham probably had to go through years of therapy after this.
At any rate, names for characters are not chosen at random. When you are going along in your enjoyment of media and someone there is named Isaac, you need to be thinking about altars and reasonably-innocent sacrifice and like that. People in stories are not named Isaac by accident. It’s even more of a thing to pay attention to when the name is weirder. Like, say, Ishmael. :) The more weird the name is, the more likely it’s there for a reason.
***************
Anyway, I was saying that Isaac Lahey’s allegiances shift from Derek towards Scott over the first half of season 3. Now, Scott’s not actually trying to get a pack. He’s not recruiting and he’s damn sure not creating his own pack ex humano like the other alphas do. (Apparently creating one’s own pack is not a thing true alphas do. Again, I need to rewatch because they dribble out tiny amounts of mythology at one go instead of having a pocket guide or something and I was probably watching this at 3 am instead of sleeping.) But, in the course of his everyday life, Scott is being a leader that people want to follow. Where Derek and other alphas make their own followers out of humans by biting humans, Scott can get followers by being a leader that people choose to follow. His pack can (and will) coalesce around him of its own volition.
Wait, what is that over there? Did I just see…
Holy shit, it’s our old friend consent. Hello, consent! I haven’t seen you here much on Teen Wolf because most of the consent on this show is so far removed from what it could be that I can’t blame you for being afraid to show your face. But here, halfway through season 3, you have finally got something worth showing off. Look at the consent offered from Isaac to Scott… fuckin’ a, Scott hasn’t even asked the question and Isaac has consented.
It is my read, here, that the true alpha derives power from the consent of the betas, who select and follow the alpha of their own choosing and that this is a more awesomer and more powerful and more special snowflake way to do things than the more normal alpha method of coercively building betas by biting.
Happily for us, Teen Wolf is shouting the party line: If you have to bite them to get betas, that’s lame. The real alpha, the true leader gets followers by being worthy of them so that the betas want to follow their lead.
This is a lot like the mentality of Dude, only losers fuck drunk chix, which I would very much like to become the new not-mating-call of fraternity boys everywhere.
Admittedly, I am looking at this through a lens of fucking because the Derek/Erica thing was about fucking when we started looking at werewolves and consent. Also, I like fucking and think it’s a fun filter to apply to my entertainment media interpretations. (You should hear me listening to pop music. EVERY DAMN SONG IS ABOUT FUCKING. ALL OF THEM. THE ENTIRETY OF POP MUSIC IS ABOUT PUSSY. Listening to that shit, you’d swear young persons from about 13 to about 25 were nothing but bundles of overly hormonal need. Er…)
As entertaining as fucking is, since we’ve moved to examining the Isaac and Scott dynamic (which does not read sex for me in the way that Derek/Erica did and it’s not because they’re both dudes. Trust me, dude on dude is not any sort of a barrier to my desire to read the action on-screen through a lens of fucking. More of an invitation, actually.), I’m starting to think this could also be a commentary on leadership as a whole. In that respect, the Isaac/Scott dynamic reads more like consent-of-the-governed. (Consent of the governed is one of the reasons I rabidly and furiously and consistently support the right to keep and bear arms of all sorts in spite of the fact that the pro-gun lobby is hella weird.) Consent of the governed is the only legitimate source of power for a government and the government should damn well fear its citizens. (Some days I feel like our government has nothing but contempt for its citizens. *sigh*)
And then in S3x13 (which I watched, about half – I should really have given it my full attention but I was making work lunches) Isaac is so penitent when he goes to Scott and lets on as how he’s all mackin’ on Allison. And we’re right back to reading this through the lens of fucking, side order of power. :) If this show is not careful, Imma start dressing everybody up in leather and strappy bits and we’re gonna have a damn good time then.
Way to go, Teen Wolf. You are more entertaining than you have any right to be.
I’ve bitched previously about Derek’s shitty coercive efforts at getting consent. (It’s here.) I’ve talked about how Derek could do a better job with consent. (here) I really want Derek to be better at consent. And then I got to thinking that perhaps this was all part of a greater whole, a larger conversation that Teen Wolf is trying to have about consent.
I have, to be fair, been thinking about consent a lot lately and I realize that people see what they are looking for rather a lot of the time. There’s that video of the gorilla suit among the basketball players for example. I’ll admit that I may well be looking for consent and so everything I see turns into things-for-talking-about-consent because I want them to be that way. :) Doesn’t matter either way – I’m still going to talk about consent, starting with Derek. (I just like looking at Derek. Sue me.)
We know that Derek is a regular alpha. All the alphas we see prior to midway through season 3 are regular alphas, but we are told that there exist bootstrapped “true alpha” alphas, critters of legend or whatever, who do not steal their alphahood from anyone else but instead deserve/become alpha through their own strength of character such that followers simply accrete around them. That right there is when Chekov sets his gun upon the mantle. (Sit/set is a shibboleth in my grammar and I’m probably always going to do it wrong or feel like I’m doing it wrong because I can’t tell what right is. When I need to have it be “right” in a sit/set situation (see what I did there?), I use “put”.)
We see this storyline develop with Isaac Lahey’s shifting allegiances and one of the characters (I need to rewatch, but I’m thinking Peter Hale or Deucalion) remarks upon it in case we as viewers aren’t noticing Isaac’s increasingly lukewarm support of Derek and his siding with Scott more and more over the course of the first half of season 3. (The rest of season 3 that has aired is still downloading at my house. I’ll get there. Be patient.) Isaac’s shift is in line with Scott’s ascendancy as a true alpha, which happens at midpoint of season 3 when he crosses the rubicon circle of powder (Because of fandom bleed-through, in my world this is goofer dust a la Supernatural. Goofer dust, because fandom bleed-through goes both directions, is therefore made at least partially of Mountain Ash.) and I respectfully posit that the singular difference between regular alphas and true alphas is… below the huge digression on the naming of characters and Abraham and God’s dysfunctional and abusive relationship.
********************
Time for a big digression! Everybody is on board with the fact that Isaac is the son of Abraham? Ya’ll do get that shit, right? You’re supposed to know these things.
Genesis 22 (If I have to read the Bible, it’s the KJV. More literary.)
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Mori'ah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
(Blah, blah. They go. They cut wood. They build an alter. They get all ready for the sacrifice whereupon Isaac is all “Hey, dad, where’s the lamb?” and that’s when Abraham ties his boy up and sticks Isaac up on the altar.)
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. (If this were a more modern version of the Bible, the angel of the LORD would have said “PSYCHE!”)
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son,from me.
God is a bit of a dick to Abraham, here. Seriously, telling people to slaughter their kids for sacrifice is totally a dick move. Abraham probably had to go through years of therapy after this.
At any rate, names for characters are not chosen at random. When you are going along in your enjoyment of media and someone there is named Isaac, you need to be thinking about altars and reasonably-innocent sacrifice and like that. People in stories are not named Isaac by accident. It’s even more of a thing to pay attention to when the name is weirder. Like, say, Ishmael. :) The more weird the name is, the more likely it’s there for a reason.
***************
Anyway, I was saying that Isaac Lahey’s allegiances shift from Derek towards Scott over the first half of season 3. Now, Scott’s not actually trying to get a pack. He’s not recruiting and he’s damn sure not creating his own pack ex humano like the other alphas do. (Apparently creating one’s own pack is not a thing true alphas do. Again, I need to rewatch because they dribble out tiny amounts of mythology at one go instead of having a pocket guide or something and I was probably watching this at 3 am instead of sleeping.) But, in the course of his everyday life, Scott is being a leader that people want to follow. Where Derek and other alphas make their own followers out of humans by biting humans, Scott can get followers by being a leader that people choose to follow. His pack can (and will) coalesce around him of its own volition.
Wait, what is that over there? Did I just see…
Holy shit, it’s our old friend consent. Hello, consent! I haven’t seen you here much on Teen Wolf because most of the consent on this show is so far removed from what it could be that I can’t blame you for being afraid to show your face. But here, halfway through season 3, you have finally got something worth showing off. Look at the consent offered from Isaac to Scott… fuckin’ a, Scott hasn’t even asked the question and Isaac has consented.
It is my read, here, that the true alpha derives power from the consent of the betas, who select and follow the alpha of their own choosing and that this is a more awesomer and more powerful and more special snowflake way to do things than the more normal alpha method of coercively building betas by biting.
Happily for us, Teen Wolf is shouting the party line: If you have to bite them to get betas, that’s lame. The real alpha, the true leader gets followers by being worthy of them so that the betas want to follow their lead.
This is a lot like the mentality of Dude, only losers fuck drunk chix, which I would very much like to become the new not-mating-call of fraternity boys everywhere.
Admittedly, I am looking at this through a lens of fucking because the Derek/Erica thing was about fucking when we started looking at werewolves and consent. Also, I like fucking and think it’s a fun filter to apply to my entertainment media interpretations. (You should hear me listening to pop music. EVERY DAMN SONG IS ABOUT FUCKING. ALL OF THEM. THE ENTIRETY OF POP MUSIC IS ABOUT PUSSY. Listening to that shit, you’d swear young persons from about 13 to about 25 were nothing but bundles of overly hormonal need. Er…)
As entertaining as fucking is, since we’ve moved to examining the Isaac and Scott dynamic (which does not read sex for me in the way that Derek/Erica did and it’s not because they’re both dudes. Trust me, dude on dude is not any sort of a barrier to my desire to read the action on-screen through a lens of fucking. More of an invitation, actually.), I’m starting to think this could also be a commentary on leadership as a whole. In that respect, the Isaac/Scott dynamic reads more like consent-of-the-governed. (Consent of the governed is one of the reasons I rabidly and furiously and consistently support the right to keep and bear arms of all sorts in spite of the fact that the pro-gun lobby is hella weird.) Consent of the governed is the only legitimate source of power for a government and the government should damn well fear its citizens. (Some days I feel like our government has nothing but contempt for its citizens. *sigh*)
And then in S3x13 (which I watched, about half – I should really have given it my full attention but I was making work lunches) Isaac is so penitent when he goes to Scott and lets on as how he’s all mackin’ on Allison. And we’re right back to reading this through the lens of fucking, side order of power. :) If this show is not careful, Imma start dressing everybody up in leather and strappy bits and we’re gonna have a damn good time then.
Way to go, Teen Wolf. You are more entertaining than you have any right to be.
